Drones in the yard? Shoot-em down...

Popular Mechanics has a nice article on "How to shoot down a drone". Of course we are talking non-military, civilian "nuisance" drones. Neighbors peeking in the back yard? Noisy drones flying down the block. ready to grab your 12 gauge?

You could, but you will probably end up in jail.Grab your Super Soaker, a ball, rock, whatever and knock that bugger out of the sky. You just need to hit it with something to send it tumbling to the ground.

mBot - One Robot per child

Being the geek that I am, when mBot announced its kickstarter campaign, I had to get in on the action. I ordered 3 of the $49 mBots, one for each of my kids (ages 6, 9 and 12). My hopes were to get my 9 year old and 12 year old inspired to pursue more than just playing games on their electronic devices. My hopes are that buy the end of summer they will have spent a little less time on the ipad and create a few of their own custom programs.

The mBot is programmed using mBlock, a version of Scratch.

There are many reviews out their for the mBot and the one robot per child mission.

The mBot instruction manual and software installation went smoothly. I was able to help all three kids build their robots in under 30 minutes. (ok, I built the 6 year old's robot, and barked instructions at the other two.)

Installing the app on an iPhone and iPad was simple. Next up is learning and teaching the kids to program. I'm starting with this instructables article, then I will delve into the tutorials on the mBot site.

"Virtual Reality still in Pong stage"

"Already hugely impressive, virtual reality is only now at the 
stage video games were when Pong was released in 1972, says 
Left 4 Dead, Portal and Half-Life writer Chet Faliszek. " 
Check out the full story

rebuilding

This is the blog that started it all. I'm hoping to ramp up posts on Autodesk Inventor, CNC Projects on the Tormach PCNC 1100 and anything else geeky I can find.

For today I'd like to share a piece of hardware that I'm dying to get a live preview of:

3D Robotics Solo Quadcopter

Take a look at the interview posted by The Verge.

Delta Robot using Wii and Arduino « Don't buy, make!

Delta Robot using Wii and Arduino « Don't buy, make!: "Delta Robot using Wii and Arduino"

Nut and bolt designed by John Senft printed on Dimenstion BST1200 3D printer.