I honestly thought my boss was just pulling my chain at first.

Being my first year to attend the Consumer Electronics Show I was quite excited to say the least. I had overheard someone on the shuttle claiming that attendance would be down 10-15%, but when you factor in that up to 150,000 people have attended this in the past… 10-15% was trivial, there were still a LOT of people here. Arriving at the event and seeing a vast crowd of people out front of the main exhibition halls made the enormous size of this event hit home.

At first I wandered the main hall, then ended up in the south hall, and then realized I had just lost 3 hours in what felt like 30 minutes. Electronics as far as the eye could see, multi-story booths (yes, some of the booths had stairs), and rivers of people flowing in every direction. Finally I found a map and figured out that I actually needed to be about 3 miles away at the Sands Expo Center to find the Robotics Tech Zone.

Anybots‘ booth immediately caught my attention: boasting a slick new telepresence robot, QA. This is taking telepresence a step further, in that QA actually stands about as tall as a human and acts as a physical representation for you. The concept is that if you or your company has multiple sites, and you need to say… check out the new wallpaper in your factory in China, participate at a trade show, or attend a meeting, QA grants you the ability to do so in style. You see and hear what QA does, can look and move around fluidly, and speak as if you were on site. Aesthetically QA is very slick, a robot that would easily fit into a scene from a sci-fi movie based in the future.

The crew behind MechRC also had a booth, showcasing their new Groundpounder variant as well as the their upcoming Educational Program. I got a chance to talk with Dr. Jim Wyatt and Victor Chen about their plans for the robotic line, which includes a K-12 adaptable curriculum, future variants such as the Groundpounder pictured above, and the possibilties of Laser Tag kit upgrades!

Also showcasing at the CES was WowWee, iRobot, Kowatech, Robolabs, Hagisonic, and many more. While the Robotics Techzone wasn’t as big as I had hoped, it was somewhat expected as the show is based around consumer electronics, and consumer level robots are still considered new territory. The great thing about robotics however is that there will always be more in the future!

Feel free to check out our CES 2009 Photo Gallery (and if you were there, add your own!). I focused on taking pictures of things relative to robotics seeing as though the rest of CES is covered by everyone and their grandmother. We’ll see you there next year!

We were super busy keeping up with visitors at our booth, but we tried to snap a few pictures before the show started each day. We created a gallery of some of the better pictures we took. Farrell Robotics was also there, showing off their amazing new robots Zyn and Kai, which are based on the EX-106, RX-28, and DX-117 servos. They are quite literally the most advanced competition humanoids in the US, completely custom built and a real marvel of engineering.

These bots are literally as big as toddlers, in fact they had Kai dressed the part. Seeing how quick and strong these robots are was truly a sight, I’m pretty sure they could at least take our software guy Alex (not me though, I know their weakspots!)

Here are a few pictures (click to enlarge) but be sure to check out our iHobby 2008 Gallery!

First, either purchase or build a scary pop-out halloween prop, screaming speaker, or flashing lights of your choice. Here’s a pretty fancy one made out of PVC and other various items:

Couple this with one of our simple Floor Mat Switches….

and you’ve got an automatic Halloween gag that is sure to make a few kids soil their costumes!

Photo courtesy of SparkFun Electronics.

We recently got a batch of these neat little TTL-controlled laser modules in stock.  Needless to say, we did what what we always do when we get a new toy.  We played with it and took some pictures!  It was super easy to wire up, and it can be switched on and off with any TTL logic signal.  It draws a miniscule amount of current (26 mA on our meter).  It has a pretty good output, too.  Don’t expect to see it a mile away, but when we shined it at a white wall in direct sunlight at a distance of about 12 feet, it projected a bright, sharp dot.

American Twenty-five cent piece shown for size comparison.

The thing is freaking tiny, too.  Slim and sleek.

It’s as thick as a nickel!  Would have used the quarter from the last picture, but we couldn’t get one to stand on its edge.  Yep.  So far this post has cost me thirty cents.

As we’ve mentioned, wiring it up and controlling it is a cinch.  To use it with the Phidgets 8/8/8, we used the power and ground connections on one of the analog connectors and one digital output to switch it on and off.

Three wires are all you need.  Power, ground, and digital control.

Here’s our test setup.  Laser module is connected to the 8/8/8 with jumper wires from SparkFun.

Here it is.  The stuff.

 

Buy stuff from us!!!

TTL-Controlled Laser Module
F/F Jumper Wires
Phidgets 8/8/8

Thanks to Chicago Public Radio for covering this story while I was on my way to work this morning.  Their pledge drive is still going on, so head over to WBEZ.org and give them some money.

Story at news.big.net

Project CONDOR event posting at Metromix

I couldn’t find any Project CONDOR pictures, so I ran a Google image search for “psychedelic blimps” and this is what I got.