Archive for the ‘Fun Stuff’ Category

Trossen Robotics Announces the Grand Opening of New Sister Store RoboticsToys.com

Monday, February 1st, 2010

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Assimilate them early! Corrupt their minds before they have a chance to live a life free from fascination with robots. Yes, we are talking about our youth. We must teach them to master the machines to avoid enslavement in the future!

Trossen Robotics has been filling the professional hobby robotics niche for half a decade now. We’ve all seen the crazy projects mentally unstable adults have been creating over there, but now it’s time to help pass the torch. The droids at Trossen Robotics are happy to announce the Grand Opening of their new sister store for the youngins, Roboticstoys.com.

To celebrate the opening of the store sure to be the favorite of baby John (and Sarah) Conners everywhere we are giving away a free robot to the first 50 orders! In reality these are spybots that we plan to put into every home as part of a secret government program, but for now you can have one free. Isn’t that exciting!?

Roboticstoys.com aims to be the number one place to find all your robotics kits, toys, and decor for that budding roboticist in your family. Robotics is a great way to spark an early interest with children in mathematics, engineering, and the sciences. There is nothing quite like building your first interactive creation and watching it come to life to kickoff a lifelong fascination of discovery and invention. Just be careful with how much time they spend behind closed doors or you just might come home to find this thing “negotiating” allowance increases with you.

As always, Thank you for being a customer and blog reader!

- The Trossen Robotics Team

Lego NXT Scorpion Says: “Back Off Mah Skittles!”

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

If pictures are worth a thousand words, videos are worth like, a million right?

Wi-Fi Warhog Mayhem!

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

Our pals over at Coding4Fun wrote up a pretty extensive, and pretty awesome tutorial on how they made their Wi-Fi Warthog project a reality. Remember Power Wheel toys as a kid? Add in Phidgets, Nerf Guns, computers, and Xbox 360 controllers, and you’ve got yourself a real life videogame!

The video below shows the Wi-Fi Warthogs in action at PDC09!

Sparkfun Free Day Video!

Friday, January 15th, 2010

On Jan 7th, Sparkfun did an awesome thing for the DIY hobbyist community; they gave away $100,000 worth of stuff for free. Free Day was a massive thank you to all that supported them growing as a company, a way to give back to the community. While we at Trossen Robotics cannot fully express just how much we appreciate such a gesture, the move was one that sparked both love and hate from their many fans, customers, and followers. The website was up and down all day under the immense amount of traffic they were experiencing and many of those who were not able to get their free stuff were ‘outraged’. How one can be mad over such a generous gesture is beyond me, but as the age-old saying goes: “No good deed goes unpunished”.

Anyway, Sparkfun put together a pretty cool video highlighting the chaos from their POV, check it out!

iHobby 2009!

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

We’re a little late to get this posted, but have been busy working on new robotic monstrosities in our lab, as well as moving to a much bigger facility! Check it out! iHobby was a blast this year.

Just in time for Halloween!

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Forum member WGhost9 has the right idea; build a robotic spider to pass out candy at Halloween. Creeper2 looks like a cousin of the Phoenix Hexapod, but a bit bigger and with more powerful HS-5645MG servos! Definitely a cool way to scare some kids for Halloween. /devilishgrin

Fun Robot Gear!

Friday, September 25th, 2009

We’ve been asked for awhile to make the ‘I Build Robots!’ T-Shirts (we sport them at Robogames and various tradeshows) available for purchase. Well, we finally got off our lazy butts and made it happen. Our Fun Robot Stuff section is a bit barren right now, but we’ll be filling it with cool robot gear and merchandise in the near future.

Did I mention we have Robot Floor Mats too? Very bright, very retro!  Oh and ‘I Build Robots!’ stickers for good measure.

Okay, This Is Just Rude

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

I mean, he didn’t even wash his hands. Robots are so insensitive to human mysophobia.

Can You Smell What Lynxmotion Is Cooking?

Friday, September 11th, 2009

Our good friends over at Lynxmotion have been a force to be reckoned with for well over a decade in the robotics industry; producing some truly inspiring and amazing robots over the years. My first ‘real’ robot was a Lynxmotion Hexapod 1 (the 3 servo variety) that I picked up back in 1997, and their product lines were one of the driving forces that got me addicted to robotics.

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Well, they’ve impressed me yet again; Lynxmotion owner Jim and his son James, being robot enthusiasts and likewise fans of the Mechwarrior franchise, were intrigued with the Mech Warfare competition. Specifically they loved the biped aspect of it and so they set out to create a low cost competitive platform for Mech Warfare, and succeeded. Nicknamed ‘Hunchback’ and based around their BRAT biped platform, this is turning out to be one of the lowest cost and straight forward platforms for the competition. Currently there is a work-in-progress tutorial showing the build and code, and it looks like we have a very high chance of being treated to a complete kit allowing you to build your very own. If you’re interested in seeing how it progressed from prototype to near final revision, check out the project thread over on the Lynxmotion forums. Check out the following video of the Hunchback in action!

Tour of Sparkfun’s Offices

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

As I’m not currently allowed within 300 feet of their premises due to a misunderstanding (My costume and intentions were good, I swear.), this photo tour found over at Keith’s Electronic Blog gives us a nice sneak peak into the Sparkfun offices. I’ve openly expressed my (unwanted) love for Sparkfun in the past; these guys are my heroes and have become what Radioshack used to be and could have been. Definitely worth taking a look, after checking out this neat little write-up I immediately emailed my boss asking why Sparkfun had a limo while we were left lame and limo-less. Sadly, he said it wasn’t going to happen.

I can only assume the silver tentacles shown in this picture are some sort of electronic mind control device for the Sparkfun army.

Sparkfun

And if you don’t know who Sparkfun is, throw your Geek Card in the trash right this instant.

Via Keith’s Electronic Blog