lego tube rocker

[Douglas Ridgway]

I don't have a shaker at home, so my son built me this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3jv08nAb7Y

The lego brick it's based around is basically a general purpose
two-actuator robot, with a simple programming interface: do it once,
then it copies. He also built another version (no movie, sorry)
hooking one actuator to translation and the other to lifting the arm,
so you could do repeated dunking in different water baths.
Unfortunately the brick has only 30 sec of memory, which is a little
short for a PCR cycle, but still, as a conceptual prototype, it's kind
of cute.

[Bryan Bishop]

On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 11:44 PM, Douglas Ridgway wrote:
> The lego brick it's based around is basically a general purpose
> two-actuator robot, with a simple programming interface: do it once,
> then it copies. He also built another version (no movie, sorry)
> hooking one actuator to translation and the other to lifting the arm,
> so you could do repeated dunking in different water baths.
> Unfortunately the brick has only 30 sec of memory, which is a little
> short for a PCR cycle, but still, as a conceptual prototype, it's kind
> of cute.

Neat. Your kid gets bonus points for making it out of legos. I think
his next step should be to experiment with a simple PIC or
microcontroller, like the arduino, as a method to control the lego
actuators- the arduino will be far more than necessary in order to do
complex programs. But it's not as easily programmed as choreographing
the positions for legos (although there are other kits out there like
that- for instance, the humanoid miniature robots these days).

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507

[Andrew Hessel]

I can see a new group forming -- DIYbio Kids -- and a Saturday morning TV show.

--
Andrew Hessel
Biostrategy consultant
780.868.3169
ahe...@gmail.com