Robotics has always interested me. Growing up (and to this day), I'd be pulling all my gadgets apart—mechanical, electrical—I didn't discriminate. I wanted to see and learn how things worked, discover their inner workings. To this day, many items that come my way don't have a chance; I end up with a screwdriver wrenching away at them. Some survive; others... not so much.
It's this odd fascination, curiosity—mainly the journey, but the finished product is so satisfying. Because when something gets taken apart, my mind races to all the interesting projects I can conjure up with whatever is discovered within. Kids' battery-powered toys are some of the best! Some can actually be pretty freaky once the cute fur/fluff is removed, leaving an exoskeleton of animatronics.
Inside out, taking our child hood toys "apart". Seeing what is under the "skin". And, not really what you are used to seeing when taking them apart... Jason Freeny shows us the anatomy of our favorite childhood toys/ animated figures...
That 1 is a bit too real... though, not the actual, or real composition of the inner workings. There's an online collection - many, many... where the fur has been removed, leaving us with the naked mechanisms- the robots that hide within. Large collection, with detailed portraits taken of the before and after—like I said, some can be seriously creepy! And as far as I can see, this page gets updated... there are alot more on the page than the last time I visited the site.
Do you have a favorite out of all of them? I enjoyed seeing the dancing flower.. I remember many of those in shop window when I was a kid growing up.... there are the many that are...if I was a kid and pulled the fur off to see those, no wonder some kids have more nightmares than others. Leave a comment of your favorite below. Mine is the one with the caption"
Looked cute enough, but made a very, very sad robot
Maybe you remind yourself of something that broke down, so you need to keep a component, or a daydream is trying to come to life. Most of the time, whatever was pulled apart gets broken itself, and it's hard to toss out. First, there's the guilt of breaking it, then denial, and the wild idea that, "Hey, I broke it...I can fix it...I just need another...part..."
One thing that I am exploring is using those PTZ auto-follow/track security cameras for other projects. Surprisingly, I've only seen a couple—literally two—projects where someone has taken those and created something else with them. They have wicked night vision and can track objects. I've made a few to have the externals of stuffed animals... it's actually a good use, brings them to life, as though real. As you walk past, the—what used to be your favorite teddy bear—now an animatronics experiment...its head follows you...and looks up at the sky as birds and planes pass...then following the family dog as it runs by. I'll put up details in the future of what I've done.
These little security cameras have fairly good night vision and IR—how about some night vision goggles?
Some can be accessed outside of their proprietary apps—now you have a platform already put together to transmit audio/video.
Instead of the one stepper motor controlling the pan, the other the tilt...what if one connection went to multiple motors, controlling a drive train?
The components inside are generally similar across the different models. I've purchased $20 models and $160 ones—didn't see any difference in components. In fact, the more expensive one had two antennas...one of them was fake, just plastic.
There's one thing that I've discovered these PTZ cameras do fairly well: the auto-tracking function. I'll be exploring this in more detail. I don't want to get into it just yet, but I'll be experimenting and will share down the road—this is more in line with SDR and signals rather than animating stuffed animals.
Now for the star of the show, which is the following—use it to get your robotics project to another level.
"Abstract"
Further reading on the subject can be found here - which is the research done regarding the open source robotics project.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468067220300092#f0010
For anyone that is interested/ is involved in/ hobbyist/ or professional, this is a fantastic wealth of knowledge to either have a good foundational start to a project, or apply to current one(s).
This guy in the video did, and look how much dexterity is present. Not only that but, from past renditions to what is being presented as the most recent product- next level.
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