Big news over at Dangerous Prototypes as they successfully release their open source USB stack today. Via Dangerous Prototypes:

Good news everyone! A new free and open source USB stack is now available for PIC microcontrollers. Today we finished testing and prepared a simple echo test that works with PIC 18F and 24F. We hope a demo release will get more developers involved. A release package and overview are in the forum. As always, thanks to Honken and JTR for making this possible.

Microchip has a free-as-in-beer USB firmware for the PIC microcontroller, but it can’t be redistributed. For a project like the USB IR Toy, we can give you our source code but not the USB source. You have to get that on your own from Microchip. It’s not a huge problem, but it is a barrier for people new to PICs. We used the Microchip firmware because it works great and there wasn’t an alternative.

This looks exciting, and we can’t wait to see what people do with this!

Striking a design similarity to a Star Wars Droideka battle droid, the MorpHex is a rather remarkable project.  While at first glance it might be considered an ordinary hexapod, it has a handful of several very interesting design ideas going to work.  For starters, the MorpHex has a dynamic support structure which can expand and contract to give the legs a variable walking radius.  From the core support, MorpHex uses 31 servos in a mirrored hexapod style to create a machine capable of creating a ball.  Couple that with the attachment of several exterior spherical shell pieces, and you have yourself a very unique rolling hexapod.  One thing that cannot  go unnoticed is the quality of the control software for this robot creating incredibly smooth transitions and walking strides.  Be sure to also check out all the beautiful photos on Zanta’s project page for a better idea of how the MorpHex functions.  Strap on a few blaster cannons and the MorpHex should be the perfect candidate for protecting your empire.

(via Hack a Day)

IEEE Spectrum has an article detailing a pair of innovative, off the beaten path UAV designs that are cool and very interesting to watch in action.

First up is the Lockheed Martin Samurai UAV. Based on the design of a maple seed, the robot achieves lift by spinning around in circles very quickly. The result is a simple, durable UAV, without the need for many of the fragile parts in helicopter rotors and traditional aircraft ailerons, etc. A video of this thing in flight is shown below:

(continue reading…)

Spotted over at EDN, this circuit looks very useful for hobbyists considering making power circuits with multiple power supply options (battery-powered devices that can also be run while charging, for example). Via EDN:

Many systems must select among two or more low-voltage dc-input sources, such as an ac adapter, a USB (Universal Serial Bus) port, or an onboard battery, for example. You can implement this selection using manual switches, but automatic switching is preferable. You usually want to use the highest-available input voltage to power your system. You can accomplish this task using a Schottky-diode ORing scheme (Figure 1). Unfortunately, the forward-voltage drop of a Schottky diode ranges from 300 to 600 mV. This voltage wastes power, creates heat, and decreases the voltage available to your system.

Efficient voltage ORing requires only a P- or an N-channel MOSFET, a suitable op amp, and a few passives. This Design Idea describes the application of voltage ORing to positive dc-power rails. The P-channel-MOSFET design is suitable for low-power, single-supply systems operating at 3.3V or higher, and the N-channel MOSFET fits situations in which the bus voltage is lower or the current is higher and a suitable op-amp bias voltage is available.

Check it out, breadboard it yourself! And, if you do, contact us or hit us up in the NBitWonder forums.

Beta 7 of Microchip’s cross-platform MPLABX IDE is now available. The IDE can be downloaded over at the MPLABX download page. Additionally, tutorials and help information for MPLABX are available here.

In addition to MPLABX, the Microchip C compilers on the downloads page have all been updated. Updated compilers are: C30 v3.30b, C32 v2.0, C18 v3.40, PICC 9.82, PICC18 v9.66. Head on over and check it out!

(Via IEEE Spectrum)

Do you want to learn more about Artificial Intelligence?  From Stanford?  …for free?!  If so, then today is your lucky day!

IEEE Spectrum, a publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, reports that Stanford will let you do just that this fall.  Two 75-minute lectures per week will be videotaped and split up into 15-minute chunks for easy streaming.  Three days into registration, there are over 10,000 students signed up.

Check out the original article for the full story, or head over to the class website and sign up!

The EagleUp development effort has been covering a fair bit of ground in the past two weeks since we first wrote about the new version 4 going live.  Since then the 3D circuit board modeling utility has made it to revision 4.1, increasing compatibility with board designs and board export options.

The major news for the EagleUp project is the public release of the part warehouse. This part warehouse is a collection of the component models submitted by the EagleUp user community.  Starting off with a handful of common components, you can create more advanced models for other components and submit them to the EagleUp project for inclusion in the warehouse.  While the warehouse currently holds only components, it is intended to also hold enclosure and hardware models as well, making your next project modeling a snap.

(via EagleUp)

(This is part of a multi-part post detailing my efforts to build a RepRap Mendel, an open source 3D printer.)

Introduction:

In my previous post, I triumphantly touted the completion of all blocks for the X, Y, and Z stages. Build completion was assured, and I’d be cranking out test prints by the weekend!

Y-Axis Assembly:

…Not quite. Having finished the Y-axis bearings, I set about installing those bearings on the Y platform as detailed in the Y-axis build instructions. Unfortunately, the lower bearings on the Y Bearing 360 parts collided with the metal slightly, and wouldn’t fit. (continue reading…)

While mankind may still have the upper hand over robots in most tasks, another activity has been added to the checklist of things we may no longer be superior at.  As part of a summer research project, a Purdue University student has enabled a Darwin-OP robot to play Dance Dance Revolution.  While it currently steps on command, his next task is to give it vision so it can see the arrows on the screen and react accordingly.  Hopefully we have enough time to blow the dust off those dance pads and get some practice in before it dominates us all.

(via IEEE Spectrum)

Over at Thingiverse, mraiser debuts his next exciting creation: The Truckbot!

The truckbot is a functional, almost entirely 3D-printable driving chassis. It’s the successor to the previous tankbot and tankbot v2 projects. Best of all, it was designed to use the NBitWonder DCMotorDriver project!

Via the forums.