David Johansson created a smartphone charger that can charge up your smartphone or other power hungry gadgets with just fire. Yes, fire is the source of energy for the thermoelectric module called as the peltier element. Using his wits David came up with the DIY Smartphone Charger Powered by Fire (thermoelectric generator) that charges your devices by getting the fire power from gas, charcoal, burner, candle light, camp fire, wood stove, spirit burner or even tea light.

From: Instructables and…

This is a amazing project of Arduino-powered scooterputer. 

Like all awesome projects, this build is the product of a massive case of feature creep. Initially, [Kurt] only wanted a voltage monitor for his battery. With an  Arduino Duemilanove, a voltage divider, and an evening of coding, [Kurt] whipped up a simple device with three LEDs to indicate the status of the batter: either low, good, or charging.

The project was complete until he ran across an awesome OLED screen. Using a touch screen display for just battery monitoring is a bit overkill, so [Kurt] made a trip over to Sparkfun and got his hands on a temperature sensor, real-time clock,…

Robotic hand is one of most important parts in robot equipment. This is main manipulator that interacts with outside world. Complex robotic hand may be very expensive part that may be hardly achievable by hobbyist. Anyway you are always free to experiment and find new ways of reducing cost while making it worth using. Aaron Thomen have been experimenting with interesting robotic Arm solution controlled by Arduino.

As you can see. Few smart approaches makes it really responsive and realistic enough. It is basically made using servo motors and spring-loaded fingers. Fingers are maid of bicycle chains that have many joints and are really flexible. Servo motors activate finger by pulling strings. It is able to pick small objects pretty well what makes it great candidate in many awesome projects. So this is an example of how complex things can be…

The tim-E is an alarm clock that’s designed to dock your iPhone or iPod Touch into a robotic body. The screen of your iPhone or iPod becomes the face of the robot and it gives you several ways that you can be woken up. The device can wake you to a normal alarm in the form of buzz or using a song from your device, all the time dancing around and bobbing its head.

You can also be awakened to the weather report or the day’s traffic report. tim-E will also give you voice reminders to do things the next day before you go to sleep and can even wake you with a brainteaser to ensure you don’t fall back asleep. Of course, this is all done with a certain amount of attitude  waking you with phrases like “Hello, lazybones! Time to get up!”

If…

Making hand-built robot at home can be a perfect hobby for an engineer, but what do you say when a former police officer builds a humanoid robot that actually has moving limbs and other parts?  Baltimore resident Mark Haywood, an ex-cop has created a robot – he calls HEX, out of all kinds of household appliances. The four foot, three-inch humanoid robot is made out of plethora of ordinary household things comprising everything form an electric fan to kitchen fryer and from an old radio to speakers and discarded DVD player.

From: Damn…

Rather than being a benign foam hammer, this Mjölnir can summon 80,000 volts of electricity thanks to the inclusion of a Tesla coil.

Do it yourselft, click here.

The VertiBOT is a self balancing robot project taken on for the purpose of exploring how the sensors work in conjunction with some PID algorithms.

[Miguel] didn’t roll any extras into the build. But you have to admit that makes it look interesting. There’s almost nothing to it and yet, as you can see in the clip after the break, he accomplished everything he set out to.

The body and wheels are 3D printed, with black bands for tires to help give it some traction. Note the connection in the center of the body which allowed him to make a longer part by printing in two stages. On the electronic side of things he’s using an Arduino Nano. A level converter lets it communicate with the 6 DOF IMU board which is used to detect…

Jumping robots must really be in demand I guess. RHex uses six curved leg-scoops to propel the robot into some incredible jumps. This 15-pound machine can even hoist itself up a vertical wall that’s taller than itself. The RHex robot has a simple yet rugged design too. It can be completely submerged in water. And those legs are perfect for swimming too.

From: Technabob

Researchers (Ramaraja Ramasamy,right, and Yogeswaran Umasankar) explore how to harvest electricity directly from plants. The sun provides the most abundant source of energy on the planet. However, only a tiny fraction of the solar radiation on Earth is converted into useful energy.

To help solve this problem, researchers at the University of Georgia looked to nature for inspiration, and they are now developing a new technology that makes it possible to use plants to generate electricity.

See more at: Phys.org