The 15 inch-tall, 6 lb. robot is called the Junimotion and it’s a kit that you have to assemble for yourself. That’s kind of cool, yet daunting. The thing is that this ‘bot costs about $4,000 (USD), so you’d better be really careful when putting it together!

This kit has a special sort of servo that requires fewer cables than most, making the whole ‘bot more structurally sound. I guess that means it can be chucked around a bit. It comes with a bunch of different connection options including ones for LEDs, audio, sensors, gyro-sensors. The whole shebang is controllable via Bluetooth, so when someone writes an app for your cell phone, you’ll be able to control it wirelessly.

Battery time isn’t that great, at only 30 minutes. Also, the price doesn’t really work for me. But hey, if you’re in the market for a kit robot  – and have $4,000 bucks to spare, you’ll probably go bonkers for Junimotion.

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[via Plastic Pals via Ubergizmo]

The pair of dragonflies use a solar-powered motor and a mechanical wire rig to make their wings beat. And while these dragonflies don’t actually fly anywhere, I think that’s a good thing. Have you ever tried to get a good look at a dragonfly up close and personal? They don’t like to stick around for long. Here’s a video clip of the solar dragonflies in action…

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You can catch the Tamiya solar dragonfly kit over at Amazon for about $36 (USD).

The short-necked 4-string electric guitar kit includes everything you need to build your own electric guitar, along with detailed photographic assembly instructions (in Japanese!) From what I can tell, it sounds like there’s a tiny built-in amp and speaker, but you’ll really want to plug it into a regular guitar amp with a standard 1/4-inch connector if you want to rock out.

The guitar comes with the December 17th issue of the magazine, and if you happen to live in Japan, you can order from the Gakken Shop for ¥3675 (appx. $42 USD). The rest of us can pre-order the kit over at VeryCoolThings for $59.99 (USD)

Our pals over at Evil Mad Science Labs have created these battery-operated “Deluxe” LED Menorah kits which let you choose the type of lights you like the best. I personally love the ones with the giant 10mm LEDs, but you can choose from tiny 3mm LEDs too.

In addition to the ultrabright yellow version, there are blue and white LED variants available for a small up-charge. Personally, I think they’d look really cool with some ultraviolet LEDs. Each Menorah comes as a kit with a pre-programmed microcontroller that automatically “lights” an additional “candle” each time you turn it on. As the LEDs illuminate, the light up in the proper sequence.

These kits do require basic soldering and electronic skills and start shipping on November 9th. You can pre-order yours over at the Evil Mad Science store $14 to $17 (USD). Look ma, no waxy mess!

This simplistic 4-bit microcomputer kit from Gakken is really designed as a retro educational plaything, and not any sort of computer you’d ever want to be stuck using. Ever. The GMC-4 computer features a 20-key keyboard with hexadecimal characters, a single red 7-segment LED display, and 7 additional LEDs. That’s it. No big-screen, no Blu-ray drive (same as that iMac), and it doesn’t run any operating system.

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Still, it somehow manages to play simplistic games like “whac-a-mole” and tennis, and also offers a basic sound generator for playing monotonous music. Keep in mind that this kit does require assembly, and the instructions are entirely in Japanese – and they show pictures of components that don’t come with the GMC-4, So that should increase the challenge a little bit.

You can get your hands on the GMC-4 microcomputer kit over at the MakerSHED for $39.95 (USD).

[photo via HobbyMedia]

The Ice Tube clock ($70 USD) gets its brilliant blue display thanks to an old-school Russian-issued VFD (vacuum fluorescent display) tube. It’s set inside of a spiffy clear acrylic shell, which lets you see its internal circuitry whenever you want. Each tube has 8 glowy blue digits, as well as a dot indicator for PM and an alarm on/off indicator.

While the Ice Cube kit includes everything you need to build a standard alarm clock with day/date functionality, both hardware and software are open source, so you can mod this to do something else if you want – say display text messages or run the time backwards.

Keep in mind that the circuit generates very high voltages (up to 70 VDC), so you’ll need significant electronics, soldering and kit-building experience if you want one of these sitting on your bookshelf (and not catching your house on fire). If you’re up to the build challenge, head on over to Adafruit and place your order.

[via LadyAda]

Kairos Autonomi showed off the Pronto4’s capabilities at the recently held Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International demonstration. The kit was installed on a pickup truck “fitted with a heavy weapon”, and it went through a maze, following waypoints. The folks at Popular Mechanics were kind enough to share the fun of seeing a vehicle drive itself:

The vehicle is steered by a ring of actuators, while the transmission and throttle are “controlled by lines from a main box”.  Like most of the awesome tech we’ve featured here, the Pronto4 is primarily for the military, so they can conduct night missions more easily, or allow one soldier to man the weapons while the vehicle takes care of the driving. Or they could install the kit for vehicles on patrol, and even put it on an expendable car for target practice.

So if you’re thinking of saving up to get your own Pronto4 so your vehicle can also be your designated driver, you’re out of luck. The kit isn’t sold to the public. Not yet anyway. Man, I can think of a dozen pranks that you can pull off with this kit. Viva technology!

The wearable TRUTH wristband uses a set of red and blue LEDs, tied to a circuit that measures GSR (galvanic skin response). GSR is often used in lie detector tests – a questionable practice in and of itself. As the wearer’s galvanic “emotional arousal” increases, the lights turn red, and as it decreases, the lights turn a cool blue. As you can see from the video clip below, it’s seems to do a much better job detecting excitement than anything else. Especially nipple stimulation.

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The TRUTH kit includes everything you need, to make your own TRUTH wristband, but does require experience assembling electronics and soldering. It’s available over at the MakerSHED for $44.95 (USD).

Here’s a demo of the hack in action. It kind of hurt my eyes trying to read the message. How about a widescreen Meggy Mr. Oskay?

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If this is the first time you’ve heard of the Meggy Jr RGB, you can get more details about it here. For those who already own a Meggy Jr RGB, you can download the necessary software for the project here. Check out the original post at Evil Mad Scientist Labs for detailed instructions. Because I sure as hell wouldn’t be able to explain it to you in my own words.

The SuperHeadz Plamodel 35mm camera kit lets you snap together your camera using die-cut pieces that are reminiscent of the first time you built a model car or airplane when you were a kid.

When you’re all done putting the 30-odd pieces of the Plamodel kit together, it should look something like this:

Or if you’re less mechanically-inclined, something like this:

Yeah, yeah, I know. In a world of ever-increasing megapixels, who cares about a cheap plastic 35mm camera? I do. After all, if I took my Nikon apart into a bunch of pieces, I’d never get it back together.

If you like to tinker, you can find the Plamodel camera kit over at Unica Home for $17 USD.

J & C Studios makes these teeny, tiny retro arcade machine models built to O-Scale proportions. Each 1.75″ tall game cabinet snaps together from laser-cut black styrene, and offer a place for you to put a grain-of-wheat or LED bulb behind the screen so it can light up.

J & C offers self-stick decal kits for Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Galaga, Centipede, Zaxxon, Phoenix and Defender, but you could certainly make your own custom labels using a color printer if you wanted. Me, I want a miniature BattleZone machine. And if you’re feeling even more retro, they’ve got super small pinball machines too.

The arcade machines are just $7.49 (USD) a piece and the pinball machines will run you $6.49 each. You can find them over at the J & C Studios website. With a little work, you could probably stick a circuit board and an LCD screen inside one of these if you really wanted to go to town.

The tinyCylon gets its tiny little brains from the programmable ATtiny13 controller chip, and loaded with more patterns than you can shake a stick at.

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A simple press of the button lets you toggle between a bunch of mini light shows: classic Cylon bi-directional scan, left-to-right, right-to-left, glowing eyes, a couple of random modes, cyclops, and the oh-so-thrilling “off”.

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You can grab the tinyCylon kit over at the MakerSHED for just $10. If you’d rather have one pre-assembled for you, just add $5 bucks. Me, I’d plunk down a couple hundred donuts and build my own mini desktop Cylon army.

Designed by Adafruit (in collaboration with Jay Silver), Drawdio is an analog synthesizer circuit that straps to any soft-leaded pencil, and lets you crank out electronic sounds while you sketch. The kit takes advantage of the conductive properties of the graphite in the pencil lead, and produces a veritable cacophony of sounds as you put pencil to paper.

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So maybe you can’t call those otherworldly bleeps, beeps and squeaks “music”, but with enough practice you might be able to carry a basic tune… or you could give one of these a try the next time you have to fill in all those perfect little circles on your SAT or GMAT exam. I’m sure the test administrator would love that.

Adafruit sells the Drawdio kit for $19.50 (USD), including the circuit board, all necessary hardware and a 2B pencil. You’ll need basic soldering skills to put Drawdio together, so don’t expect it to work without some experience building electronic kits.

With a colorful 8×8 RGB LED display, the Meggy Jr RGB handheld platform gives you everything you need to create your own mini-games or pixel art displays.

Each colored dot actually contains three tiny LEDs, for a total of 192 uniquely addressable positions. The kit includes 6 clicky button switches, an audio transducer and additional LEDs for keeping track of things like your score or number of lives left in your custom games.

Meggy Jr even offers customizable handles so you can pimp out your handheld with your own design.

The Arduino-based Meggy Jr RGB kit comes with a pre-installed game called “Attack of the Cherry Tomatoes”, a little side-scrolling shooter, but the real fun comes from writing your own games. All you need is a USB-TTL cable, and the open-source Meggy Arduino developer library.

You can get your hands on Meggy Jr. over at Evil Mad Science with prices ranging from $65 to $95 USD.

[Meggy Jr. RGB Details]

The AREXX YT-3000 (aka “YETi Walker”) is a bi-pedal robot which can be programmed using your PC or an remote-controlled via an IR interface. It’s powered by an ATMEGA8 microcontrolller, which can be easily programmed in C to do your bidding.

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In its basic configuration, the YETi is a simple walking machine, but can be expanded with additional sensors and modules such as an ultrasonic obstacle detector and an external LED display.

The basic YETi Walker kit is available from TheRobotShop for £69.99 (appx. $114 USD).

Matt over at Liquidware decided to build an “open source Gameboy” (known as the Gamepack) using off-the-shelf parts, including the modder-friendly Arduino microprocessor. While the Arduino may provide the brains of the operation, the 128×128 TouchShield Stealth color OLED touchscreen is most definitely the soul. Rounding out the build is an Inputshield board, which provides a tiny joystick (complete with rumble) and control buttons as well as a flat Lithium battery pack.

The Gamepack system is now available in kit form so you can build one for yourself. At this point, the Gamepack only runs some rudimentary homebrew demo code, but the hope is that others who grab the kit will contribute more advanced games, or maybe even a Nintendo emulator.

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At $249 for the Gamepack kit, you could buy more than 10 used Gameboys. But none of them would be nearly as cool as the one you built yourself.

[Liquidware Antipasto via Boing Boing Gadgets]

Tamiya’s Robocraft boxing robots come in a kit that’s easy enough to assemble if you know your way around a screwdriver.

Each robotic boxer operates on a wired remote, which lets you control each of two gearboxes which drive the robot’s punches and movements. The same gears drive the punching action and forward/backward movement, making them a bit wobbly and unpredictable – both excellent traits for a boxer. Just as Mickey Rourke.

A simple adjustment lets you switch between two punch types: upper-cut and straight jab.

Pow, right in the kisser!

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They’re sorta like a modern-day version of Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, no?

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Tamiya USA sells individual blue boxing ‘bots (along with a little punching bag) for $37 USD, and pairs (in colorful pink and yellow so you can tell ‘em apart) for $67 USD.

The clock features a set of dramatic surface-mounted Nixie tubes which peek through the front of the warm reddish African Sapele wood case.

The only thing keeping me from putting one of these clocks on my mantle is the fact that it’s only sold as a kit. And between writing this blog, a day job (yes, I have one of those too), and trying to retain some semblance of a life, it’s almost impossible to envision having the time to build this sucker.

For those of you with more free time (and are more adept with your soldering skills than I), the kit comes with everything you need to build the clock, including pre-cut wood case parts, 6 Nixie tubes, a couple of bright neon bulbs for the hour:minute separator, and all the electronic parts you need. In all, there are 115 parts you’ll need to put the clock together.

If you’ve got the time on your hands to build your own clock, you can find this kit (along with a variety of other Nixie kits) from eBay seller Neonixie.

Out of the box, there are three “standard” robot designs, HUNO, DINO and DOGY. HUNO is a humanoid robot, capable of walking on two legs, and can perform moves like walking, jogging, headstands and kicking.

DINO is sort of like a dinosaur, standing on two legs with a third appendage that resembles a tail. The prehistoric robot can move much faster than HUNO, and can thrash its tail about.

Last but not least is DOGY, a four-legged mode which simulates the movements of a robotic canine. Thanks to its extra legs, it’s the fastest of the bot modes, and can be programmed to run, sit, lie down or other dog-like movements.

Additional modules let you build even more complex robots. If you have enough you can create some really cool custom robots, like this awesome spiderbot…

The kits come in either a simple black design, or a clear body loaded with programmable LEDs inside under the see through shell, letting you easily create your own disco ‘bots. Best of all RoboBuilder is encouraging its users to share designs and programming on their online community.

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U.S. pricing for RoboBuilder kits isn’t known but Korea’s Funshop has started offering kits from KRW 450,000 to 660,000 (appx. $433 to $634 USD).

[RoboBuilder]

Adafruit’s Botanicalls Twitter Kit lets your plants communicate over the web, letting you know when they need water, or if they’re feeling happy that they’ve been recently cared for. And since Twitter can notify your mobile device of new posts, you can receive a text message when your plant is feeling blue.

The easy-to-assemble electronic kit uses wired moisture sensors to detect your plant’s state of mind and send information out to the Internet via an on-board Ethernet jack. Connect the board to your PC using a USB cable, and the Arduino-based circuit can be programmed to send custom messages to Twitter.

The kit is available from Adafruit for $160 USD. All I need now is for my dogs and cat to start Twittering too and I can finally take a nice long vacation.

[via MAKE]