Tag: Spin

This amazing creation by robot enthusiast Hinamitetu appears to be getting ready for the Robot Olympics. As it builds up speed in the video below, the little robot eventually builds up enough speed to spin all the way around the horizontal bar, and even attempts to release its grippy hands mid-spin (with questionable success).

This flying saucer-like apparatus from Bandai is a modern day take on a classic kids’ toy – the spinning top. Just flip open the collapsing handle on the Bandai Luminodisc and give it a spin. As it goes round and round, a persistence-of-vision LED display tells you how many rotations your spin made.

I’ve been waiting all my life for the day that somebody came up with a gadget that would finally combine my passions for radio-controlled race cars and breakdancing. That day has finally arrived. You can certainly drive this R/C car around the floor just like any other, but the real fun kicks in when you kick it into Breakin’ II Electric Boogaloo mode.

This robot kit from Japan lets you build your own ball shaped robot that can pull off all sorts of wild and crazy moves as it gyrates around your floor. While the Tornader robot from Elekit can drive slowly around the floor like most remote-controlled vehicles, the real fun starts when you set the Tornader into one of its insane spin modes.

This amazing wall clock can display intricate animations thanks to the optical phenomenon known as persistence of vision (POV). Using a small spinning “blade” covered in red, green and blue LEDs, along with sophisticated microcontroller circuit, this clock can dynamically change its look with just the push of a button.

Hardware hacker Ian Matthew decided to see if he could turn a hard drive into a clock. But this isn’t one of those lazy designs where you just stick some clock hands through a hard drive platter.

In the beginning, there was the roller skate, then came the skate board and later the Rollerblade. So what’s the next conveyance that we’ll be strapping to our feet to roll around the street? Orbitwheels move sort of like inline skates, but a wheel rotates around your feet, instead of under them.

The guys from online shop MyVirtualZone just tipped me off to these little playthings. The appropriately named Laser Top has a little laser beam that projects out of the side as you spin it around. While I actually think the effect of the LEDs and the laser are pretty cool when its spinning, I think that the music that plays as it goes is about as ridiculous as it gets.

By rapidly spinning a blade that contains an array of flashing LEDs, this wall clock tells time in a visually striking way. A thin LED arm, loaded with 33 LEDs spins at 30 revolutions per second to create the illusion of a complete image.

ThinkGeek is at it again. This time they’re offering up a fan which can load up animated GIF files from your computer and display them in full color on the blades of the fan. Inspired by those light-up LED spinner rims that might have turned up on Pimp My Ride, The LED Art Fan hooks up to your computer via a serial connection, and lets you download up to 128 frames of art into its internal memory.

Some sick individual strapped their buddy to a seat at the end of a FANUC industrial robot’s arm and then ran him through the spin cycle. They captured all of the fun and festivities in this video clip: I wouldn’t want to be the one sitting in that chair.