We are pleased to help Instructables launch an Egg-Bot Challenge for egg-related projects.
“Make something awesome that is egg inspired. Share your favorite omelet, a picture of your best decorated eggs or your favorite “recipe” for knitted eggs. Anything egg related is eligible.”
You can win some prizes, including a Deluxe Egg-Bot Kit, and we’ll be helping to judge the the finalists. The contest closes on May 1, so start writing up your projects!
Hershey Text is an Inkscape extension that can render a line of text in one of several stroke-based “engraving” fonts. This extension solves a persistent problem, and one which we have come across in many different contexts: How to easily create simple and readable vector representations of text.
Quick start: Download and install the EggBot extensions for Inkscape, which now include Hershey Text. Much more information follows.
Continue reading Hershey Text: An Inkscape extension for engraving fonts
Our little open-source educational robotics kit, The Original Egg-Bot Kit, is (finally) back in stock at our store. :)
If you happen to be into TV and/or Eggbot, you might want to tune into the Martha Stewart Show on Wednesday, Oct. 20. Our collaborator, Bruce Shapiro, inventor of the Eggbot, will be on as a part of a special episode about Maker Faire which will show off some of the cool things that Martha and her colleagues discovered at Maker Faire New York. After the show is broadcast, you should be able to find photos and video from the episode here.
Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid under cc-by-nc-nd license.
One of those questions that keeps coming up about the Egg-Bot is, “Does the surface have to be perfectly smooth?” Or sometimes just, “Can you print on a golf ball?”
While we wouldn’t go so far as to say that you’ll have good luck printing on a tennis ball, it turns out that the surface doesn’t exactly have to be flat either. Golf balls certainly aren’t a challenge. And, as you can see above, you can even plot on strangely shaped “eggs,” so long as the surface is smooth enough that you can drag a marker along. Neat.
Update: We’ve posted some tips on using the Eggbot with pumpkins here.
You can find more pumpkin projects in our Halloween Project Archive.
Coming up soon: Combots Cup V at the San Mateo Event Center on Saturday, October 23 and Sunday, October 24. Combots is the annual heavyweight robot combat championship.
“This event highlights the best combat robot teams in America and their 220 pound flame-throwing, blade-spinning, titanium shearing robots of destruction! Whether you’re a sports fan or techno geek, ComBots puts on the best robot events in the world! If you missed seeing fighting robots at Maker Faire this year, or are longing for RoboGames, here’s your chance to see them again.”
That same weekend: East Bay Mini-Maker Faire is on Sunday, October 24 at the Park Day School in Oakland. We’ll be bringing our Egg-Bots and showing off a few of their Halloween related applications.
We hope to see you there!
Robogames 2006 photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid under cc-by-nc license.
We have mentioned Eggbot several times this year as we demonstrated it at Maker Faires in San Mateo and Detroit, as well as at the California state fair. And today, we’re very pleased to (finally) reveal the the design of our new kit.
Maker Faire Detroit was a blast! It was held at The Henry Ford, which is a museum worth visiting in its own right. It is an amazing place we didn’t get to see nearly enough of and would love to go back and visit again.
