>> Evil Mad Scientist is a small company where we, write up projects on our blog, and we make little hobby electronics and robotics kits, and other projects which are just for fun. I like to say that the things we make are in a class of hackable hardware. Everything we make, it's not going to be closed boxed, that you're going to be able to open it up and play with it, repurpose it if need be. >> We had been making some of these electronic kits on the side. This was funding our hobbies but it kept growing and we do this full time now. >> This is called the Octolively and this is one of our our interactive LED kits that we make. >> Each Octolively module has eight LEDs on it. It also has eight infrared LEDs which are positioned next to a photo transistor. When there's a change in the amount of infrared that the phototransister receives it sends the signal to the microcontroller which then tells the LED to respond in the pattern that you've programmed. >> And this one is doing kind of a rippling pattern right now where it sort of ripples after your hand motion to replay it. We also have other programs this can execute, for example, a sparkly program. So there's not delay anymore here, there's just sparkles. It's really interesting that these things which are all basically doing the same kind of response function, it looks so organic and not cohesive even though it really is. And people use this to make interactive walls, and tabletops, and bar tops. And staircases and things like that. >> Again it's very satisfying when someone latches onto one of our ideas like the Octolively and implements in a new setting or a new way that we hadn't anticipated. So we got to see some pieces of art using custom glass work in front of the Octolively, interactive art pieces recently. And it's, it's fascinating. >> Egg-Bot is a pen plotter that draws on spherical or egg shaped objects rather than on flat things like paper. So it's a printer that can work on objects that are traditionally hard to draw on. We met Bruce Shapiro, the inventor of the Egg-Bot, and redesigned it to be manufacturable and user-friendly. You start with a drawing in your computer. It needs to vector line art. Something that a pen can draw. So you create a drawing, and then send it to the Egg-Bot. I'm starting with a purple pen, I've got my drawing set up in layers, so that I can draw one layer at a time with different colors. So that Egg-Bot can very precisely draw the same thing again and again, we thought of Egg-Bot as a robotics tool, an introduction to robotics and computer numeric controlled, tools. But as, after we release the Egg Bot, members of the International Egg Art Guild contacted us. Asking when we would be releasing an ostrich edition, that would fit ostrich and rhea and emu eggs. Which was a surprise to us, because we had no idea that people drew on ostrich eggs. >> So there is nothing more exciting than seeing that application you never saw coming. That you provided inspiration for somebody to do something else that you weren't even trying to. That is really cool. And, for example the people carving the flower pots on the Egg Bot or the people painting moss spores with the WaterColorBot. These are really neat things. >> This is the WaterColorBot. It is a collaboration between us and Super Awesome Sylvia who has a web show called Sylvia's Super Awesome Maker Show. And she wanted to make a watercolor painting robot. And she and her dad contacted us and asked if we would be willing to help her with that. While we were working with her on the design and the proto-types, we realized that this had a much broader appeal than just one entry in in a competition. That it would be great to be able to get it out to a wider audience, so. we, worked with her to bring it out as as a product. So, this is the WaterColorBot. You, similar to the Egg Bot create a design in the computer to have the WaterColorBot paint, and it uses the same mechanism as an Etch-a-Sketch to move the carriage that holds the brush in the X and Y axis, so. It's something that you get to build and then use to create your own art, and then you can save your, your painting and have it make another one, so you can send one to each grandma, and have them mount on their fridge. >> Well, we want to do the things that other people aren't doing. We have printers like our laser printer that produce extraordinarily precise output and they do exactly what you tell them to and they will do it for a huge number of pages. But is there a reason to make a WaterColorBot which is immensely less accurate, and immensely less reproducible and the level of water in each of your dishes and the amount of moisture in each of your pans, and the type of paints you used and the shape of your brush and the height of your brush. And how fast you're running it. All those things are going to make a difference, and if you can run the same file ten times on ten different days, you're going to get a different looking painting out. I think there is a use for that. There's something artistic, even if you're using robotic tools to do it, or you're using electronic tools to do it. >> Even if the computer is doing the same thing, the WaterColorBot is doing the same thing, it can turn just a little bit different each time. It's, neat to see that even though this is robotically created, each painting has its own personality. A new idea that is valuable, or you can see has a direction to go is often one that makes you laugh. Circuitry snacks is one of our favorite projects. >> The gist of it is that we make models, accurate models of real electronic circuits, for example, a 555 LED blinker circuit, out of edible components. For the example in the 555 circuit, we started with a circuit board. And that would be a graham cracker. And we found green, spray food coloring. So you could make a green circuit board Graham Cracker base. And we used icing, to, bind the things together. It looked a little bit like solder, not quite silver, more whitish but, good enough. And then we made a resistor out of stacks of, for example, Life Savers and we used a little gum drop with a pair of legs as an LED. A Nilla wafer becomes a ceramic capacitor and so on. >> We can go down the candy aisle and instead of seeing everything as candy, you saw everything as an electronic component. And searching for wires was a really fun challenge. >> The red and black liquorice strings make excellent wires. This is the Bristle Bot, and it's a little vibrating robot. So, it's like other types of vibrobots that are called, vibrating robots. This one is the same as those in that it has a little vibrating motor, but it's different in that it has angled bristles on the bottom, and so rather that just skittering around in place, or making little marks with it's felt tipped feet on the ground. It, moves forward. The usual way that we've done this is to cut the head off a toothbrush and you hook a battery to a pager motor on it and make it vibrate. This is the worst toothbrush they sell, and they have these bristles that, well they're not bent, but if you bend them they'll kind of stay bent. That makes them terrible for brushing your teeth, but really cool for making Bristle Bots and other kind of little vibrating thingys. This is a set of 14 inch bolt cutters, it's a good general-purpose tool for cutting pieces of plastic. So here's our toothbrush head. And I like to just take a piece of this double-sided foam tape and stick it right to the top of the toothbrush head. And then we're going to need our motor. So this is a really small, vibrating pager motor. This is about five millimeters in diameter, about 0.2 inches. Its got a red wire and a blue wire, soldered leads, and its got little offset weight on it. Looking across the leads to the battery, it really vibrates like crazy. Motor on here. Piece of tape to hold it down. The other end of the, [SOUND] Wee! This one spins. [MUSIC]
