MUTR Micro rover

I found this little tracked robot platform at mutr.co.uk. It's quite difficult to find tracked robot platforms (or even the components) cheaply, but this is very nice for the ~ ten pounds they charge. It contains the tracks, wheels, motors and gearboxes, an aluminium plate for the chassis, fixing screws and some three-way switches and wire. It needs a bit more than just assembly to get it moving - I had to fold and drill the aluminium and glue some of the wheels together, and I found the motor tended to rise out of the gearbox if I didn't tie it down with some copper wire.

Somewhere I have some infra-red proximity sensors and a camera board I'd like to attach to it to make it into a proper robot. It'll need a suitable battery and some motor controllers - the Electronize controllers I have at the moment are a bit too big for it.

MUTR sell a lot of useful stuff - I got some Nitinol memory wire at the same time, which is very interesting stuff. Their £5.80 default delivery charge is a bit annoying for small orders, but handily I have some colleagues who also buy from there to share costs with.

Dan's from-scratch barbeque

Last weekend my friend Dan invited us all down for a barbeque. A generous offer anyway, but this had the added highlight that Dan had built the barbeque from scratch. It's a fine piece of engineering - perhaps not quite as stable as a brick barbeque but it served very well and cooked plenty of food for fifteen or so hungry guests over the weekend.

The construction materials are (so far as I remember) 1/2" steel bar and angle, some thin steel plate, steel mesh and those corner strips plasterers use - the closest thing most DIY stores will have to perforated angle. If anyone else has a go at this, my one piece of advice would be to avoid galvanised metal, as can give off some nasty fumes if heated. Compared to the quantities of ethanol usually drunk at barbeques though, it's probably a drop the ocean.

Dan also made a giant jenga set by cutting up some planed timber - a very quick and effective party piece. Pictures of that are in the gallery.