Eli Whitney Museum

Title: Arduino Trinket Rover

During the summer of 2014, Eli led two sessions a summer camp at the Eli Whitney Museum in which kids would build small robots and learn to program them. Based on a designs from Adafruit, he designed a small tank-like robot that could be cut out of wood on the museum's CNC machine. The wheels were 3D-printed, and dollar-store bracelets were used as surprisingly good tank treads. Continuous-rotation servos were used for driving.

Title: Leonardo's Bridge

This bridge was based on a sketch by Leonardo DaVinci. A central pivot allows the bridge to open up the channel for large ships. Interestingly, the suspension system, built from simple twine, actually strengthened the bridge considerably.

Title: 555 Chip

The 555 timer is one of the most influential analog microchips invented. It allows arbitrary delays and pulses to be created, which have innumerable uses. When the inventor of the chip, Hans Camenzind, died in 2012, we had a vacation camp about the 555 chip. The circuits shown above allowed kids to play around with generating sound, blinking lights, and learn about the concept of electrical resistance.

Title: 3D Printed Trumpet Mouthpiece

Calipers were used to measure every dimension of the mouthpiece: inner diameter, outer diameter, bore size. The model was designed in Autodesk 123D Design. A minimalist, tapered mouthpiece. Not only did the mouthpiece fit perfectly into the trumpet, but it also sounded pretty good.

Title: 3D Printed Orrery