Meet the hottest geek dad device of next Easter: the Egg-Bot. Developed by the wacky inventors at Evil Mad Science, the Egg-Bot will draw repetitive geometric shapes on any round of egg shaped surface. Think of this as a high tech version of the stencil kit you used to color eggs as a kid, without the colored water and wire egg lifters.
The original Egg-Bot was developed in 1990, and has been evolving (revolving?) ever since. The device consists of a rigid frame that allows you to mount the drawing surface (egg, golf ball, ping pong ball, etc.) on to the computer controlled motor that spins the object. A second servo motor (also computer controlled) moves the drawing stylus against the surface, determining what design will be drawn.
The kit comes with a circuit board that allows you to connect to the Egg-Bot via USB, and control how the motors move. This allows a resolution of up to 3200 steps per turn of the egg. The end result is a pretty impressive build it yourself project that can create some neat artwork. The kit comes with everything you need, including the open source Inkscapesoftware and Python extensions that will allow you to decide what design to put on your egg.
You can buy your own Egg-Bot kit from the Evil Mad Science lab for $195. Currently there is a bit of a backlog, you should expect your kit to ship early next month. I’d expect to start seeing these in shopping mall kiosks this coming holiday season.
[via Gizmodo]