Oh! How I adore a few things: Simple electronic toys and a jab at established mores. (Irreverence is my anti-drug.) Anyhow, this post is all about the fun that we all had some of in the mid to late 90’s- Vibrating pagers. I don’t know about you, but I always smiled when my pager (affixed to dirty punk rockly, patch-covered pants) would scoot its way around a small table.. And Lo! A dozen years later, and apparently, I’m not the only one! The peoples over at Evil Mad Scientist Labs have documented a little more into the evolution of what could be called A Very Dumb Robot.. The Bristlebot.
The premise is simple: Take an old cell phone or pager, harvest the motor, and fix it up with a battery and slap it on a toothbrush. With a little planning, you can order the motors off the internet for about a buck a piece, Grab some dollar store toothbrushes, and find some cheap 3v coin cells, and you’re off to the races! It’s kinda fun to get a little herd of these guys together and run them all over the kitchen floor.. Or, go a little further and do a little anthropomorphizing. A favorite one of mine, and perhaps only one of two bristlebots I own anymore, has a pair of eyes, and little doom-hands flailing about over his little disky-body. Oh, just Look For Yourself.
And so, as it goes, I got Bored one day and put together one of my favorite Dumb Robots so far- The Flying Spaghetti Monster Bristlebot. I was touched by His Noodly Appendage, and the joy of the FSM was rained upon the world… That afternoon, the fimo flew, hot glue was glued, and the Noodly One was given an earthly body: Perched upon a 7,000 RPM motor with a die glued to it, prone to flying off and hitting one in the eye, given a seat upon a hairbrush.. truly, a rather odd thing to see!
