INTRODUCING – SPIDER

Surface-Penetrating Imaging and Dimensional Electromagnetic Radar

 

3D MODEL

This is the second prototype I’ve created within a month. (See my Centrifuge) While the details will remain sketchy for the moment due to some supply issues and details I want to update, the basic idea is a Ground Penetrating Radar that the Adventure Team can use to locate buried objects. In crime, searching for bodies is often a use. But for an Adventure Team, searching for underground buried dinosaur skeletons or buried statues might be a good use.

This has been an idea I have had for years. A GPR normally is a box that you’d push around with handles, but every time I think about it all I see is a lawn mower.

I spent a fair amount of time trying to come up with a handle system that would fold down over the body, and I had it all figured out, then I realized that this is the Adventure Team we’re outfitting, not some amateur or government organization. Huxter Labs would create an Autonomous Ground Penetrating Radar. No need for handles, any more than you’d need one for a remote control car.

As a detail, I added a heat sink to the top, to imply that the energy source needed to power the powerful ground penetrating radar needs a set of cooling vanes. (My Atomic Charger also has vanes, an homage to the Trouble Shooter radio.)

And when I designed it it really looked a lot like a spider. So I decided to call it the SPIDER. And to add some realism to the concept, I added a red hour-glass-like black widow marking. (These will act as a send/receive radio pair.)

 

COMPLICATION!

Dollar Tree, once again.

Last year I bought a couple of head lamps that were readily available at Dollar Tree. (This is where I say again that I should buy up about 40 of anything I see that I even remotely suspect I can use.)

So I prototyped this SPIDER to fit these head lamps:

Now Dollar Tree has none. NONE.

And I’ve visited quite a few around me. So I went online and ordered 48 to come to my nearby store. A week later, the order was cancelled claiming the local distribution center didn’t have enough in stock to fulfill the whole order. However, they made no attempt to inform me of whether they had ANY in stock anywhere. I figured since I used the “deliver to my local store” option, that they were only looking in the local distribution center. So I re-ordered with a shipping to my house option. Still waiting to see if that got through.

So the whole prototype is done and works, for this head lamp I may never be able to get anymore.

However, in a weird twist, a new version of this head lamp is making the rounds. They are easily found online, and so I ordered a bunch.

And how weird is this? I drop into a local store, and there they are on the shelf! Packs of two. So I bought a pack to test. And they are quite a bit smaller than the first ones, and rounder, and the real sticky problem is that they moved the switch.

The switch of the originals was on the side, making it simplicity itself to push a button into the body of my SPIDER and it would push the button perfectly.

The new one – the button is on bottom.

So I have to make a lever that you can push down, and it pushes UP on the button. This is fine. I can deal with that. It’s not a deal breaker.

And since it is smaller, I can compact the design a little if I wish.

 

UPDATE: Aug 18, 2024

I got an e-mail from Dollar Tree with a tracking number. Apparently, my second order worked, as not having it delivered to the store meant they didn’t have to rely on a local distro center! Here’s hoping I get the whole order. Then production can begin in earnest.

 

FEATURES

The lamp itself has 3 settings. Bright. (I mean don’t look directly into it bright. It hurts.) Less bright. And flashing. (Not great if you have epilepsy or are triggered by flashing lights, but you can quickly cycle through that setting to off).

The hinged top secures with magnets.

The body hinges up from the front to allow you easily remove the light, and change batteries (3xAAA).

The wheels are free-rolling, and feature the Huxter Labs logo on the hubs.

It will come with a control tablet. I may make a little carrying slot on the body for it.

This is the screen. If you need a copy of the sticker, download this and print it.

 

UPDATE: Oct 31, 2024

I initially prototyped this in red with two teal colors, which to me is a fine aesthetic. However, in keeping with Adventure Team theming, Greg asked for a yellow/black/red version and that’s what we’ll be producing for market.

This version is also quite nice. I loved the original red/teal theme, but as a long-time fan of the Adventure Team, the yellow/black is awesome!

Seen here, the SPIDER has its own more elaborate RACCS mount:

The unit comes with a very powerful light with three modes, as described above. Here it is lit:

For this item, I decided I wanted to get fancy. I wanted to do a very nice box.

Boxes cost. And brown boxes cost less than white boxes. But I was unwilling to compromise on this. I bought a bunch of white boxes that would fit the bill, and while they were twice as expensive, I didn’t care. I wanted it, and I got it.

Here are some pics of the box. The label is printed to attach over the box opening with a warning strip. This will, I hope, give the user a very unique unboxing experience, where they have to cut open the label to get at the SPIDER unit.

The cover is a rendering of the SPIDER Ground Penetrating Rader from the 3D model. It shows the control tablet, and features the Huxter Labs logo, and a list of contents.

The front overflap of the box is another 2 CGI renderings of the model, one from the side, and one inside the RACCS Mount that comes with the set. A QR code brings you to this web site.

Then you get a DIRE WARNING!!! This is mostly for fun, but also it is an actual warning to keep it away from kids.

My products are not intended for kids. They often contain small parts, and sometimes very powerful magnets that really – you need to not handle if you’re a kid.

And what would a Huxter Labs product be without a blueprint? (Well, I don’t do them for everything, but people do seem to enjoy them.)

 

For some time now, I have wanted to do some field medical equipment. Among others would eventually be an IV station, a portable X-Ray or mini MRI machine, and included in this was a centrifuge for separating out blood and other fluids. But it would also have uses in geology and other Adventure Team missions.

GOAL

My plan was to create a piece of equipment that definitely looked medical. I did a lot of web searching for medical centrifuges, and a surprising number were white and blue, and I had just gotten these lovely turquoise and teal filaments, and as the Huxter Labs logo is blue (though I lean towards turquoise sometimes) I thought I could make something quite lovely.

I wanted to spin these glass bottles I got for the Save the Endangered Rhino set I created in 2014, and recently revived as a whole new set with Cotswold Collectibles. I wanted the vials to fit into these buckets that would be hinged at the top to spin outward.

A centrifuge works by spinning very fast and causing centrifugal force to act as extra gravity that causes denser particles in a liquid to work their way to the outer part of the circle, while less dense particles are pushed towards the center. Just like gravity, but faster.

So I put the buckets on little hinges (clipped pieces of a paper clip) and they dutifully spun, and when the motor is turned off, they slowly spin and angle back down to rest.

 

POWER

Recently, Dollar Tree stocked some battery-operated mini-fans. These fans had a battery compartment for 2 AA batteries, a switch, and a quiet fast motor. For $1.25 per.

I bought a couple and started measuring out and planning. My first goal was to get the motor to fit into a chassis that would look fairly cool, be similar in theme to my previous Huxter Labs RACCS equipment, and still have room for the switch and battery leads, without having to rewire anything. I don’t like soldering, and if all of it is in place without alteration, that’s a huge win.

The first attempt used two AA batteries, but the bulk of the battery compartment I had to make (from scratch, to fit the metal spring, bump, and rear connector so two AAs can work together) and it worked fine after a fair amount of effort. Then I figured two AAAs would be smaller which would allow me to reduce the bulky base a bit.

And the battery would spin the motor for a while, but soon run out. So I thought of moving to a 9V battery, which should make the motor spin faster.

And that worked too, but for this centrifuge to actually (I mean for real) work, the spinning would have to be done over a fairly lengthy time, and batteries wear out too fast.

 

EUREKA! USB!

I could throw out the bulky batteries entirely if I could buy some USB-C sockets and allow people to power this thing by a USB-C cable.

USB-C? Why? Because the world is moving to USB-C. It doesn’t benefit me much here, as I am using only to get the power output, but the idea of not having to figure out which way up to plug in is quite attractive.

So I found some USB-C sockets and bought a few to test. And they work!

Connect wires to GND and VBUS and you get a consistent 5v power, and when I touched the motor wires to these, the thing spun very satisfyingly.

So I set out to refit the body to take these little USB-C circuit-boards.

 

To RACCS Or Not To RACCS?

RACCS is the Ready-Attachable-Configurable-Component-System, a rack I created to fit on the back of a GI Joe Adventure Team All-Terrain Vehicle so Joe can configure his own adventures using various modules I created. (Search this page for RACCS and you will see a bunch of them. But there are even more I haven’t take time to write about yet.)

When I was creating a prototype for a new Weather Tracker or Environmental Analyzer, I found a way to make RACCS pegs fold up so new units can act either as standalone equipment, or slot into the RACCS slots. So by folding down these hinged pins, you can attach this Centrifuge to a RACCS-equipped ATV.

(Oh, I also created a new version of RACCS that has legs, so it can also act as a table. In fact I made a set of legs that are also compatible with previous RACCS by slotting the legs into the pegs used to attach  the rack to an ATV (or Training Tower).

I will talk more about this project later but for now, I’ll just link these videos I created to show the prototypes in various stages of development.

 

Update – Aug 15

Well that kinda worked, but only kinda. I redesigned the chassis (shrinking it significantly) to accommodate the USB-C port and it worked. For a while. I got the motor spinning and it spun gorgeously.

However, on repeated tries, the motor began to judder and stop. And the USB Power Bank I had shut down every time I tried it after that, and my plug-in USB power block’s blue light went out. Something is reaching the USB charger controllers and saying “Uh, there’s nothing there dude.” or something like that.

I highly suspect I’m burning out the motors. I am not sure what amperage USB-C puts out, and what amperage the motors can handle, so I am pretty sure this isn’t going to work. But it could have been a fluke.

I soldered in another motor and the exact same thing happened. Worked for a while quite nicely, but shutting it off and restarting it a few times resulted in a dead motor.

Oh well.

This, as with most of my new products, is in a prototyping phase, which is when you go down dead ends and find out what works and what doesn’t. 9V works, but the power doesn’t last long. 2xAAA works, but same. I’m going back to my original idea of 2xAAs and recommend buying rechargeable batteries.

At least I learned a little something about USB powering.

And also I bought a bunch of these little USB powered hand-vacuums at Dollar Tree that are wired into a USB (standard) cable and so I may just revisit the USB version of this later, with its own cord, since that motor seems to work fine, probably has some regulator on the circuit board or something I do NOT have with my Centrifuge.

I’ll keep posting updates here.