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When the Arduino Duemilanove microcontroller appeared in 2005, it featured a set of female pin headers exposing most of the pins of the ATmega168 for easy hacking and for connecting accessory boards known as 'Shields'. The purpose of a shield is to provide new plug-and-play functionality to the host microcontroller, such as circuit prototyping, motion control, sensor integration, network and radio communication, or gaming interfaces, without worrying too much about the hardware implementation details. Seven years after the birth of the original Arduino, new shields keep coming out and are being cataloged on http://shieldlist.org/, a testament to the versatility of the design. It is also simple to build a DIY shield when nothing out there will meet your needs or when you want to understand how the shield concept works from the ground up.

Imagine that a guest is about to depart from your house. She (or he) pauses to check her appearance in an antique-looking mirror mounted near the front door. Suddenly, the image of your guest undergoes a Matrix-like 'ripple' and is replaced with a strange face saying… …actually, we'll move on to consider what the face might say in a moment, but first let me introduce you to a few underlying concepts. Just a few days ago as I pen these words, I came across about a very cool website that describes a really cunning idea called a Magic Mirror (http://diymagicmirror.com).

Icosatetraped does, in fact, mean “twenty-four legged.” I’m not sure how to inject “soft” into that word (icostatetrasquishaped?), but this robot does have 24 soft legs. Or rather, 8 legs are soft (and moving) at any one time, while the other 16 are pressurized to carry the weight of the bot. It can move at about 1 meter per minute, which isn’t especially fast, but who cares, look at all of those little legs go! Made from plastic medical tubing, particle board, a bunch of solenoids, a Mac Mini, and some 24 volt rotary vane compressors salvaged from Gulf War nerve gas detecting equipment, this is about as DIY as it gets, and it’s awesome.