Just in time for decorating Easter eggs, I’m featuring the nerdiest thing I own…”The Original Egg-Bot.”  I have had my Egg-Bot for close to two years now and it is a fun and sometimes frustrating robotics experiment.  It is easier to show you what it does, than to explain…so check out this quick video I put together…

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I first saw the Egg-Bot popping up on a variety of tech sites about two years ago.  It wound up being my birthday present.  At the time there was a huge waiting list to get one as demand far outpaced supply.  Eventually a box from “Evil Mad Scientist” arrived at our house.

My Egg-Bot making a plot.

Let me tell you, this kit is not a turn-key, easy project.  The unit arrives in pieces and the user puts the entire thing together.  It was a bit daunting but went together just fine.  The PC software is free and installs pretty easily.  The Mac version is actually a bit of a challenge to get working, but not too bad.

Getting the Egg-Bot assembled is only the beginning.  There is a pretty big learning curve to the world of plotting line or dot images on a spherical surface.  The software handles a lot of the processing for images, but the user still has to learn the tricks of properly positioning the egg and the pen. The Egg-Bot can produce some amazing results!

The nutrition label egg.

There is a great community of people who post Egg-Bot files that can be downloaded and plotted by other users.  Some of my favorites include: the egg nutrition label, definition of the word egg, “Chickens are cool!” chick, and the various geometric designs.

I use Sharpie ultra fine tip markers in my Egg-Bot but some users track down technical pens that have an amazingly fine tip.  With the finest tipped pens users can plot ‘stipple’ processed images that can come close to reproducing a photo (example).

When I am plotting on an egg, I poke holes in both ends of the egg and ‘blow out’ the egg whites and yolk.  Our 5 year-old always finds it entertaining to watch me blow out eggs.  We have enough eggs in our fridge right now for a very nice egg casserole.

Eggs aren’t the only thing the Egg-Bot can plot on.  I have done many Christmas ornaments with the Egg-Bot.  They easily mounted in the unit and plotting on an ornament is actually easier than an egg since every ornament is uniform.  I have also plotted on golf balls and ping pong balls.  I have seen some users plot on light bulbs but I haven’t tried that yet.  (You can check out all kinds of examples here.)  I have recently found some food safe permanent markers that will fit in the Egg-Bot and might occasionally draw a logo on the eggs we sell from our backyard chickens.

A cool geometric pattern.

Is the Egg-Bot for everyone? Most definitely not.  It is an ongoing user-driven collaboration project.  It is an experimental toy.  Is the Egg-Bot fun?  Depends on your definition of fun.  When I am just tinkering and messing around it is tons of fun.  When I am trying to get something done quickly it can be frustrating.  Is the Egg-Bot frivolous? Absolutely.  There is no real purpose to this robotics kit other than to learn and have a bit of nerdy fun.

Thanks for checking out this edition of Favorite Things Friday!  Did you miss any of my other posts from the week?  Monday I broke my one-day readership record with “Why I Quit Being A ‘Professional’ Photographer.”  On Tuesdays I write about spiritual things.  This week I wrote “Sticks and Stones…” about how we speak to our children.  Then on Wednesday I continued the “Lessons from the Trail” series with “Keep In Touch.”

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