Steam powered spud gun

steamspud

[robbtoberfest] put together this cool looking steam powered spud pistol. Made from household materials, like a lighter and some copper pipe, this spud gun builds pressure in its little bitty boiler to expel the projectiles. It seems as though he's using a cork to supply a seal, so why bother with potatos? At roughly 2 minutes between shots, its not the quickest, but it sure is cool. Good job … [Read more...]

Light Therapy

sads

[Boris] wanted to help ease his sister's seasonal affective disorder. The most common way to do it is with fairly expensive light boxes. [Boris] built one of his own instead.  Now his sister can blast her sadness away with over 10,000 lumens of CFL happiness.  This is pretty much the same method one would use to create a ring light for photography. … [Read more...]

Parts: Precision humidity and temperature sensor (SHT1x/7x)

sht11

Sensirion's SHTxx is a digitally interfaced humidity and temperature sensor. Accurate humidity measurements usually require careful analog design, but the SHTxx moves all that complicated stuff into a single chip. Through-hole (SHT7x) and surface mount (SHT1x) versions are available, we used the surface mount SHT11 with +/-3% accuracy. We'll show you how to use the SHTxx below. … [Read more...]

Unique method of home automation

automation

[leevonk] sent us this quick and dirty home automation set up. Using photo resistors and your computer screen, you can drive as many relays or actuators as you want. [leevonk] is simply using changes in brightness on his computer screen to set off relays. This makes it easy for someone who has no programming knowledge and a tight budget to set up some automation. You could even do remote … [Read more...]

Passive Multidimensional Input

Any musician who has ever used a computer to create music will tell you that while this technology is more than capable of producing great music, it is always a much more intimate experience to create by physically playing an instrument. In an effort to bridge this gap, [Randall Jones] has built a passive multidimensional interface that uses multitouch input to create an intimate experience that … [Read more...]