Fart intensity detector

posted May 8th 2009 1:34pm by Caleb Kraft
filed under: classic hacks, home hacks

farts

When we ran the story about the office chair that twittered your flatulent activity, many people commented on the fact that it had no method of determining intensity. Well, here’s the solution to that problem(is this really a problem?). These students built a fart intensity detector for their final project in ece 476. It measures the sound and temperature, as well as the composition of each fart. They really added some bells and whistles on this project. Not only will it display your statistics on and LCD screen after a reading, it will beep and, if your fart was intense enough, blow it away with a little fan. You even have the option of playing back the audio recording of your most recent glory.

Comments [35]

tagged: ece 476, fart, final project

Reader Comments

these guys are my heros

Posted at 1:40 pm on May 8th, 2009 by metalicaman8

oh…there surely was a pun intended:

volatile signed int fartTime;

Posted at 1:46 pm on May 8th, 2009 by mac

I bet what ever institution that they belonged to loved them that they choose their final year project was basically a fart-ometer, lol

Ah well… good stuff tho!

Posted at 1:55 pm on May 8th, 2009 by #yls#

To quote General Beringer from Wargames, “I need a computer to tell me that?”

Posted at 2:17 pm on May 8th, 2009 by pburgess

my wife wants one for medical purposes (i think she wants to prove something to me)

Posted at 2:30 pm on May 8th, 2009 by aztraph

I am pleased to see that Beavis and Butthead decided to finish high school and go on to get engineering degrees.

Posted at 2:35 pm on May 8th, 2009 by ac7zl

So these are these “fartologist” or just “fartology” majors?

Posted at 2:45 pm on May 8th, 2009 by kimster

the fan puts it over the top

Posted at 2:51 pm on May 8th, 2009 by tony

Man… I am the most crude and vulgar of my friends – by far. Still though, I’m the only one that things fart humor is immature…
-Taylor

Posted at 3:23 pm on May 8th, 2009 by Taylor Alexander

The next step is a vacuum device that captures the fart and stores it in a small canister, along with a print out of its stats… for later use in fart weaponization..

If reading the chemical composition of a fart sparks interest, imagine then launching that fart 10 yards into the nostrils of your nemesis… if your still reading, imagine also importing highly sought after super intense farts at $10-$15 a pop… for special occasions.. or finishing moves..

Posted at 3:49 pm on May 8th, 2009 by coreyw

volatile signed int fartTime;

LOL!

Posted at 3:50 pm on May 8th, 2009 by coreyw

That’s funny and what a nice detector :) Keep it close (or not)

Posted at 4:00 pm on May 8th, 2009 by David

ok the twittering chair was ok but this is just going too far lol

Posted at 4:02 pm on May 8th, 2009 by jamieriddles

i want to see it in a pair of pants

Posted at 4:30 pm on May 8th, 2009 by vikki

The pants comment reminds me of a journal article I read years ago which went about proving that women’s farts smell worse than men’s. It involved a group of senior citizens eating half a kilo of beans each while wearing special airtight “pantaloons”. GC/mass-spec was used to quantify hydrogen sulfide compounds, and expert sniffers had to score each sample in order to correlate noxious odor with hydrogen sulfide levels. Nice work if you can get it.

Posted at 4:40 pm on May 8th, 2009 by dildo baggins

I’m getting tired of these things for automatic twittering, they’re cool, yeah, But its IS getting kinda old.

Posted at 4:42 pm on May 8th, 2009 by r4ze

r4ze,

great comment…to make on one of the twitter posts.

Posted at 5:20 pm on May 8th, 2009 by dildo baggins

When i saw the title of this on the rss feed, i laughed pretty hard, and at 2.13 in the morning too. (hope i never woke anyone)

These guys are heroes.

Posted at 6:13 pm on May 8th, 2009 by hunnter

@r4ze:

please read the post before you comment. this one has nothing to do with twitter.

Posted at 8:02 pm on May 8th, 2009 by andrew

Well done! I can’t imagine a more entertaining subject for a final class project. As an engineer myself I appreciate the well thought out engineering and execution of the project. I would suggest, though, that you proof read the manuscript and remove the typos before submitting it, lest you confirm what many people suspected in my generation, that engineers can build rockets to the moon but can’t write their way out of a paper bag. Yours is clearly an exception to this standard.

Posted at 9:05 pm on May 8th, 2009 by kmpres

Cant we be more selective of things.. with more meaning than twitter I mean come on… The majority of projects presented in past have offer beneficial constructive ideas that would branch off.. in the factor of more productive…all this talent being wasted on such pointless projects…

Posted at 12:29 am on May 9th, 2009 by Nicklaus Michael (Cold)

@Nicklaus Michael (Cold)

Try to actually read the post before you sumbit a totally irrelevant comment, this has nothing to do with twitter, and even if it did so what, people can still learn from those projects, how to get things from the everyday world to interact online, even if you dont like the twitter part, the sensors they use can still be interesting to read about.

Posted at 3:19 am on May 9th, 2009 by oNo

OH PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE CALL IT THE “FLATU-RATER”.

Posted at 7:23 am on May 9th, 2009 by LILO

The guy on the left kind of reminds me of Alan A. Allen (as played by Rupert Grint) in possibly the greatest movie of all time, “Thunderpants”:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/b000p6r9lm

(Which just happens to be a movie about an eccentric scientist kid and a pair of flatulence containment trousers.)

Posted at 8:47 am on May 9th, 2009 by pburgess

Sorry! now that I reread it (and im not half awake) I see what its about.

Posted at 9:22 am on May 9th, 2009 by r4ze

Thanks for your input, guys. I do not look like Rupert Grint!

Posted at 10:14 am on May 9th, 2009 by robert

hah, robert, you are here, lol

Posted at 10:21 am on May 9th, 2009 by sarah

Seriously, are they 12?

Ugh, the reason they make you do a final project is to show that you’ve learned something and bring innovation. I hate to see wasted talent and even more wasted components, web space, bandwidth, and my time to type this comment.

Posted at 10:49 am on May 9th, 2009 by jay

actually, jay, it was a really hard project. there are 4 sensors, which means lots of c coding for all the hardware. the boys ended up pulling more all-nighters than they’ve ever done before. (this is the guy on the left’s gf speaking btw).

Posted at 6:32 pm on May 9th, 2009 by sonica

That’s sick. For the next revision they need to make the user fart into the center of a superconducting magnet to get an NMR spectrum :-D

Posted at 7:41 pm on May 9th, 2009 by Evan

@ oNo
I did read the entire article.. and in the begining it reference to twitter project earlier.. as I was as well.. both projects regardless of twitter are a waste of talent and obviously Im not the only that feels that way so maybe you might want to keep to yourself buddy…to be inspired by such device is to be 5 yrs old

Posted at 2:12 am on May 10th, 2009 by Nicklaus Michael (Cold)

Could lead to an extremely useful machine in the pig farming and farm regulating industries.

Posted at 6:07 am on May 10th, 2009 by Dan Fruzzetti

Real mature. I’m sure whatever college educated these clowns is proud of their lame achievement. It’s not even funny, I hope they go to engineering hell.

Posted at 7:17 am on May 12th, 2009 by jason

Not all hacks need to result in practical outcomes IMHO. I think this is a pretty great proof of concept type project where the end result may not be something of intrinsic value, but rather it’s the path getting there that is important. I’ve given myself MANY useless projects just to learn more along the way.

Posted at 10:53 am on May 12th, 2009 by Jim K

sonica,
I was not saying it was easy to pull off, though its certainly not rocket science, I was just saying that it is useless. I will make the comment however, that pulling all nighters usually means that they procrastinated to begin with or wanted to get it done in less time than it should have taken.

@jim k
I know not all hacks have to be practical, but when you are doing a project to show what you’ve learned, you normally make it useful or at least give the impression of usefulness to show that you appreciate the knowledge you have acquired rather than something like this which makes your knowledge seem silly and useless.

Posted at 12:29 am on May 13th, 2009 by jay

Fart intensity detector

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