Comments on: Hackaday Links: Friday the 13th, 2009

By: Graham Simpson

Graham Simpson — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:21:08 +0000

Alcohol? But Club-Mate is the nectar of the gods!

By: BigBubbaX

BigBubbaX — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 04:27:44 +0000

Way cool. Thanks for bringing the links back!

By: Peter

Peter — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:27:21 +0000

@that LED dress
It must be said. How did they get the batteries out of the ipods? :p

By: keynote

keynote — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:10:45 +0000

those Asimo concepts have been done already :P :

By: Spork

Spork — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:28:40 +0000

I agree on the cable tester, except if you were to just buy the jacks and place them into a small project box with 3mm LED’s you could make a comparably priced unit that worked well enough. Plus, you made it yourself!

Also, that is an awesome wort cooler. Now I’m pondering what I could use a gigantic cooler for, so I’ll have an excuse to build one.

By: Caleb Kraft

Caleb Kraft — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:52:40 +0000

@normaldotcom,
yup, this is exactly why they were brought back. The bosses want us to post some simpler stuff. We just needed the right format. All we had to do was look back to the beginning to see that we already had it.

By: normaldotcom

normaldotcom — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:49:24 +0000

I’m liking the links posts… much better than a bunch of full posts that aren’t incredibly interesting. Great job.

By: Bob

Bob — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:18:28 +0000

The coffee cup is nothing new. PCM stands for phase change material. Essentially, it is a hot “ice cube”. It melts at the temperature you want to drink your coffee at. When your coffee tries to cool lower than that temperature, the material then dumps the heat back into the coffee and solidifies again. There are a few patents for this from the 90′s. The problem with the design comes from the fact that you end up heating up the outer most portion of the mug and lose heat rapidly that way. You are almost always better off insulating with air. Part of my thesis was on this…well, for space suits though.

By: djrussell

djrussell — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:07:41 +0000

that 747 in the garage is pretty awesome. thx

By: Caleb Kraft

Caleb Kraft — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:01:22 +0000

@MS3FGX,
yeah, I see what you mean. Just buying this stuff would be more expensive than ordering a tester. I have found that after every wiring job I have stuff left over, but then again, if you do enough wiring you’re better off not wasting these. That’s a good point on the order testing. That saved my butt. regularly (apparently my shaky hands won’t hold the wires still enough when I shove them into the connector before crimping).

By: MS3FGX

MS3FGX — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:53:53 +0000

I’m not sure I can really get behind the cable tester.

The biggest problem is that it doesn’t test sequence, only continuity. The reason that real cable testers step through each line individually is so you can tell if you have any pairs mixed up. In other words, if the LEDs on the tester don’t go through 1 to 8 in the proper order, something is wrong. That same cable would appear to be correct through this tester, as it only shows that the lines are connected, not what order they are in.

The other problem is that I am rather skeptical as to cost involved. From the looks of it, he got his parts at the Home Depot, and being in there quite a bit I know that the wall box, wall plate, and 2 keystone jacks cost him at least $15. You can buy a proper RJ-45 tester (that goes pair sequences, not just continuity) for $4 – $8 shipped on sites like DealExtreme.

By: Michiel

Michiel — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:46:02 +0000

LOL, that UTP tester stinks… :P

By: taylor

taylor — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:35:39 +0000

I’m liking the links section being back. Thanks guys!
-Taylor