Levitating lightbulb does it all with no wires

It would be really fun to do an entire hallway of these levitating wireless lights. This a project on which [Chris Rieger] has been working for about six months. It uses magnetic levitation and wireless power transfer to create a really neat LED oddity.

Levitation is managed by a permanent magnet on the light assembly and an electromagnetic coil … Read the rest

Ti Chronos watch controls Raspberry Pi

[Mike Field] was working on interfacing his TI Chronos eZ430 watch with the Raspberry Pi. As things were going pretty well, he took a side-trip from his intended hack and implemented watch-based control for an RPi audio player.

It really comes as no surprise that this is possible, and even easy. After all, the RPi board has native USB … Read the rest

Game of chance built as a Red Bull Creation entry

[Tom Bourke] wrote in to show off the game of chance which was built for this year’s Red Bull Creation contest. The project was completed with the help of the Wausau Collaboration Center, a Hackerspace in Wausau, Wisconsin.

He does a great job of showing off the game in the clip after the break. Near the bottom of the device … Read the rest

Christmas prep starts early: MIDI control for strings of lights

If you’re planning to outdo yourself with this year’s Christmas decorations now’s the time to start planning. After all, what else have you got going on since the dreadful heat is making outdoor activities a sweat-soaked misery? Take some inspiration from [Tim] who just finished prototyping a wireless MIDI controller for his strings of Christmas lights. You can just … Read the rest

Two-thirds of a casting foundry

[Th3BadWolf] decided to undertake a casting foundry project of epic proportions. The hardest part of the build is obviously the apparatus for melting the metal. It needs a vessel that can stand up to the heat, and a heating method that has enough thermal power to melt metal. He’s just finished the burner portion of the build. His writeup … Read the rest

Easy to build parts tumbler you can add to your shop

This parts tumbler was easy to build but it still does a great job of rounding rough edges and polishing the surfaces of parts cut with a CNC machine. You can see that it mounts in a bench vise, and the cooling fans have a magnet which holds the tray in place on the anvil portion of that tool. Since … Read the rest

[Dino] upgrades his robot chassis

This is the fourth iteration that [Dino] has produced for his all-terrain robot. Just before this it was more of a turtle, with an aluminum pan shell. We think his upgrade to MicroRAX frame parts makes it look a lot better, and lightens the load so it can get around better as well.

It’s hard to tell from the picture, … Read the rest