Building a mechanical counter out of scrap wood

Watching [Matthias Wandel] fabricate this mechanical counter from scrap wood is just fascinating. He likens the mechanism to the counters you would find on decades-old cassette tape players.

You may recognize the quality of [Matthias'] work. We’ve seen several pieces, but his binary adder is still one of our favorites. This project gives us a very clear view of the … Read the rest

Birthday badges teach kids how to solder

[Ian Lee, Sr] wanted to have an educational activity at his younger son’s birthday party. These were uncharted waters for him as he doesn’t remember education taking place at his own early birthday parties. But he came up with a great idea, with was to teach soldering using interactive badges which each guest could assemble themselves. He needed about twenty, … Read the rest

Robot stroller lets baby steer without mowing down other toddlers

We’ve seen strollers and car seats that have a steering wheel for the baby to play with (like in the opening of The Simpsons). But what we hadn’t seen is a stroller that allows baby to actually steer. You might think that a putting a motorized vehicle in the hands of someone so young is an accident waiting … Read the rest

Developing a thermostat for a heat pump that only has a timer

The heat pump which cools [Chris LeBlanc's] home lacks the sort of control he was looking for. It’s just got a timer, which switches it off automatically. He wanted to the ability to schedule the cooling cycle like you would with a thermostat-driven arrangement. He ended up build his own controller to automate the cooling process.

The heat pump … Read the rest

Building a thermal imaging sensor from scratch

[Rob] lives in a 100-year-old house, and with these antique lath and plaster walls and old window frames comes a terrible amount of drafts. The usual way to combat this energy inefficiency is with a thermal imaging camera, a device that overlays the temperature of an object with a video image. These cameras are hideously expensive so [Rob] did what … Read the rest

Giving an apartment keyless entry

The key for [rybitski]‘s apartment is a copy of a copy of a copy, and the landlord lost the original key years ago. The lock itself still works, but opening it with [rybiski]‘s key is a chore. He wanted to make it easier to get into his apartment, and with Arduinos and such he figured he could make a keyless Read the rest

Turning the Hexbug spider into a line-following robot

You may be familiar with the Hexbug Spider, a small electronic robot toy sold at Target and Walmart for $20. While they’re able to be commanded to move forward, backward, and spin around on a dime, there aren’t any external sensors to make it really exciting. [Eric] sought to remedy this and came up with a line-following board replacement for … Read the rest