Make The World Takes On Crowdsourcing Prosthetics

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Tonight marks the launch of a new program from Adafruit focused on improving the availability of prosthetic designs. The program will be highlighted in four Google+ Hangouts over the coming month. Mark your calendars for 8pm Eastern Time to join in on the one-hour launch.

We’ve seen a fair number of prosthetic hacks over the years, and every time one is featured we try to drive home the importance of sharing information in order to build upon the advances of others. The power of this is clear, shown in a $150 3D printed hand for a child, hackers that are replacing their own limbs or digits, and the sharing of diy fabrication techniques to help bring prostheses to the developing world. So get excited, get involved, and get hacking!

How This Power Racing Series Car Got On A Plane To WMF

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You really should check out the monthly meetings at your local hackerspace. It’s an excellent opportunity to hear the most interesting stories. Like the tale of how the guys from Sector67 got this electric vehicle on the plane with them. Not only did it go up in the air, but they did zero planning ahead of time on how they would actually pull it off.

[Bob Baddeley] posted an album of the PRC experience at World Maker Faire. There are captions that somewhat tell the tale, but we’ll fill you in as best we can on the rest of the story behind this second car from the hackerspace — lovingly known as the Lamebourghini.

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Interactive Office Conference Table (Tableduino)

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The folks over at One Mighty Roar have been hacking their office lately, and there have been some pretty creative results! The latest development is this interactive office conference table.

The table itself is made of fine American walnut and is quite appealing, but they wanted it to be a bit flashier than that.

The center square of the table features the company logo lit up by RGB LED’s, and the whole thing lifts out of the table using a small hydraulic actuator. This reveals some power outlets and ethernet jacks, but unfortunately the current system doesn’t have any safety precautions to make sure it doesn’t close on cables…

If that wasn’t enough, they wanted to automate the whole thing too, so there are also ultrasonic range sensors underneath which can detect when people are present — the end goal is to have the LEDs change color depending on how many people attend a meeting. This is all controlled by an Arduino Uno — but we have to wonder, isn’t there a better way for detecting if people are sitting down? The project is far from done though, so there will be many more features to come.

One of their other cool office hacks includes their interactive office sign that is controlled both by SMS or web app.