Growing algae with an Arduino

algae_grow

We’ve seen automated grow boxes of all shapes and sizes, but all were for growing plants. [Jared] over at Inventgeek wanted to do something similar for his algae. He started off with an Arduino-based solution that allows the controlled pulse of LEDs connected to his standard bioreactor as a prototype. Once he determined his proof of concept worked, he … Read the rest

The incredible breakfast machine

platform21-jamming

A lot of us skip breakfast in the morning, be it because we don’t have time to make something, don’t have the patience, or for some other reason. Yuri Suzuki and Masa Kimura are aiming to make your breakfast a little easier, a little quicker, and a lot more interesting. Their latest project is a Rube Goldberg-like machine that does … Read the rest

Tweetidor, the tweeting humidor

tweetidor12-300x225

As cigar aficionados will tell you, cigars should be stored in climate controlled humidors to keep them in best condition for smoking. Most of the time a humidor is just a simple air-tight box with a hygrometer attached, which measures the relative humidity inside the box. Feeling as though he needed more control over the environment he kept his cigars … Read the rest

Arduino command interpreter shell

F77LQEPFYTCLILR.MEDIUM

A lot of people like fancy GUIs and nice graphics, but some of us just feel more at home in a command prompt. [nevdull] is one of those people. Instead of just using the Arduino dev tools that are available for download, he wanted the ability to shell into his Arduino, so he created AVR Shell. AVR Shell … Read the rest

Classy hard drive speaker set

hdd_speakers

Hard drive speakers aren’t anything new, but they have yet to be done very professionally. Most hard drive speaker hacks are awesome, but aren’t meant to be a showpiece. [Oliver] took the opportunity to put together a set of 20GB drives and a custom-built acrylic case with a horizontal VU meter up front. The project is well-photographed and documented and … Read the rest

Firefox master password recovery tool

firemaster

It’s great in this day and age that browsers can remember our passwords for us, allowing us cross-site security without the hassle of memorizing a million different random passwords. It’s great, that is, until we forget our master password. Fret not, though; there is a solution. The folks over at Lifehacker show us how to use FireMaster to recover forgotten … Read the rest

XMPP and home automation

xmpp_office_lights

[Matthias] from Intuity Media Lab put together a nice bit on controlling office lights with XMPP from his Android phone. In the article, he explains the components involved in the project, why he chose XMPP, and lists everything you need to replicate it. The project makes use of a wide variety of tools and libraries, weaving together code from multiple … Read the rest