While being caught out in the rain skiing, [Andrew] was left with a pair of soaking wet gloves. Leaving them to air dry did little good, as after 3 days they were still wet, and blowing a fan at them did little to nothing to help the situation. Luckily [Andrew] had been thinking about ways to make a forced air glove drier for some time now using standard plumbing fittings.

A prototype was made similar to consumer models where the glove is fit over the end of a pipe, and while this worked great to dry the palms, it did not help the wet finger situation at all. In order to solve this issue a new design was whipped up featuring 4 fixed fingers and a movable thumb made out of copper pipe. A little drilling, and soldering was performed then the metal hand was then duct taped to the end of a hair drier, turning soaked gloves into perfectly dry ones in about three hours.

It looks like [Dino] is getting settled into his new digs, and while the moving process has kept him pretty busy, he’s slowly but surely getting his workshop area set up. One thing that he really wanted from his new bench was a better way to record video, for both his Hack a Week series as well as broadcasting over Ustream.

He bought a nice little Hi-Def web cam for making videos and set out to build a camera boom for his bench. The boom is constructed mostly from PVC piping along with some other odds and ends for mounting. In the video below, he walks through the construction step by step, making it easy for anyone to follow along and build one of their own.

The boom looks like it works very well, and is a bargain at under $40. It articulates every which way giving him complete coverage of his workbench, and makes it easy to film whatever he’s working on – big or small.

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Don’t you hate that feeling, the one you get when you have just realized that you have no clue where you may have left your keys? If you are unlucky enough to have lost them in a public place, odds are they are as good as gone. Pumping Station One member [celtwolf] thought it would be great if your keys could help someone contact you instantly upon finding them, so he created a key fob that did just that.

SMS can use a similar URI scheme as the “mailto” protocol we are all familiar with, so [celtwolf] generated a URI that would send a text to his mobile phone with the message “I found your keys!”. He generated a QR code from the URI, then etched it on a piece of acrylic using a laser cutter. He filled in the recessed portions with a dark polymer clay, baked it, then coated it with a layer of nail polish for added durability.

Now, if anyone finds his keys and takes a picture of the QR code with their smartphone, he will immediately receive a text letting him know they are safe and sound. What a great idea!

Reader [Xellers] sent in his newest instructable: DIY Electron Accelerator: A Cathode Ray Tube in a Wine Bottle. While not exactly what you might think of a cathode ray tube, the basics are in place. A wine bottle is used as a vacuum chamber and a 9kv neon transformer is attached to a stopped in the top. A cathode is placed mid way, the air is sucked out with a pump, and high voltage is applied.

Naturally as more air gets pumped out the electric arc intensifies into a pretty solid plasma filling the space between the two contacts. While mixing drilled glass with a vacuum and high voltage sounds like an awesome hospital story [Xellers] does cover some safety points including the possibility of this thing putting out some nasty waves.

One thing that is not mentioned (that I saw)  is this is very similar to how florescent light tubes work and without florescent material lining the chamber it will spit out quite a bit of UV light (notice germicidal UV lights are clear). So you will want to watch your eyes!

Join us after the break for a quick video.

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[Theo] tipped us off about something that every TI Evalbot owner may be interested in, the The manual and source code for the uC/OS-III kernel is now available for download. UC/OS-III is what came with the evalbot, and it is a realtime operating system for that and many other chips. The problem with it for most hobby level people is that just the manual was 100$, and unless you already knew something about the system it did not sound very attractive.

But now micrium, the author of US/OS-III, has released the source code free to use in non commercial applications, and manuals for every chip supported it may drum up some more interest in this neat little RTOS. Though it does require a subscriber login.

Excerpt:

Dear Subscriber,

The ideal scenario for developers wishing to evaluate embedded software is to be granted easy access to the software’s full source code.  In the case of Micriµm’s celebrated real-time kernel, µC/OS-III, this ideal has become reality.  Last week, Micriµm announced a new policy for µC/OS-III: the kernel is now “source available.” µC/OS-III’s incomparably clean source code, as well as PDFs of the popular books describing the kernel, can be downloaded from Micriµm’s Web site at no cost, giving developers a refreshingly fast and simple means of beginning an evaluation

Imagine that you have been asked to construct a portable shipping container workshop that will be sent to the other side of the globe, where the power grid is sketchy and the resources tight. If you had $20,000 to outfit this 20’ container, what components and tools would you include?

This was the question recently posed to us by [Luke Iseman], CTO at re:char. He and his partners are in the midst of putting together a mobile makerspace that will eventually be shipped over to Western Kenya in order to help the locals fertilize their land using biochar. The primary function of this workshop will be to build biochar chambers, so plenty of durable tools and machines are a must. They already have a pretty solid list of items put together, but they wanted input the from makers and hackers out there, who may have worked under similar conditions.

Have any suggestions? Share them in the forum, we’re sure [Luke] and co. will appreciate it!

[Andrew] recently ordered some lockets to bejewel them with some LEDs but got a bonus small locket for free with the order. Not really having a plan for the small locket it kind of sat around until finally some inspiration hit. Meet the ee-locket which contains a tiny circular pcb with a 64k eeprom, a few passive support components and a male pin header on the back so you can quickly plug it into the micro of your choice.

While the uses of such a thing may not be obvious at first, just sitting down writing this I thought of a few applications, such as some form of key and lock system, mission impossible dreams, or just going full out geek at your next job interview. Its a pretty spiffy idea no matter what its used for, and we just love it when people shove electronics where no one expect them.

[Grenadier] Had some spare wire, electrical tape, and a giant ferrite core laying about and decided to create a massive and pretty snappy looking disk shaped flyback transformer. Dubbed the Fryback, he claims that it will “revitalise your health and bring wondrous wealth and prosperity to your family”.

He chose a disk shaped transformer because they look cooler, fair enough.. (oh and they reduced inter-winding capacitance and the voltage difference between layers). The construction is fairly simple, but time consuming. Grenadier goes through the important steps on his website, but be prepared for 25 hours of winding wire if you decide to make your own.

Running at 48V the Fryback can output 8kV at a very high current, producing some nice thick 30cm long sparks. Check out the video after the break to see the Fryback in action.

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