Generating electricity from alcohol

thermoelectric-generator-lamp

Here’s a thermoelectric generator which [x2Jiggy] built. The concept uses heat from a flame, biased against cooler temperatures produced by that huge heat sink making up the top portion of the build to produce electricity via the Peltier effect.

The build is passively cooled, using a sync assembly that takes advantage of heat pipes to help increase the heat dissipation. … Read the rest

Robot bartender mixes a mean drink

robot-bartender-mixes-mean-drink

Back in 2002, [Dave] came across a discarded PUMA robotic arm and quickly set his sights on turning it into a bartender to serve drinks at his parties. Unfortunately, the arm was far from operational and being an engineer at his day job meant that working on this project was the last thing he wanted to do when he came … Read the rest

Gas sensor suite built with Gadgeteer modules

gadgeteer-gas-sensor-suite

[Blake] just finished a gas sensor suite built from Gadgeteer parts. The three sensors are the cylindrical towers along the left hand side of the assembly. The one at the top (with the orange ring) is an alcohol sensor. The middle one senses ammonia and the lower sensor measures air quality. Also rolled into the mix are temperature and … Read the rest

LED ice cubes prevent alcohol induced blackouts

cube

On November 23rd last year, [Dhairya] attended a little shindig at MIT. Three drinks into the night, he blacked out and woke up in the hospital the next day. It was an alcohol-induced blackout, and like all parties at MIT, there’s an ingenious solution to [Dhairya]‘s problem.

[Dhairya] came up with an alcohol-aware ice cube made of a coin … Read the rest

Red-bullet: cooking stove from cans, fueled by gas additive

A couple of beverage containers and a little bit of fuel additive bring together this aluminum can stove project. When lit it shoots flames out each of those holes around the top to heat the vessel resting upon it. [Peter Geiger] calls it the Red-Bullet because one of the stove pieces started as a Red Bull can and the … Read the rest

An actively cooled cloud chamber

This cloud chamber is designed to keep the environment friendly for observing ionizing radiation. The group over at the LVL1 Hackerspace put it together and posted everything you need to know to try it out for yourself.

A cloud chamber uses a layer of alcohol vapor as a visual indicator of ionizing particles. As the name suggests, this vapor … Read the rest

DIY flux comes straight from the tree

[Tom] needed more solder flux and instead of buying it he thought he’d try making his own. The thing is, he didn’t have any rosin on hand. But knowing its source let him acquire it for free. He took a sample of tree sap and turned it into his own solder flux.

We’ve seen a few different DIY flux … Read the rest