The Google Power Meter API is no longer in development but that didn’t stop [Pyrofer] from finishing his metering hardware. It uses a reflectance sensor to read the meter instead of using clamp-based current sensing.
Music videos from inside the instrument
Filming from inside of a guitar creates the camera effect seen above which looks like the waveform you’d see on an oscilloscope. [Thanks Philleb]
Hidden messages in audio files
GhostCoder lets you encrypt and hide audio files within other audio files. The thought is, you can piggyback your own data into Torrents that are circling the interwebs.
2×4 Chair
If you’re skilled with a Skill saw you can make a chair out of one 2 by 4. You can see the pattern you’ll have to cut out from the board in the image above, wow!
SketchChair is a piece of software that takes the engineer out of engineering furniture. In a child’s-dream-come-true you draw the outlines you’d like to have, add some legs, and the software pops out a design ready to be laser-cut. The finishing touch of adding palm fiber and felt produces what we imagine is a moderately comfortable place to sit. Now the hard part will be convincing your spouse that you should spend the money building an industrial grade laser cutter because of all the money you’ll save on furniture.
We’re still holding out for furniture that is 3d-printed from rock to match our Flintstone’s motif.
A table and chair that can move around by themselves? What’s next, suicide booths, self-replicating robots, and Star Trek styled tablet computers? It seems that [Adam Lassy] is moving in that direction. He took this furniture from Ikea and made some neat modifications to give it mobility. Each of the four legs has wheels on them and the legs themselves rotate in unison to change the direction of travel. We could see the table as a more practical drink delivery system than the Bar2d2. It certainly would make for some great late-night pranks but the chair motors need to be silenced before that can happen.
Who hasn’t fantasized about riding on a hexapod robot? With these detailed instructions, you very well could be living out your fantasy very soon. As you can see in the video, they opted for connected legs instead of 6 independent ones, so your dreams of riding the dancing Lou Bega bot may have to wait for another day.
Chairs may be among the most useful inventions known to humanity, but that doesn’t mean that a clever engineer or two can’t improve on the idea. As proof, we offer you this list of robotic chairs that do much more than provide a place to put your rear in.
