[Happy Dragon] grew tired of wiping moist palms on his pants during intense gaming sessions. To combat the issue he tried adding a fan to an Xbox 360 controller that he had sitting around. He pulled a small PC fan from a Nyko Airflow and glued it over a hole he cut into the battery compartment of the controller. This forces air into the body of the unit, which exits through holes he’s drilled in the wings. He added an external battery pack to power the controller since the original batteries were removed before the fan was glues in place. The fan itself isn’t powered from this external pack, but requires a USB connection that he attaches using the disconnect from a wired Xbox controller.

After some testing, [Happy Dragon] seems… happy… with the results. He tells us that his hands are not sweaty, and that he finds he’s not gripping the controller quite as tightly as he used to so as not to block the vent holes. We can see a couple of issues with this design, like the holes filling up with crud, or the fan blowing dust and dirt into the controller (we’re thinking about the analog sticks). But perhaps a future design could create dedicated ducts inside that keep the electronics isolated from the cooling. Or maybe the exhaust from portable console builds could be used in a similar way?

You’ll notice that there’s no direct link for this hack. [Happy Dragon] didn’t write a post about this, he just sent us a half-dozen images and his description of the project. Check out the rest of the pictures after the break.

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[DocDawning] had a nice home network up and running, but the messy pit housing the hardware made him avoid that part of the house. In an effort to cut down on noise, and clean up the clutter, he built himself a very nice data center inside a small closet.

One of the biggest changes in the setup provides adequate cooling. He cut a vent hole into a wall shared between the closet and a hallway. This was just the right size for a few large cooling fans which suck air into the enclosed space. But cool-air intake must be accompanied by hot-air outflow so he added an exhaust vent in the ceiling. This also received a trio of big fans, and as you can see above, the integrated LEDs act as a light source for the server farm.

The final part of the plan involved machine-specific brackets mounted to the walls of the enclosure. These racks were built out of 1×1 white wood. They hold the hardware in place leaving plenty of room to run cables. The new setup even opened up enough wall space to mount power and networking hardware. Now everything has its place, and [DocDawning] can finally close the door on his noisy servers.

[Loreno Minati] built his own stir plate out of a hard drive enclosure. It’s the exact same hack as the one we saw a few weeks ago. A magnet was glued to the center of a computer fan, which causes the magnetic capsule inside the beaker to spin. This creates a vortex, evenly mixing the liquid.

Using a hard drive enclosure is a brilliant idea. It’s designed to sit in plain sight so you get a very nice finished look. It’s also exactly the right size for the fan itself. A potentiometer mounted in the cap of the enclosure allows for variable speeds, and the DC barrel jack is being used for the power source. Now that we think of it, this may be the best use of an external HDD enclosure we’ve ever seen (even eclipsing its original purpose). Check out a video and image gallery of the project after the break.

We’ve categorized this as a beer hack since stir plates are often built by hobbyists for growing yeast starters used in home brewing.

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Adding this board (translated) to your bathroom fan will turn it into a smart device. It’s designed to automatically shut off the fan after it’s had some time to clear humidity from the room. It replaces the wall switch which normally controls these fans by converting the fan connection to always be connected to mains.  The board draws constant power to keep the ATtiny13 running via a half-wave rectification circuit. A single LED that rises from the center of the PCB lights up to signal that the fan is in operation, but it is also used as a light sensor, similar to the LED communications hack from a couple of days ago. When the lights go on in the bathroom the microcontroller will turn on the exhaust fan via a Triac. It will remain on until the light level in the bathroom drops.

There’s an interesting timing algorithm that delays the fan startup, and varies the amount of time it will stay on in the dark depending on how long the bathroom lights were on. This way, a longer shower (which will build up more humidity) will cause the fan to remain on for the base of five minutes, plus one minute longer for every two minutes the bathroom was in use. Pretty smart, and quite useful if your bathroom sees high traffic from several family members.

Ever wonder how to calculate revolutions per minute using a microcontroller? This project shows you how by purposing an IR emitter and detector and a computer fan. As the fan blades spin they disrupt the beam of infrared light between the emitter and the receiver. This results in a waveform on the receiver’s circuit which can be easily used to trigger interrupts in any microcontroller. In this case a PIC 18F452 monitors the detector’s signals for a rising edge. By measuring time data between interrupts the period can be established and RPM calculated. You can see a video of the test rig after the break.

So what can you use this for? It’s the method that most spinning POV displays use to stabilize the display. You won’t be limited to an IR sensor, but can use a hall effect sensor in the same basic fashion.

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[SXRguyinMA] built a replacement top bezel for his computer case. He wanted to add vents that would automatically open or close based on the cooling needs of the computer. With some careful measurements he modeled the parts in Sketchup and sent out for them to be cut from styrene with a water jet cutter. The parts came back looking great and the assembly of the shutters went swimmingly. The bezel also includes a lighted screen for temperature information, as well as the front USB ports, headphone and mic jacks, etc. Hidden underneath is an Arduino board and servo motor. The Arduino polls the temperature and drives the servo to adjust the fins accordingly. There’s even a supercap in the circuit that will close the vents when the PC powers down or when power is unexpectedly lost. See it in action after the break.

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[Christian] was running a Linux box as a home server but needed a way to quiet the noisy machine. Like many Linux servers, he’s using some pretty old hardware which doesn’t have an on-board header for the CPU fan which generates much of the unwanted sound. Those headers are nice because software can monitor the CPU and board temperature and adjust the fan accordingly.

[Christian's] solution was to use the serial port for the task. He built a small circuit in which serial pin 3 drives the base of a transistor, pin 5 provides ground, and a floppy drive power cable supplies 5 volts. From there he wrote a RUBY program to monitor the CPU temperature and generate a PWM signal on the serial port, throttling the fan speed as needed.

[CC Photo Credit: Garrette via Flickr]

Ask any engineer what originally sparked their interest in technology, and almost universally the response will be a Hollywood film or TV robot — Star Wars’ R2-D2, the B9 robot from Lost in Space, or Short Circuit’s Johnny 5, to name a few. Engineers need a creative outlet too, and some pay homage to their inspirations by building elaborate reproductions. At this year’s Maker Faire, droid-builders had their own corner in the center hall, their work ranging from humble craft materials to ’bots surpassing their film counterparts in detail and workmanship.

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