ikea bed

2 Articles

Keep Track Of Your Weight While Sleeping

December 12, 2017 by 36 Comments

When the average person looks at a bed, they think about sleeping. Because that’s what beds are for. You cover them with soft, warm cloths and fluffy pillows and you sleep on them. [Peter] is not your average person. He’s a maker. And when he looks at a bed, he thinks about giving it the ability to track his weight.

The IKEA bed has four Chinese-made TS-606 load cells under each foot with custom aluminum enclosures. Each one goes to an HX711 analog-to-digital converter, which offers a 24 bit resolution. These feed an Arduino Nano which in turns connects to a Raspberry Pi via USB to UART bridge. Connecting to the Pi allows [Peter] to get the data onto his home network, where he plots the data to gnuplot.

This smart bed doesn’t just track [Peter’s] weight. It can also track the weight of other people in the house, including his pets. Be sure to check his GitHub for full source code.

Building The Ultimate IKEA Bed

September 27, 2015 by 17 Comments

When [Eric Strong’s] son outgrew his convertible crib, he didn’t want to give it up. Needing the bed for their next youngest, [Eric] made his son a deal. He was going to build him the ultimate big boy bed. And boy did he ever!

Using Ikea Hackers for inspiration, [Eric] came up with a bed that features not only a slide, a ball game, a secret room hidden behind a bookcase, a hidden window, and a back door escape hatch — but even a bed. Kind of sounds like one of those too-good-to-be-true infomercials!

And he built it using only three products from IKEA. Two Kura beds (one for building materials), a Trofast tiered shelf storage unit, and a Besta — a small bookshelf. Pretty resourceful! And because he had limited space to build it, the whole thing is still modular. Stick around after the break to see it in action!

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