Adjusting the bit height on a router table can be a pain in the butt. Traditionally you needed to get into the cavity under the table top in order to make these adjustments, and it’s hard to make the adjustment and measure the height at the same time. Modern routers now offer the option to adjust height through a hole in the plate that sits in the router table, but this is usually only found on the more expensive models. Rather than buy a new tool [Urant] built his own router lift.

He’s using recycled closet rails to give his rig some smooth operation. These are the rails and runners that let closet doors hang from the top jamb. He saved them when replacing the closet doors in one of his rooms. There’s a triangular gantry which hosts the router, allowing it to move vertically on the three sets of rails. The threaded rod in the foreground of the picture above lets the woodworker adjust bit height by turning the nut at the top. Once mounted in the router table the nut is accessible through a small hole in the table surface.

This beautifully crafted Daft Punk table with iPod dock was built by [Dustin Evans]. The table itself was built with the help of a friend in one day with electronics added a bit later. It features an 8×8 grid of boxes with red LEDs mounted inside. The picture above is not quite the finished product, a diffuser will be added later to augment the scattering of light already provided by cutting the tip off of each LED. On the underside you’ll find a power supply and a set of speakers. The system is controlled by an Arduino which resides in the same drawer as the dock. See the final product in the clip after the break.

[via HackedGadgets]

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has proven bigger is better with their colossal LED table running Conway’s Game of Life. At the heart of the system is 44 ATmega164Ps controlling 352 LEDs on a 32×44 inch table; and to make it interactive IR LEDs detect the presence of objects.

The display is set up as an exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Art in tribute to [Leo Villareal]. To see a demo, catch a video after the divide.

Related: Colossal LED tables, and Conway’s Game of Life. Why has it taken so long to combine them?

This mechanized table automatically expands from seating for six to seating for twelve. We tried to capture the action with the three images above but don’t miss the transforming goodness in the video after the break. Alas, we’ll never see something like this in real life because it resides on a yacht worthy of Robin Leach’s attention. We wouldn’t have a problem copying the geometry of the tabletop pieces, but there’s got to be some serious design work to pull off the structure controlling the movement. No solid price is listed, but the creators note that construction costs are in the tens-of-thousands of British Pounds. We’ll stick to our Ikea furniture hacks for now.

[Thanks Luke]

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.

[Thanks Balbor via Ikea Hacker]

It’s hard to believe we missed this one from a couple of years back but we’re thankful that reader [Christian] tipped us off about it. This a Nintendo DS with two tablet pc screens being used as an external display. He’s using an FPGA but not to emulate the processor. It is translating the video data from the DS board into usable signal for the larger LCD screens. In the video after the break you can see that pen input has been implemented, with the FPGA sending location data back to the DS.

[Neal], the creator, priced the project out at around $580. It’s worth a lot more considering the know-how needed to get the video scaling and pen input right using the FPGA. It won’t fit in your pocket, but it doesn’t have a case either so it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

The table for electronic dreams is an interactive table that is sensitive to electric activity.  Though it looks similar to the table built by EMSL, this one lights up based on electromagnetic fields. You can get the schematics and such from the instructable, but there is also a video located at the bottom of the project’s home page. It would be really cool if the effect could be localized more.

The main problem with the current design is that you have to hit the table hard enough to make a noise the mic can pick up. The ideal solution would be able to detect anything, no matter what the material or how forcefully it was set down. How would you detect objects being placed on the surface (table doesn’t have to be wood)?

For many of the tables on the list, more means integrated lights that react to the user in fun ways, like KLOSS’s DeLighTable, which creates light patterns on its surface in response to being touched or having objects placed on it. We can’t argue with the design behind such tables, but if the tech upgrades are practically useless, at least they should be genuinely compelling, like this table that simulates endless space, or the embedded LED pong table. Of course, the list also contains tables that consider utility first, doubling as media centers or embedding a multitouch surface.

Still, to us the best ones weren’t even on the main list, but in an honorable mention category: a sweet coffee table made from a pinball machine, and our very favorite, a giant working NES controller. We understand that these are not as aesthetically pleasing (arguably) or as useful as some the tables on the list, but our priorities are ingenuity first, then utility, then design.

[via Neatorama]

The Corian table was commissioned in 2006 by DuPont. Inside the table are 2,400 red LEDs and a touch sensor on either end. The trackpads control the motion of the paddles and the LEDs display the paddles’ positions as well as the position of the ball. Since the LEDs are completely embedded, it can still be used as just a table. It was recently displayed in a MOMA exhibit called Design and the Elastic Mind.

[Waldemeyer] also created a matching LED mirror using similar specs. The mirror’s design closely resembles that of the table, but instead of using trackpads for input, it uses a webcam mounted on the top. The image of anything in front of it is captured by the camera and displayed as a “reflection” by varying LEDs’ intensities.

Earlier this year he revealed a simple mini SMD POV he designed for FLOS. Only 500 were produces, so you probably won’t be able to get your hands on one. Since the pong table is one-of-a-kind and part of a touring design installation, your chances are even slimmer there.

[via Gizmodo]