Many westerners visiting or living in China may observe the art of “water calligraphy” and some may even try to imitate it. However, media artist [Nicholas Hanna] decided to take a totally new approach and make his own water painting machine.

Someone less creative would have devised some imitation of a human, but [Nicholas] decided to totally rethink the process in the form of a tricycle.  Using 16 PC-controlled water solenoids, this tricycle is turned into a sort of moving dot matrix printer. It doesn’t have the same sort of grace that the traditional Chinese art does, but it’s quite a bit faster, so if you want to get your message out, this might have some practical applications.

The post doesn’t go into the electronics, but the video after the break includes some close-ups and video of [Nicholas] assembling the device. If you happen to be in china, his tricycle is part of an event for “Beijing Design Week” at the Northern Electric Relay Factory until October 3rd.

While some projects we feature are meant to perform a useful function or make life easier, others such as this art installation by [Pe Lang] are far less functional, but amazing nonetheless.

Taking a cue from CNC-style machines, his creation is an experiment in falling objects and the properties of water. The machine methodically moves along a small 370 x 330 mm plate that is constructed out of a special omniphobic material. A syringe full of water travels along with the machine’s arm, depositing a single 3.3 mm wide drop of water on the board every few seconds as it moves along. Due to the surface tension of the water, each droplet forms a near perfect sphere on the plate without disturbing any of its neighbors.

Once the machine is finished, it leaves the matrix of water droplets to evaporate, after which the machine starts its careful process once again. It really is amazing, regardless of the fact that it doesn’t exactly “do anything”.

Be sure to check out the video below to see the exhibit in action.

[via Make]

[Daniel] let us know that he finished up a SNES arcade cabinet he has been working on for awhile. It looks so good, he says that his wife has even agreed to let him keep it in the house!

DIY Overhead projector beamer

[Liquider] sent us some information about a DIY beamer he built using an overhead projector and an old LCD panel. It looks like a great way to get a big-screen wall display set up in no time.

WordClock gets a makeover

[Doug] wrote in to share with us some progress he has made on his WordClock. You might remember our coverage of this creative timepiece a little while back. This time around, he has built a new control board, and is using vinyl stencils for a much cleaner look.

Interactive water fountain

[Gerry Chu] is well known for his water-based imagery and projects. His most recent project is a water fountain that interacts with passers by. There are no real build details as of yet, but we hope to see some soon.

Sixty Symbols explains why glass is transparent

Do you think you know why glass is transparent, but a brick is not? If you looked it up via Google, you are likely mistaken. A professor from the University of Nottingham explains why the Internet is so, so wrong about this, as well as how energy gap determines if photons of light can make it through a piece of glass. [via i09]

[Avatar-X] has a Siberian Husky that gets a lot of exercise throughout the day, and as you would imagine, drinks a ton of water as well. We all suffer from memory lapses at one time or another, and while he is normally good about keeping the bowl filled, he occasionally forgets. He has tried a handful of various auto-filling dog dishes, but none of them seemed to work all that well, and they often rapidly built up healthy bacterial colonies.

With the help of some friends, he rigged up an automatic water dish filler, that ensures his pup always has a sufficient supply of water. He tapped into his kitchen water supply with a standard refrigerator hookup kit, and ran some tubing up into his cabinets, where he placed a garden irrigation valve. The valve is controlled using an Arduino which senses the bowl’s water level using a pair of wires.

The system looks like it works pretty well if the video embedded below is any indicator. [Avatar-X] provides code and schematics for the water control circuit on his site, free to anyone looking to build a similar system for their pets.

If you are interested in learning more about automating some of your pet’s care, be sure to check out these hacks we featured in the past.

[Arthur Benemann] has the worst part of making coffee licked. His add-on for a drip coffee maker fills the water to the proper levels for you, saving the drudgery of rinsing out the carafe, carefully filling it to the appropriate level, then pouring it into the machine without getting everything wet. This isn’t limited to a full pot, but is user selectable by the cup based on how many times in a row you hit that red button. One LED gives feedback on the selected mode, then the device uses a washing machine water valve to turn on the tap for the appropriate amount of time. We’re a little bit leery of connecting homebrew hardware to the water pipes in our house. Make sure you’ve done a good job of debugging so that an infinite loop doesn’t flood you out.

[cmwslw] built a soda-bottle water rocket that uses the ignition of oxyhydrogen gas to quickly expel the water, as opposed to the usual compressed air and water mixture. His project contains excellent documentation with photos and it builds on other articles he’s written about generating the flammable HHO gas used to launch his craft into the skies. Every aspect of this project uses items most of us have at home or could score cheaply at most hardware stores.

We love seeing projects that re-purpose everyday materials into something fun. Just be sure to dodge the missile pop bottle as it speeds back to Earth!

The end of the year is rapidly approaching and there’s a good chance you have a slowly dying tree in your living room. Help it hold on a little longer by using [Eric Ayars'] Christmas Tree water monitor. He’s built a sensor out of a piece of strip board. Three bus strips on the board allow for a variety of alerts. When all three are submerged everything is ok. When the two longer traces are still under water but the third is not an LED will blink to let you know it’s time. If you don’t pay attention and there’s no water left, a piezo buzzer makes noise until you add water (or the coin cell runs out of juice).

This project centers around an ATtiny85 that [Eric] programmed using an Arduino, one of the methods we covered in our AVR Programming Tutorial. But if this simple circuit isn’t high-tech enough for you, we saw a similar method last year that will send an alert to your iPhone.

How much water do you use when showering, or washing your hands, or washing the dishes? Not how much does the average person use, but how much to you use? That’s what the team over at Teague Labs set out to find with this water usage feedback system. The sensor used is a Koolance flow meter which is intended to measure coolant flow in PC liquid cooling systems. At $20, it makes a nice low-cost sensor which was paired with a WiFi enabled Arduino. In the image above they’re using an iPad as a screen so that you can see how much water you’re using (or wasting) as you wash your hands. This resulted in saving 1/2 gallon of water every time someone washed their hands.

The project code, schematic, and board files are all available for download. Along with the hardware build there’s some nice server-side software that gathers and graphs the data over time. We’ve seen a lot of power-meter hacks, but it’s nice to have the option to track water usage, even if this is tailored to just one tap at a time.

[Paul] wanted to have access to renewable energy at his cabin. It’s a relaxing place, nestled in a tall forest that shelters him from the sun and wind. This also means that solar and wind energy aren’t an option. But there is a stream running through the property so he decided to build his own version of a small water-powered generator.

He tapped into a reservoir about 200 feet upstream, split the flow into four smaller hoses, and channeled that into a five-gallon bucket. Inside the bucket you’ll find a Pelton wheel he built which turns a low-RPM generator. He manages to generate 56 VDC at 10 A with this setup, more than enough to charge a bank of batteries.

He does a great job of explaining his setup in the video after the break. If you’re looking for other ideas of how to cut down on your environmental impact check out this compost-powered water heater.

[Dave] has put together this laminar water jet, mainly from PVC and drinking straws. There isn’t a project page, but he does go into a little depth explaining how it works. The water enters at the bottom and is slowed down by a series of sponges, then forced through a column of drinking straws. It then pools at the top before being forced through a perfectly smooth and sharp nozzle. We did manage to find this other video, making one for $15 that has a ton of information and links. How long before we see a submission of a complete music synchronized fountain in one of our readers yard?

Moscow is in a bit of a hot spot right now, dealing with a heat wave and enormous wildfires. The combination of smoke, ash, and heat was driving Andrew up a wall so he built a contraption to provide some relief. It has two chambers, the bottom houses ice water, the top is an air baffle. A small DC fan pumps air into the upper chamber where it encounters the water being sprayed in from the lower reservoir. What results is a heat exchange similar to other diy AC setups we’ve seen. But Andrew also notes that after running the device for a while the smell of smoke and ash is gone. Can this setup be seen as an effective way to trap airborne smoke particles?

This multi-layer display uses droplets of water as a projection medium. This way, several different projected areas can be seen for a not-quite-3D layering effect. The trick is in syncing up all aspects of the apparatus. There are three manifolds, each with 50 stainless steel needles for water drop production. A solenoid valve actuates the drops, a camera images them mid-air, and a computer syncs the images of the dots with a projector. In the video after the break you can see the SIGGRAPH 2010 presentation that includes a description of the process as well as action shots including a 3-layer version of Tetris.

[Thanks Mid_Sci via theEngineer]

No hack will be more readily accepted by the significant other more than an automated vegetable watering system. [Jouni's] homemade rig keeps those tomatoes happy with just the right amount of moisture. A bucket serves as the reservoir, a submersible pump gets the water to the soil through a bit of plastic hose. An Arduino monitors the soil sensor, watering and tweeting about it when things dry out too much. Don’t miss the soil moisture sensor post if you need some tips on how to get that end of things working. The rest is pretty straightforward.

Sonoluminescence is one of those strange phenomenon that many would never encounter outside an academic environment. For those who have never heard of it, Sonoluminescence is when tiny bubbles suspended in a liquid emit light while being vibrated at certain frequencies. We were pleased to see that some plans are out there on how to build your own device to produce it.

[via io9]

[Taichi Inoue] is back again, this time with a multitouch system that uses water as the touch surface.  The setup consists of a tank of water placed atop an LCD, a lamp, and a web cam. The web cam pics up the light that is reflected when something breaks the surface of the water. It is, as far as the computer is concerned, no different than the blob recognition we see with many of the home made multitouch systems. Mixed with his Yukikaze, this guy might end up with the most relaxing computer system in the world.

[via Makezine]