Aerodynamic Tail Makes Geo Metro Even Cooler

December 25, 2009 by Mike Szczys 77 Comments

[MetroMPG], an environmentally friendly car enthusiast from Ontario, added a tail to his car to increase gas mileage. This 1998 Pontiac Firefly is a sibling of the cheap and popular Geo Metro. He had already done some work to cover a portion of the rear wheel wells to reduce drag. Using cardboard, duct tape, and an aluminum frame he extended the rear of the car by around six feet.

The results are pretty impressive. His extensive testing can be seen in the video after the break and reveals a Miles Per Gallon increase of 15.1% at 90 km/h to get to 64 MPG. The tail is removable but we’re thinking it’s a pain to keep relocating the tail lights from the original body to the removable one.

Now we’re wondering if someone is doing this to our Smurf-blue Metro that we sold to the junk man for $100 back in 2001. It ran great, if you weren’t caught in the cloud of blue smoke coming out the back.

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You’re Not Seeing Double: RGB Christmas Trees

December 25, 2009 by Jake W 30 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAt6A98lXQw]

[mrpackethead], created this monster of a tree. As shown in the video, it’s capable of showing animations, patterns, and potentially video. The 6m tall creation is studded with 2000 waterproof RGB LED modules. Software for the tree was written in Apple’s own Quartz Composer and integrated into Madrix, a piece of software designed with the purpose of controlling LEDs. The 600W system is 100% Arduino-free and costs less than the equivalent of 0.04USD per hour to run in New Zealand.

[Geoist] opted for the Arduino way to rig up his own smaller RGB Christmas tree. Finding a slightly kitschy fiber-optic model in his local department store, [Geoist] was eager to harness its colour-changing powers. Upon opening it up, it was discovered that it was controlled by nothing more than a light bulb and a spinning disk of coloured light filters. [Geoist] gutted the setup in favour of a breadboard with 3 RGB lights hooked up to an Arduino. The sketch for it is available on his site.

Hackaday Links: Christmas 2009

December 25, 2009 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

It’s a Guitar Hero Christmas

Nope, we’re not adding Christmas songs to the game, but instead making the game part of the decor. [kumbaric] hung strings of lights on his garage door in the shape of this familiar gaming interface. The best thing is, you can actually play the game based on these lights. [Thanks Yuppicide]

Smallest… Snowman… Ever.

You can make one of these if you have an electron microscope and an ion beam on hand. This is the product of some clever folks at the National Physical Laboratory near London. This is a pretty fat snowman, 1/5 of a human hair across. By the way, you should have read the subtitle with the voice of Comic Book Guy (like we do when reading the tolls’ comments). [Thanks Matthias]

A little help please

[Andy] outdid himself with this creative decoration. Hanging a dummy from the gutter and placing a tipped over ladder beside it had some folks alarmed. The police asked him to remove the prop after they almost ran off the road while driving by. This was real enough that somebody actually came to the rescue, climbing to the top of the ladder before discovering the ruse. [Thanks Rob]

Lights that blow your mind

This video is from a 2007 display and features over 45,000 lights running on 176 channels. Individually controlled colors, fading effects, and music synchronization put on a show that will get you kicked out of your gated community. Admittedly this guy runs a business dealing in Christmas lighting displays, but that doesn’t diminish the sheer awesome of what he’s done. [Thanks Patrick]

Have a safe and happy Christmas. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that you get that new Weller you’ve been hoping for.