Hacklet 14 – Hacks Around The House

September 5, 2014 by Adam Fabio 25 Comments

In this weeks Hacklet we’re looking at household hacks. Not necessarily globally connected home automation hacks, but task specific hacks that we want in our lives yesterday!

We’ve all had it happen, you’re burning the midnight oil on a project when you realize it’s garbage night. The mad dash to collect empty anti-static bags, last night’s Chinese food, and the rest of the trash before actually venturing outside in the dark.

[Mehmet-cileli] doesn’t have to deal with any of that, thanks to My Bins, his automated trash and recycling can moving system. Normally the bins are stationed near the house. Each garbage night, the system springs into action. The cans and their platform pivots 90 degrees. The entire system then rolls along a track to the curb. Once the cans have been collected, everything rolls back ready for more trash. We just hope [Mehmet’s] garbage men are nice enough to put the bins back on their platform!

Next we have the perfect cup of tea. [Marcel] kept forgetting his tea while it was steeping. After ending up with ink a few times, he built this Automatic Tea Timer. A button starts the timer, and after a few minutes, the tea bag is automatically lifted and a light illuminates to let you know your tea is ready. [Marcel] used a ~~Raspberry Pi~~ ~~Arduino~~ ~~555~~ simple R-C timer circuit to create his delay. The lift arm is a discarded hard drive read arm. The light bulb limits current through the voice coils.

[Juan Sandu] always has veggies with his Smart Small Greenhouse. [Juan] has created a desktop sized greenhouse that gives plants what they crave. No, not Brawndo, we’re talking water, warmth, and light. An Arduino Uno uses sensors to monitor humidity, temperature, light, and moisture. Based upon one of two pre-set plant types, the system determines when to water, turn on lights, or even power up a fan to keep temperatures plant friendly. [Juan] is still working on his greenhouse, but his code is already up on Github.

Next up is [nerwal] with his entry in The Hackaday Prize, GrillUp. GrillUp is a remote grill temperature monitoring system with a cooling spray. Up to 6 food grade thermometers provide GrillUp with its temperature data. If things are getting a bit too hot, Grillup cools the situation down by spraying water, beer, or your favorite marinade. The system is controlled over Bluetooth Low Energy from an android smart phone. A laser pointer helps to aim the water spray. Once the cooling zones are set up, the system runs automatically. It even has a sprinkler mode, where it sprays everything down.

Every hacker’s house needs some Sci-fi mood lights, right? [spetku and maehem] round out this weeks Hacklet with their Fifth Element Stone Mood Lighting. Originally an entry in the Hackaday Sci-fi contest, these mood lights are based on the elemental stones in everyone’s favorite Bruce Willis movie. The lights are 3D printed in sections which stack over foamboard cores. The actual light comes from a trio of RGB LEDs. LED control is from the same brain board which controls the team’s Robot Army. The lights are designed to open up just like the ones in the movie, though fire, earth, wind, and water are not required. The servos [spetku and maehem] selected weren’t quite up to the task, but they mention this will be remedied in a future revision.

That’s a wrap for this week’s Hacklet. As always, see you next week. Same hack time, same hack channel, bringing you the best of Hackaday.io!

Unlock On LAN Apartment Security

September 5, 2014 by James Hobson 29 Comments

Here’s a cool little variation of that handy little function called Wake on LAN — [Jonathan] found himself locked out of his apartment one too many times, so he decided to add his own fail safe backup in order to get inside without a key — using a Raspberry Pi of course.

His apartment is one of those older style ones where the door is always locked and you use a buzzer to let someone in (or a key to get in yourself). This made it super easy to add some internet connectivity to the system. [Jonathan] tapped into the buzzer with a relay since the system uses medium voltage AC to operate. A Raspberry Pi triggers a transistor using its GPIO to click the relay on and off, effectively controlling the lock.

Using a WiFi dongle he’s connected the Pi to his home network and written a simple perl script to trigger the relay — all he has to do is visit a URL on his phone or computer and the door will unlock instantly!

Once the system worked [Jonathan] soldered all the components onto a breadboard and hooked it up. He still needs an enclosure for it, but it’s been working well since he installed it.

Another option would be to use an RFID tag system through the door, which could be pretty cool as well.

Radioshack Phone Dialer – Red Box

September 5, 2014 by Hackaday 58 Comments

i thought i’d start out with this hack while we’re in beta, since it was one of the first ones that really got me interested in the way phones worked and how many consumer electronics can be used for new and educational things. a “red box” was a device that would simulate coins being dropped in to a pay-phone, hence free phone calls for many people until the phone systems changed. the most popular device to modify was a radioshack tone dialer, a simple solder of a 6.5536 mhz crystal was all it took and you could “drop” 5, 10 and 25 cents at a time to make calls.

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DIY UV Lamp Is The Cure For Nails And More

September 5, 2014 by Kristina Panos 60 Comments

We must admit to wondering how Adafruit’s [Becky Stern] gets anything done with those fingernails of hers. They’re always long and beautifully painted without any chips, dings, or dents. As it turns out, she uses UV gel nail polish. It’s much more durable than standard air-dry polishes, but it requires UV light to cure. [Becky] bought a lamp to use at home, but it’s very bulky and must be plugged into the wall. She knew there was a better way and devised her DIY UV mini manicure lamp.

She really thought of everything. The open source 3D-printed enclosure includes a small compartment in the top for cuticle sticks, emery boards, and tweezers. The Li-poly battery is rechargeable over USB in conjunction with Adafruit’s PowerBoost 500c. The lamp itself is made from 30 UV LEDs and 100Ω resistors. [Becky] lined the inside of hers with silver sticky paper to help distribute the UV light evenly.

You know, this can also be used to erase EPROMs or to cure small DLP 3D prints. Do you have another use for it? Tell us in the comments. Introductory and partially hyperlapsed video after the break.

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THP Hacker Bio: Rusty Jehangir

September 5, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 18 Comments

[Rusty]’s project for the Hackaday Prize is extremely ambitious. He’s planning on sending an autonomous craft across the ocean, from LA to Hawaii, a distance that will end up being well over 2,500 miles The best part about this project? It’s already had some time in the ocean, cruising off the coast of southern California under its own power for a distance of 20km.

Why is [Rusty] doing this? Partly because he wanted to do something no one had ever done before. For him, this meant developing a cheap underwater thruster, building an autonomous solar-powered surfboard for a months-long voyage halfway across the Pacific. It’s a small step to the goal of exploring the deep ocean with his thruster and mostly off the shelf parts, but already [Rusty] has learned a lot about electronics in a marine environment and being confident enough to let a project go on its own for months at a time.

Interview below.

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Virtual Reality Expands Into The World Of Rollercoasters With ‘The Augmented Thrill Ride Project’

September 4, 2014 by Matt Terndrup 22 Comments

A rollercoaster company in Germany called Mack Rides joined forces with a team of virtual reality developers in the spring of 2014 to create an experience like no other.

The idea came from [Thomas], a professor at the University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern who was working in the department of Virtual Design at the time. The thought of extending a real rollercoaster ride with an Oculus Rift was an intriguing one, so he approached Mack Rides with the experiment, and the ground-breaking research began.

Hundreds of tests were done over the following weeks and months, which provided insight into how we perceive time and space while inside VR. This led to some interesting discoveries. For one, the VR track inside the Rift could be more complex than the real one. This meant that the directions could be contorted into different angles without the user feeling much of a difference. Knowing this, the developers were able to unfold/extend the track well beyond what was possible in real life.

Another epiphany had to do with the rails, which actually didn’t have to be present in VR at all. In fact, it was better if the tracks weren’t there because the experience was much more exciting not knowing which way the ride was suddenly going to take. This made things exponentially more surprising and compelling.

By far the most startling revelation was the reduction in dizziness and motion sickness during the tests. This was attributed to the complex synchronization that the mind goes through when melding together g-forces and the actual rollercoaster rides with the virtual ones displayed inside the Oculus Rift.

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Master Clock Keeps Time For All Other Clocks

September 4, 2014 by Bryan Cockfield 23 Comments

[Brett] just finished construction and long-term testing of this extremely accurate timepiece. It keeps such great time by periodically syncing with the atomic clock in Mainflingen, Germany.

The core of the project is an ATMega328 which uses the new DCF77 library for decoding the signal broadcast by an atomic clock. The libraries written by Udo Klein significantly increase the noise tolerance of the device reading the signal, but they will not work with any project that use a resonator rather than a crystal.

In the event of a complete signal loss from the atomic clock, the micro driving the clock also has a backup crystal that can keep the clock running to an accuracy of within 1 second per day. The clock can drive slave clocks as well, using pulses with various timings depending on what [Brett] needs them to do. The display is no slouch either: six seven-segment displays show the time and an LCD panel reads out data about the clock. It even has chimes for the hour and quarter hour, and is full of many other features to boot!

One of the most annoying things about timekeeping is daylight savings time corrections, and this clock handles that with a manual switch. This can truly take care of all of your timekeeping needs!