Wait a minute. We’re almost through June and we haven’t seen anyone’s ‘DIY air conditioning’ setup. Oh the shame! How could we ever argue about thermodynamics otherwise? Here’s some copper tubing wrapped around a fan. Does it make sense? Assuming you’re making the ice (or cold whatever) in a room separated from the crappy air con, and you don’t have to pay for electricity (or ice), and you don’t mind hauling buckets of ice every few hours, yes. It’ll work. Now we can argue if you should put salt in the ice water…
I know I mentioned this in last week’s links post, but [Arsenijs]’s Raspberry Pi project is growing by leaps and bounds. He already has more than 33 followers to this project (awesome!) and 3.3k views on his project page. Not only is it climbing in popularity, but this is also a great use for the Raspberry Pi. You don’t see projects like this come around very often.
The Goliath is a quadcopter powered by a lawnmower engine. It was an entry in the first Hackaday Prize, but the project literally never got off the ground. There’s now a Mk. II version in the works. Goliath is getting a new frame made out of aluminum tube and rivets. There’s going to be ducts on the props, and this version might actually fly.
You did know Hackaday has it’s own Hackaspace, right? Technically it’s the Supplyframe Design Lab, but there are still a few skull ‘n wrenches hidden in the rafters. The Design Lab is hosting an open house this week on June 23rd, and the design lab residencies will begin July 1st. If you have an idea for something you’d like to build, here’s the residency application.
The LimeSDR is a powerful next generation software defined radio that’s currently on CrowdSupply The crowdfunding campaign ends in just a few days. It’s a very impressive tool, able to send and receive anything from 100 kHz to 3.8 GHz.
Last week one of our writers posted a review on the Monoprice MP Select Mini 3D printer. This printer is becoming stupidly popular, and Monoprice has depleted their inventory twice since then. I’ve been watching the product page for this printer for a while now, and here’s what happens: 1) Printer is out of stock, with an ETA of about a month in the future. 2) Printer is still out of stock, ETA is a few days away. 3) Monoprice has this printer in stock. This cycle seems to repeat every week or so.
Arduino Raycasting. When you think of raycasting, you probably think about Wolfenstein 3D, or other barely 3D games. You don’t need a powerful CPU like a 386 for raycasting – you can do it on an Arduino. The display is a 32×16 matrix of LEDs, control is through a Wii Nunchuck, and yes, head-bobbing is implemented. Here’s a video.
Youtube link for Arduino raycasting is broken since it is missing a capital I at the end of the URL. Link should be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5U8uspxGYI.
Nevermind. It’s fixed now.
That “DIY A/C” was specifically designed to be used in a dorm where normal A/Cs are often not allowed. (And maybe not even technically possible to install due to having the wrong type of window.) Too many liability issues with improperly installed units falling out of windows, not to mention neighbors complaining about the noise…
Apart from that, there are a few times where the idea makes sense. One could be to store cheap/free energy for later cooling uses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFnSFWx13mo
[Arsenijs]’s project is still my favorite Raspberry Pi project. Truly groundbreaking work is going on there! Don’t forget to check out their project video. :D
LimeSDR looks awesome. I will be watching this.
Oh look, more forced memes. Before this, they were pushing their “pi zero usb hub ” meme into a meme. Fail in obscurity.
The Hackaspace is legit, the presence of the pallet jack proves it.
Holy cr*p! The LimeSDR got two pledges for $99,000 for 100-pack of units with cases. Someone must have an absolute faith in the guys to *actually* deliver or they are @notch-level rich so they don’t care about the possibility to lose 100k….
more likely founders of Myriad-RF made ninja donations to push this campaign thru to completion
there are also kickstarter trolls (http://gamerant.com/kickstarter-troll-ruins-campaign/) pledging huge amounts and then cancelling or gradually removing pledges as the end of funding gets near, all for teh lulz
Those cheap induction motors run as hot as the cooling gotten off of the rig.
Shaded pole motors get far hotter … and yeah … from the small size of the center hub it looks like it might be a shaded pole motor.
Last time I bought a fan and motor, I bought the one that claimed the most efficiency and it turned out to be a shaded pole motor. I took it back. The better ones didn’t have any claims about efficiency on the box so it’s ironic that the one that had the greatest claim to efficiency was also likely the least efficient of the lot.
OK – Just worked out the Mericans (and others) refer to shaded pole motors as induction motors. Pro tip – they all work on magnetic induction.
We call them –
Shaded pole – has shorted copper winding on the stator.
Induction – has a capacitor instead.
Commutated – umm – has a commutator (magnetic or inductive fields) often with start only capacitor or complete start winding.
Brushless – umm – has no brushes – inductive or magnetic rotor – multi phased stator.
They know what shaded pole motors are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaded-pole_motor
Notice that Wildi book referenced there is printed in the USA. Cheers.
15 hours to go on LimeSDR and 95% funded. At $249 I cant see them getting there. I briefly estimated parts cost and thought that even the $199/$249 early bird costs were too high. And BTW, comparing LimeSDR against other over-priced SDR boards to justify the price doesn’t cut it. I wish them luck. If they don’t make it, they should price it affordably and have another go.