Hackaday Links: March 12, 2017

The world’s first public installation of a solar roadway caught fire or something.

Hey hardware nerds in the UK! Nottingham is having its first monthly hardware meetup. This get together is being put together by [Spencer], creator of the extremely popular RC2014 Homebrew Z80 computer kit. The meetup is free, and it’s happening this Tuesday.

[danjovic] sent in a link to this YouTube channel of a guy building stuff out of PVC sheets and CA glue. There’s a lot of stuff in here from a PVC tripod to instructions on how to get PVC sheets out of PVC pipe. Small warning: this is PVC, and it will kill you instantly, for reasons we can’t yet determine. Additionally, he’s heating PVC, which means cancer for your yet-unborn great-grandchildren. How it both kills you while still allowing you to breed is beyond our comprehension. That’s how bad PVC really is.

NASA has updated their available software catalog. If you want to go to Saturn, you first have to go to Venus three times. Here’s a tool that packs batteries. You should build a router for the interplanetary Internet.

[jlbrian7] is Breaking Android over on Hackaday.io

Last week, we had a Raspberry Pi Hack Chat with [Roger Thornton], the principal hardware engineer at Raspberry Pi. We talked about the hardware that goes into the Raspberry Pi (and the new Pi Zero W), and gave away a few Pi Zero Ws to a few people on hackaday.io that had great ideas for a project. One of the winners of a free Raspberry Pi Zero W was [arsenijs] for his Raspberry Pi Project. This is a really great project that uses a Raspberry Pi and Raspberry Pi accessories. It’s pushing the envelope of what a Pi can be, and a free Raspberry Pi Zero W couldn’t have gone to a more worthy project.

What are you doing the weekend of March 31st? We’re going to New Jersey for the Vintage Computer Festival East. This is one of the better cons we go to. Maybe this year we’ll organize a trip to the pinball museum in Asbury Park.

13 thoughts on “Hackaday Links: March 12, 2017

  1. GO O THE PINBALL MUSEUM. I repeat: GO TO THE PINBALL MUSEUM. It is only a couple miles away. Then, hit a show. If there are any. Asbury Park isn’t really a college town…..

  2. You should not burn PVC because when an organic substance is incinerated in the presence of chlorinated compounds, dioxins can be generated unintentionally due to incomplete combustion, whatever the incinerated substance may be. The PV is the organic part, and the C is the chlorine. So if you burn a lot the monoxide will kill you, but if you do survive your body will get a big dose of mixed dioxins. It is the dioxins that will mess with your offspring.

    https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/77/92/1b/77921b418e02c58700fc02b90a5dd2b1.jpg

    It is no joke.

    1. Ideal temperature for heat forming PVC is a little over standard boiling point of water. The material is soft enough to bend and take a set at that temperature, but a long ways from burning.

      1. That is correct not burning things is called not burning things. Thanks for that captain obvious, but I was replying to the text above regarding how it could harm you, if you do burn it.

  3. Since I got out of the gene pool when there were just three billion, I have flattened some pieces with summer ventilation going. Don’t use too much heat keep it moving have no drift of air near the burner since you need to control the hot spot. A heat gun let’s you see what you are doing without any scorching. An outdoor oven would be best, but it likes to stay round so hands on to get it uncurled.

    The flat stock makes the languid in the center of the mouth piece in flutes that I make out of it. Everything is shaped to fit then I use plastic bonding epoxy to do it up. It’s stiff enough that I can position it while moving it to the state of perfect tone, then just leave it set. Very strong.

  4. It takes all of 10s with google and “msds pvc” to find out what happens if PVC catches fire – as is possible if held too close to a naked flame. Also, any laser cutter operator will know: burning PVC produces HCl. If inhaled or on eye contact, HCl mixes with water to form hydrochloric acid.

    While hydrochloric acid is a good thing in your stomach, if it refluxes into you throat you get that rather unpleasant “chemical burn” sensation. If that happens in your lungs, the consequences can be more serious and long lasting.

    Contributors to Hackaday really ought to know that “MSDS” stands for “material safety data sheet”, and that beginners shouldn’t be encouraged to take *other* *people’s* safety lightly.

    (My personal view is that what someone knowingly does to their own body is their business; what they might do to other people’s body is everybody’s business)

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