Trike With Water-Rocket Engine

September 27, 2017 by Brian McEvoy 32 Comments

Many of us made soda bottle rockets for science class. Some of us didn’t have that opportunity, and made them in the backyard because that’s what cool kids do. Water rockets work on the premise that if water is evacuated from one side of a container, the container will accelerate away from the evacuation point. Usually, this takes the form of a 2-liter bottle, a tire pump and some cardboard fins. [François Gissy] modified the design but not the principle for his water trike which reached 261 kph or 162mph.

Parts for the trike won’t be found in the average kitchen but many of them could be found in a motorcycle shop, except for the carbon fiber wrapped water tank. There wasn’t a throttle on this rocket, the clutch lever was modified to simply open the valve and let the rider hold on until the water ran out. The front brake seemed to be intact, thank goodness.

Powering vehicles in unconventional ways is always a treat to watch and [François Gissy]’s camera-studded trike is no exception. If you like your water rockets pointed skyward, check out this launch pad for STEM students and their water rockets. Of course, [Colin Furze] gets a shout-out for his jet-powered go-kart.

Thank you, [Itay], for the tip.

Continue reading “Trike With Water-Rocket Engine” →

All The Speakers Plus We’re Heating It Up A Day Early

September 27, 2017 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

Things are getting real now. Check the list below for the last round of confirmed speakers to the 2017 Hackaday Superconference. This brings our slate of speakers to 32, but we’re not done yet.

Hackaday is adding an extra day to the Superconference by starting the festivities on Friday. Again this year we have an excellent custom hardware badge in development. It’s hard to pull yourself away during the Supercon for badge hacking so this year you can check in on Friday and let the hacking begin. Since you’ll be in town early, we’re also throwing a party at Supplyframe office (minutes walk from the main venue) for all Supercon speakers and attendees.

But we’re still not done. 32 talks, an epic hardware badge, and an extra day of festivities, what else could there be you ask? Two things: workshops and the Hackaday Prize party. Supercon will play host to eight hardware workshops this year. We’ll announce workshop presenters and topics next week but I can tell you they’re superb this year!

Continue reading “All The Speakers Plus We’re Heating It Up A Day Early” →

The Engineering That Survives Hurricanes

September 27, 2017 by Bryan Cockfield 84 Comments

Florida is a great place to live, especially around January when it’s sunny and 24 degrees outside (76F) while all of your friends from back home are dealing with scraping ice off of their windshields every morning. In the late summer, though, this pleasant tropical paradise can sometimes take a turn for the worse, because Florida is one of the handful of places that frequently see some of the worst storms on the planet: hurricanes. As a Floridian myself, perhaps I can shed some light on some of the ways that the various local governments and their residents have taken to mitigate the destruction that usually accompanies these intense tropical storms when it seems that, to outsiders, it might be considered unwise to live in such a place.

Continue reading “The Engineering That Survives Hurricanes” →

Monstrous USB Power Bank

September 27, 2017 by James Hobson 57 Comments

At some point, cleaning out the spare parts bin — or cabinet, or garage — becomes a necessity. This is dangerous because it can induce many more project ideas and completely negate the original purpose. [Chaotic Mind], considering the pile of batteries he’s collected over the past decade, decided that instead of throwing them out, he would recycle them into a grotesque USB power bank.

Inside the bulk of this power bank are an eye-popping 64 18650 Lithium Ion cells, mostly collected from laptop batteries, and wired in a parallel 8×8 pattern with an estimated capacity of over 100,000mAh(!!). The gatekeeper to all this stored energy is a two-USB power bank charger board from Tindie.

Ah — but how to package all this power? The handy man’s secret weapon: duct-tape!

Continue reading “Monstrous USB Power Bank” →

PID Controlled Charcoal BBQ – Put An Arduino On It!

September 27, 2017 by Bob Baddeley 19 Comments

At Maker Faire Milwaukee this past weekend, [basement tech] was showing off his latest build, a PID controlled charcoal grill. While it hasn’t QUITE been tested yet with real food, it does work in theory.

PID (a feedback loop with some fancy math used to adjust the input to get a consistent output) controlled cooking is commonly used for sous vide, where one heats up a water bath to a controlled temperature to cook food in plastic bags. Maintaining water temperature is fairly easy. Controlling a charcoal barbecue is much more difficult. [basement tech] accomplishes this with controlled venting and fans. With the charcoal hot and the lid on, there are two ways to control temperature; venting to let hot air out, and blowing air on the coals to make them hotter. A thermocouple sensor stuck through the grill gives the reading of the air inside, and an Arduino nearby reads that and adjusts the vents and fans accordingly.

The video goes into extensive detail on the project, and describes some of the challenges he had along the way, such as preventing the electronics and servos from melting.

Continue reading “PID Controlled Charcoal BBQ – Put An Arduino On It!” →