We all know what it means to procrastinate, but what about actively spending time building a useless machine? You have undoubtedly seen the ornamental boxes with a tempting little toggle switch on the top. When you inevitably flip the switch, an actuator pops out from one half of the enclosure with the sole purpose of undoing its own power switch. [Paz Hameiri] took it a step further by adding some [Rube Goldberg] flavor, and with the help of a microcontroller, his levers take their sweet time powering themselves down. (Video after the break.)
We didn’t find any code or diagrams for the project, but if you know the useless machine’s internals, it shouldn’t be any trouble to recreate one for your desk. The most significant design factor is that the switches. Their contacts must be wired in parallel so that the controller has power as long as one is active. How would you spice up the useless machine?
Even though these are called useless machines, they serve the purpose of decoration, conversation-starting, or a way to show off your woodworking and programming skills.
I like this concept, congratulations to the maker! The movements were rather elegant.
This made me laugh in a way that I haven’t since I saw my very first useless machine, so well done!
This is like my Commodore rotary phone, useless but KOOL!
http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=17125.0
Now all we need is a useless machine with a rotary knob (or two) instead of switches.
I like ;) . Useless … but then we have a lot of ‘useless’ items on our shelves we just look at…. This is more interesting than most! Thanks for sharing.
And a start for you too.
The report button is really easy to accidentally click.
Indeed.
You turn on the poor thing on and this pulls its soul into our realm with silent screams no one can hear, and it desperately tries to free itself by turning the power off, but it’s futile, because it only pauses its suffering.
Where is the GIF? :(
Has anyone figured out the components and how it works?