Wearable Neon Necklaces Run On Battery Power

October 5, 2025 by Lewin Day No comments

We typically think of neon signs as big commercial advertisements, hanging inside windows and lofted on tall signposts outside highway-adjacent businesses. [James Akers] has gone the other route with a fashionable build, creating little wearable neon necklaces that glow beautifully in just the same way.

Aiming for small scale, [James] began with 6 mm blue phosphor glass tube, which was formed to reference Pink Pony Club, one of Chappell Roan’s more popular songs. The glass was then filled with pure neon up to a relatively low pressure of just 8 torr. This was an intentional choice to create a more conductive lamp that would be easier to run off a battery supply. The use of pure neon also made the tubes easy to repair in the event they had a leak and needed a refill. A Midget Script gas tube power supply is used to drive the tiny tubes from DC power. In testing, the tubes draw just 0.78 amps at 11.8 volts. It’s not a light current draw, but for neon, it’s pretty good—and you could easily carry a battery pack to run it for an hour or three without issue.

If you’re not a glass blower, fear not—you can always make stuff that has a similar visual effect with some LEDs and creativity. Meanwhile, if you’ve got your own neon creations on the go—perhaps for Halloween?—don’t hesitate to light up the tipsline!

3D Printing A New Kind Of Skateboard That Is Ultimately Unsafe

October 5, 2025 by Lewin Day 1 Comment

Skateboards were organically developed in the 1940s and 1950s; 30 years would then pass before the ollie was developed, unlocking new realms for skaters dedicated to the artform. The advent of powerful batteries and motors would later make the electric skateboard a practical and (un?)fashionable method of transport in more recent years. Now, [Ivan Miranda] is pushing the cutting edge of skateboarding even further, with an entirely weird build of his own design.

The build was inspired by one-wheels, which [Ivan] considers fun but ultimately too dangerous. Most specifically, he fears crashing when the one-wheel is tilted beyond a critical angle at which the motor can restore it to a level heading. His concept was to thus create a two-wheeled board that is nonetheless controlled with the leaning interface of a one-wheel.

The frame is assembled from a combination of 3D-printed brackets and aluminium extrusion. The rider stands on a platform which rides on rollers on top of the frame, tilting it to control the drive direction of the board. Detecting the angle is handled by an Arduino Due with an MPU6050 IMU onboard. The microcontroller is then responsible for commanding the speed controller to move the board. Drive is from a brushless DC motor, hooked up to one of the wheels via a toothed belt. Power is courtesy of three power tool batteries.

Early testing showed the design to be a bit of a death trap. However, with refinement to the control system code and an improved battery setup, it became slightly more graceful to ride. [Ivan] notes that more tuning and refinement is needed to make the thing safer than a one-wheel, which was the original goal. We’ve seen some other great builds from [Ivan] before, too. Video after the break.

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Simple Counter Mechanism In An Asthma Inhaler

October 5, 2025 by Maya Posch 4 Comments

The counter wheel and white worm gear inside the counter. (Credit: Anthony Francis-Jones, YouTube)

Recently [Anthony Francis-Jones] decided to take a closer look at the inhaler that his son got prescribed for some mild breathing issues, specifically to teardown the mechanical counter on it. Commonly used with COPD conditions as well as asthma, these inhalers are designed to provide the person using it with an exact dose of medication that helps to relax the muscles of the airways. Considering the somewhat crucial nature of this in the case of extreme forms of COPD, the mechanical counter that existed on older versions of these inhalers is very helpful to know how many doses you have left.

Disassembling the inhaler is very easy, with the counter section easily extracted and further disassembled. The mechanism is both ingenious and simple, featuring the counter wheel that’s driven by a worm gear, itself engaged by a ratcheting mechanism that’s progressed every time the cylinder with the medication is pushed down against a metal spring.

After the counter wheel hits the 0 mark, a plastic tab prevents it from spinning any further, so that you know for certain that the medication has run out. In the video [Anthony] speculates that the newer, counter-less inhalers that they got with the latest prescription can perhaps be harvested for their medication cylinder to refill the old inhaler, followed by resetting the mechanical counter. Of course, this should absolutely not be taken as medical advice.

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