People in hotter parts of the world may permit themselves a grin at this, but Europeans have recently been suffering under an unseasonal June heatwave. Most of us have been cowering inside with our air conditioners, but not [Making Stuff With Mike]. He’s adapting a safety helmet with a Noctua fan for only slightly uncool on-the-go cooling.
On the face of it, the hat is a straightforward hack. [Mike] mounted a 3D-printed chimney to the top of a hard hat and placed a fan in the top of it. But as always, there’s a little more to it than meets the eye, and in this case it’s because he’s modeled the hat/chimney interface by 3D scanning the hat and using the scan to create his CAD model. The two are attached with four small bolts, and a set of large holes are made in the hat for airflow. Taking it out for a spin, he finds it does the job, but has a few ideas for improvements.
So Mike’s ready for the upcoming BornHack hacker camp, which Hackaday has been to a few times. We’re not so lucky with headgear, but at least if there’s a heatwave, they have plenty of hammocks in the trees.
Looks cumbersome but the concept is pretty cool.
Besides the safety hat no longer being a safety hat, it looks like a lot of space for peltier activities.
I reckon it could fit a nice sized CPU cooler in there.
Well, the human body doesn’t put out that much heat and also doesn’t handle sudden big changes as well. So the fan should be enough.
Actually the human body puts out a surprising LARGE amount of heat.
Way more heat than the average person realizes.
So much so that top level athletes of certain sports like cycling topped out on raw human cooling capacity a LONG time ago and had to start optimizing movement efficiency to literally stop athletes from getting heat stroke while riding at a competitive level.
Humans are actually pretty bad at keeping cool.
We can SURVIVE in some hot places, but we have to drastically alter behavior.
And when you consider that a large portion of our calories are used to do thinky-brain-stuff, it becomes a problem to do brain-stuff when it is really hot even when adequately hydrated.
Those dumb little neck coolers that use peltier modules to pump heat away from the body are actually extremely useful for lowering body temperature. They conduct heat away pretty quickly, and the metal plates get cool but not freezing.
Ok, so I’ve managed to find the term “exertional hypertherma” but where can I read more about “optimizing movement efficiency”? That sounds really neat.
When you train for a pro level that’s the first thing you focus on learning.
It simply means “your each and EVERY move should be towards the finish line”. Literally. There is only that much energy that can be used, and it has to be properly allocated, for example, all kinds of auxiliary/unneeded jolts or bobs should be absolutely minimized or eliminated – and your body has to be trained to think like that, it is aimed at the finish line.
Simplest example is easily understood by watching any short-distance track and field runs, 100 meters, maybe, I’d say 400 or 1000 meters or relays are easier to understand.
100 meters is the elite sport, only selected few are really fit for it (you HAVE to be in the right gene pool for that – either by having specific lower-leg/upper-leg/body proportions, of have amazing metabolism to compensate for lack of, or, ideally, both, body proportion and excellent metabolism that can get rid of lactic acid quickly).
Each and every step is endlessly practiced, and meticulously planned and thought about, and it is not far from being a track and field ballet of sorts; I’d also point out what I liked the most when I was younger – long jump an triple jump.
It is more of an art, really, and there exist different routines aimed at all these, including establishing better metabolism.
Riders need to learn specific cadence, and even muscle activation strategies to use the lowest exertion during a pedal stroke.
When I rode it was “keep X heart rate, breathe like Y, and maintain Z cadence.”
But today it is WILD.
“During this portion of your downstroke use X and Y quad muscles but not A or B. Then 20 degrees later relax Z and activate A and B. Then relax them all and spin 30 degrees. On the upstroke pull with J and K while keeping G relaxed. Add G in at 240 degrees and push until 290 then relax.”
They are micro optimizing individual muscles inside the groups to stay out of catabolism and minimize inefficiency from acidic conditions, not just optimizing for fatigue.
Mind you, these are elite riders that are already mutants that can break the lactic acid wall that us normal humans run into.
It looks a bit like a bump cap to me and not a true hard hat and isn’t really there to protect you from things hitting you but instead against you hitting your head on things above you. And in that aspect it will still work, but less convient with the extra height.
watching the warm weather in Europe at the moment we australians are amazed (and shocked) at how many people are out in the sun without hats, sunglasses, and probably sunscreen – all things we grew up with…
Standing in the bare sun without a hat on telling a tv camera that you are a hot is just making yourself look stupid..
Hats do diddly squat for being hot. I find they usually make it worse.
Hats are protection against rain and sunlight.
This year has been exceptionally hot here in the UK.
The temptation has been to create a full body suit with microbore tubing sewn into it. It seems simple enough, until you try to make it comfortable and flexible enough to at least be worn around the house.
Although I think I might just settle for a water cooled mattress at this point, I’m thinking, repurpose an ice cube maker as the cold side of the heat exchanger.
yes, it’s been warm in the UK – thought not what we (aus) would call hot..
The big problem in the UK is that they have designed buildings and air systems to suck heat in, and given no thought to getting heat out (or not letting it in in the first place). Thus they have the ‘warm car problem’ with the buildings instead of cars ie it can be hotter inside than out.. Apart from a lack of air con they also seem to lack any concept of shade management, internal & external blinds, air flow, opening up at night and shutting during the day, etc etc etc…
I’ve been in london when the outside temperature has been very pleasant (ie 32c) yet inside is much hotter than that and unpleasant for most people…
And you don’t need a cooled mattress, what you need is a fan on the ceiling above your bed, as people who have always lived in warm countries have..
Absolutely, a large percentage of houses in the UK were built to withstand pretty harsh winters, you’re only likely to find air-conditioning in a large supermarket. Sure there are small indoor units, but they seem to put out more heat than they remove and once the house is hot, it’ll likely retain the heat for several days. The thing that really seems to make it u bearable is the humidity. 25°C at 2am with 90% humidity isn’t conducive to getting a good night’s sleep. If it’s cold, you can put on a coat or light a fire, if it’s too hot, you’re pretty much stuck with it.
Waterbeds can get pretty cool.
We are thermally conductive, so you don’t need to cool the whole body. When treating heat exhaustion and heat stroke at the hacker camps, we don’t cool the whole body, just the armpits, neck and crutch. The back near the kidneys is also a good place for extracting heat if you only cool one area.
How about making a reversible peltier jacket such that when it’s hot you where it one way and when it’s cold, turn it inside out? Carry the battery on a hip belt.
Perhaps when it’s cold outside you could use your own body heat as a power source.
Peltiers are reversible electrically, just swap the polarity. Don’t need to turn anything inside out.
A week of higher temperatures and it’s back to regular 20°C with a 15% chance of rain. All that was needed to endure this heat wave was to keep windows closed (sic!) and keep a 1,5L bottle of chilled mineral water nearby, with another one sitting in the fridge waiting for its turn.
But people are people and many went panic buying crap, single-hose portable AC units for grossly overinflated prices, only to realize those are noisy af and actually work more like a 1.5 kW space heater. 仕方ないね.
This design begs for a top hat, you might even get bold and steampunk it if you’re so inclined
a stovepipe hat, if you will
Puts me in mind of Sergeant Detritus’s clockwork thinking cap from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Men at Arms.
A hard hat is a brilliant idea since it has air space between the hat and the head, but I just can’t figure out why the fan tower is so tall?
It would be fun to do a version of this using 12mm diameter axial fans bolted right to the hard hat over 12mm drilled holes, so the resulting helmet would only be 3-4mm larger than it is now.
I needed space for all the electronics i am going to put into it ;-)
For a second I thought “Steve Wozniak”, sorry; though this would be something he’d think about inventing.
They DID sell a chimney for the original Mac to better cool it: https://www.reddit.com/r/VintageApple/comments/ekc9gc/macchimney_cool_your_mac_and_make_it_look_like_a/