Perfect Shots Every Time

December 28, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 23 Comments

A shot is a shot right? Well, not really. Usually we see a sloppy shot poured of a single type of alcohol and, depending on our current standing with the bartender, may or may not be full to the brim. The Pousse-Cafe makes an art out of your drinks by perfectly layering several liqueurs. Not only will it measure them out perfectly, but it is voice controlled as well. There are 3 liqueurs to choose from, as they were going for a specific, visually appealing drink (otherwise, why bother?). Judging from the pictures it looks like it’s using an arduino in conjunction with a laptop for control.

You can see a video of it in action after the break.

[via Gizmodo]

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Build A Fusion Reactor In Your Home

December 27, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 55 Comments

At first we were pretty skeptical of this home made fusion reactor instructable. However, we’ve seen home made fusion reactors before, so it is technically possible, we guess. The construction alone is interesting enough to warrant a few moments of looking.

We’re not experts, so pardon us if we can’t tell you exactly what is going on, but we can appreciate the craftsmanship involved with the build. The vacuum chamber specifically is quite nice.

We know that some of our commenters probably have more experience here. Tell us, does this thing look legit?

Santa-Pede Challenge: Take Two

December 27, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 36 Comments

We are going to give the Santa-Pede Challenge another try. This time, you have till the end of January to do something (make it walk/crawl/scoot) with a dancing santa (or dancing musical holiday toy). As you can see in my example, it doesn’t have to be complicated or efficient in any way.

Here are some issues and questions we would like to address:

1. Many of you suggested a banner of some type to remind you.
Great idea, we were waiting for some other features to be added, but we’ve just gone ahead and popped them in. You can see the featured items at the top of the right hand column.

2. Some pointed out that the “Buy Break Build” title isn’t very hack-ish since we often preach up-cycling.
yeah, we really think you should find these santas anywhere. The alliteration is fun though isn’t it?

You can get all the rules by going to the original post. Just note that the last date for entries will be January 31.

Upgrading An Old Polaroid Land Camera For 35mm Rolls

December 26, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 19 Comments

Ok, we recognize that this is a bit of an odd upgrade, since many would probably think that a digital upgrade would be more appropriate. However, we found this interesting anyway. [Marker1024] has taken this old Polaroid land camera and modified it to accept a standard 35mm roll. His list of materials may sound fairly MacGyver-ish with foil and sculpey, but his results look to be well done and fairly sturdy. We have to say that the aesthetics of the camera itself are quite appealing and we could see carrying one of these around. As interesting as the writeup is though, we can’t help but wonder what the pictures look like that came out of it!

Instructables “Hackaday Edition”

December 20, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 67 Comments

We got a pleasant letter from [Eric Willhelm], the owner of Instructables. He wanted to shoot a token of good will our direction, in the form of an EPUB of some of the projects we’ve linked to in the last quarter of 2010. These are Ad-free and have all images included. You can download it and view it on the e-reader of your choice, or even in your browser with the appropriate plugin. The videos still link back to Instructables, but he thought our readership might enjoy having an ad-free experience. He says that link should work for about a month.

For those who really want ad free content and are willing to pay for it, Instructables has been putting out publications that are collections of instructables on certain topics. For example, [Eric] pointed out that they’ve compiled some that might be of interest to us like “Better living through microcontrollers” and “Amazing LED Projects“. Actually, there are a bunch of titles and it looks like some are free as well.

Thanks [Eric], I’m sure your actions gained a little respect, even from those who dislike Instructables generally due to ads and registration.

Santa-pede Challenge: The Conclusion

December 18, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 66 Comments

At the end of October we announced the Buy, Break, Build series kick off with “The Santa-pede Challenge“. The goal was to get your hands on one of those annoying dancing santas, tear it apart, then use its parts to build something that walks. We got our hands on some cool prizes and even got [Phillip Torrone] to be a guest judge. Join us after the break to see just what we came up with and maybe have a few laughs.

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Home Built Knitting Machine

December 17, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 25 Comments

Wow, we knew it wouldn’t be too long before we would see a fully automated home built knitting machine show up. We recently posted a hack where people were emulating the keyboard input of a commercial knitting machine, and that was pretty awesome, but we knew we would be seeing some hacked together machines soon. [corex37] hasn’t let us down with this beast. It is mainly composed of old printer parts, a couple servos, and a Picaxe 18-x microcontroller. It seems to do a good job right now, but lets hope he keeps going. It would be cool to see it able to change colors like the other one.

[via Make]

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