Author: Dan Maloney

3373 Articles

Time Lapse Rig Puts GoPro Into Orbit – In Your Shop

August 23, 2016 by 11 Comments

The combination of time-lapse photography and slow camera panning can be quite hypnotic – think of those cool sunset to nightfall shots where the camera slowly pans across a cityscape with car lights zooming by. [Frank Howarth] wanted to replicate such shots in his shop, and came up with this orbiting overhead time-lapse rig for his GoPro.

[Frank] clearly cares about the photography in his videos. Everything is well lit, he uses wide-open apertures for shallow depth of field shots, and the editing and post-production effects are top notch. So a good quality build was in order for this rig, which as the video below shows, will be used for overhead shots during long sessions at the lathe and other machines. The gears for this build were designed with [Matthias Wandel]’s gear template app and cut from birch plywood with a CNC router. Two large gears and two small pinions gear down the motor enough for a slow, smooth orbit. The GoPro is mounted on a long boom and pointed in and down; the resulting shots are smooth and professional looking, with the money shot being that last look at [Frank]’s dream shop.

If you haven’t seen [Frank]’s YouTube channel, you might want to check it out. While his material of choice is dead tree carcasses, his approach to projects and the machines and techniques he employs are great stuff. We featured his bamboo Death Star recently, and if you check out his CNC router build, you’ll see [Frank] is far from a one-trick pony.

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DIY Coil Gun Redux: Life Really Is Easier With Arduino

August 22, 2016 by 41 Comments

A common complaint in the comments of many a Hackaday project is: Why did they use a microcontroller? It’s easy to Monday morning quarterback someone else’s design, but it’s rare to see the OP come back and actually prove that a microcontroller was the best choice. So when [GreatScott] rebuilt his recent DIY coil gun with discrete logic, we just had to get the word out.

You’ll recall from the original build that [GreatScott] was not attempting to build a brick-wall blasting electromagnetic rifle. His build was more about exploring the concepts and working up a viable control mechanism for a small coil gun, and as such he chose an Arduino to rapidly prototype his control circuit. But when taken to task for that design choice, he rose to the challenge and designed a controller using discrete NAND and NOR gates, some RS latches, and a couple of comparators. The basic control circuit was simple, but too simple for safety — a projectile stuck in the barrel could leave a coil energized indefinitely, leading to damage. What took a line of code in the Arduino sketch to fix required an additional comparator stage and an RC network to build a timer to deenergize the coil automatically. In the end the breadboarded circuit did the job, but implementing it would have required twice the space of the Arduino while offering none of the flexibility.

Not every project deserves an Arduino, and sometimes it’s pretty clear the builder either took the easy way out or was using the only trick in his or her book. Hats off to [GreatScott] for not only having the guts to justify his design, but also proving that he has the discrete logic chops to pull it off.

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Garage-built Aluminum Miniboat Tears Up The Surf. Or Not.

August 22, 2016 by 17 Comments

It’s the water-borne equivalent of building a minibike out of steel pipe and an old lawnmower engine. Except it’s a DIY personal watercraft made out of aluminum and an old chainsaw, and it has that same garage build feel – and the same disappointing results.

When we first saw the video below, we were hoping for one of those boats that let you water ski by yourself, or a wave-hopping, rooster tailing DIY jet ski. Alas, the chainsaw [MakeItExtreme] chose to power this boat is woefully underpowered, and the boat barely has enough oomph to make a wake. [MakeItExtreme] acknowledges the underwhelming results and mentions plans to fix the boat with a more powerful engine and a water jet drive rather than the trolling motor propeller they used. Still, whatever improvements they make will probably leverage the work they put into the hull, which is a pretty impressive display of metalwork. We’re used to seeing [MakeItExtreme] work in steel, so it was interesting to watch aluminum panels being cut, bent, and welded into a watertight hull. Looks like there’s plenty of room in there for more power, and we’re looking forward to version 2.0 of this build.

If you like rough and ready metalworking videos, there are plenty of them on [MakeItExtreme]’s YouTube channel. We’ve covered quite a few before, including this all-terrain hoverboard and a spot welder that’s more-or-less safe to use.

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IKEA Lantern Houses Full-Featured Weather Station

August 22, 2016 by 4 Comments

From plain and utilitarian to the sleek and professional, there are a lot of ways to build a multifunction weather station. We’d thought we’d seen it all here, but building a weather station into an IKEA lantern is a pretty unique presentation.

There’s  an active community over at ikeahackers.net, and the variety of IKEA hacks they’ve come up with is pretty astounding. For this weather hack, [Richard Stevens] chose the Borrby, a $15 candle lantern. While it doesn’t exactly scream “weather station”, the form factor makes sense – plenty of room for electronics, easily replaced windows, and a nice cupola for mounting extra displays. [Richard]’s build includes a barometer, a hygrometer, and a thermometer, along with graphing displays for trends and historical data. There’s also an alarm clock and a rear panel bristling with more connectors and switches than an 80s-era HP oscilloscope. The wiring is admittedly “rats-nest style”, but as you can see in the video after the break, it works pretty well and looks good too.

Interested in rolling your own non-lantern weather station? Check out this headless Weather Underground sensor suite, or a simple panel of analog meters.

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Bare-bones Musical Tesla Coil Is Tiny And Tinny

August 21, 2016 by 14 Comments

We’ve seen musical Tesla coils aplenty on these pages before, and we’ll be the first to point out that [Kedar Nimbalkar]’s musical high-voltage rig doesn’t quite qualify as a Tesla coil. But it’s dirt cheap, and might make a pretty cool rainy-afternoon-with-the-kids project.

Chances are good you have the parts needed for this build lying around the house. All that’s needed is an audio power amplifier and a high-voltage source. [Kedar] used a Class D amp board and a 3V to 7kV high-voltage module sourced from eBay for a couple of bucks; if you really want to go cheap, tear down that defunct electronic fly swatter gathering dust on top of your fridge and harvest the high-voltage module inside. The output of the amp feeds the high-voltage module, the HV leads are placed close together to get an arc, and the glorious high-fidelity sound will wash over you. Or not – sounds pretty awful to us. Still, it looks like a fast, fun build.

If this project gets you in the mood to go the full Tesla, check out this coil big enough to produce 12-foot arcs, or even this musical Tesla hat.

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Bachelor Builds Enormous Laser Cutter, Nobody Complains

August 20, 2016 by 61 Comments

Nothing says swinging 21st-century bachelor pad better than a laser cutter. To really make a statement, you want a custom-built, 100 Watt, 1200mm x 900mm laser cutter.

The bachelor in question, [drandolph], rightly points out that a $6,000 build that takes up a significant fraction of the floor space in one’s apartment is better attempted without the benefit of spousal oversight. Still, what spouse couldn’t love the finished product? With a custom aluminum extrusion frame (which barely made the trip from China intact) it’s a sturdy affair, and who could deny the appeal of the soft glow of an LED-illuminated work chamber? A custom exhaust system with sound-deadening, a water chiller for laser cooling, an Arduino-controlled status beacon – there’s even a 3-D printed beer holder on the control panel! And think of all the goodies that will come off the enormous bed of this thing. Note to self: make sure wife sees this post.

There are cheaper and smaller laser cutters, but what’s the point if you have the freedom to go big?

[via r/DIY]

Swedish Senior Rolls In Style With Hybrid Hoverboard Walker

August 19, 2016 by 25 Comments

You don’t have to know a word Swedish to understand that 86-year old [Lasse Thörn] is the coolaste modernaste pensionären in Gränna. All you have to do is see him rolling on his walker-assisted hoverboard and you’ve got the whole story.

Still, not knowing any Swedish and the spotty nature of Google translations makes it hard to discern the details of this build. Did [Lasse] build the folding aluminum bracket that connects the battery-powered hoverboard to his walker himself? We guess that he did, since another story says that he built a pedal boat back in the 1950s because he thought it sounded cool. He also says that he gets a lot of attention when he’s out on his contraption, and that other seniors have asked him to build one. [Lasse] says he’s too old to start a business; we don’t think he’s giving himself enough credit, but if he’s willing to leave the field of affordable personal mobility open to the rest of us, we say go for it.

We’ve seen lots of hoverboard builds lately, and lots of hate in the comments about the use of that term. Seems like the false advertising vibe grates on folks, but face it: “rolling wheelie board” is kind of awkward, and until technology catches up with the laws of physics, it’s the best we’re going to do.

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