Sometimes sustainability is about making do with what you have. This is the wood burner that I use for my personal workshop. In my area, it is mandated by law that we have to clear brush on a yearly basis. I live on a pretty large lot so we have plenty of brush to be cleared every year. Add to that the occasional tree that falls down and all of the scraps from my shop and you have all the wood that you need to heat a shop like mine. With the exception of the work that I put into gathering firewood, my heat is free and is carbon neutral. This is somewhat of a double hack because as you have probably noticed, the wood burner is sitting outside of my workshop. My workshop is fairly large but I have it so packed full of tools that I just didn’t have room inside so I came up with this solution.

More details after the break.
Continue reading “Sustainability Hacks – External Wood Burner” →

Solar panels are a popular item among people who are trying to do more with less but, at least in the past, they have been pretty expensive to install. For some uses, you can forget using solar panels and use the sunlight directly with very little efficiency loss. A device that lets you do that is called a heliostat, which is really just a fancy mirror that you can set to reflect sunlight to wherever you might want it. You could aim it through a window so that it hits your ceiling and diffuses throughout the room or you could point it towards a location where you could collect the sun’s energy to heat something directly.

For a really good rundown on how heliostats work and how you can build one, check out this page where you can find all sorts of information. Heck, they even have an Arduino controlling some of them!

Our last theme, ATtiny hacks, received a really good response but it is time to move on. Today we are announcing our next theme, which will be Sustainability Hacks. In this theme we will be showing projects that allow us to have a lighter footprint. This could be things like projects that run on renewable resources, projects that control systems that allow us to use less energy such as an automated fan to preempt the need for more aggressive cooling. We are also interested in showing projects that push power consumption to the limit. Like our other themes, we need your help for this to be successful. If you have a project that you think we might be interested in, please let us know on our tip line.

As food for thought, driving is simply part of life for most of us. There are ways to make it have less impact on the earth though. One example of this that isn’t seen very often these days but will probably become more commonplace as fuel prices go up is boat-tailing. This is the process of reshaping the rear of a vehicle to make it more aerodynamic. You can catch a video after the break that makes up for its lack of sound with a pretty good run down on their process.

Continue reading “Announcing Our Next Theme – Sustainability Hacks” →

In case you missed them, here are the most popular posts from this past week.

Our most popular post is about a hand-made security robot that any good hacker would be proud of. This robot was built by a father-daughter team and has an interesting holonomic drive train that allows it to drive in any direction at any time.

Our next most popular post was about eight breadboard hacks that let you do more with your breadboard than you previously thought possible.

Following that is a post dealing with what you can do with a dead laptop battery. Surprisingly, not all of the cells are dead so there is still useful life in some of them.

Next we have a post about an electronic cello that uses a combination of a magnetic pickup for the bow and resistive strips for the strings. There is even a video of it being played.

Finally, for those of you looking to grow things indoors throughout the year, we have a post about a hydroponic setup.

In case you missed them, here are our most popular posts from the past week.

Our most popular post from the past week was one where we show a project where [Linas] built his own CT scanner and then used those scans to create 3D models.

Our next most popular post was an Engine Hack from the previous theme where [Mike] built a jet out of pipe fittings and motorcycle parts.

Next up is a post that will be of interest to folks who like their privacy. This post shows a project that simulates a trip wire using a laser beam. The end result is the same though. Cross the beam, hear it scream.

Our forth most popular post was one about a robot that can climb walls and then parachute back down to do it again… provided that it has a team of students ready to catch it on a tarp at the bottom.

Finally, we have a post that describes how to create a circuit board out of a piece of glass. The author is using it for a touch-sensitive button interface.