Making A Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell Is Almost DIY-able

February 28, 2024 by Lewin Day 9 Comments

We see plenty of solar projects here on Hackaday, but they primarily consist of projects that use an off-the-shelf solar panel to power something else. We see very few projects where people actually create their own solar panels. And yet, that’s precisely what [Shih Wei Chieh] has done!

The project consists of a large dye-sensitized solar panel. These are a type of solar panel that can easily be created by the DIY builder, though their efficiency leaves something to be desired versus the best commercial types available. However, you can build them in any way you like to suit your application, which can have some potential benefits.

It consists of two pieces of FTO glass that is etched and prepared to become the electrodes for a string of solar cells. The cells have to be treated with titanium dioxide and then laced with silver traces, before being assembled with liquid electrolyte squirted in between. It’s finicky stuff, but the video almost makes it look easy… if you’re familiar with working in a chemistry lab, that is.

While it’s DIY-able, it’s at the outer edge of what some of us would be comfortable with. It does involve some steps with semi-obscure chemicals and the use of a kiln to produce the cells. The design shown here outputs around 5.8 volts and 51 milliamps. It’s not heaps, but it’s enough to run a low-power project for some time in an area with decent sun.

We’ve seen some other great solar projects over the years, too! Video after the break.

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ESP32 Weather Station Looks Great With Color E-Paper Display

February 28, 2024 by Lewin Day 20 Comments

[educ8s.tv] has built weather stations before, but his latest is his best yet. It’s all thanks to its low-power design, enabled by its e-paper display.

The build is based around an ESP32 microcontroller, combined with a BMP180 sensor for measuring barometric pressure, and a DHT22 sensor for measuring temperature and humidity. By taking these values and feeding them into the Zambretti algorithm, it’s possible to generate a rudimentary weather forecast.

The weather station looks particularly impressive thanks to its six-color e-paper display. It’s brightly colored and easy to read, and displays graphs of temperature, pressure, and humidity over time. Plus, by virtue of the fact that it only draws power when updating, it allows the project to last a long time running solely on battery power.

As far as DIY weather stations go, this is an attractive and clean design that offers plenty of useful data to the user. We’ve seen some other neat builds in this vein before, too.

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Wireless Telescope Guidance You Can Build On The Cheap

February 27, 2024 by Lewin Day No comments

Telescopes are fun to point around the sky, but they’re even better when you have some idea of what you’re actually looking at. Experienced sky-gazers love nothing more than whipping out some quality glassware and pointing it to the heavens to try and view some photons from some fancy celestial point of interest. To aid your own endeavors in this realm, you might consider following [aeropic’s] example in building a capable wireless telescope DSC.

Yes, [aeropic] built a capable digital setting circle (DSC) which can be used to quickly point a telescope at objects in the sky, with the aid of the right astronomical software. An ESP32 board runs the show, using AS5600 positional encoders on each axis of the telescope to understand the device’s orientation. The encoders are attached via 3D-printed components to track the motion of the telescope accurately. It can then be paired over Bluetooth with a smartphone running an app like Skysafari. Once calibrated on some known stars, the app can then read the encoder outputs from the telescope, and help guide the user to point the device at other stars in the night sky.

The rig won’t actually move the telescope for you, it just guides you towards what you want to look at. Even still, it makes finding points of interest much faster and could help you get a lot more out of your next sky viewing party. Have fun out there! Video after the break.

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3D-Printed Automated Development Tank For Classic Photo Films

February 27, 2024 by Lewin Day 7 Comments

[packetandy] had a problem. He was still into classic analog photography, but local options for development were few and far between. After some frustration, he decided to take on the process himself, creating an automatic development tank for that very purpose.

For black and white film, developing is fairly straightforward, if dull and time consuming. The film requires constant agitation during development, which can be dull to do by hand. To get around this, [packetandy] decided to build a development tank rig that could handle agitation duties for him by wiggling the film around in his absence.

The tank itself is created by Patterson, and has a stick on top for agitating the film inside. The rig works by attaching a NEMA stepper motor to this stick to jerk it around appropriately. Rather than go with a microcontroller and custom code, [packetandy] instead just grabbed a programmable off-the-shelf stepper controller that can handle a variety of modes. It’s not sophisticated, but neither is the job at hand, and it does just fine.

It’s a nifty build that should see [packetandy]’s black-and-white photography on the up and up. Meanwhile, if simple development isn’t enough for you, consider diving into the world of darkroom robot automation if you’re so inclined!

The DeDeterminator Uses Quantum Physics To Make Decisions So You Don’t Have To

February 26, 2024 by Lewin Day 20 Comments

Are you making your own decisions and mainlining causality like a sucker? Why go through the agony, when you could hand over the railway switch of determinism to a machine that can decide things for you! Enter the DeDeterminator, a decision machine from [Oliver Child].

The construction is simple enough, being built inside a small tin. One kind of wishes it had a secret third “PERHAPS” bulb that illuminates only when the universe’s continued existence has been called into question.

The idea is simple. At the press of a button, the DeDeterminator illuminates a bulb—indicating either yes or no. The decision for which bulb to illuminate is truly random, as it’s determined by the radioactive decay of a Americium-241 alpha particle source. A Geiger-Muller tube is used to detect alpha particles, with the timing between detections used to determine the yes-or-no output of the device.

It’s a neat concept, and it’s kind of fun knowing that your decision is both out of your hands and as random as it could possibly be. Would the universe guide you wrong? Who could possibly question the reasoning of the particles? The only rational move could be to comply with whatever directive the box hath given. Just don’t ask it to make any decisions with dangerous outcomes.

We’ve featured other projects using radioactive decay for random number generation before, though they weren’t quite as philosophically intriguing as the DeDeterminator. Mostly they’re just about cryptographic security and such, but some do deal with causality in imaginary spaces, which has its own magic about it.

Meanwhile, if you’ve untangled the quantum chains of cause and effect, or you’ve just found a way to break RSA encryption using a Pi Pico, do drop us a line, won’t you?

TuneShroom Is An Artistic Mushroom-Themed MIDI Controller

February 25, 2024 by Lewin Day 1 Comment

Most MIDI controllers are modelled after traditional instruments, like pianos, flutes, or guitars. [Oliver Child] went in a different direction for the TuneShroom, instead modelling his DIY controller after the terrifying, unclassifiable living organism we call the mushroom.

The project was a fun way for [Oliver] to try creating a project with an artistic PCB design, and it worked out well in that regard. He penned a circuit board in the shape of a toadstool, with conductive pads serving as capacitive touch points to activate various notes.

The design is based around the Sparkfun Pro Micro, but it’s not programmed in Arduino. [Oliver] wanted to make full use of the ATmega32U4 microcontroller and have freedom to use the pins at will, so instead the project was programmed with a patched version of LUFA to handle the USB side of things. MIDI data is naturally piped out over this interface to an attached computer.

Files are on Github for the curious. Alternatively, contemplate turning an entire saxophone into a MIDI controller in your spare time. Video after the break.

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Internet Radio Built In Charming Cassette-Like Form Factor

February 25, 2024 by Lewin Day 21 Comments

You can listen to plenty of broadcast radio these days. There’s a lot of choice too, with stations on AM, FM, and digital broadcasts to boot. However, if you want the broadest possible choice, you want an internet radio. If that’s your bag, why not build a fun one like [indoorgeek’s] latest design?

The build is based around a PCB and 3D-printed components that roughly ape the design of a cassette tape. It even replicates the typical center window of a cassette tape by using a transparent OLED screen, which displays the user interface. In a neat way, the graphics on the display are designed to line up with those on the PCB, which looks excellent.

An ESP32 is the heart of the operation, which is responsible for streaming audio over the Internet via its WiFi connection. It’s powered by a small lithium-polymer battery, and hooked up with a MAX98357 Class D amplifier driven via the chip’s I2S hardware. Audio is played out over a small speaker salvaged from an old smartphone.

While it’s obviously possible to play whatever you like on a smartphone these days, sometimes it’s fun to have simple devices that just do a single job. Plus, we can’t deny this project looks really neat. Video after the break.

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