Author: James Hobson

1404 Articles

Finding The Sun And Moon The New Old-Fashioned Way

September 7, 2017 by 3 Comments

The ability to build a robot to take care of a tedious task for you is power indeed. For a few centuries, the task of helping determine one’s location fell to the sextant. Now, you can offload that task to this auto-sextant, courtesy of [Raz85].

To be clear, this robo-sextant doesn’t give you your exact location, but it does find and display the bearing and altitude of the most luminous object around and display them on the LCD — so, the sun and moon. A pair of cheap servos handle the horizontal and vertical movement, an Arduino Uno acts as the brains and nervous system, and a photoresistor acts as the all-seeing eye. Clever use of some cardboard allow [Raz85] to keep the photoresistor isolated from most all light except what the sextant is currently pointed at. Servos have a limited field of movement, so you might need to adjust [Raz85]’s code accordingly if you’re rebuilding this one yourself.

After taking three minutes to make its rounds of the sky, the Uno records the servos’ positions when fixed on the sun or moon, translating that data into usable coordinates. Don’t forget the best part, it runs on batteries making it convenient for all your wave-faring excursions!

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DIY Wireless Sprinkler System? Don’t Mind If I Do.

September 5, 2017 by 13 Comments

What to do once you have a sprinkler system installed on your property: buy a sprinkler control system or make your own? The latter, obviously.

[danaman] was determined to hack together a cheap, IoT-enabled system but it wasn’t easy — taking the better part of a year to get working. Instead of starting right from scratch, he used the open-source Sustainable Irrigation Platform(SIP) control software — a Python sprinkler scheduler with some features [danman] was looking for(eg: it won’t activate if there’s rain in the forecast). Since he wasn’t running it with a Raspberry Pi as recommended, [danman] wrote a Python plugin that runs on his home server as a daemon which listens to TCP port 20000 for connections and then updates the relevant relays. Ok, software done; on to the relay controller box!

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Make Cars Safer By Making Them Softer

September 3, 2017 by 78 Comments

Would making autonomous vehicles softer make them safer?

Alphabet’s self-driving car offshoot, Waymo, feels that may be the case as they were recently granted a patent for vehicles that soften on impact. Sensors would identify an impending collision and adjust ‘tension members’ on the vehicle’s exterior to cushion the blow. These ‘members’ would be corrugated sections or moving panels that absorb the impact alongside the crumpling effect of the vehicle, making adjustments based on the type of obstacle the vehicle is about to strike.

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Tracing A Scene An Old-Fashioned Way

September 2, 2017 by 23 Comments

Taking a picture is as simple as tapping a screen. Drawing a memorable scene, even when it’s directly in front of you, is a different skill entirely. So trace it! Well, that’s kind of hard to do without appropriate preparation.

[bobsteaman]’s method is to first whip up a pantograph — it tested well with a felt marker on the end. Next, he built a camera obscura into a small wood box with a matte plexiglass top, which didn’t work quite so well. A magnifying glass above the camera’s pinhole aperture helped, but arduous testing was needed to ensure it was set at perfect position for a clear image. The matte plexiglass was also thrown out and, after some experimentation, replaced with a sheet of semi-transparent baking paper sandwiched between two pieces of clear plexiglass. The result is hard to argue with.

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Hack Together A Whack-A-Mole In A Box!

September 2, 2017 by 2 Comments

Here’s a project that you can throw together in an afternoon, provided you have the parts on hand, and is certain to entertain. Hackaday.io user [SunFounder] walks us through the process of transforming a humble cardboard box into a whack-a-mole game might be just the ticket to pound out some stress or captivate any children in the vicinity.

A multi-control board and nine arcade buttons are the critical pieces of hardware here, with wires and a USB cable rounding out  the rest of the electronics. Separate the button core from the upper shell, mounting the shell in the box, and connect the button core’s LED cathode to the button’s ON terminal. Repeat eight times. Solder the buttons in parallel and add some more wire to the buttons’ ON terminals to extend their reach. Repeat eight more times.

Place the finished LED+cores into the buttons and connect their ON terminals to their respective buttons on the multi control board. Now for the hard step: use a mini-USB to USB cable to connect the controller to a computer you want to use to run the game’s code in the Arduino IDE. Modify the key-mappings and away you go! Check out the build video after the break.

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How Low-Power Can You Go?

September 1, 2017 by 28 Comments

[lasersaber] has a passion: low-power motors. In a bid to challenge himself and inspired by betavoltaic cells, he has 3D printed and built a small nuclear powered motor!

This photovoltaic battery uses fragile glass vials of tritium extracted from keychains and a small section of a solar panel to absorb the light, generating power. After experimenting with numerous designs, [lasersaber] went with a 3D printed pyramid that houses six coils and three magnets, encapsulated in a glass cloche and accompanied by a suitably ominous green glow.

Can you guess how much power and current are coursing through this thing? Guess again. Lower. Lower.

Under 200mV and 20nA!

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An Environmentally Conscious, Solar-Powered Throwie

September 1, 2017 by 24 Comments

The basic throwie is a a type of street art/graffiti/vandalism — depending on where you stand — consisting of a coin cell, an led, and a magnet taped together. Seeking to be a slightly more eco-friendly troublemaker, [Alaric Loftus] has kindly put together an Instructable on how to build a solar-powered throwie!

In order to be the best maker of mischief possible, [Alaric Loftus] tried a number of different products to find one that was hackable,  supplied the right voltage, had the right form factor, and cheap enough to literally throw away. Turns out, garden path lights hit that sweet spot. Once [Alaric Loftus] has drilled a hole in the light and opened it up, de-soldering the stock LED, attaching some leads to the contacts and sticking it into the freshly-drilled hole is simply done. Hot-gluing a strong magnet on the bottom completes the throwie.

[Alaric Loftus] also advises that drilling the LED hole slightly smaller and sealing up any cracks with hot glue will strengthen its water resistance — because if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing it right.

We’ve featured some really cool — even creepy — takes on the throwie concept, but please don’t contribute any further to e-waste buildup.