Author: James Hobson

1404 Articles

VU Meter Prom Dress

October 3, 2013 by 11 Comments

vu meter prom dress

[Kyle] has just put the finishing touches on this VU Meter Prom dress, and it looks great!

The dress makes use of 70 feet of aquamarine EL wire, a 2600mAh li-on battery, a repurposed DB9 cable, an Arduino knock off, an Adafruit microphone pre-amp, and features eight addressable triac channels through an EL Escudo Dos by Sparkfun. Each loop of EL wire was sewn into the dress using clear thread. The separate segments were then daisy chained together near the zipper in the back using ribbon cables. To top it all off, [Kyle] has a cheap thermoforming setup utilizing a toaster oven which he used to make an acrylic case for the electronics.

The dress is for his lucky friend [Diane] and we think it will make for quite a memorable prom! To see this awesome VU Meter in action, stick around after the break for the video.

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Rubber Band Blaster Shoots 10 Rounds A Second

October 3, 2013 by 18 Comments

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Office warfare has just been stepped up a notch and it’s time to hide in your cubicles! Enter the Rubber Band Blaster-32, a fully automatic rubber band handgun with switchable barrels for quick reloading.

It features a unique trigger release design that we haven’t seen before. By using a pull string release, [Dave] the inventor was able to load multiple rubber bands per barrel for individual firing, one by one. Hold down the trigger and as the firing wheel spins up, you can start shooting up to 10 rounds a second!

According to [Dave], reload time is around a minute per barrel, but the barrels can be stored loaded and ready to go, so pack a few mags and hang out behind the water cooler. That’s the last time [Bill] from accounting steals my stapler!

To see this puppy in action, sit tight after the break!

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Calling European Hackerspaces!

October 2, 2013 by 108 Comments

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In a few weeks time, I will be in Düsseldorf on business for the world’s largest plastics and rubber industry trade show, the K-Show. That’s not very interesting for you, but afterwards a coworker and I will be traveling for a week in Europe, and being the geeks we are, we would rather visit you instead of the typical tourist attractions (mind you I have lived in Germany for half a year).

The majority of our Hackerspace Intro pieces thus far have been limited to North America, so we would love to visit your Hackerspace in Europe! Take pictures, ask a few questions, get a tour, and share it all here!

If you are part of, or know of a cool hackerspace in approximately the geographical doodle shown on Google Maps above, let us know in the comments! We will be traveling around October 19th to the 24th.

X-Winder: Carbon Fiber Wrapping

October 1, 2013 by 41 Comments

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One of our readers just sent us a tip about this interesting kickstarter project. [Turner Hunt] is bringing carbon fiber manufacture into the hands of makers — at considerable cost savings!

So how does it work? The machine wraps the filament around the workpiece, not unlike a CNC lathe in reverse. Actually it’s kind of a new breed of 3D printer! As the machine feeds the filament, it dips it through a bath of epoxy resin before being wrapped around the workpiece. A finishing step wraps heat shrink tape around the finished project using a heat gun, which then provides a glossy surface finish very similar to commercial carbon fiber products.

By purchasing carbon fiber filament and epoxy resin and using this machine, you can create structural carbon fiber tubes for about 80% less than they would cost commercially. The system comes with its own software that controls the machine via g-code, and you can also specify different wrapping patterns for different applications. While tube-shapes work best, you can also wrap other shapes including flat bars, wing skins, turbine blades and more — anything that is wrappable and under 6″ in total diameter. Is anyone else thinking about custom wrapped quadcopter frames?

[Thanks Alannah!]

DIY 250 Lb Thrust Liquid Oxygen/Kerosene Rocket

October 1, 2013 by 28 Comments

Robert’s Rocket Project has been going on for a long time. It has been around so long that you can go all the way back to posts from 2001, where he talks about getting his first digital camera! The site is dedicated to his pursuit of liquid fueled rocket engine building. It’s a great project log and he has finally come to the point where he will be testing his first flight vehicle soon.

His latest project is a 250lbf regeneratively cooled engine. It uses kerosene as the fuel, and liquid oxygen as the oxidizer. The neat thing is he utilizes the temperature change of the liquid oxygen expanding to cool the chamber and nozzle before being burned. This allows for a very efficient and powerful combustion of the fuel. He has some videos of testing it on his site, we just wonder why he doesn’t host them on YouTube or something…

Anyhow, there’s more than enough info on his site to try and recreate some of his experiments, but perhaps you should start here instead: How to Design, Build and Test Small Liquid-Fuel Rocket Engines.

[Thanks Ray!]

Steam Controller: Open And Hackable?

October 1, 2013 by 50 Comments

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The folks over at Valve Corporation have been busy. Just this week they have made three announcements regarding the future of their company; SteamOS, a linux-based operating system, Steam Machines (for running SteamOS), and the one we’re most interested in, the Steam Controller, an open controller. Not to worry though, the controller is not exclusive to the Steam Machines!

This is why we’re intrigued:

The Steam Controller was designed from the ground up to be hackable … We plan to make tools available that will enable users to participate in all aspects of the experience, from industrial design to electrical engineering.

We’re curious to see what that exactly means, but it definitely sounds promising! We know that Valve already takes in tons of customer feedback through their Steam Community and Workshop contributors, but how open is this controller really going to be? To read more about it as the information unfolds, check out the topics in the Steam Universe forum.

If you’re interested in joining the hardware beta, head on over here, but space is very limited.

[Thanks Adam!]

Android Controlled RGB Lights

October 1, 2013 by 5 Comments

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Here’s a handy hack for an Android controlled, Arduino driven, RGB light setup.

[Kerimil] recently wrote up this project on the Arduino.cc, and is sharing all of the source code and plans. While many of our seasoned Arduino-lovers can easily throw together the code for an RGB LED circuit in their sleep, [Kerimil] also threw in the Android app, and the source file to be modified in App Inventor, an Android app development program originally released by Google, but now maintained by MIT.

We’ve seen many commercial versions of this product, but it’s nice to see one that can be easily hacked to our liking. Next up is writing an app to use the phone’s camera to identify colors and reproduce them with the LED! While you’re at it, why not mix it with an easy to build infinity mirror!

To see the board and app in action, check out the video after the break.

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