Author: James Hobson

1404 Articles

Laser Etching Graphene Supercapacitors

October 3, 2015 by 24 Comments

The tech is nothing new, but did you know you can make your own graphene using your DVD burner? No seriously — all you need is a light-scribe compatible DVD burner and some graphite oxide.

It’s pretty simple. By placing a thin film on top of a DVD (or any plastic CD shaped disc), and coating it with graphite oxide, you can literally print patterns of graphene using the laser in your DVD burner. By making the shapes shown above, you can introduce an electrolyte and turn the whole thing into a supercapacitor. Albeit, a tiny super capacitor. But — you can print hundreds of them on a DVD in less than an hour.

We’ve covered this before a few times now, but that doesn’t make it any less interesting. We’re still waiting for someone (one of you guys!) to do a project that actually makes use of graphene! Hurry up!

[Thanks for the tip John!]

2015 RedBull Creation Ends With Flaming Tire Swing Of Death

October 1, 2015 by 1 Comment

Holy *#$&. That just about sums up the 2015 RedBull Creation Competition. It was fantastic. Where else could you ride a gasoline engine powered tire-swing-of-death, complete with fireball launcher? Well… maybe Burning Man…

Anyway, was it a hackathon? No, this was a build-a-thon. A few Arduinos and Atmel’s may have been used, but the majority of the projects were serious mechanical marvels. The teams had 72 hours to compete, with the very broad theme of “Serious Fun”.

And did they make some serious fun. From human-sized hamster wheels, to glass smashing recycling machines, and even an arcade style carnival game housed in a dumpster, not one team had a similar idea about Serious Fun. It was awesome.

Continue reading “2015 RedBull Creation Ends With Flaming Tire Swing Of Death” →

The HEXXX Gaming Console

October 1, 2015 by 10 Comments

Worried about bringing a project to demo at CCC15 (The Chaos Communication Camp), [Anthony Liekens] had to act fast. He would have brought his giant Flying Spaghetti-Monster Display (FSM for short), but unfortunately it wouldn’t fit in his car. So, looking around his garage he realized he had a pile of extra RGB LEDs, and a broken iCade Core. The gears in his head started turning and he came up with the idea for the HEXXX Gaming Console.

So what is it? It’s a hexagonal console designed for three-person gaming — like his Tron for Three and Pong for Three — he even has a 6 player Flappy Bird clone! From conception to reality, it took a mere ten stressful evenings to complete… The end result is quite fantastic. Continue reading “The HEXXX Gaming Console” →

Folding Robot

SMA Robot Jumps 7 Times Its Height, Weighs Nothing

September 30, 2015 by 10 Comments

This is some seriously cool research. Scientists at the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne) have made tiny, tiny, tiny robots using shape memory alloys, or SMA’s for short. They weigh less than 4 grams and move like an inchworm!

Unlike regular robots that feature rigid structures and electric actuators, the researchers opted to take more of an origami like approach — so much so, they call it robogami. Their very first attempt was years ago, and was rather large. Since then they’ve shrunk it down to about the size of a compact flash card. The way it works is quite simple. SMA’s shrink when heated (either externally heated or by an internal current) and in doing so, produce extremely high forces.

So by patterning these in a shape (like that of an inchworm) the researchers are able to trigger each “limb” separately to induce movement. They can also jump seven times their height thanks to the super high power-density of SMA’s.

Continue reading “SMA Robot Jumps 7 Times Its Height, Weighs Nothing” →

The Pizza Button

September 29, 2015 by 24 Comments

How often have you ever wanted a pizza but reaaaaaaally didn’t want to get off the couch to go order, or god forbid, actually go to a pizzeria to pick one up?  Well [Brody Berson] has the solution for you!  He re-purposed an Amazon Dash button to order himself Domino’s Pizza with the press of a button.

He was originally inspired by our recent post about hacking the Amazon Dash button to do whatever you want — and whatever he wanted was a pizza button. He admits he was inspired by the bachelor years gone by where this would have been really, really handy — apparently he even ordered McDonalds through Postmates once!

It’s pretty simple too — all he needed to do was a bit of coding. Someone had already made a specific Domino’s Pizza API, and thanks to the interest in the Dash button, he was able to find everything he needed to mash together a one-push-button-pizza-delivery-device. Continue reading “The Pizza Button” →

Building The Ultimate IKEA Bed

September 27, 2015 by 17 Comments

When [Eric Strong’s] son outgrew his convertible crib, he didn’t want to give it up. Needing the bed for their next youngest, [Eric] made his son a deal. He was going to build him the ultimate big boy bed. And boy did he ever!

Using Ikea Hackers for inspiration, [Eric] came up with a bed that features not only a slide, a ball game, a secret room hidden behind a bookcase, a hidden window, and a back door escape hatch — but even a bed. Kind of sounds like one of those too-good-to-be-true infomercials!

And he built it using only three products from IKEA. Two Kura beds (one for building materials), a Trofast tiered shelf storage unit, and a Besta — a small bookshelf. Pretty resourceful! And because he had limited space to build it, the whole thing is still modular. Stick around after the break to see it in action!

Continue reading “Building The Ultimate IKEA Bed” →

Lego 3D printer

Printing Chocolate With A LEGO 3D Printer

September 26, 2015 by 9 Comments

Some people think the future will include a 3D printer in every home. We think if LEGO started producing these as kits we’d get pretty close. Introducing the home-made LEGO 3D printer… with a chocolate extruder.

[Gosse Adema] has been working on his LEGO based 3D printer for a while now, and it’s gotten pretty good. It’s basically a repackaged Prusa i3, but that doesn’t make it any less impressive. It uses real NEMA 17 steppers mounted with LEGO Technic — the Mindstorms motors just don’t quite cut it… not yet anyway.

During his build, a colleague pointed out that back in 2005 Instructables had a remix contest, which included a 3D printer made out of LEGO. The original hacker, [Saul], issued a challenge at the end of his Instructable hoping someone else would build a better chocolate LEGO 3D printer… Well it’s only been 10 years, but [Gosse] did it!

Continue reading “Printing Chocolate With A LEGO 3D Printer” →