Remember reactable? (Or the iphone interface) As I recall, there were some comments noting build difficulties. [Gil]let me know about a nice how-to on building your own multitouch display. It’s not a reactable, but it’ll probably easier to re-create on your own. It looks like it was probably written by the tinkerit guy(s).
Author: Will O'Brien805 Articles
Vacuum Bike Pump
[drcrash] sent in this thorough how-to on converting a cheap bike pump to pull a vacuum. Apparently it’s just the thing for small vacuum bagging projects. I’m thinking that this could be combined with a low rpm motor and a pivot. Just picture an old steam locomotive wheel drive, and you should get my idea. (A windshield wiper motor would probably be perfect.)
DIY SCUBA: Death On A Stick
Sorry guys, I’ve got to comment on this one.
[tylin] sent in this “DIY SCUBA” youtube video. These guys used a home shop air compressor with a particle filter so they could “SCUBA dive”. This kid is lucky he didn’t die.
I guarantee there were impurities in the compressed air. A major concern here is carbon monoxide, among others. That filter they used is designed to reduce particles, not scrub out CO, CO2, etc. Hemoglobin loves CO even more than dear old O2, so he could have asphixiated or suffered from convulsions despite having an air supply.
He’s lucky he didn’t blow his lungs out. The second he took a remotely full breath off that hose, he started to float up. If he happened to hold his breath it would have ruptured his lungs and caused all sorts of nasty problems.
He wasn’t wearing a weight belt – furthering the risk of floating up when he took a breath. (in my experience about 90% of people are positively buoyant)
4)Nobody was in the water watching his back. If he’d suffered any complications, no-one was there to make sure he didn’t drown. (Think convulsions, black out, etc)
Sorry for the rant – but this is just effing stupid. Don’t try this crap, ever. I’m an advanced open water diver myself – get training and real equipment.
Update: The video was removed after reading my response to it. I went ahead and puled the youtube link since it’s useless.
AA Powered Microcontrollers
[sprite_tm] sent in this nice little single AA battery micro-controller power hack. He’s using the uc to generate a PWM signal for a simple voltage step up circuit – the catch is that the controller has to start working before it can generate the signal. He came up with a nice little solution to this caveat – a push button start that gets things rolling once the coil charges up.
Thanks for the tips guys, keep em comin.
Biopong
[Teckjunkie] was inspired by Hack-A-Day to build a bio-interfaced game. He modified a thinkgeek pong kit with an Analog Devices instrumentation amplifier and differential electrodes to create biopong. Flexing either arm actuates the inputs on the pong game. (Now you can just grab some dumbells and get a pong workout.)
Hack-A-Day inspired projects are always welcome to the tips line.
Off The Wall: Motorcycling Around The World
Not normally our thing, but holy crap this is just awesome. This map is the approximate journey of [Makiko Sugino] – so far. She’s been riding a Yamaha 250 all over the world, and she’s still going. Check out this thread for some awesome pics and details.
Use A Laptop LCD To Extend Your Desktop Display
I get an email asking for this almost monthly, and [PUNiSH3R]’s take on this covers everything pretty well. He uses some interesting tricks with WINE to get enough performance to play a DVD on the remote display. Yes, the cheapest way is to turn it into a remote desktop display over a network. Personally, I use synergy2 to share my keyboard and mouse, run multiple OS’s and keep my sanity.
