Wind-to-Heat: A Lot Of Hot Air?

June 27, 2023 by Zoe Skyforest 87 Comments

Heating is one of the greatest uses of energy in human society today. Where we once burned logs to stave off the brutal winter chill, now we lean on gas and electricity to warm our homes and keep us safe and toasty. In some colder climates, like the UK, heating can make up 60-80% of total domestic energy demands.

However, there are alternative ways to provide heating. Using wind energy to directly provide heat could be key in this area, using a variety of interesting methods that could have some unique niche applications.

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MIT Engineers Pioneer Cost-Effective Protein Purification For Cheaper Drugs

June 26, 2023 by Zoe Skyforest 10 Comments

There are a wide variety of protein-based drugs that are used to treat various serious conditions. Insulin is perhaps the most well-known example, which is used for life-saving treatments for diabetes. New antibody treatments also fall into this category, as do various vaccines.

A significant cost element in the production of these treatments is the purification step, wherein the desired protein is separated from the contents of the bioreactor it was produced in. A new nanotech discovery from MIT could revolutionize this area, making these drugs cheaper and easier to produce.

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Electronic Earrings Are PCB Art You Can Wear

June 24, 2023 by Zoe Skyforest 4 Comments

If there’s one area of the human anatomy we rarely try to draw the eye, it’s the ears. Nonetheless, [DIY GUY Chris] has developed some LED earrings that should do exactly that.

The earrings are made using PCBs as the very body of the jewelry itself. The PCBs for each ear play host to eight WS2812 LEDs in a tiny 2020 form factor. The LEDs get their instructions from an ATtiny13-A AVR microcontroller, with some further supporting hardware to get everything playing happily together. Each earring runs off a single CR1220 coin cell, which sits on the obverse side of the earring to stay out of sight. The earrings are programmed with pogo pins to avoid the need for any bulky connectors.

By virtue of the tiny addressable LEDs, the earrings are capable of displaying full RGB colors. [DIY GUY Chris] has programmed the earrings with simple color fades, as well as some fancier chase animations as well.

We’ve seen some great PCB jewelry before, too. Video after the break.

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Gumball Coaster Is 3D-Printed Candy Fun

June 23, 2023 by Zoe Skyforest 2 Comments

Marble runs are fun enough on their own, but what if you could eat the marbles? Gumballs are the satisfying answer to that question. To that end, [Adrian Seeley] whipped up a system for producing gumball runs programmatically for entertainment and candy dispensing purposes.

Track descriptions can be coded via basic instructions outlining a marble run, by typing out the order of straights, turns, and ramps that make up the course. Once created as a JSON file, the track description is processed via Javascript to create a tiled physical representation of the track via OpenSCAD, including all necessary support structures. The pieces can then be 3D printed to create an actual physical gumball run that can be easily assembled.

[Adrian] created a small tabletop “gumcoaster” as a prototype. Even at that size, it took 11 hours to assemble. It served as a trial run ahead of a larger version he hopes to build for a candy store display. We’ve seen some great marble runs before too, including those created via procedural generation. Video after the break.

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Powerful Water Pump Is Modular In Nature

June 23, 2023 by Zoe Skyforest 28 Comments

If you’ve got one decently powerful DC motor, you could conceivably build a water pump. Gang up ten of them, however, and you could build something considerably more powerful, as [akashv44] demonstrates.

The design is straightforward, relying on simple impeller pumps driven by RS-775 DC motors. The pump housings and impellers are all 3D printed. They’re designed so that the motor integrates neatly with the pump housing, and so that multiple pumps can easily be ganged up into a single larger unit. [akashv44] demonstrates a build using ten individual pump units with a large manifold, allowing the output of all the pumps to be combined into one single outlet.

The concept is straightforward enough, and running on a 48-volt power supply, it’s clear that the pump can move a significant amount of water. Notably, though, it would be possible to improve significantly with some design changes. Currently, the water path from the pumps must make several 90-degree turns, harming efficiency. We’d love to see the pumps angled nicely into more advanced manifolds which would more smoothly combine the streams together. This would likely result in a far greater output from the system.

In any case, 3D printing pumps is an increasingly popular pastime around here.

Portable Soldering Station Runs On Drill Batteries

June 22, 2023 by Zoe Skyforest 37 Comments

Power tool batteries are a convenient portable power supply for all manner of different things. [Zachary Goode] noticed that Ryobi was using them to power soldering irons, but no such tool existed in the DeWalt range. Thus, he set about to build such a rig himself.

The build relies on a simple 3D-printed adapter to suck power from a DeWalt drill battery. It’s a little piece of plastic with spade terminals inserted to act as the contacts. Armed with this tool, [Zachary] included it as part of a simple compact portable soldering iron design that relies on the off-the-shelf T12-952 controller board. This allows him to use the rig with a wide variety of common soldering iron handpieces, like his favored Hakko FX-951. The design also features a lithium-ion battery protection circuit of [Zachary]’s own design, to make up for the fact that DeWalt don’t integrate them into their battery packs.

The high power density of lithium rechargeable batteries has led to a proliferation of portable soldering irons in recent years. Some are even completely handheld, with no external wires or power supplies to speak of. If you’ve been whipping up your own gear to solder on the go, don’t hesitate to drop us a line!

Adapter Lets Digital Gamepads Work On The Tandy Color Computer

June 22, 2023 by Zoe Skyforest 2 Comments

The Tandy Color Computer came with analog joysticks, quite unlike most computers and consoles of the early 1980s. Many games of the era actually worked best with digital input, so [Gadget Reboot] whipped up a converter board to allow Nintendo gamepads to work with the computer.

The build relies on an earlier breakout board that [Gadget Reboot] built in order to read early Nintendo gamepads and output a digital 5 V signal. Meanwhile, the Tandy Color Computer is expecting variable o-5 V signals from the X and Y axis pots in its standard joysticks. To convert the gamepad button presses into voltages for the CoCo, the build uses a CD4066 analogue switch IC. When no controller buttons are pressed, the 4066 is set up to output 2.5 V on both the X and Y axes. Pressing up or down, or left or right on the D-pad, outputs 0 V or 5 V respectively as required. This essentially lets the controller’s D-pad act as a digital joystick for a computer that never actually had one.

It’s a neat hack that might make playing certain games on the Color Computer significantly easier. It’s also just neat to interface a different controller to the old hardware. In the early 80s, computers were simple enough that this could all be achieved with a minimum of dumb circuitry.

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