A multi-colored chair with a stainless steel frame sits on wooden legs against a grey background.

Recycled Chairs Bring The Subway To Your Living Room

November 6, 2022 by 38 Comments

Public transit seats have a rough life. Enduring a number of wear cycles that would make your sofa weep, they take a beating and have to keep looking presentable. When trains and buses are retired, where do the old seats go? A team from the MIT Hobby Shop investigated what was happening to the seats from retiring MBTA Red Line cars and recycled them into stylish chairs.

After some sleuthing and many emails, the MBTA relinquished a number of old subway seats to the team. Since the subway seats didn’t have legs, wood from old church pews was used to create bases. It took one pew end support to create each set of legs, which were cut out on a bandsaw. The old dark stain was sanded off, and the bases were finished with three coats of gel topcoat, letting the natural beauty of the old oak shine through.

We love seeing old things given new life here at Hackaday. If you want to see some more recycled furniture, check out this tire table, this upcycled jeans chair, or these best practices for making box forts.

New Venue Gives Philly Maker Faire A Fresh Start

October 21, 2022 by 5 Comments

When we last checked in with the Philadelphia Maker Faire in 2019, one couldn’t help but be impressed with what the organizers had pulled off with just a fraction of the budget and resources it took to put on the defunct World Maker Faire in New York. We came away absolutely certain the event was on the verge of explosive growth, and that next year would be even bigger and better.

But of course, that didn’t happen. The COVID-19 pandemic meant that by the time the 2020 Faire should have kicked off, the logistics of holding a gathering much larger than a family dinner had become a serious hurdle. Philadelphia implemented strict rules on indoor and outdoor events to try and contain the spread of the virus, to the point that even when they were relaxed in 2021, it still didn’t make sense to try and put on a Faire under those conditions.

Thankfully things are largely back to normal-ish now, and as such the Philadelphia Maker Faire had something of a rebirth this year. Organizers decided to move the event to the Independence Seaport Museum, with vendor and exhibitor tables distributed throughout the museum’s three floors. This made the ticket price a great two-for-one value, especially if you had enough time left over to head out to the docks so you could explore the 130-year-old cruiser USS Olympia, and the USS Becuna, one of the last surviving WWII Balao-class submarines.

As you’d expect, the event was packed with fascinating projects and demonstrations, to the point that trying to list them all here would be impossible. But for those who couldn’t make the trip out to see what the 2022 Philadelphia Maker Faire had to offer, let’s take a look at a handful of the standout exhibits.

Continue reading “New Venue Gives Philly Maker Faire A Fresh Start” →

Don’t Miss The Philadelphia Maker Faire This Weekend

October 11, 2022 by 3 Comments

For readers in the American Northeast that are looking for something to do this weekend, may we humbly suggest a day trip to attend the 2022 Philadelphia Maker Faire on Saturday, October 15th. After taking the last two years off due to COVID-19, the event has moved to the Independence Seaport Museum for its grand return, and is sure to attract plenty of hackers and makers who are eager to show off their pandemic projects.

Of course, the nature of these events is that you never really know what you’re going to see until you actually get there. But just browsing the list of confirmed projects that will have dedicated tables set up, we can tell there’s some very interesting stuff on tap — from fighting robots and hologram printers, to plasma physics and electric hydrofoils. While the deadline to submit projects for official inclusion has long since passed, we can tell you from experience that’s not going to stop folks from showing up with their own gadgets to show off to the captive audience. Especially if they’re of the wearable variety; it’s not really a Maker Faire unless somebody is wearing something that’s blinking.

Olympia and Becuna

Naturally the Faire itself is obviously the main event, but don’t forget that the Independence Seaport Museum itself is worth checking out while you’re there. You can tour the 130-year-old USS Olympia, as well as the USS Becuna, one of the last surviving WWII Balao-class submarines.

While the community might never truly recover from the loss of the flagship Maker Faires in New York and California, we do take some comfort in knowing that smaller regional shows like this one have been growing over the last few several years. They’re not only a great way to connect with like-minded folks in your area, but can help you connect with maker-friendly vendors and organizations which you might otherwise be unaware of.

A bike computer sits on a wooden background. The back of the bike computer has a 3D printed attachment with two white translucent zip ties running through the back.

Repairing A Bike GPS With 3D Printing

October 7, 2022 by 10 Comments

We love hacks that keep gadgets out of the trash heap, and [Brieuc du Maugouër] has us covered with this 3D printable replacement mount he designed for his bike GPS.

One of the most frustrating ways a gadget can fail is when a small, but critical part of the device fails. [du Maugouër] combined a 3D printed back and four M2x6mm screws to make a robust new mount to replace the broken OEM mount on his handlebar-mounted GPS. Slots for zip tie mounting are included in case the replacement mount breaks before yet another replacement can be printed. Apparently [du Maugouër] agrees with Chief O’Brien that “in a crunch, I wouldn’t like to be caught without a second backup.” [Youtube]

It’s exciting that we’re finally in a time when 3D printed replacement parts are living up to their potential. This would be a lot easier if more manufacturers posted 3D printed design files instead of getting them pulled from 3D file platforms, but makers will find a way regardless of OEM approval.

We’ve covered a lot of bike hacks over the years including DIY Bike Computers and GPS Trackers. Do you have a project that keeps something from becoming trash or might save the world another way? There’s still time to enter the Save the World Wildcard round of the Hackaday Prize (closes October 16th).

Ugliest Airplane Ever Built Predicted The Future

October 5, 2022 by 31 Comments

The airplane that many called “the flying barrel” is also widely considered the ugliest plane ever built. However, [Dark Skies] in the video you can see below argues that the Stipa-Caproni was the direct predecessor of the turbofan engine. Either way, it is an interesting and unique part of aviation history.

The plane was built in the days when inventors were experimenting with many different ways to improve aircraft utility and performance. In this case, the inventor built an “intubated propellor” which used a prop to draw air through a venturi tube in an effort to improve engine efficiency. The 570kg vehicle had a wingspan of just over 14 meters and was a bit more than 6 meters long. It could reach about 72 knots and climb to over 3 km.

Continue reading “Ugliest Airplane Ever Built Predicted The Future” →

CMOS Oscillator Circuit Gets An Eatable Input

September 24, 2022 by 9 Comments

In interaction designer [Leonardo Amico]’s work Processing Decay, lettuce is used as an input to produce sound as an element within a CMOS circuit. 

We’ve all seen lemons and potatoes doubling in science-fairs as edible batteries, but lettuce is something else.  [Leandro]’s circuit uses alligator clips to insert lettuce into oscillators in this audio generating circuit — we think they’re behaving like resistors. Without refrigeration, the resistance of the lettuce changes, and so does the oscillation in the circuit. In a matter of hours, days, and weeks the cells degrades slowly, modulating the system and its sonic output. What a way to make music!

This hack isn’t the freshest — the video dates from nine years ago — but this is the first lettuce circuit we’ve seen. Of course, we love other food hacks like these multi-wavelength lasers used to cook 3D-printed chicken, or maybe the circuit can make use of this neural net detecting fruit ripeness. 

AI Midjourney Imagines “Stairway To Heaven”

September 14, 2022 by 36 Comments

This modern era of GPU-accelerated AI applications have their benefits. Pulling useful information out of mountains of raw data, alerting users to driving hazards, or just keeping an eye on bee populations are all helpful. Lately there has been a rise in attempts at producing (or should that be curating?) works of art out of carefully sculpted inputs.

One such AI art project is midjourney, which can be played with via a Discord integration bot. That bot takes some textual input, then “dreams” with it, producing sometime uncanny, often downright disturbing images.

You can have a tinker with it for free, for a short while, but there is monthly cost if you want to use it ‘for real’ whatever that means. YouTuber [Daara] has been feeding the lyrics from Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” into it, producing a video tour of the resulting outputs for your perusal. Continue reading “AI Midjourney Imagines “Stairway To Heaven”” →