Mobile Mini Green Recreates Coeur D’Alene’s Floating 14th Hole

December 28, 2015 by 13 Comments

Golf is an expensive obsession for some, with course fees on the most memorable and challenging courses running into the hundreds of dollars a game and beyond. If playing one of the most unusual holes in golf is simply beyond your means, there’s no need to fret – just do what [TVMiller] did and build a miniature mobile replica of the famous Coeur d’Alene Resort Floating 14th hole.

The Floating 14th is pretty spectacular as far as golf holes go. With a green located on an island about a hundred yards offshore of beautiful Lake Coeur d’Alene in northern Idaho, there’s little room for error – after all, it’s surrounded by a 49 square mile water trap. [TVMiller]’s replica green recreates the target quite accurately, although we doubt the Jolly Wrencher flag is regulation for championship play. But the best part is the motorized platform and smartphone app that can be used to send the mini green out as far as you feel like practicing. Sure, it could be a tad more realistic if the replica green actually floated, but asphalt fairways are a little easier to come by than Olympic-sized swimming pools.

A fun, tongue-in-cheek project, and we really enjoyed the faux TV coverage of the 2015 Hackaday Golf Championship in the video below. If real golf isn’t your thing, you might want to build a table-top golf course, or play a round of mini golf with a ball-incinerating Portal themed hole.

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Act Now And Receive The Prong Saver For Only $0.00!

November 12, 2015 by 33 Comments

Well, actually, you can’t buy this. But for [TVmiller’s] latest project he decided to have some fun with the video — so he made an infomercial for it.

Called the Prong Saver, the device clips onto any appliance’s electrical cord to help prevent you from accidentally pulling too hard and bending the electrical prongs. It’s basically a cord-tension alarm. The question is — can you hear it over the vacuum cleaner?

And just because he could, it’s solar powered. Because why the heck not? He built it using scraps he found around the workshop. That included a solar powered LED key chain, a small piezo speaker, an eyebolt and a compression spring. Anyway, check out the commercial after the break. It had us in stitches.

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Making A Door That Opens Both Ways

September 3, 2015 by 67 Comments

How many times have you walked into the wrong side of the door? How many times have you been momentarily confused as to whether or not you push or pull that obscure door handle which isn’t so obvious in its intended use?

What if you never had to worry about doors again? What if we could have an omni-directional door? [TVMiller] couldn’t find any examples of this, so he decided to build his own prototype. He calls it the Any Way Door.

The Any Way Door is just a 1:12 scale version, but as you can see in the following video, it works pretty well — and if anything would make for a very cool door that interior designers / architectures would love.

The question is, can it be done at full size effectively?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxL68u_YJ_g

50 Shades Of Gray Water Reuse

May 30, 2015 by 54 Comments

Entered into this year’s Hackaday Prize, [TVMiller] built a super cheap Arduino powered gray water recovery system.

The system is very simple and can be easily made for almost any bathroom. By making a zig-zag of PVC pipe underneath the sink, he’s created a simple grey water reservoir sized for his toilet’s flushing capability.  And if you use too much water, it just backs into the drain — think of it as a giant P-Trap! A 12V solenoid and 240L/h water pump switch on after the toilet has been flushed — refilling the tank with reused gray water! He’s also added an Arduino and an LCD screen to keep track of the water saved; with the nice touch of a HaD logo of course.

We love [TVMiller’s] project brief build logs — he doesn’t hold anything back.

Pipes were glued, the inhaled toxins coursing through my lungs and penetrating the cells, turning me in an enhanced human, now capable of lifting small things with great ease, like a stapler or Big Gulp.

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Margarita Drip Infuser!

Margarita Drip Infuser Ensures A Perfect Mix

October 14, 2014 by 13 Comments

In order to get a margarita just right, the various ingredients need to be mixed together quite vigorously to over-come the different viscosity of the fluids. Looking to create his own barbot of sorts, [TVMiller] decided to make a Margarita Drip Infuser to help make margaritas a bit easier.

Using various chem lab supplies, [TVMiller] has cobbled together something pretty awesome. The Infuser can take up to 8 different ingredients into its test tube reserves, and after the drink ingredients are programmed on the computer, the magic begins.

An Arduino Uno controls a bank of 8 relays which control small fluid solenoids, with each control pulse releasing just a single droplet of fluid. An LED for each valve is run in parallel adding a bit of a light show to the mixing experience. If that’s not enough, he’s also created a copper cooling coil to chill the drink as it is poured.

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Arduino Gives Your Toilet Options

August 9, 2014 by 60 Comments

toilet water saver

With the severe drought going on in California with no end in sight, [TVMiller] decided he could put an Arduino and a toilet together to try and save at least a few gallons of water per day. The invention fills a toilet to the minimum level, saving around two gallons per day for the average “user”.

A typical toilet functions by using gravity and moving water to create a vacuum, sucking the waste down and out of the toilet. As long as there is nothing, uh, solid in the bowl, the toilet will be able to function on the reduced amount of water. The Arduino cuts the flow of water off before the toilet fills up the entire way.

In the event that anyone -ahem- needs the toilet’s full capacity, there is a button connected to the Arduino that fills the reservoir to capacity. [TVMiller] notes that if 1,825 hackers installed this device on their toilets, we could save a million gallons of water per year and be well on our way to saving the planet.

The project site is full of more information and puns for your viewing pleasure. We might suggest that the “2” button would be very easy to integrate with the toilet terror level indicator as well.

 

We Asked For It — An Arduino Bowel Gauge

March 18, 2014 by 50 Comments

toilet

Well, we asked for it, and [TV Miller] delivered this hilarious and surprisingly accurate bowel gauge.

Between our recent Wiping Your Bum with an Arduino feature and how to Measure Poop for a Better Sanitation Service, we guess we should have seen this coming. And you know what? It’s pretty awesome.

He’s using an Arduino Uno with a home-made resistance sensor to “hack our bowels”. After all, how can you have a proper diet without knowing exactly what is coming out of you? Two copper or aluminum strips make up the resistance sensor with a few known resistors, a capacitor and a potentiometer for adjustment. He’s even included an LCD display as well so you can see the volume of your excrement in real-time! Classy.

To see it in action (don’t worry, not that kind of action) stick around for the following video:

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