We Are Now At DEFCON 2

September 16, 2017 by 18 Comments

If you had a working DEFCON meter that reported on real data, would it be cool or distressing?

Before we get ahead of ourselves: no, not that DEF CON. Instructables user [ArthurGuy] is a fan of the 1983 movie  War Games, and following a recent viewing –hacker senses a-tingling — he set to work building his own real-time display.

Making use of some spare wood, [ArthurGuy] glued and nailed together a 10x10x50cm box for the sign. Having been painted white already at some point, the paint brilliantly acted as a reflector for the lights inside each section. The five DEF CON level panels were cut from 3mm pieces of coloured acrylic with the numbers slapped on after a bit of work from a vinyl cutter.

Deviating from a proper, screen-accurate replica, [ArthurGuy] cheated a little and used WS2812 NeoPixel LED strips — 12 per level — and used a Particle Photon to control them. A quick bit of code polls the MI5 terrorism RSS feed and displays its current level — sadly, it’s currently at DEFCON 2.

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DIY Diner Booth With Cocktail Table Arcade

September 16, 2017 by 3 Comments

[Glennzo] has a house with some odd interior design choices. The most glaring one is a living room/den complete with a green Jacuzzi hot tub straight out of the 1980s. The tub really didn’t fit with [Glennzo’s] plan to use the space as a bar and game room, so out came the Sawzall and demo hammer. The tub was in its own little alcove, possibly a converted closet. [Glennzo’s] turned the space into a restaurant style booth complete with a cocktail arcade table.

The fiberglass tub was relatively easy to cut up and remove. This left the wood framed tile tub surround. The surround was extended to become a booth seat. A bit of creative woodworking, some vinyl cushions, and the booth itself was ready. But what good is a booth without a table?

The cocktail table arcade machine is powered by a mini-tower running MAME. The monitor is an old 21″ LCD. The frame of the table is plywood and pine lumber, finished with stain and polyurethane. The illuminated buttons and interface came from an arcade control kit, which made wiring a snap. The table is topped off with a custom 3/8″ thick piece of glass.

The final product looks great and fits the room perfectly. Now [Glennzo] just needs a BarBot to finish off the perfect hacker and gamer paradise!

Cutting Stone With A Diamond Bit Built From Plumbing Parts

September 15, 2017 by 24 Comments

Everyone’s favorite Canadian is at it again. This time, [AVE] needed to cut a large hole in a stone countertop. They making coring bits for this, but a bit this size would cost upwards of $400. Not a problem. [AvE] broke out the tools and built his own stone cutting bit.

Everything starts with a 6″ plastic pipe cap. [AvE] center drilled the cap, then threaded it. A turned down bolt makes a great arbor for this new tool. The edge of the cap was then slotted. [AvE] used a clapped out Bridgeport milling machine, but you could do the same job with a hacksaw or a Dremel tool.

The secret sauce is industrial diamonds. That’s right, this is a diamond cutting bit. [AvE] ordered 20 grams of 20-25 mesh industrial diamonds. “Mesh” defines the size of the individual diamonds — in this case around 50 microns and up.  Now, how to bind diamond and plastic? Plumber’s transition cement didn’t work – the diamonds and coating just peeled off like a sunburn. The solution turned out to be JB-Weld. A liberal coating of JB-Weld on the face of the tool, a sprinkling of industrial diamonds, and the pipe cap was ready to cut.

The cutting operation was slow, steady, and lots of cooling water. [AvE] made it most of the way through his countertop before having to refurbish his bit.

[AvE] usually is a man of many words, as can be seen in this post about his EDM machine. This time though, he gave us the silent treatment — an entire video with no words, set to classical music. It’s great seeing YouTubers step outside their comfort zone and trying something new.

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Delivery Drone Aims To Make Package Handoffs Safer Than Ever

September 15, 2017 by 18 Comments

Picture this: you’re at home and you hear a rapping on your door. At last!– your parcel has arrived. You open the door, snatch a drone out of the air, fold it up, remove your package, unfold it and set it down only for it to take off on its merry way. Hand-delivery courier drones might be just over the horizon.

Designed in the [Laboratory of Intelligent Systems] at Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and funded by [NCCR Robotics], this delivery drone comes equipped with its own collapsible carbon fibre shield — it fold up small enough to fit in a backpack — and is able to carry packages such as letters, small parcels, and first aid supplies up to 500 g and to 2 km away!

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Hacker Maketh Kingsman Umbrella

September 15, 2017 by 11 Comments

Yes! Someone made the Kingman umbrella and yes it can shoot and yes it has a display on the inside. [James Hobson] just put up a video on YouTube for this excellent project detailing the process that went into creating this live working prop and it is amazing.

The build starts with finding a rugged umbrella and was tested by standing on it as well as decimating a few household objects. Compress CO2 cartridges provide the fuel for propelling blow darts as well as other non-lethal forms of ammunition. The coolest part of the project is the screen inside the portable that allows you to see-through the dome. This is accomplished by a combination of a small camera and a portable mini projector. Simple yet awesome.

The camera is mounted near the muzzle whereas the projector is sliced-up and integrated into the grip. The handle in question is itself 3D printed and includes a custom trigger into the design. Check out the video for a demonstration of the project.

Movie props have a special place in every maker’s heart and this project is an excellent example of imagination meeting ingenuity. After seeing this video, security agencies are going to be giving umbrella owners some suspicious looks though creating own of your own could be a very rewarding experience. If you are looking for a more obvious prop, then check out the PiPBoy Terminal from Fallout which is sure to get everyone’s attention. Continue reading “Hacker Maketh Kingsman Umbrella” →

Automatic part remover for 3D printer

Automatically 3D Print Infinite Number Of Parts

September 15, 2017 by 24 Comments

We’ve seen 3D printers coming out with infinite build volumes, including some attempts at patenting that may or may not stall their development. One way around the controversy is to do it in a completely different way. [Aad van der Geest]’s solution may not give you the ability to print an infinitely long part, but it will allow you to print an infinite number of the same, or different, parts, at least until your spool runs out.

[Aad]’s solution is to have a blade automatically remove each part from the print bed before going on to the next. For that he put together a rail system that sits on the bed of his Ultimaker 2, but out of the way on the periphery. A servo at one end pulls a blade along the rails, sweeping over the bed and moving any parts on the bed to one end where they fall away. This is all done by a combination of special G-code and a circuit built around a PIC12F629.

One of many things that we think is pretty clever, as well as fun to watch, is that after the part is finished, the extruder moves to the top corner of the printer and presses a micro switch to tell the PIC12F629 to start the part removal process. You can see this in the first video below. The G-code takes over again after a configurable pause.

But [Aad]’s put in more features than just that. As the second video below shows, after the parts have been scraped from the build plate, a pin on the extruder is used to lift and drop the blade a few times to remove small parts that tend to stay on the blade. Also, the extruder is purged between prints by being moved over a small ridge a few times. This of course is also in that special G-code.

How do you produce the special G-code, since obviously it also has to include the parts to print? For that [Aad]’s written a Windows program called gcmerge. It reads a configuration file, which you edit, that contains: a list of files containing the G-code for your parts, how many to print, whether or not you want the extruder to be purged between prints, various extruder temperatures, cooling times, and so on. You can find all this, as well as source for the gcmerge program, packaged up on a hackaday.io page. Incidentally, you can find the PIC12F629 code there too.

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