You Probably Don’t Want To Find This Toilet In Your Washroom

August 16, 2017 by 12 Comments

Ok, this one is a bit bizarre, but in perfect keeping with the subject matter: a talking toilet ripped from the pages of the Captain Underpants children’s books. Hackaday.io user [hamblin.joe]’s county fair has a toilet decorating contest and at the suggestion of their neighbour’s son, [hamblin.joe] hatched a plan to automate the toilet using an Arduino in the fashion of the hero’s foes.

Two Arduinos make up this toilet’s brains, an Adafruit Wave Shield imbues it with sound capabilities, and a sonic wave sensor will trigger the toilet’s performance routine when someone approaches. A windshield wiper motor actuates the toilet bowl lid via a piece of flat iron bar connected to a punched angle bracket. Installing the motor’s mount was a little tricky, since it had to be precisely cut so it wouldn’t shift while in the toilet bowl. A similar setup opens the toilet tank’s lid, but to get it working properly was slightly more involved. Once that was taken care of there was enough room left over for a pair of 12V batteries and a speaker. Oh, and a pair of spooky eyes and some vicious looking teeth.

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GuitarBot Brings Together Art And Engineering

August 15, 2017 by 10 Comments

Not only does the GuitarBot project show off some great design, but the care given to the documentation and directions is wonderful to see. The GuitarBot is an initiative by three University of Delaware professors, [Dustyn Roberts], [Troy Richards], and [Ashley Pigford] to introduce their students to ‘Artgineering’, a beautiful portmanteau of ‘art’ and ‘engineering’.

The GuitarBot It is designed and documented in a way that the three major elements are compartmentalized: the strummer, the brains, and the chord mechanism are all independent modules wrapped up in a single device. Anyone is, of course, free to build the whole thing, but a lot of work has been done to ease the collaboration of smaller, team-based groups that can work on and bring together individual elements.

Some aspects of the GuitarBot are still works in progress, such as the solenoid-activated chord assembly. But everything else is ready to go with Bills of Materials and build directions. An early video of a strumming test proof of concept used on a ukelele is embedded below.

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The Latest Hacker Camp Badge Comes From BornHack

August 15, 2017 by 9 Comments

If you’re a fan of outdoor hacker camps, or if you’re a SHACamp attendee who’s still coming down from the event high, you may already know about the upcoming BornHack 2017 hacker camp on the Danish island of Bornholm, from the 22nd to the 29th of this month. It’s a smaller camp than many of the others on the calendar, but it makes up for that with a quite reasonable ticket price, a much longer duration, and a location that is a destination in itself.

Today we have news of the BornHack badge announcement, and though the details are a little sketchy it’s safe to say that there should be plenty there to keep attendees occupied. The irregularly-shaped PCB contains a Silicon Labs “Happy Gecko” EFM32 ARM Cortex M0 microcontroller, a 128×64 pixel OLED display, and the usual array of I/O lines. There is no information about its connectivity as it seems the BornHack folks prefer to run a teaser campaign, but we’d be surprised if there wasn’t some kind of wireless module on the reverse.

Barring a transportation miracle it’s unlikely that any of the Hackaday team will be making it to BornHack, but that’s our loss. It may not be one of the larger camps, but it looks to offer no less of the atmosphere you’d expect from a European hacker camp. At the time of writing there are still BornHack tickets to be had, so head on over to their website if you fancy a week at a hacker camp on a Danish island.

A Gas Model Made Of Magnets

August 15, 2017 by 16 Comments

Magnets are great stuff and everyone loves them, there are so many things you can do with them, including creating a model of the crystalline structure of solids, just as [Cody´s Lab] did using a bunch of magnets inside a pair of plexiglass sheets.

Crystal structure of ice. Image from Wikemedia Commons.

Many materials have their atoms arranged in a highly ordered microscopic structure — a crystal — including most metals, rocks, ceramics and ice, among others. The structure emerges when the material solidifies looking for the minimum energy configuration. Every atom interacts with its neighbors via microscopic forces forming several patterns depending on the specific material and conditions.

In his macroscopic world, [Cody´s Lab] used the magnets as his “atoms” and the magnetic repulsion between them represent the microscopic forces. Confining the magnets inside two transparent walls, one can see the formation of the crystal structure as magnets are added one by one.

This is an excellent teaching resource and also a fun way to play with magnets if you want to give it a try. Or if you want another magnet hack, we have tons of them, including implanting them in your body, or making your own with 3D printing.

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Use A Drill To Power Your Flipbooks

August 15, 2017 by 9 Comments

[WolfCat] of Wolfcatworkshop is creating a hand-animated split-flap animation. But what do you use to test your animation once it’s on the split-flaps? Well, to test it out, [WolfCat] used a drill to give it motion. DoodlersAnonymous has some pics and an interview with [WolfCat] about his animation and there are some pictures on his Instagram page.

Technically, what [WolfCat] wanted to make is a “mutoscope,” a hand-cranked precursor to the movie projector that had its heyday in the late 19th and early 20th century. Originally installed in penny arcades and the like, mutoscopes were single-viewer apparatus. The viewer cranks the handle and the animated cards inside rotate around, stopped briefly by a bit of metal at the top in order to show a frame. The basic idea is similar to the way split-flap clocks or signs work.

[WolfCat] hand drew the animation for his movie and then scanned and printed out each frame. The frames were then transferred to a pair of flaps. [WolfCat] wanted to see how it would look when animated, but didn’t have any plans at the time for a case or a hand crank, so he found the closest tool that would do the job – a cordless drill. Attaching the drill and using a bit of card or wood as a stopper, [WolfCat] could see how the end result would look and could then start work on the case and crank.

The drill is a quick and easy way to see what the finished product would look like. Once he’s got it working, [WolfCat] could check out this 3D printed mutoscope case, or this flip dot animated display.

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Pouring 1200° Tea: Foundry In A Fire Extinguisher

August 15, 2017 by 29 Comments

Let’s face it — the design of most home foundries leaves something to be desired. Most foundries are great at melting metal, but when it comes to pouring the melt, awkward handling can easily lead to horrific results. That’s why we appreciate the thought that went into this electric melting pot foundry.

Sure, electric foundries lack some of the sex-appeal of gas- or even charcoal-fueled foundries, but by eschewing the open flames and shooting sparks, [Turbo Conquering Mega Eagle] was able to integrate the crucible into the foundry body and create what looks for all the world like a Thermos bottle for molten aluminum.

The body is a decapitated fire extinguisher, while the crucible appears to just be a length of steel pipe. An electric stove heating element is wrapped around the crucible, PID control of which is taken care of by an external controller and solid state relay. Insulated with Pearlite and provided with a handle, pours are now as safe as making a nice cup of 1200° tea.

You’ll perhaps recall that [Turbo Conquering Mega Eagle] has a thing for electric foundries, although we have to say the fit and finish of the current work far exceeds his previous quick-and-dirty build using an old electric stove.

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