Denim Epoxy Table Is A Work Of Art

July 27, 2023 by Lewin Day 34 Comments

Epoxy has become a hugely popular material in the woodworking and furniture worlds. Who doesn’t love glossy, translucent finishes, after all? [Cam] recently spotted some neat combinations of epoxy with denim, and decided to see if he could replicate the technique to create a very unique desk. We’d say he succeeded.

A significant amount of material was involved, with [Cam] claiming he used 1,000 square feet of denim and 20 gallons of epoxy. The denim was sourced as a bulk roll, making it easy to cut to the proper size to make the desk. Liquid Glass epoxy was used for its visual qualities and its hard-wearing nature.

Combining the two materials was a challenging task. The 50 layers of denim had to be squeegeed one at a time to remove excess epoxy, a process made harder by the thickness of the material. Once all laid up, the stack of denim was compressed between sheets of wood, leading to an epoxy spill of monumental proportions.

Regardless, when the final desk was cleaned up and polished, the results were well worth the trouble. It looks like some kind of crazy denim gem thanks to the rich shine and perfect grain. It’s a material we’d like to play with ourselves.

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Where Old Files Go To Die

July 26, 2023 by Elliot Williams 30 Comments

We all lead digital lives, and we work in and on files of one sort or another. And sometimes we get attached to them. That long manifesto you poured your heart into, but nonetheless probably shouldn’t see the light of day? Love letters from former flames? Your first favorite video game that you can’t play any more, but it just sits there eating up drive space?

These are the files that are important enough that they deserve better than just a drag-and-drop into the trashcan. They deserve to be buried with dignity, and that’s just what [Ulf Schleth]’s /death/null offers us – a digital graveyard where our files no longer exist as they were, but still are allowed to linger in memory.

This is an old project, but one that tickled our funny and poignant bones in equal parts. The pun on /dev/null probably works just a little better if you read both filepaths with a German accent in your head, but the idea translates anyway.

To use it, you simply upload your file and it gets sent to the great trashcan in the sky, but along the way a 4 x 5 matrix of colored blocks is created that represents the file, and it is registered forever in the graveyard, where you can check up on it any time you like. Of course you can’t read it – only 20 RGB triples remain – but you have the digital “gravestone” as commemoration.

Even if you don’t have any loved ones in [Ulf]’s graveyard, you can walk by and see which files others have chosen to remember. Swing on by and pay your respects to notepad.exe.

Sand Drawing Plotter Runs On ESP32

July 21, 2023 by Lewin Day 3 Comments

Humans have always drawn lines in the sand, whether it’s to communicate a plan of attack or to indicate metaphorically a very real boundary. It’s also something we do just for the aesthetic pleasure, and this plotter from [aidenvigue] is great at performing in just that role.

The plotter traces patterns in the circular sand tray by dragging a small marble with a magnet. This is achieved with a pair of NEMA 17 stepper motors, set up in a polar coordinate fashion. One stepper motor controls the angle, while another motor controls the marble’s distance from the center point of the circle. It’s a simple way to build a circular plotter, and works far better than a Cartesian setup would for this geometry. The build uses an ESP32 as the brains of the operation. It hosts a web interface that allows various patterns to be selected and run on the device. It also runs a set of addressable SK6812 LEDs that light the sand rather nicely.

We’ve seen some great sand plotters before, and have always been particular fans of the larger variety. Video after the break.

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Hackaday Prize 2023: Tilting Mechanical Panels Make A Beautiful Display

July 17, 2023 by Donald Papp 13 Comments

Mechanical displays use a variety of different methods to represent data with physical objects, and [AIRPOCKET]’s Mechanical Display aims to be a platform anyone can use. Each “pixel” in this display is a panel of some kind, and different effects can be had by moving individual panels to different angles. Not only can images be represented, but the patterns of the movements themselves can be beautiful as well.

The panels are an important part of how the display presents, so the design makes them easy to change out.

These sorts of displays are fertile ground for artistic expression (one memorable implementation of this basic idea was the wooden mirror, which used varnished tiles of wood) but anyone looking to use the concept has usually been on their own when it comes to implementation.

The idea [AIRPOCKET] has is to make this kind of installation easier to implement. This method uses economical mini RC servos and 3D-printed pieces to create modular segments that can be assembled into whatever configuration one may need.

The material of the panels matters, too. Just below the page break, you can see a large unit with each “pixel” consisting of a mirrored square that reflects daylight. There’s also a video of an earlier prototype that uses some ridged two-color pieces to create a simple 4×4 three-level greyscale display.

There are a lot of possibilities if [AIRPOCKET] can make this sort of display more easily accessible, and that makes it a contender in the 2023 Hackaday Prize.

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The Demoscene, Now An Irreplaceable Piece Of Cultural Heritage

July 11, 2023 by Jenny List 21 Comments

Break out your tuxedo or your evening gown, we’re going to take in some highbrow culture. A night at the opera perhaps, some Tchaikovsky from the symphony orchestra, or maybe a bit of Shakespeare? No, we’re going to a demo party, because the demoscene is the latest art form to be accepted as officially a part of the national cultural heritage of the Netherlands. This builds on successes adding the scene to the cultural heritage registers of Finland, Germany, and Poland, and should provide a boost to other bids in countries such as Switzerland and eventual UNESCO world acceptance.

It’s all very cool that one of our wider community’s art forms is at last being taken seriously rather than being dismissed by the establishment, because along with greater recognition comes other benefits. Sadly we don’t expect any cities to shell out for a demo auditorium next to the shiny new opera house any time soon, but we can see that it could be used to the benefit of for example a hackerspace chasing grants. meanwhile, feast your eyes on a bit of cultural heritage courtesy of the Dutch Centre For Intangible Cultural Heritage (Dutch language, English translation).

Not sure what the demo scene is? We’ve taken you to a demoparty before.

Header image: People Celebrating Evoke 2019 – Foto Darya Gulyamova

The Other Way To Fight Software Rental

July 8, 2023 by Jenny List 208 Comments

It’s been a distressing trend over the last decade, that of taking commercial software from a paid-for licence model and moving into the cloud and onto a rental model. In out line, we’ve seen this with CAD packages and notably with EAGLE PCB CAD, but it’s hit other sectors in exactly the same way. The art and design communities, in particular, are feeling the pinch from Adobe Suite going towards a rental model, and now the artist and perennial thorn in the side of anyone who seeks to own a colour, [Stuart Semple] is doing something about it. He’s launching a competing suite called provocatively, Abode, which will follow an affordable paid-for licence model. It’s a development that raises interesting questions for the open source community, so it’s definitely worth a second look from that perspective.

Taking on software rental can only be a good thing, and we hope that the new package gains a foothold for that reason. But since we’re sure that there will be open-source enthusiasts asking the question: why are the established open-source equivalents such as GIMP and Inkscape not the obvious alternatives to the Adobe suite? In there may be some uncomfortable moments of soul searching for the software libre world around usability and interfaces.

Whatever your take on open source versus paid software, it’s extremely encouraging to have somebody mount a high-profile challenge to the software rental model. We hope that Abode makes it to market and that it succeeds in making the graphics software market a little more open. Meanwhile, we’ve mentioned [Stuart Semple] before for his colour activism over the blackest of blacks, and for previously taking on Adobe over Pantone pricing.

A More Conspicuous Computer Assistant

June 25, 2023 by Bryan Cockfield 11 Comments

Back in the last century, especially in the ’40s to the ’60s, one of the major home decor trends was to install various home appliances, like the television or stereo, into its own piece of furniture. These were usually bulky, awkward, and incredibly heavy. And, since real life inspires art, most of the futuristic sci-fi technology we saw in movies and TV of the time was similarly conspicuous and physical. Not so with modern technology, though, where the trend now is to hide it out of the way and forget it exists. But [dermbrian] wanted some of his modern technology to have some of the mid-century visibility aesthetic so he made some modifications to his Amazon Echo.

The Echo itself remains largely unmodified, other than placing it inside a much larger cookie tin with some supporting electronics. For that, [dermbrian] found a relay board with a built-in microphone which switches the relay off when it detects sound so that when the Echo is activated, the sound from its speaker activates the module. From there it drives a series of blinkenlights which mimic the 60s computer aesthetic. Some custom fabrication and light diffusion methods were needed to get it to look just right, and a switch on the outside can disable the mechanism if it is getting triggered by background noise like music from his stereo.

While the appeal of this style may be lost on anyone who wasn’t a fan of the original Lost in Space, Star Trek, or Jetsons, it certainly holds a special significance for those who grew up in that era. It’s certainly not the first project we’ve seen to take a look back at the aesthetics of bygone eras, either. Take a look at this project which adds lenses to modern displays to give them the impression of antiquated CRT displays.

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