Super Nincoffee Jr.

August 3, 2012 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

Your morning routine doesn’t include enough old-school gaming. Break the caffeine habit and get your Mario on at the same time with the help of the Super Nincoffee Jr.

[Luigifreakout123] shares the details of the build in the video clip after the break. He starts by revealing that this is the second version he’s made. The first wasn’t a Jr., but instead used a full-sized Mr. Coffee unit. Neither make coffee, but instead serve as an enclosure for the gaming hardware. The on/off switch and original power cable are used to control the electricity to the console. Openings have been cut in the tops and front for a game cartridge and the two controller ports. A composite video and stereo audio cable comes out the back of the machine next to the power cord.

Yeah, it’s super simple, but sometimes that all it takes for a project to be a delight like this one is.

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Building A Coffee Roaster From Junk

July 27, 2012 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

[Rxdtxd] has tried his hand at roasting coffee beans in a frying pan. It works but he can only roast small batches at once. What he really needed was a large-scale roaster that would have no problem with a few pounds of the green beans all at once. He ended up building this large-scale coffee roaster out of junk parts.

The vessel which holds the beans is the drum from a top-loading washing machine. It was headed for the junk pile, but the fully-enclosed drum is perfect for this purpose. After acquiring it [Rxdtxd] set out welding a frame that would hold either side by the pivot points. He used a geared motor to automate the process. The output shaft on the gear box is meant to drive a chain, but he just welded some pieces onto the gear to use as a coupling.

In the picture above he’s giving the roaster a thorough testing with about ten pounds of beans. A portable gas stove placed below the rotating drum supplies the heat. After the beans have reached the desired darkness he pours them out into a large skillet to cool. Take a peek at the roasting action in the clip after the break.

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Growerbot Turns Gardening Into A Science

July 23, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 18 Comments

A backyard vegetable garden can be a hit-or-miss game. You’re really not sure if your crops are getting enough sun, shade, or water until it’s time for harvest and you see the results of a season of hard work. Growerbot, a hardware project by [Luke] that’s up on Kickstarter now, hopes to change that. This box will pull down how much sun and water your crops should get, and is smart enough to correct any deficiencies.

On board the Growerbot is a soil moisture sensor, light, temperature, and humidity sensors, as well as WiFi connectivity and a few relays to run pumps and turn on grow lights. The idea is to learn from mistakes and achieve optimal growth for everything connected to the Growerbot. If you’re trying to grow some heirloom tomatoes in the midwest, you can go online and get the growth profile for your area and precisely control environmental variables for the perfect crop.

As of now, there are settings for in-ground gardens, raised beds, and hydroponic setups. There’s not much in the way of ideal growing conditions aside from what is available from the USDA, but once Growerbot is released we expect the data to start flowing in.

Any Flavor Sports Drink At The Push Of A Button

July 13, 2012 by Mike Szczys 22 Comments

[Sage Spate] wasn’t happy with the boring flavors of orange, blue, or red sports drinks. He decided to mix it up by building this flavor-mixing drink dispenser.

He modified the caps for each bottle to work with an air-pressure system. This way the bottles themselves serve as the reservoir and can easily be replaced when empty. Each cap has two openings, one is used by the dispenser nozzle and includes a hose that will reach all the way to the bottom of the bottle. The other hole connects to an air pump. Raising the pressure in the bottle forces sports drink up and out of the dispenser hose.

One air pump is used for all three reservoirs with a set of solenoids to enable each flavor individually. [Andreas] sent in the tip and mentioned that some of the parts are salvaged from an ink jet printer but we’re not sure which ones. At any rate, the next step in the project is to add Arduino control which will allow for custom mixing based on preset recipes.

We’ve embedded the demo video after the break.

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Solar Oven Built To Last

July 11, 2012 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

The problem with most solar ovens is that they’re flimsy builds that will stand up to only a handful of uses. But this one stands apart from that stereotype. It’s big, sturdy, and used a lot of math to efficiently gather the sun’s energy when cooking food.

This is the third version of the build and each has included many improvements. The obvious change here is a move from aluminum reflectors to actual mirror reflectors. These attach at a carefully calculated angle to get the most power from the rays they are redirecting. The orange mounting brackets for the mirrors also serve as a storage area for transport. The rectangular reflectors fit perfectly between them (stacked on top of the tempered glass that makes up the transparent side of the cooking chamber).

The body of the oven doesn’t track the sun and one of the future improvements mentions adding tilt functionality to the base. We’d suggest taking a look at some of the solar tracking setups used for PV arrays.

[Thanks John]

Adding An Auto-shutoff To The Simplest Of Drip Coffee Makers

July 8, 2012 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

[Jerry Pommer] and his wife have relied on a percolating coffee pot for years. We have fond memories of camping trips with these things; they make great coffee which tastes even better on a cold morning in the back woods. But a recent package from the stork means that they no longer have time to sit and watch the coffee perk. After several days of boil-overs [Jerry] switched to this very basic drip coffee maker he salvaged from the trash pile. It has one switch that turns it on and off and nothing else. In order to make sure he doesn’t forget to turn it off, he hacked together his own shut-off timer for the device.

His write-up is all back story, but the 34 minute video embedded after the break takes us through the hack itself. We like it that he starts by discussing the different options that he could have chosen. Of course it might have been a microcontroller, or a 555 timer keeping time. But in the end he went with a simple resistor-capacitor timer. The carefully calculated component pair drives a Darlington transistor which keeps a relay closed. When the slowly draining capacitor lets the voltage drop past a certain threshold it also kills the power to the hot plate. In this case it will only stay on for about a half hour.

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Fritz’s, Fast Food With A Robotic Slant

July 6, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 27 Comments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhvSPgSAzsU&feature=player_embedded

While at Maker Faire K.C. this year, I was sure to take my family to a spot we tend to visit every time we are near: Fritz’s. Fritz’s is a restaurant with an interesting food delivery method. The food itself is your standard faire of burgers and fries, however the railroad theme comes into play when your food is delivered by a model train on a track that runs along the ceiling. Your tray of burgers is deposited safely on a platform that is lowered (hydraulically?) to your table. The whole thing doesn’t look terribly complex, but it is fantastic fun.

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