Building A Thermal Imaging Sensor From Scratch

November 12, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 45 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIb1scnD67o&w=470]

[Rob] lives in a 100-year-old house, and with these antique lath and plaster walls and old window frames comes a terrible amount of drafts. The usual way to combat this energy inefficiency is with a thermal imaging camera, a device that overlays the temperature of an object with a video image. These cameras are hideously expensive so [Rob] did what any of us would do and built his own.

The build centers around a Melexis MLX90620 far infrared thermopile that can be had for about $80. Basically, this sensor is a very, very low resolution camera (16×4 pixels) that senses heat instead of light. By sticking this sensor on a breadboard with an Arduino Mini and WiFly network adapter, [Rob] is able to pull the data down from the IR sensor to his iPhone and overlay it on the feed from the camera.

The result, as seen in the video above, is a low-resolution but still very useful thermal imaging camera, perfect for looking for cold drafts in an old house or tracking down [Arnie] just like a Predator.

Tip ‘o the hat to [Ronald] for sending this one in.

Optimus Prime Keeps A Vigilant Watch Over The Hen-house

October 30, 2012 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

[shOOter—] and his family are just starting to keep chickens and need a coop in which the hens could roost. He wanted it to be mobile and protective and what is more mobile and protective and the leader of the Transformers? As you can see, his chicken coop is modeled after Optimus Prime.

The cab of the truck serves as the hen-house. It’s made of marine grade plywood held together with glue and galvanized nails. The exhaust stacks, which are made of PVC pipe, are not just decorative. They are chutes for the feed trays to either side of the blue ramp (you can’t really see the trays in this image). To give the chickens a way to stretch their legs he brought his welding skills to bear. The trailer portion of the build is a welded metal frame covered in mesh which provides a rather large exercise yard. Since the habitat is enclosed there’s really no need for an intricate motorized door.

[Thanks James]

Unlocking Silk For Uses As An Optical, Digital, Biological, Or Food Storage Device

October 18, 2012 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

[Fiorenzo Omenetto] gave a TED talk early last year to illustrates a lot of intriguing uses for silk. Before watching his presentation we would have been hard pressed to come up with a use for silk other than in clothing. But it turns out that investigating how silk worms create the material has led to a range of other applications. You can see the full talk embedded after the break.

One of the first things he shows off is a transparent film made of silk. The material looks almost like cellulose film, and can function in a similar way. [Fiorenzo] shines a laser through a silk slide that has a micro-dot of words embedded in it. the result is a clearly readable message projected on the wall. The film can also be used for holographic images.

But it’s the biodegradable aspects that are clearly the breakthrough here. A slide of silk can be doped with pharmaceuticals and programmed for a very specific time release. This way the drugs no longer need to be stored under refrigeration, and can be reclaimed using only water. The same properties allow one to manufacture disposable objects that will quickly and completely degrade. But there’s even more, if you dope the material with a conductor like gold it becomes a disposable circuit.

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Electric Vehicle Peripheral Controller For The Masses

October 12, 2012 by Mike Szczys 66 Comments

This juicy hunk of printed circuits is an open source controller for the peripherals of an electric car. It’s the product of a capstone project working on a vehicle aimed at urban commuting. There wasn’t a suitable non-proprietary module for controlling a car’s peripherals so the team built their own.

As far as we can tell this is not responsible for driving the vehicle itself. We assume there’s another piece of hardware which reads from the accelerator pedal, drives the motors accordingly, and handles things like regenerative braking. But there’s a lot of other things in a modern vehicle that need to be taken care of as well. Head, tail, and turn indicator lights must be switched. All of the dashboard controls (like the turn signal lever and the wiper blade speed settings) need to be monitored. Something needs to drive the door locks, and a system that reads the door ajar sensors and switches the dome light on and off must be handled. This is where the controller pictured above really shines.

The team has released all of the hardware information. The code is not yet available, but will be as soon as they’ve cleaned it up enough to package the first release candidate.

Light Bulb Efficiency Exhibit Updated With LED Bulb Option

October 4, 2012 by Mike Szczys 30 Comments

It seems like tinkerers are always being tapped to build or repair exhibit hardware. This time around it’s [Dino’s] turn. He’s been asked to alter a light bulb efficiency demo so that it includes an LED option.

The idea here is that you crank a generator to power different types of light bulbs. There’s an ammeter built in, but possibly the best feedback is knowing how hard you have to crank to illuminate the most inefficient choice. As it stands there is a toggle switch to choose between incandescent and CFL bulbs. [Dino’s] solution is to use a three-position rotary switch. He removes the toggle switch and replaces it with a socket for the LED bulb. A new location for the rotary switch is chosen and he does a bit of work to get it mounted securely. If you haven’t worked with this type of switch before he takes the time in the video after the break to explain how they work.

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Decades Old TV Gets Sleep Function Thanks To 7400 Family Of Chips

October 2, 2012 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

[Viktor] dredged up a hack he pulled off years ago. His grandfather likes to end the day in front of the TV, but he falls asleep soon after sitting down. Rather than tick away the electricity meter all night, [Viktor] built an automatic shutoff which is akin to a modern TV’s sleep feature.

At the time microcontrollers were not as easy to source as they are now. So [Viktor] used a circuit based on the 7400 family of logic chips. It uses a multivibrator to feed some binary counter chips. These are used to divide the oscillations to establish the desired timing. He tuned the system to be about 15 minutes, but that can be adjusted using a potentiometer built into the multivibrator. When time is about the run out an LED next to the TV comes on. This way if [Viktor’s] grandfather is still awake he can press a button next to his chair to reset the counter. But if he’s already snoozing the counter will eventually switch off the television.

Honey Bee Temperature Logger Tracks Internal Hive Movement

October 1, 2012 by Jesse Congdon 15 Comments

Apparently bees tend to use different areas of the hive throughout the year. All we know is not to mess with them. [Max Justicz], on the other hand, does exactly that at his high school. He built a whether resistant solar powered multi-point temperature logger to do such things. The logger is designed to track heat movement within the hive throughout the year. Bees can be tracked like this because they generate a good amount of heat, some even use it to kill off predators.

Building weather resistant electronics is no picnic. You have to deal with rubber O rings, cable glands and clunky waterproof connectors. [Max] shows the whole process of mounting the various components into the enclosure. A solar panel feeds an Ardunio Mega, charging electronics, and SD card shield. With a 1GB SD card this bugger is in for a long haul. The 6600mAh battery should keep it running excessively long though. We’d cut the fat a bit though and swap out that Mega for something less power hungry, but going super low power can get a bit fancy. That mega is powerful enough to incorporate every other bee project we have here.

[Max] has yet to install the logger in his high school’s apiary but will update with logs once he can furnish them. We can’t wait to see the patina it develops over the seasons.