Shapeshifting Material For Weather Adaptive Structures

July 10, 2015 by Dan Maloney 14 Comments

Where [Isaac Newton] had his apple (maybe), [Chao Chen] found inspiration in a pine cone for a design project that lead to a water-sensitive building material. He noticed the way some pine cones are sensitive to water, closing up tight when it rains, but opening up with dry conditions. Some dissection of a pine cone revealed [Mother Nature’s] solution – different layers that swell preferentially when exposed to moisture, similar to how a bimetallic strip flexes when heated. [Chao Chen’s] solution appears to use balsa wood and a polystyrene sheet laminated to a fabric backing to achieve the same movement – the wood swells when wet and pulls the laminate flat, but curls up when dry.

As [Chao] points out, the material is only a prototype, but it looks like a winner down the road. The possibilities for an adaptive material like this are endless. [Chao] imagines a picnic pavilion with a roof that snaps shut when it rains, and has built a working model. What about window shutters that let air and light in but close up automatically in that sudden summer storm? Self-deploying armor for your next epic Super Soaker battle? Maybe there are more serious applications that would help solve some of the big problems with water management that the world faces.

Make sure you check out the video after the break, with a more decorative application that starts out looking like an [M.C. Escher] print but ends up completely different.

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Why Build Furniture When You Can Grow It?

July 2, 2015 by Dan Maloney 43 Comments

[Gavin Munro] is turning the standard paradigm of furniture making on its head. Instead of harvesting trees and slicing them up into boards – or worse, turning them into sawdust to be used for particle board – [Gavin] is literally growing furniture.

Supple young willow saplings are pruned and trained using wire and plastic form work. The trees are encouraged to grow in the right directions to form legs, arms, seat and back, and eventually the individual pieces are grafted together to continue growing into one solid piece. When the chair is mature, the leaves are removed, the chair is cut free from the ground, and with a little seasoning and finishing, you’ve got a unique and functional chair. And what’s more, since it’s a solid piece of wood, there are no joints to loosen over time.

You’ve got to admire the dedication that goes into these chairs. The current crop is about nine years old and still a few years from harvest. There’s a lot to be learned from the organization of a project like this – planning a production line where the first finished pieces are a decade or more from the showroom is no mean feat. Looks like [Gavin] has thought that through as well, by starting a line of lamps that will be turning a profit sooner. The video after the break demonstrates not only [Gavin’s] chairs and lamps, but also features his first harvest of tables.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Saving Water With The Vinduino

June 27, 2015 by Will Sweatman 9 Comments

[Reinier van der Lee] owns a vineyard in southern California – a state that is in a bit of a water crisis. [Reinier van der Lee] also owns an arduino and a soldering iron. He put together a project the reduces his water usage by 25%, and has moved it to open source land. It’s called the Vinduino.

Its operation is straight forward. You put a water sensor in the dirt. You turn on the water. When the water hits the sensor, you turn the water off. This was not, however, the most efficient method. The problem is by the time the sensor goes off, the soil is saturated to the point that the plant cannot take it all up, and water is wasted.

The problem was solved by using three sensors. The lowest most sensor is placed below the roots. So it should never go off. If it does, the plant is not taking in all the water, and you can reduce the output. The two sensors above it monitor the water as it transitions through the soil, so it knows when to decrease the water amount and watering cycle times.

Be sure to check out the project details. All code and build files are available on his github under the GNU General Public License 3.0

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

Juice-Spewing Wind Turbine Bootstrapped From Bike Parts

May 30, 2015 by Rich Bremer 25 Comments

Wind Turbines are great, they let us humans harness the energy of the wind. Wind is free and that is good, but spending a ton of money on a wind turbine setup begins to make the idea less appealing. [Ted] has spent many years building low cost wind turbines and this one is not only simple but can be made from mostly found parts.

It’s easy to identify the main rotor hub and blade frame which are made from an old bicycle wheel. The blades are standard aluminum flashing normally used in home construction and are attached directly to the spokes of the bike wheel. Mounted below the bike rim is a permanent magnet motor that acts as a generator. A belt couples the motor to the main rotor and uses the tire-less rim as a pulley.

[Ted] has strapped this beast to the roof of his car to measure how it performs. At 12 mph, he’s getting between 18-20 volts at 2 amps. Not too bad! Bikes and bike parts are cheap (or free) and there is no surprise that they have been used in wind turbine projects before, like this one that hangs from a kite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxL68u_YJ_g

50 Shades Of Gray Water Reuse

May 30, 2015 by James Hobson 54 Comments

Entered into this year’s Hackaday Prize, [TVMiller] built a super cheap Arduino powered gray water recovery system.

The system is very simple and can be easily made for almost any bathroom. By making a zig-zag of PVC pipe underneath the sink, he’s created a simple grey water reservoir sized for his toilet’s flushing capability. And if you use too much water, it just backs into the drain — think of it as a giant P-Trap! A 12V solenoid and 240L/h water pump switch on after the toilet has been flushed — refilling the tank with reused gray water! He’s also added an Arduino and an LCD screen to keep track of the water saved; with the nice touch of a HaD logo of course.

We love [TVMiller’s] project brief build logs — he doesn’t hold anything back.

Pipes were glued, the inhaled toxins coursing through my lungs and penetrating the cells, turning me in an enhanced human, now capable of lifting small things with great ease, like a stapler or Big Gulp.

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Itemizing Water Consumption At Home

May 29, 2015 by James Hobson 79 Comments

For a while now [Florian] has wanted to itemize his water usage at home to keep better track of where his water bill is coming from — and to help him develop water conscious habits. He’s not done yet, but has had a pretty good start.

The problem with measuring the water usage of everything in your house is that the plumbing involved to install sensors is a rather big job — so instead he assumed constant flow in some places and just used sensors on the valves to determine how long the valve was open for, which gives him a fairly accurate number for water usage.

On the right is his kitchen faucet which features a super quick arcade button hack to keep track of it being on or off.

The toilet was a bit trickier. He ended up designing a 3D printed mount attached to the lever on the inside of the tank — it’s pretty universal so he’s included the .STL files on his website if anyone wants to try implementing this system.

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DIY Wave Energy Reclamation, Not So Complicated After All

May 13, 2015 by Rich Bremer 27 Comments

We humans are becoming more aware every day that we need to reduce our fossil fuel dependence and move to more renewable methods lest we make the earth a less-desirable place to live. The sun is here today, and it will be tomorrow, harness that energy is one solution. There are places that are commonly windy, we can harness that energy too. [Jonathan] and [Ellen] set out to harness that wind energy but not in the traditional wind-turbine way. Wind creates ocean waves and the pair set out to recover some of that wave energy. They built a proof of concept and they did it on a budget with a side of DIY-style, to boot!

The device consists of a raft, with magnets attached to a sheet metal ruler standing on end. As you would expect, this ruler is flexible and the mass of the magnets easily sways back and forth as waves pass. The magnets move through stationary wire coils and as they do, creating an electrical current in the coils. The output of the coils is AC, which is then rectified to pulsed DC using several diodes and smoothed even further by some capacitors. The two DC outputs are then connected in series to double the voltage to 5 with a max current of about 20mA.

For this experiment the generator powers a modified smoke alarm which keeps burglars away from a coral reef. But the team could see this powering lights on buoys or low-power sensors. What would you use it for?