Model House Models House, Vice-Versa

May 30, 2015 by Elliot Williams 8 Comments

[Eric Tsai] is on a home-automation rampage. Not content with the usual smartphone-based GUIs, [Eric] built a cardboard model house that models his house. Open the garage door, and the model house’s garage door opens. Open the real front door, and a tiny servo motor opens the cardboard front door.

The model house also comes with a power meter that represents his current power usage, which is certainly useful for figuring out if something electronic has gone grossly wrong. You should watch the video (found after the break) all the way through, here’s the spot where he turns on an electric leaf blower. Despite a little big of lag that’s pretty cool!

But the system doesn’t stop there. Since he can control the garage door and some lights remotely via WiFi, the next logical step is to add a couple of buttons so that the model house can control the real house.

We’ve covered [Eric]’s home before. He set up simple, Arduino-based sensor packages all around his house, connected them together through the pub/sub framework MQTT and added in the open-source OpenHAB software interface. The door sensors connect to a hacked Wink hub. From whether or not his dog is barking to whether his laundry is done, [Eric]’s system knows it all.

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Absolute Overkill IKEA Lampan Lamp Hack

May 24, 2015 by Elliot Williams 5 Comments

Sometimes too much overkill isn’t enough. [Jesus Echavarria] hacked an IKEA Lampan light for his daughter to add color LEDs, a timer, Bluetooth control over the hue, and a local override knob. The result: a $5 lamp with at least $50 of added awesomeness. Let’s have a look at the latter.

The whole lamp system is based around a PIC microcontroller and WS2811 LEDs for the color light show. Since the lamp was already built to run a 40W lightbulb, and [Jesus] wanted to retain that functionality, he added an SSR to the build. Yeah, it’s rated for 5,000W, but it’s what he had on hand.

Next comes the low-voltage power supply. [Jesus] needed 5V for the PIC, and used the guts from a cheap USB charger as a quick and dirty 5V converter — a nice hack. To power the HC-05 Bluetooth module, which requires 3.3V, he wired up a low-dropout voltage regulator to the 5V line. A level-converter IC (74LVC07) gets the logic voltage levels straight between the two.

A fuse for the high-voltage power line, screw-terminal connectors all around, and a potentiometer for manual override round out the hardware build.

On the software side, [Jesus] set up the knob to turn on and off the built-in lamp as well as control the colors of the LED ring. That’s a nice touch for when his daughter wants to change the lamp’s color, but doesn’t want to go find her cellphone. But when she does, the SPP Pro app sets the colors by sending pre-programmed serial commands over Bluetooth to the PIC in the lamp.

All in all, a nice build, well-documented, and with enough rough edges that none of you out there can say it’s not a hack. Nice job [Jesus]! We can’t wait to see what he does next… robot lamp anyone?

DIY Coffee Roaster Uses Cordless Drills And A Camp Stove

May 15, 2015 by Ethan Zonca 12 Comments

We’re no stranger to coffee roasting hacks, but it’s been a while since we’ve seen a new DIY roaster design. Thankfully [Larry] has been hacking together a small-batch roaster with a bunch of off-the-shelf parts. He was originally trying to make a fully-automated roasting system, but after a bunch of failed prototypes, he settled on a simple roaster design that works great.

[Larry]’s roaster is designed for small batches of coffee (about 3oz). He has a small hopper with a motorized auger (cannibalized from a chocolate fountain) which drops coffee down into his roasting basket. The basket is mounted to a cordless screwdriver which rotates it to agitate the beans inside. A small camp stove provides the heat, which is placed right under the basket. The beans churn around in the roasting basket and heat up until they reach the desired roast level (typically between first and second crack).

Once the roasting is complete, another hand drill rotates the basket assembly to dump out the coffee. [Larry]’s build includes an assortment of knobs and switches which control the auger, basket speed, bean dumping, and even a “speedometer” gauge that shows how fast the basket is rotating. Want to build your own roaster? Check out the instructions for building [Larry]’s roaster or some other builds we’ve featured before.

Super Simple Cat Feeder

May 12, 2015 by Anool Mahidharia 24 Comments

Sometimes, along comes a hack that is just that. A kludged collection of parts thrown together quickly to solve some problem. [mightysinetheta]’s Upcycled Cat Feeder is just that – no pretensions.

It’s a cat feeder built out of a drill, wall switch and mechanical clock timer for under $10. Pretty much the simplest electric cat feeder you can make. Survives power outages just fine, is single serving, but due to the noise and motion it makes, it is a perfect Pavlovian trainer for the cat. The best way to describe it is as a Rube Goldberg machine.

Set the timer for the planned feed time (up to 12 hours in advance). At the appointed time, the timer triggers, the drill rotates, the old, broken screwdriver chucked in the drill turns. The cord tied to the screwdriver winds up like a winch. This pulls up the lid covering the cat’s dinner plate. The noisy drill announces it’s dinner time. When fully raised, the lid pushes up a short piece of PCV pipe. This flips a switch, that shuts off the drill. If you need build instructions, fear not. [mightysinetheta] has detailed build instructions although the pictures are probably all you’ll need.

Check the video after the break.

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DIY AC For The Hot Shop

May 10, 2015 by Rich Bremer 74 Comments

Working out in the shop is usually super fun but if it’s summertime, watch out, it can get hot! We’ve all been there and we’ve all wished we could do something about it. Well, woodworker and general DIYer [April] has stepped up to the plate and built a portable low-buck AC unit to cool her shop down to an acceptable temperature.

The unit is very simple and starts off with an old thrift store cooler. A hole is cut in the back of the cooler to make room for a fan that is directed to blow air inside the cooler and across blocks of ice. The air cools down as it passes over the ice and leaves out the top of the cooler through five 90-degree PVC elbows. After all the inlets and outlets were caulked, the entire unit was given a monochromatic black paint job.

[April] says you can feel the cool air blowing from about 5 feet away from the unit. She has measured the output air temperature to be 58-62ºF. If using loose ice cubes, the unit will work for 2-3 hours. Freezing milk jugs full of water gets about 5 hours of use.

RoomMote, A DIY Remote For Your Room Project

May 2, 2015 by Rich Bremer 6 Comments

[Rohit] wrote in to tell us about a project he has created. Like most projects, his solves a problem. Sometimes while sleeping, a mosquito will infiltrate his room. He has a mosquito repellent machine but there are 2 problems, he has to get up to turn it on/off and it smells bad when in use. [Rohit] only needed a remote-controlled mosquito repelling machine but decided to make a 6 channel system he calls the RoomMote.

From the beginning, the plan was to use an old Sony TV remote to do the transmitting. The receiver unit was completely made from scratch. [Rohit] designed his own circuit around a surface mount MSP430 chip and made a really nice looking PCB to fit inside a project box he had kicking around. The MSP430 chip was programmed to turn relays on and off based on the signals received from the Sony remote. These relays are inside an electrical box and control AC outlets. Just plug in your light, radio or mosquito repellent into the appropriate outlet for wireless control. Code for the MSP430 is made available on [Rohit’s] project page for anyone wanting to make something similar.

In addition to the relays, there is an RGB LED strip attached to the custom circuit board. By using more of the Sony remote’s buttons, the LED strip can output 6 pre-programmed colors, some mood lighting for the mosquitoes!

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Use A Lamp To See Into The Future

April 29, 2015 by Bryan Cockfield 8 Comments

We’ve heard of magic lamps before, but this one is actually real. [Alex] has created a wall-mounted lamp that can tell you what the future will be like; at least as far as the weather is concerned. It is appropriately named “Project Aladdin” and allows you to tell a great deal about the weather at a glance as you walk out of the door.

The lamp consists of twelve LED strips arranged vertically. The bottom strip represents the current hour, and each strip above represents another hour in the future. The color of each strip indicates the temperature, and various animations of the LEDs within each strip indicate wind speed and precipitation.

The system uses a weather forecasting backend built-in Java, which is available on the project’s page. The LEDs are controlled by an application that is written in C, and the entire set of LEDs are enclosed in a translucent housing which gives it a very professional appearance. Be sure to check out the demo video after the break. Be sure to check out some other takes on weather lamps which use regular desk lamps instead of intricate scratch-made LED lamps.

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