Make A Cardboard Bookshelf In Less Than A Day

July 27, 2012 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

Lucas came up with a real winner when upcycling cardboard to use as a bookshelf. It’s visually pleasing, can be built basically for the cost of glue and a mounting brackets, and you don’t have to feel bad if you decide to get rid of it later on.

What he saved in raw material cost he spent in labor. There are 23 different layers of cardboard that went into the project, not including the spacer squares between each piece. The vast majority of the time spent in the clip after the break shows a fast-time video of him cutting out the layers. It apparently took about eight hours of cutting, and we’d image he’s got a claw of a hand after all of that work.

This is hanging from a single L bracket positioned in the square opening with two nails to keep it level. We’d suggest including a better mounting technique in your design. If you have some ideas about this please let us know in the comments.

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Lighting Controller Counts How Many People Are In A Room

July 25, 2012 by Mike Szczys 32 Comments

[Deekshith Allamaneni] built this controller which will automatically turn the lights in a room on and off. No big deal, right? You can already get a replacement light switch at the home store that will do this for you. But there is one big difference. The commercial solutions we’ve seen simply rely in a motion sensor and a timer. But [Deekshith] found a way to count the number of people that enter a room, turning the lights on when the first person enters and off when the last person leaves.

The video after the break shows a demo of his test rig. At first we just thought that this was only counting how many times an object passes between the sensors. But it can also detect in which direction that object was traveling. Now the system just needs to be scaled up for use in a doorway.

It would be a great addition to the house that doesn’t have any light switches.

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Raspberry Pi Keeps Tabs On Your Solar Power Setup

July 25, 2012 by Mike Nathan 15 Comments

raspberrypi-solarlogger

[Brian Dorey] has been adding green power solutions to his home for some time now, and as things have progressed, he has experimented with several different iterations of data loggers. The latest system watching over his solar power setup is a Raspberry Pi armed with a custom-built I2C analog/digital converter.

The Rasp Pi is responsible for monitoring several different temperature sensors related to his solar water heating and storage system, but that’s just the beginning. It also keeps watch over his roof-mounted solar electric panels, his battery bank, and its charge controller. For good measure, he also monitors his home’s temperature and his water tank’s recirculation pump because, why the heck not?

All of the collected data is relayed to his web server where it is handsomely displayed for his perusal and analysis. [Brian] has made his code available here, so you can monitor your home in the same fashion with little fuss.

Driving Your Home Appliances With Hybrid Power

July 22, 2012 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

This system of hybridizing your home’s electric appliances is an interesting take on solar energy. It focuses on seamlessly switching appliances from the grid to stored solar energy as frequently as possible. There’s a promo video after the break that explains the setup, but here’s the gist of it.

Follow along on the pictograph above. We start on the left with solar panel. This feeds to a charger that tops off a 12V battery. When that battery is full, the charger feeds to the inverter which converts the 12V DC to 110V AC power. This is fed to a pass-through which is in between the appliance (in this a case a lamp) and the wall outlet. The pass-through will switch between mains power coming from the outlet, and the 110 coming from the inverter. The homeowner won’t know, or care, which power source is being used. But sunny months should result in lower energy bills. The real question is how long it takes to cover the cost of the system in saved electricity.

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Building Fiber Optic Chandeliers

July 21, 2012 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

This chandelier keeps the light source hidden and uses fiber optics to illuminate the acrylic diffusers. It’s the second attempt [TheCreator] has made at building his own. Bother projects are interesting in their own way.

The first attempt used marbles as diffusers and had a much different look to it. This time around he’s using what he calls acrylic dowels. They’re not round, but square (which is why we’re not sure dowel is the right term), and he says they work better than marbles for several reasons. The marbles weren’t very heavy so they didn’t really weigh down the glass fibers to keep then straight. They were also difficult to attach to the fibers and prone to breakage.

To attach the dowels he drilled a hole in the end and epoxied a fiber optic strand in place. To direct light into the other end of the filament he built his own frustum (a pyramid with the tip cut off) of inward facing mirror. This helps to focus what is coming from the RGB LEDs in the appropriate direction so that as much light as possible makes it into the fibers.

He didn’t really give any final thoughts so we wonder if it puts out enough light for his needs. We’re sure that if it’s purely a mood piece he’s satisfied.

Automatic Trough Filler Makes Sure The Animals Have Water

July 19, 2012 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

It has been a hot hot summer for many parts of the US. The heat has been dangerous at times and making sure the livestock has the water they need is incredibly important. [Maddox] recently upgraded the automation on their water troughs which will help with the process. Sure, they still have to check on the animals, but this will ensure there’s plenty to drink in between those visits, and that a malfunction doesn’t waste precious water.

There has always been some level of automation here, but it relied on float valves which were frequently malfunctioning. This project seeks to get rid of the float value and use solenoid valves like those used in irrigation. These solenoids can run from a 9V battery and offer quite a bit more reliability than the mechanical vales. There is still a float sensor which measures the water level, filling up the trough when needed.

An MSP430 Launchpad was used for the prototype, from which a PCB was designed. Since this needs to be weather-proof a water tight enclosure was sourced. The company that makes the enclosure also provides DXF templates which [Maddox] used to establish the size and outline of the PCB.

Father/son Team Goes Big With Backyard Observatory

July 19, 2012 by Mike Szczys 40 Comments

Oh that? It’s just the backyard observatory we built last summer. You know, for fun. This is a conversation we image [Kakon24] and his dad are having quite often these days. They’re astronomy interests just got a big equipment upgrade when they built a huge observatory on their homestead. Now we don’t proclaim to know a lot about observatory quality, but this is head and shoulders above what most people manage to acquire.

It isn’t a simple build either. It’s a full-fledged building of its own, starting with a poured foundation, then stick framing which was covered in stone work. The images tell the story of the build, but for information on the hardware you’ll want to read through the comments over on the Reddit Astronomy thread. Sounds like the scope itself cost over 100 grand so having a proper building to protect it is a must.