Fake Christmas Tree Makes It Fake Snow

December 1, 2010 by Mike Szczys 23 Comments

Let it snow inside your house this Christmas by building your own snow making tree. [Trey] was inspired by a snowing lamp-post he came across in a story. He looked around the house and came up with all the stuff necessary to make this happen with a Christmas tree. The snow is loose Styrofoam like you’d find in a bean bag chair. At the bottom of the tree there’s an inverted umbrella to collect the snowfall and funnel it into a blower salvaged from an inflatable Halloween yard ornament. The blower shoots the Styrofoam up through a PVC pipe, which also serves as the trunk of the fake tree, and it erupts from the top bringing Christmas cheer to an otherwise quiet room. See for yourself.

Epic Wooden Marble Run For Kids’ Room

November 27, 2010 by Mike Szczys 30 Comments

Some parents buy kinetic sculptures for their kids at art or craft fairs. Not [Steve Moseley], he turned his kids’ hovel into a sculpture by wrapping a marble run around the entire room. It’s big enough, with so many features that finding a banner image was a bit tough. After the break we’ve embedded a video where you’ll see a wagon wheel lifter, plenty of gravity-fed curves, loops, inclines, rockers, a stair-step lifter, and… well you get the idea.

Considering the scope of the project it was remarkably inexpensive; about $70 in wood, $40 for the glass marbles, and around $60 for everything else. We’re glad he shared his building methods with such verbosity. You’ll need a well-stocked shop. Fine work like this requires tools common for woodworkers, but we’d bet the band saw and oscillating spindle sander were a godsend.

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Automated Chicken Coop Door Is Solar-powered

November 27, 2010 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

[Fileark] has been busy with the hacks lately. This time around he’s built a solar-powered chicken coop door that opens in the morning, and closes at night. A single motor slides the door open and closed using a loop of spring-loaded string. There are limiting switches on either side of the door jamb to ensure proper positioning. The grey box seen above houses the hardware; a regulator for the solar panels perched atop the roof line, a battery from a broken UPS, and the driver board itself. An AVR chip running the Arduino bootloader monitors a phototransistor to detect sunup and sundown, driving the door motor appropriately using a pair of relays.

Check out the demonstration and hardware overview after the break. [Fileark] was inspired to build his after seeing the alarm-clock coop door. We don’t know if he got a chance to look at the vertical coop door, but we think his less mechanically-complicated solution is just as elegant.

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Roller Curtains With Your Graphics On Them

November 26, 2010 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

[Lenore] added a bit of customization to her office window hangings by fitting roller curtains with custom printed fabric. The treatment seen above is a $20 Enje roller blind from Ikea but that logo is all Evil Mad Science. The weight at the bottom of the fabric uses a friction-fit plastic insert that can be stapled onto new material. Some fusible tape was ironed onto the sides to finish those edges, and the roller at the top has strong adhesive that remains for a second use after peeling off the original material.

A fabric printer was used to produce this rendition of shades. But we’d like to see some conductive thread added for a f abric-based display that can be rolled up when not in use.

The Quest To Build A Better Stairmaster

November 24, 2010 by Mike Szczys 22 Comments

[Eric Feldman] likes to use the Stairmaster in his exercise routine during the winter months. But apparently the exercisers that are designed for mere mortals don’t satisfy his need to climb stairs really, really, quickly. After mastering the upper speed limits of some top-of-the-line equipment he contacted the company asking if there was a way to unlock the software-imposed speed restriction. They laughed at him; a motivation that he used to build his own that is already five times faster. He calls it the Stairmonster, and after being tested at over 500 stairs per minute that name is quite fitting. It’s got a nice interface for choosing an exercise program and recording data from his routines. It uses an AT89C51RD2 along with a quadrature decoder and a heart rate monitor module that talks to a chest strap worn during each session. A 320×240 touchscreen gives feedback on the routine, which is altered to achieve targeted heat rates for optimum results. Nice job [Eric]!

Hacking Together A Bedbug Exterminator

November 22, 2010 by Mike Szczys 57 Comments

We’ve seen so many stories in the news about the growing plague of bedbugs. It kind of infuriates us because the spin of these “news” pieces is always that we’re going to have to live with these insects and there’s nothing you can do to avoid it. Bullcorn! [Ed Nisley] was dealt a bum hand in the form of a bedbug infestation but instead of losing his mind he used it to get himself out of the mess. One of the steps in the dis-insecting process was to develop a bedbug killing box that raises the contents above the kill temperature for the pests. He built an insulated chamber, with a grate to raise the target material off the bottom and allow for heat exchange around all edges of the item. Light bulb combinations of 60, 100, and 120 Watts were tested along with a fan for air circulation. He graphed the results and plans to use what he learned to build a more efficient heater for the box.

But the hot box isn’t his only defense. His household developed barriers, blocking the insects by height or with a sticky zone. Check out the collection of his bedbug posts and stop being afraid of these things! We can fight back and we can do it using common items and ingenuity.

[Thanks Steven]

Under-desk RGB Keyboard Lighting

November 11, 2010 by Mike Szczys 34 Comments

[Jay Collett] was having trouble seeing his keyboard when the room was dim. But throwing a light under the desk just didn’t seem cool enough. Instead he built an RGB light board that is controlled by his desktop. The board is based around an ATmega328 with the Arduino booloader. He etched a single-sided PCB to connect it to a group of five RGB LEDs, with a programming header for an FTDI cable. The board communicates with a PC via serial connection, with a C# control application that [Jay] coded to control the color. We’ve embedded a couple of videos after the break but check his page for a package of code and hi-res pictures.

If you want something cool that’s a little bit less work to build check out the EL-wire keyboard from this links post.

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