Halloween Props: This Drill Makes Your Head Spin

October 25, 2010 by Mike Szczys 9 Comments

[Nollie551] sent us a demonstration of his head spinning yard prop. Adding a possessed child as part of your Halloween display is a nice touch. But when her head starts to spin (think: The Exorcist) as trick-or-treaters saunter by it should scare the life out of them. You can see that all it took is a jig to hold an inexpensive power drill in place. He didn’t include details of how this is hooked up but we think it would be a great way to use that drill switch hack that [Ben Krasnow] did a while back.

Join us after the break for some video.

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Halloween Props: Pumpkin In Standby-mode

October 22, 2010 by Mike Szczys 28 Comments

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories is preparing for Halloween with this standby-mode pumpkin. Inside there’s an LED plugging a hole that is drilled just to the skin of the gourd-like vegetable. It fades in and out similar to a sleeping Mac, using what we think is a vastly over-powered circuit based on an ATtiny2313 (1k of programming space for this?). But we still like the idea and we’d enjoy seeing it scaled up to a full LED matrix.

We’ve come to expect pumpkin hacks from EMSL and they don’t disappoint. Last year was a mechanized version, and the year before an LED schematic symbol. So what about your creation? With about one week left, take a look around and see if you can’t create something as wonderful as the Pie of Sauron.

Halloween Props: Dancing Spider

October 18, 2010 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

[Isaac] grabbed the motor from an old printer and used it to make a spider run up and down the wall for Halloween. A PIC 12F683 uses a MOSFET to drive the motor. The program loop has a little bit of dramatic flare to it, raising the arachnid with a bit of a jerky motion to give it some life, then wait for a time before quietly lowering the spider (hopefully onto an unsuspecting party-goer). The driver board is set up for two motors, making it easy to reuse in future projects. This is quite effective, and the only addition we might suggest is to add a couple of red LEDs as some glowing eyes.

Take a look at the finished product after the break.

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Window Curtain Moves To Screen Pedestrians

October 15, 2010 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

[Niklas Roy] built a motorized window curtain to screen out foot traffic in front of his window. When you hear “motorized curtain” you may think that this will move up and down but it doesn’t. Instead, the small curtain move horizontally to cover passersby as they travel down the sidewalk. This is accomplished using a camera in conjunction with some motion sensing software. In the video after the break you can see that the software also anticipates the movement, and ends up doing a good job of keeping the target covered. That’s thanks to the Processing sketch working in conjunction with a rotary encoder on the hardware setup. Details for both are available on the page linked above.

This harkens to other community involvement hacks we’ve seen like the subway stair piano, or the bottle recycling video game. It’s fun and quirky, which is not too much of a surprise as we saw a glimpse of that when we looked at [Niklas’] public fountain hydropower generator.

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Halloween Props: Puking Pirate

October 12, 2010 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

With everyone’s favorite free-candy holiday approaching, [Slouriesr] set to work building a vomiting ghoul for his Halloween display. He’s calling it a puking pirate and it centers around a pump and some simple plumbing fixtures.

First, the vomit receptacle was made by adding a sink drain with a pop-up stopper to the bottom of a kitty litter bucket. The drain slows the evacuation of liquid into a five gallon bucket below. In that bucket you’ll find a float switch pump used to keep water off of a pool cover. As the bucket fills up the pump turns on and empties the water through a hose ending at the ghoul’s mouth. The result is a 20-second puke cycle sure to delight the trick-or-treaters. Sure, there’s a lot of work to be done to get this guy looking the part, but what a great idea!

Help keep us in the holiday spirit by sending the details on your latest prop build.

Beefy Battery Backup Still Running After A Decade

October 8, 2010 by Mike Szczys 39 Comments

In 1997 [Michael Butkus Jr.] found an uninterruptible power supply in the dumpster. The batteries were shot, but he needed a backup to keep his pellet stove running for heat, drive the exhaust fan to keep the smoke out of the house, and power his computer and other electronics. After a bit of head scratching he decided to beef up the UPS using deep-cycle batteries.

He actually built two of these. One is smaller, and similar to what we’ve seen before. The other is larger and uses four batteries, two pairs in parallel which are then connected in series. He’s careful to use heavy gauge wiring and 50 amp fuses for each battery, both of which will protect against the risk of fire. One thing we found interesting is that the batteries are stored in the basement, directly below the UPS which is connected via a short run of 12 gauge home electrical wire.

We were happy to see that he’s done updates at the top of his post over the years. He lost a few batteries due to neglectfully letting the water levels drop too much. He did switch over to sealed automotive batteries sometime in 2004 or 2005. Looks like things have been going strong ever since.

[Thanks Spencer]

Wood Burning House Heater

October 4, 2010 by Mike Szczys 59 Comments

Dabbling in alternative heating technology, [Rob Steves] built a wood stove to dispose of his scrap wood while negating his home’s fire insurance at the same time. As the leftover bits from his wood projects started to stack up he wondered how he would dispose of them. Burning the bits for heat means he’s using every last bit of the lumber. The internal tank from an electric water heater was repurposed as a combustion chamber, with exhaust gases escaping through some high-temperature flexible tubing. The glass panes were removed from one of the fireplace doors to give the off-gases a place to go. The result is a rocket stove that burns very hot and does a great job of warming his house.

It’s not the safest way to heat a home, and there may be coding issues with your municipality. But this might go well in a remote location, like that cabin where you have to generate your own electricity.

[Thanks HybridBlue]