The Wake Up Machine

August 18, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 10 Comments

Meet the Wakeup Machine. It is here to ensure that you are up and ready to go when the time comes. This machine will vibrate your bed, remove the sheets, make coffee, play music, even adjust the temperature in the room for optimal wake up experiences. We like the large heavy industrial look of it too, but after looking inside you’ll see it is only a prototype which could be made much smaller with its own pcb. This thing brings back fond memories of Rube Goldberg style alarm clocks from movies such as Pee-wee’s big adventure, Back To The Future, and even Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. You can see some videos of the device on the page as well as download complete plans in pdf format. The did forget one feature though.

[via makezine]

Automated Blinds

August 17, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 11 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BendxUgRh0]

Inspired by the multitudes of other automated window blind projects, [John] decided to build his own simpler design. Knowing his Arduino was massive overkill (yes, we hear you all cheering) he picked up a picaxe 08m starter kit. Looking at his very simple circuit, you’ll notice there are no resistors or capacitors. He designed it to take commands from his PC via IR. The final product is fairly well hidden, and should his girlfriend ever be upgraded to wife, we assume he’ll hide it better. Good job [John]. We’re no strangers to automated blinds, we’ve seen them a few times.

The Happillow Project

August 17, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 22 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPzD1vM7McM]

[Harandi] wrote to us to let us know about a project he’s working on to improve our nightly rest. This is the Happillow. The Happillow is an alarm clock, as well as a snore relief system. We’re not sure that the snoring bothers us so much, but we’re sure our significant others appreciate that part. While pillows exist that are supposed to cut down on snoring, they generally have a specific shape to position your head properly, which should cut down on the snores. [Harandi] points out that this might be embarrassing to the user as it is obvious to anyone looking at the bed that they have a snore reducing pillow. The Happillow detects the noise and agitates you to get you to reposition yourself. We have actually seen a very similar project in the past with the Interactive Pillow project.

Robert Crumb Ghetto Hacks

August 15, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 36 Comments

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[Robert Crumb], the celebrated artist who created the commonly recognized keep on truckin, Fritz the cat, and mr natural can be seen here doing a ghetto hack. His record was warped, so he had to melt it in the oven to flatten it out. While [R. Crumb] may not be the epitome of celebrity and wealth, he got us wondering, what celebrities do ghetto hacks? More importantly, what ghetto hacks do you continue to do, even though you could afford to just simply replace the item? In case you missed the ghetto hacks thread, here it is.

Solid State Tesla Coil

August 14, 2009 by Steve Watkins 9 Comments

pano

While researching solid state Tesla coils we stumbled across this old project. As you have probably guessed from the pictures, this coil is meant to actually play music. Knowing how to add eye catching flare, the coiler uses a Plexiglas frame turned light pipe; only to be complimented by an audio amplifier complete with graphic equalizer. There is a video of the coil in action on YouTube. We have covered singing tesla coils in the past. Other twists on the classics include the tesla coil guitar amp and a hand held plasm gun.

Logging Weight Changes

August 14, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 16 Comments

scale

This is a classic example of a well done hack, simply for the sake of hacking. [Jorge] wanted to be able to chart his weight changes. His solution wasn’t to simply buy a scale that could be hooked to the computer. Those are available and aren’t really that expensive. He could have even used pencil and paper to chart it in a few seconds. Instead, [Jorge] started hacking. He took apart a digital scale he already had and installed his own circuit to display weight and write the values to a CSV. The CSV resides on a removable card which can then be put in his computer to chart the data in openoffice.

Giant Bulb VU Meter

August 8, 2009 by Eliot 20 Comments

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The latest Inventgeek project is a 12 outlet control box. They decided to demo it using a giant bulb based VU meter. The control box has 12 individual outlets hooked up to two layers of six solid state relays. [Jared] notes that SSRs can be very expensive, but he purchased his on eBay for ~$10 each. Wiring and installation on this project is incredibly clean and they plan on using the control box for future how-tos. The simple audio circuit used for the VU is based on the LM3915. You’ll find full plans on the site or you can watch the overview video embedded below.

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