home hacks

1938 Articles

Breathing Walls With Shape Memory Alloy Wire

October 3, 2007 by 8 Comments

When you need something quietly bending or moving, don’t underestimate SMA’s (or Shape Memory Alloys). The Living Glass project by architects [David Benjamin] and [Soo-in Yang] catalogs an experiment in building interactive, flexible, “breathing”, walls out of SMA wire and microcontrollers. Although they use Basic Stamps, the project could easily be extended to more cost-effective microcontrollers for large surfaces. The project is well documented with videos (AVI) of each prototyping step and even includes the ideas that were ultimately scrapped. Even if you don’t build a wall of interactive gills, this project should give you plenty of ideas for uses of SMA wire embedded in semi-flexible materials.

Remote Control Your Blinds

September 16, 2007 by 12 Comments


I was dredging my brain for interesting topics to cover and this vertical blind hack popped into my head. The page isn’t the prettiest, but it’s the hack that counts. The mechanism is constructed from PC board. A motor fitted with a ball chain drive gear pulls the chain in either direction. When the end of travel is reached, a micro-switch is triggered by the stand off that’s actuated by the chain. The motor is driven by a pair of relays that latch to form a simple direction control. When power is triggered on or off, the motor starts moving until the stop is triggered.

GardenMon(itoring Project)

July 23, 2007 by 16 Comments


[Ken_S] sent in his GardenMon (coral cache) project. It’s a set of light, humidity, moisture and temperature probes that monitor the surface and below ground conditions in his garden. He’s using several picaxe micro controllers to take readings with a variety of off the shelf and commercial sensors. Once he started collecting the data, he added a programmable servo controlled watering valve with a configuration that he tweaks accordingly.
The site is on geocities, so use the cache.

I had a few requests, and this fits, so I added a home hacks category.

Peltier Desktop Drink Cooler

February 15, 2005 by 5 Comments

peltier drink cooler
i found this link in my inbox, courtesy of j. peterson.  we’ve posted a peltier beverage cooler before, but i think this one deserves mention as well.  it hasn’t had the finishing touches, so it’s not as pretty yet.  however, this one does come with a digital temperature readout.  more importantly, it’s big.  you could countersink a couple of these babies into your dining room table and start living the 21st century good life, as imagined way back in the mid-1900s.

just think, your home of the future, complete with soda-cooling, plate-heating countertops and a kitchen computer.

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Basic Stamp Controlled Kegerator

February 11, 2005 by 20 Comments

kegerator

evan jensen sent us a link to his basic stamp kegerator.  the microcontroller monitors and regulates the temperature, and outputs status information and the name of the current beer to an lcd display.  this looks like a fun project if you are looking to get started with hacking electronics.  for our non beer drinkers, i can assure you that root beer is also best served cold and from a tap.

i’ve never used a basic stamp before, but i’ve noticed that a lot of other people are using the microprocessor to do cool things, including james the weather ballon hacker from earlier this week.  i just ordered a starter kit last evening, so if people are interested maybe i can post an introduction when i receive it.

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Microwave Oven Foundry

January 24, 2005 by 27 Comments

microwave oven foundry

microwave oven + metal = fun

our pal barb dybwad from the unofficial apple weblog sent us this link. (Wayback Machine) david reid discusses a cheap and easy method for melting and casting metals in a common microwave.  apparently, this method requires only very minor modifications to the oven and is able to reach temperatures of around 1000 degrees celcius, thereby melting small amounts of cast iron.  i find this amazing since i still can’t figure out how to thaw the center of a frozen burrito of similar external temperature.  it looks like there is still some hacking to be done to find a process capable of melting steel, so i’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

when you are done making pewter army men, you may also want to check out the detailed photos of barb’s new mac mini.  lucky!

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