Toot-B-Gone, With The FartMaster 3000

January 7, 2025 by Jenny List 19 Comments

Face it, we’ve all been there, in a crowded workshop building something, and horror of horrors, things are going to get a little… windy. Do you try to drop it quietly and hope nobody says the rhyme, do you bolt for the door, or can you tough it out and hold it in? Never fear, because [Roman_2798881] has got your back, with the FartMaster 3000.

No doubt born of urgent necessity, it’s a discreet wall-mounted fixture for a shop vac line which allows a casual activation of the shopvac as if some sawdust needed removing, and backing up for a safe disposal of any noxious clouds under cover of the vacuum’s whirring.

We have to admit, this one gave us something of a chuckle when we saw it in the Printables feed, but on closer inspection it’s a real device that by our observation could have been useful in more than one hackerspace of our acquaintance. There’s a square funnel in front of a piece of ducting, with a rotary valve to divert the vacuum in an appropriate direction to conceal the evidence.

Then simply turn it back to straight through, vac your pretend sawdust, and nobody’s the wiser. Unless of course, you also integrated a fart-o-meter.

The TimeChi Never Shipped, But You Can Build One From Scratch

December 26, 2024 by Maya Posch 6 Comments

What do you do when a crowdfunded product you really liked gets cancelled? Naturally, you take the idea and build your own version of it. That’s what [Salim Benbouziyane] did when the TimeChi project on Kickstarter saw its launch cut short. This device allows you to set a ‘no distractions’ timer, during which notifications on one’s phone and elsewhere are disabled, making it something similar to those Pomodoro timers. What this dial also is supposed to do is integrate with home automation to set up clear ‘focus’ periods while the timer runs.

A quick prototype of the newly minted Focus Dial project was set up using an ESP32 and other off-the-shelf components. The firmware has to run the timer, toggle off notifications on iOS and trigger firewall traffic rules to block a batch of social media addresses. Automating this with iOS was the hardest part, as Apple doesn’t make such automation features easy at all, ultimately requiring a Bluetooth audio board just to make iOS happy.

After this prototyping phase, the enclosure and assembly with the modules were drawn up in Autodesk Fusion 360 before the plastic parts were printed with a resin printer. The end result looks about as good as the Kickstarter one did, but with a few changes, because as [Salim] notes, if you are going to DIY such a failed crowdfunding project, why not make it work better for you?

Continue reading “The TimeChi Never Shipped, But You Can Build One From Scratch” →

A visual timer for toddlers that uses LEDs that go out.

Time Management For Toddlers

December 25, 2024 by Kristina Panos 12 Comments

It’s really never too early (or too late) to learn time management. All joking aside, carefully managing one’s time can result in some really wondrous achievements. So it’s best to learn early, when most of your time is spent generally having fun.

Let’s say you’ve just heard you have five minutes left to play, but what does that mean if you’re three years old? Not much, unless you have some visual cues to go by. That’s the idea behind [Julius Curt]’s visual timer for toddlers.

This lovely reverse progress bar uses a Wemos D1 mini to control a strip of six WS2812B LEDs at 30 LEDs/meter density. There’s a small OLED display for literate users, and the whole thing is childproof. [Julius] challenged himself to do this entire project in one day, and ended up finishing it in a little over eight hours total, including time to design the way cool knob. Be sure to check out the build video below.

If you struggle with managing your time, check out our own [Arya Voronova]’s personal account.
Continue reading “Time Management For Toddlers” →

A small mood/busy indicator attached to a laptop.

Personal Traffic Light Stops Them In Their Tracks

December 14, 2024 by Kristina Panos 30 Comments

Working from home can be pretty cool, but if you’re not the only one in the house trying to do it, the whole situation can feel like you’re right back in the office with all those walking, talking distractions. Except they’re in pajamas instead of business casual.

So, what’s the answer? Many times it’s not practical to stop what you’re doing, especially just to communicate that you’re busy. We suppose you could glare at them, put up your hand, or even give a dismissive wave, but a better solution might be this mood signal built by [gokux].

Through a simple web app, you can be red to indicate that you’re super busy, yellow to mean busy-ish, and green for let’s gossip about the cats.

This mood indicator is built on the Seeed Xiao ESP32-C3 and shows the given mood indicator on a small matrix of sixteen WS2812B LEDs. It’s powered by a 600 mAh, 3.7 V battery and a small push button switch. As usual, [gokux] has grade-A instructions for building your own version of this slick solution.

Would you like something more tactile and low-tech? Check out our own [Bob Baddeley]’s free/busy indicator from the lockdown days.

Bioelectronic implants with size reference

Batteries Not Included: Navigating The Implants Of Tomorrow

November 19, 2024 by Heidi Ulrich 19 Comments

Tinkerers and tech enthusiasts, brace yourselves: the frontier of biohacking has just expanded. Picture implantable medical devices that don’t need batteries—no more surgeries for replacements or bulky contraptions. Though not all new (see below), ChemistryWorld recently shed new light on these innovations. It’s as exciting as it is unnerving; we, as hackers, know too well that tech and biology blend a fine ethical line. Realising our bodies can be hacked both tickles our excitement and unsettlement, posing deeper questions about human-machine integration.

Since the first pacemaker hit the scene in 1958, powered by rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries and induction coils, progress has been steady but bound by battery limitations. Now, researchers like Jacob Robinson from Rice University are flipping the script, moving to designs that harvest energy from within. Whether through mechanical heartbeats or lung inflation, these implants are shifting to a network of energy-harvesting nodes.

From triboelectric nanogenerators made of flexible, biodegradable materials to piezoelectric devices tapping body motion is quite a leap. John Rogers at Northwestern University points out that the real challenge is balancing power extraction without harming the body’s natural function. Energy isn’t free-flowing; overharvesting could strain or damage organs. A topic we also addressed in April of this year.

As we edge toward battery-free implants, these breakthroughs could redefine biomedical tech. A good start on diving into this paradigm shift and past innovations is this article from 2023. It’ll get you on track of some prior innovations in this field. Happy tinkering, and: stay critical! For we hackers know that there’s an alternative use for everything!

Hack On Self: The Alt-Tab Annihilator

October 7, 2024 by Arya Voronova 43 Comments

Last time, I told you about a simple script I made to collect data about my laptop activity, talked about why collecting data about yourself is a moral imperative, and shared the upgraded script with you alongside my plans for it. Today, I will show you a problem I’ve been tackling, with help of this script and the data it gives, and I also would love to hear your advice on a particular high-level problem I’m facing.

Today’s problem is as old as time – I often can’t focus on tasks I badly need done, even ones I want done for myself. This has been a consistent problem in my life, closing off opportunities, getting me to inadvertently betray my friends and family, hurting my health and well-being, reinforcing a certain sort of learned helplessness, and likely reinforcing itself as it goes, too.

It’s deeply disturbing to sit down fully intending to work on a project, then notice no progress on it hours later, and come to a gut-wrenching realization you’ve had hundreds of such days before – I think this screws with you, on a fundamental level. Over the years, I’ve been squeezing out lessons from this failure mode, making observations, trying out all sorts of advice, in search of a solution.

Join me today in non-invasive brain augmentation and reprogramming, as I continue trying to turn my life around – this time, with help of my laptop, a computer that I already spend a ton of time interfacing with. Ever notice that starting work on a task is often the hardest part of it? It’s the same for me, and I decided to hack away at it.

Staying On Track

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A chicken's egg with many holes glows beneath a glass globe set atop an inverted wooden bowl.

Glowing Egg Is A One-Oeuf Solution For Tracking Cycles

September 7, 2024 by Kristina Panos 28 Comments

Look, if something happened to you every three weeks or so to basically turn you into a different person and factored heavily into whether any new humans were created, you’d probably want to keep abreast of the schedule, yeah? Yeah. So, while there are, of course, a ton of ways to do this with your phone, most of those apps do gross things with your data. Are you angry yet?

[Jakoba the Online Witch] certainly was, or if not angry, at least annoyed. So she built a glowing egg timer, which shines a different color based on current point in her cycle, to let her know when she is fertile and expecting Aunt Flo.

The coolest part is that this is an actual egg from one of [Jakoba]’s backyard chickens. No. The coolest part is how she was able to make so many holes without breaking it. (It took four tries.)

After bleaching the insides, the egg was ready to glow. As [Jakoba] says, the guts are simple — just a Wemos D1 Mini ESP8266, a WS2812 LED, and a heatsink. The enclosure consists of an inverted peanut bowl with a glass ornament hot-glued in place.

Once it was put together, all she had to do was add it in Home Assistant and use the current calendar state to trigger services from the YAML configuration.

Would you prefer an on-body solution? Here’s an earring that tracks temperature.