Steampunk Battleship Complete With Steam Engine!

December 11, 2013 by James Hobson 10 Comments

The photo above doesn’t do this huge and whimsical Steampunk Battleship justice. It’s an amazing project that took its creator, [Ed Ross], over 2500 hours to complete.

Called Barnum’s Dream, it was said to be originally commissioned by Queen Victoria as a ship for the Crimean war, and was the largest paddle wheel steam warship ever built. It was then retrofitted with a massive train carriage to be used in the Franco-Prussian war (that’s right, on land!).

The model is just over 4 feet long and just under 4 feet tall. Aside from the steam engine (which was modified) it was completely build by hand. Almost all of the mechanical linkages and powered by the internal steam engine. The level of detail that went into this is absolutely awe-inspiring.

If you enjoyed the background history of the ship, there’s a delightful tale of the ship’s apparent origins on [Ed’s] blog which is thoroughly enjoyable. Make sure to check it out after watching the video after the break.

Continue reading “Steampunk Battleship Complete With Steam Engine!” →

E-volo VC200 Makes Maiden Flight. Flying Cars Incoming

December 10, 2013 by Adam Fabio 83 Comments

The e-volo VC200 has made it’s maiden unmanned flight. Does the craft above look a bit familiar? We first reported on the e-volo team back in 2011. Things have been going great for the team since then. They’ve created an 18 motor (Octadecacopter?) prototype dubbed the VC200. The group has taken a smart approach to building their craft. Rather than try to keep everything in-house, they’ve created a network by partnering with a number of companies who are experts in their fields. A sailplane company laid up the carbon fiber composite frame for the EC200. Junkers Profly, a German aviation company, developed a ballistic parachute system in case something goes wrong in flight.

From the outside, the VC200 looks like a grown up version of the Quadcopters we’ve seen here on Hackaday. Even the control system used for the test flight looks like a modified Radio Control Transmitter. The motors are outrunner brushless motors. Props are carbon fiber. We’re hoping the control system is a bit more evolved (and redundant) than the systems used in R/C quads though. Just like in smaller scale models, batteries are still the limiting factor. The VC200 will only fly for about 20 minutes on a charge. However, e-volo says that new technology should allow it to extend that time to around an hour. Not very much for a cross country flight, but plenty to pioneer a new type of aircraft. Where do we sign for the beta program?

Continue reading “E-volo VC200 Makes Maiden Flight. Flying Cars Incoming” →

DIY 3D Projector From An LCD

December 10, 2013 by James Hobson 7 Comments

We’ve shared many home made projectors in the past, but we think this might just be the first home made 3D projector!

[Nicholas] has created a wonderful write up on this project on his blog, and in an Instructable, and even more details are available on the original forum post (in French though).

To sum it up though, he’s using an old LCD from a broken laptop, split into two halves. By using a Fresnel lens and two separate optical lenses that are adjustable he can combine the two images (top and bottom of the LCD) on the wall. Then by adding a polarization filter to each lens, he can reuse the cheap 3D goggles from the cinema for his own setup to see in 3D! This style of passive 3D does require a special projector screen to keep the polarization intact — he’s using a Da-Lite Silverlight screen, whose metallic surface ensures the polarization is kept the same.

It’s a great project and is definitely worth checking out. If you’re in the mood for a smaller form factor projector, it’d be worth checking out this one we covered quite a few years ago!

Creative Compulsive Disorder: Zina Nicole Lahr

December 10, 2013 by James Hobson 54 Comments

[Zina Nicole Lahr] was an extremely talented artist, designer, puppeteer and maker, with a self-diagnosed condition that she liked to call Creative Compulsive Disorder which she describes as follows:

I suppose you could say I have a self-diagnosed condition called CCD, it’s Creative Compulsive Disorder where I have to make stuff all the time, and with whatever I have around me, so if it’s trash, or junk, or things that people would normally throw away, I try to find new ways to re-fabricate them into something useful and beautiful.

A true hacker at heart. She’s worked on tons of different projects in many different fields, even doing special effects and prop work for a TV show.

Unfortunately it is with great sadness that we share her story, as she recently passed away in a hiking accident.

What we are specifically sharing is a short 5 minute documentary about [Zina] which was made by her close friend [Stormy Pyeatte] a few months earlier for a school project. In this past week [Pyeatte] has re-cut the footage in an attempt to capture her personality, creativity and to celebrate her memory. She succeeded tremendously, our heartstrings cannot lie.

It’s a beautiful video about a beautiful soul. We wish we could have met you [Zina].

Continue reading “Creative Compulsive Disorder: Zina Nicole Lahr” →

Instant Inkjet Circuits With Silver Nanoparticle Ink

December 5, 2013 by James Hobson 63 Comments

Researchers at the University of Tokyo, Georgia Tech and a team from Microsoft Research have developed a low-cost method of printing circuits using an ordinary inkjet printer using a technique called Instant Inkjet Circuits.

The hack is quite literally as simple as injecting a refillable printer cartridge with a commercially available Silver Nano-particle Ink. This allows the printing of circuits onto many different flexible substrates including paper, transparent film, or basically anything you can fit in the printer. Typically if the medium is designed for printing it will work. Some exceptions to this include canvas cloth, magnetic sheets, and transfer sheets.

The researchers chose a Brother inkjet printer because they typically have nozzles that eject higher volumes of ink than other printers. The exact model they used was the Brother DCP-J140w. To maximize ink deposition, all cartridges are filled with the ink, and printed using photo mode where the C M and Y cartridges are simultaneously used to create black. No special software is required to print.

The full article is well worth the read and shows many examples of the different applications this could be used for — including instant prototyping using nothing but scotch tape.

If anyone can source some of this ink and try it out we would love to hear from you! Those that can’t may want to give the old inkjet/laser toner etch resist trick a try.

[via Power Electronics]

LavaAMP Spectrum Analzyer

December 4, 2013 by James Hobson 15 Comments

lavaamp

Is your dusty Lava Lamp just not cool enough anymore? What if you could make it bubble to the music? [Christian] and [Eric] managed to do just that.

No, they aren’t regular Lava Lamps. In fact, they look like oversize jam jars, but the video of them in action is pretty cool! They designed and built this system for the UIST 2013 Student Innovation Contest, and while there isn’t too much information on the actual build, the contest required everyone to use the exact same kit. The kit consists of 8 aquarium pumps, a PumpSpark controller board, assorted tubing and fittings and an optically-isolated serial interface for use with an Arduino or another kind of microcontroller. From there, it’s pretty easy to guess the rest — analyzing the audio, and timing the pumps according to the various levels.

Other competition entries of note include an awesome game of WaterPong, a Water Bottle Bagpipe, and even an Xbox H2O!

Stick around after the break to see the LavaAMP bubble to the bass.

Continue reading “LavaAMP Spectrum Analzyer” →

Easy Capacitive Touch Sensors In Eagle

December 4, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 18 Comments

board

Capacitive sensing libraries for the Arduino and just about every other microcontroller platform have been around for ages now, but if you’d like to put a slightly complex cap sense pad in a PCB without a lot of work, you’re kind of out of luck. Not only do you need a proper education in how capacitors work, but a custom cap sense pad also requires some advanced knowledge of your preferred PCB layout program.

The folks over at PatternAgents have just the solution for this problem. They created an Eagle library of touch widgets that includes everything from buttons, linear and radial sliders, touchpads, and a whole lot more.

The simplest cap sense pad is just a filled polygon on the top layer of a board, but this simple setup isn’t ideal if you want to use Eagle’s autorouter. By playing with the restrict layers in Eagle, PatternAgents were able to create easy cap sense buttons that will work perfectly, without the problems of the autorouter placing traces willy-nilly.

There are more than enough parts to replicate a whole lot of touch interfaces – buttons can easily be made into a smallish keyboard, and the radial touch sensor will emulate the ‘wheel’ interface on an iPod. Very cool stuff, and we can’t wait to see these in a few more boards.