Interactive Office Conference Table (Tableduino)

October 4, 2013 by James Hobson 8 Comments

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The folks over at One Mighty Roar have been hacking their office lately, and there have been some pretty creative results! The latest development is this interactive office conference table.

The table itself is made of fine American walnut and is quite appealing, but they wanted it to be a bit flashier than that.

The center square of the table features the company logo lit up by RGB LED’s, and the whole thing lifts out of the table using a small hydraulic actuator. This reveals some power outlets and ethernet jacks, but unfortunately the current system doesn’t have any safety precautions to make sure it doesn’t close on cables…

If that wasn’t enough, they wanted to automate the whole thing too, so there are also ultrasonic range sensors underneath which can detect when people are present — the end goal is to have the LEDs change color depending on how many people attend a meeting. This is all controlled by an Arduino Uno — but we have to wonder, isn’t there a better way for detecting if people are sitting down? The project is far from done though, so there will be many more features to come.

One of their other cool office hacks includes their interactive office sign that is controlled both by SMS or web app.

Making A Bathymetric Book By Hand And Searching For An Easier Way

October 3, 2013 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

We first saw this Bathymetric Book at our local hackerspace, Sector67, quite some time ago. [Caroline Rose] gave a seven minute presentation on the project as part of the monthly meeting which is open to the public. You can get a pretty good feel for the book that includes a to-scale depth representation of Crater Lake in the introductory post which she recently published. Each page makes up one topographical ring of the lake. Put them all together and you’ve got a really amazing way to explore the watery depths of the deepest lake in the United States.

The book you see above is hand made. She downloaded the depth data from the US Geological Survey, then put it through some processing in order to print one elevation level on each page. That’s when the work really began. She cut out every page by hand! The four-plus hour task was grueling. And just for a bit of added punishment she even made a second book. But at Tuesday night’s follow-up presentation she said never again.

[Caroline] developed a much faster and still accurate technique for producing the bound-book depth maps. She is using a laser cutter and a different binding technique. By using folded packets of paper, rather than individual pages, she is able to cut out three double-sheets at once — including holes for the binding thread and the outline of the finished pages themselves. This cuts the process down to about four minutes of laser cutter time.

For now you’ll have to settle for a time-lapse video of the hand-cutting process (embedded below). But we hope to post an update when she makes more information about the laser-cut version available.

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DIY 250 Lb Thrust Liquid Oxygen/Kerosene Rocket

October 1, 2013 by James Hobson 28 Comments

Robert’s Rocket Project has been going on for a long time. It has been around so long that you can go all the way back to posts from 2001, where he talks about getting his first digital camera! The site is dedicated to his pursuit of liquid fueled rocket engine building. It’s a great project log and he has finally come to the point where he will be testing his first flight vehicle soon.

His latest project is a 250lbf regeneratively cooled engine. It uses kerosene as the fuel, and liquid oxygen as the oxidizer. The neat thing is he utilizes the temperature change of the liquid oxygen expanding to cool the chamber and nozzle before being burned. This allows for a very efficient and powerful combustion of the fuel. He has some videos of testing it on his site, we just wonder why he doesn’t host them on YouTube or something…

Anyhow, there’s more than enough info on his site to try and recreate some of his experiments, but perhaps you should start here instead: How to Design, Build and Test Small Liquid-Fuel Rocket Engines.

[Thanks Ray!]

DIY Soda Can Battery

September 30, 2013 by Marsh 18 Comments

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It may not be particularly useful to create some makeshift batteries out of soda and soda cans, but it’s a good introduction to electrodes and electrolytes as well as a welcomed break from lemons and potatoes. The gang at [Go-Repairs] lopped off the can’s lid and temporarily set the soda aside, then took steel wool to the interior of the can to remove the protective plastic coating. The process can be accelerated by grabbing your drill and cramming the steel wool onto the end of a spade bit, although pressing too hard might rip through the can.

With the soda poured back in, you can eek out some voltage by clipping one lead to the can and another to a copper coin that’s dunked into the soda. Stringing along additional cans in series can scale up the juice, but you’ll need a whole six pack before you can get an LED working—and only just. The instructions suggest swapping out the soda for a different electrolyte: drain cleaner, which can pump out an impressive 12 volts from a six pack series. You’ll want to be careful, however, as it’s likely to eat through the can and is one lid away from being dangerous.

Stick around for a quick video after the break, and if you prefer the Instructables format, the [Go-Repairs] folks have kindly reproduced the instructions there.

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Project Thumper Walkthrough

September 29, 2013 by James Hobson 29 Comments

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The Geek Group is at it again! Many years ago they built Project Thumper, a 1,600V @80,000A electrical impulse … well … “thumper”.

For those of you that don’t know, The Geek Group is the world’s largest not-for-profit Hackerspace. Lately they have been working on developing better videos for their YouTube channel, and have just released a stunning CGI animation of the build, operation, and explanation of Project Thumper.

So what is Project Thumper? In the simplest terms, it’s a giant capacitor, or more specifically, an entire server rack filled with capacitors. The Hackerspace uses it for experiments and demonstrations — but from the looks of their videos, they mostly just use it to blow things up, as shown in their 2008 Project Promo video. I think we would too. They even used it to blow up an iPhone! (Skip to 3:00 for the explosion). We think someone with a high-speed camera really needs to film Thumper in action!

The awesome CGI animation explanation of it is after the break.

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Electronics Everything Reference Poster

September 28, 2013 by James Hobson 47 Comments

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[Ben] just sent us this great reference sheet. It’s a poster he compiled of datasheets and various electronic references. He made it after spending too much of his time sifting through datasheets while working on projects. It also helped that he realized his school, Georgia Tech, had a poster printing service!

It contains the basics from resistor color codes, typical pinouts of various chips, current capacity of wire gauges, Arduino pinout diagrams, schematic symbols, trace widths for current capacity, and even typical coding functions!

The full image is 9,000 x 6,000 pixels and will print nicely at 30 by 20 inches, just shy of the ANSI D paper size. It’s 6.1MB so only click here if you want it!

Maybe if we ask nicely he’ll share the original MS Publisher file so we can tailor it to our individual needs! Some of the text in the images is a bit blurry, but everything is basically still readable.

Touring Component Markets In Shenzhen

September 28, 2013 by Mike Szczys 34 Comments

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[Al] recently returned from a trip to China. While there he toured some of the component markets in Shenzhen, the electronics assembly epicenter of the world. While he doesn’t focus too closely on what is actually being sold there, we found his description of the markets themselves and other notable attractions around the area quite interesting.

Shenzhen is different from some of the other component wonderlands we’ve heard about ([Ian Lesnet’s] tour of Akihabara in Japan comes to mind). First of all it may be a bit more difficult to get there. US Citizens need a Visa to enter China, and must fly to Hong Kong and take a ferry to the mainland. [Al] reports that the traffic is horrendous and rush-hour can turn a ten mile ride that usually takes ninety minutes into a three hour tour… a three hour tour!

The side affect of the market being out of the way is that the prices aren’t as inflated as they may be in more geek-tourist-friendly locations. That being said it also sounds like the vendors are interested in selling you a few thousand units rather than a single component. Follow the link at the top for the market tour, a stop at Seeed Studios (who will apparently sell you a map of the best markets to visit), and the rest of the attractions that [Al] encountered.