Data Scraping And Visualization With Python

April 27, 2011 by Mike Nathan 8 Comments

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[Greg] built himself a small indicator dial with his laser cutter, and wanted to use it for visualizing server performance and load information. Before he started using it for server monitoring however, he thought he should test out his data parsing skills on a simpler data set.

Pachube has a wealth of information that can be freely used for whatever project you might have in mind, so [Greg] started looking around for something interesting to track. Eventually he located the data feed for a tanker ship and wired his dial to display the ship’s speed. He uses a Python script to interface with the Pachube API, which is fed to his Netduino board. A servo motor then changes the position of the dial based on the feed’s data. Since large tankers don’t change speed often, the experiment was a bit of a letdown. He searched for a bit and tuned into another feed that tracked wind speed in New Zealand, getting much better results.

His future plans include hooking it directly to his network and eventually using it to monitor his servers…at least once the novelty of tracking random data feeds wears off.

All of his code is available on GitHub, and he is happy to make a gauge for anyone who is interested, though he doesn’t currently list a price.

Color-matching Powder Coat Paints

April 26, 2011 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

[Zitt] is sharing some methods he’s honed for color-matching powder coat paint. He developed these techniques while restoring a 1982 Star Trek coin-op machine. The image above shows a paddle used for the game. The plate that houses the control was beat up, and he needed to repaint it but wanted to make sure it didn’t look out-of-place with the molded plastic that surrounds it.

He gets his powder paints from Harbor Freight, a favorite depot for hackable goods (like drill motors, or metal carts). Usually these paints would be applied by attracting them to the piece using electrostatic charges. [Zitt’s] not doing that, but applying them with a paint sprayer instead.

The first step is to match your color. He’s using an electronic color matching device which gives data to plug into a chart on the web for a color match. Once you’ve got a formula, mix up the powder coat, and then dissolve it into some Methyl Ethyl Ketone. This goes into the spray gun and is applied in an even coat. Before heading into an oven for curing, it’s important to wait for this coat to dry. [Zitt] observed some boiling MEK on a wet test piece that left an undesirable texture on the baked paint after curing. After running a few test pieces he picked the blend that was the best match and then painted all of his restored parts.

Motorcycle Turned Chicken Launcher

April 25, 2011 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

Those who frequently work with them will tell you that rubber chickens are actually pretty heavy. You’re not going to do much damage chucking them by hand and that’s why you need your own rubber chicken launcher. This most-excellent magazine-fed foul-flinger was built by artist [Sean Pace] as a senior project while working toward his fine arts degree at UNC Asheville. He reused the rear end of a motorcycle, purposing the spinning wheel to grab the birds out of an in-feed channel and fling them much like a mechanical football launcher would. It kind of makes us wonder if you could do the same thing with a pneumatic football launcher?

[Sean’s] contraption is built on a stationary base, but in the video after the break you can see it firing from a flatbed truck. Seems somewhat like a whimsical warthog if you’re a Halo fan.

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DIY Resin Cast Project Box

April 25, 2011 by Mike Nathan 26 Comments

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[Rhys] wrote in to share a custom project box he built from scratch using polyester resin. He states that in New Zealand, he tends to have problems finding the perfect project box. They are typically too big or small to get the job done, so he figured he might as well just build his own to spec.

Using Google SketchUp, he designed his ideal project box, then got busy building wooden molds. He scored some free melamine scraps from a local company, which he used to build the base of his molding rig. Once the inner and outer molds were built, he secured them to his base and mixed up some polyester resin.

A few hours later, he pulled apart his molds and smoothed out his project box with some sandpaper. He drilled and tapped screw holes, then prepared to make a lid and base for the box.

He admits that the process is quite involved, but there is something to be said for building yourself an enclosure made specifically for the project it is going to house. If you are looking to do something similar be sure to check out his blog – he offers up some sound resin casting tips, as well as some pitfalls to avoid.

Hacking Cakes With LEDs

April 23, 2011 by Mike Nathan 25 Comments

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A large part of science is making mistakes and learning from them in order to make each subsequent design that much better. When your experimentation involves hacking cakes, each failure is an exercise in deliciousness.

[Craig] and his group of research partners often bake electronics-related cakes whenever part of the team departs in search of other opportunities. Over the years, farewell parties have seen renditions of anything from multimeters to quantum computers. This time around, he wanted to make something that contained actual electronics parts, while still remaining edible.

He settled on making an LED matrix inside of a cake, using silver foil wrapped licorice for wires. In the end however, he found the silver foil to be incredibly difficult to work with, and the matrix ended up being little more than a few randomly blinking LEDs.

Even though things didn’t work out quite how he planned, he is not discouraged. The cake was still quite tasty, and through this process he has discovered edible silver paint, which will undoubtedly make it into the next farewell cake.

Laser Tripwire Water Balloon Prank

April 21, 2011 by Mike Nathan 8 Comments

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Even though it’s a bit late for April Fool’s jokes, [Ameres] wrote in to share a project guaranteed to catch your friends (or enemies) by surprise.

Like us, he had some old CD-ROM drives sitting around and thought that there must be some way to put them to good use. He gutted one, saving the laser’s carrier unit for use as his mechanical trigger. He placed the unit above a doorway, soldered a pin on to the end of the laser carrier, and positioned a water balloon at the end of the CD-ROM’s rails. The laser carrier’s motor was then connected to a photocell located about half way down the side of the door.

He mounted a laser on the far side of the door, which is pointed at the photocell. Once the laser beam is broken, the CD-ROM motor is actuated, popping the balloon over the unsuspecting victim.

It’s not the most high-tech prank out there, but how high tech does a water prank need to be? We just wonder how easy it would be to attach one of these things to our cube at work…

Have any ideas as to how he can make a bigger splash with his friends? Share them with us in the comments.

Measuring The ~10 Kiloamp Output Of A Large Capacitor Bank

April 21, 2011 by Mike Szczys 22 Comments

[Norman] put together a rather impressive 22,500 uF capacitor bank. In addition to find things to torture with the strong magnetic field generated by a sudden discharge, he’d like to measure the current pushed from the device. He’s found a way to do this using a digital storage oscilloscope. To protect the oscilloscope [Norman] built his own interface box that includes a 50x voltage divider, and interfaces a current sensor called a Rogowski coil. When it comes time to run the experiment, he turns the safety lock-out key on the bank charger, then discharges the stored potential with the flip of a switch.

Take a look at the video after the break to see soda cans and hard drive platters mangled by the device. The oscilloscope measures the output near 10 kA, giving [Norman] the data he set out to capture. He’s entered this project into the Tektronix contest where it’ll compete with the piano tuner and laser light show tester just to name a few.

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