Moisture Control For A DIY Greenhouse

July 6, 2011 by Mike Nathan 32 Comments

greenhouse_moisture_controller

[Clover] loves plant biology, and tends a small garden while she is at home during breaks from college. She says that her family is notoriously unreliable when it comes to caring for plants, so she decided to construct a greenhouse to ensure that her garden will still be around the next time she comes home.

With her raised bed garden built and her seeds planted, she started work on the greenhouse itself, which was constructed using PVC pipe and clear plastic sheeting. Satisfied with how the structure came out, she focused on the greenhouse’s watering system and moisture sensors. The watering system uses solenoids that are connected to a pair of Arduino regulated relays. The Arduino uses moisture sensors constructed from nails, triggering the water flow when things get too dry.

The controller along with its LCD status panel was mounted inside a bird house to protect it from the elements while keeping in line with the house’s decor. [Clover] seems pretty happy with the build, but we suspect she will be adding some temperature and regulation at some point, to facilitate longer growing cycles.

Check out the video below for a quick tour of her setup.

Continue reading “Moisture Control For A DIY Greenhouse” →

Paper Craft Claw

July 5, 2011 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

Grab some stiff paper and get to work building your own paper claw. [Dombeef] posted the instructions to recreate the claw above because he was unsatisfied with his previous design which was flimsy and unable to pick up just about anything. This version is a bit larger and it internalizes all of the parts.

Being paper craft, you don’t need much in the way of materials or tools. A push-pin makes holes for the paperclip and wire which serve as the pivot points. Glue and some tape hold the rest of assembly together. You can see a video of the final product after the break. A shaft at the center closes the claw when pulled, and opens it when pushed to opposite way. This makes it perfect for that home-made crane game (or was that a claw game?)… as long as you’re not trying to pick up anything too heavy.

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Fog Horn Built From Plumbing Supplies

July 4, 2011 by Mike Nathan 9 Comments

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Instructables user [rog8811] was looking to build a fog horn that resembled hand-pumped units found on small ships in the early to mid 1900s. His budget was a bit limited, so he set off to build the cheapest replica possible.

While the original horns were likely constructed from steel, copper and wood, he opted to use cheap plumbing components he found at his local hardware store. He used a simple double-acting air pump to drive the horn, combining it with a slightly modified bottle trap. The trap was shortened, and a diaphragm cut from a dish washing glove was added to generate sound.

He added a few more pieces of PVC piping to enhance the output, giving him the results you see in the video below. He says that the best thing about his design is the ability to easily tweak the pitch and volume of the horn by simply adding different drain components to the pump.

Watch out vuvuzela, there’s a new cheap and annoying horn on the block!

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Boobie Board Powered Twitter Notifier

July 1, 2011 by Mike Nathan 16 Comments

The team over at Archonix frequently challenge themselves to create a full working project in under 20 minutes. [Andrew Armstrong] put together a blog post detailing their most recent “Quickproject” – a simple Twitter notifier built using their Boobie Board.

They started by putting together a small notifier breakout module that could later be attached to their Boobie Board. The module is pretty simple and includes a trio of LEDs to alert you to activity across several online services, though only the Twitter notification module is currently complete. The notifier’s code was written in LUA, and primarily designed to interact with Linux desktops. They do not currently have a Windows compatible version of the code available, but they are more than happy to host it if someone desires to port their code over.

The notifier was put into an old candy tin with a plastic window, which is perfect fit for their project. All in all, the entire thing took them about 40 minutes, with half spent on hardware, half on code. The notifier does just what it was intended to do, but they have a healthy list of improvements that they would like to add, including the use of the other two notifier LEDs.

Flogo – A Floating Foam Logo Generator

July 1, 2011 by Mike Nathan 29 Comments

flogos_floating_foam_advertising

Check out this floating foam letter machine that was shown off at last year’s IFA show in Berlin, the German equivalent of CES. The contraption is called Flogos, and comes from a company named SnowMasters based out of Alabama.

The Flogos machine consists of a helium and compressed air bubble generator positioned below a custom stencil cutout. As the bubbles form, they are forced into a relatively tight formation as they exit the stencil. Once a nice thick layer is established, a small plastic arm is dragged across the surface, liberating the foam from the stencil allowing it to float through the sky as you can see in the video below.

We think it’s pretty cool, and we wouldn’t mind having one around just for kicks. If you were to lay some stencils over a tweaked version of this foam generator we featured last year, you could probably have your own floating foam printer up and running in no time.

Stick around to see the video from IFA that originally caught our attention.

[Thanks DMF]

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Tour Of Advanced Circuits – A PCB Manufacturer

June 29, 2011 by Jeremy Cook 16 Comments

Although not a hack in itself, many of you may be interested in seeing how a printed circuit board is made in the manufacturing world. This tour of Advanced Circuits does a good job of explaining the process. The article explains how a PCB will go through a CAD/CAM review, drilling, deburring, and the various chemical etch, plating, and curing processes.

Although many hackers make their own PCBs, having it professionally done can be a good option depending on how many copies are needed. One benefit of this is that PCBs can be checked by an optical inspection process, or even by a “flying lead” machine which works by contacting leads automatically in a computer controlled setup.

A video of this incredible machine is included after the break. Around 0:26 is when it really starts to get going. Continue reading “Tour Of Advanced Circuits – A PCB Manufacturer” →

The PixBoard

June 28, 2011 by Jeremy Cook 5 Comments

Many hacks are, of course, interesting in their own right. Hacks like this one, however, fulfill a much greater purpose by helping people overcome their disabilities. The PixBoard is “an illuminated board adapted for disabled people, especially for people with cerebral palsy, giving them access to games using shift technology.”

This device was developed for a girl that has cerebral palsy and can’t control her arms or legs effectively. In order to interact with the world more effectively to play board games and the like, this system was developed. The PixBoard scans an 8×8 matrix of LEDs allowing her to select the piece to be moved and where to move it. This is done using only simple buttons and the processor’s timer.

The system is controlled using an Arduino, so anyone is free to create their own games for this system depending on the situation. The following video is in Spanish, but shows this device in action around 1:20. Continue reading “The PixBoard” →