Blowing Rings With Cannons, Fogs, And Lasers

May 23, 2018 by Sven Gregori 11 Comments

In today’s healthy lifestyle oriented world, blowing smoke rings won’t impress too many people anymore. Unless of course you are [NightHawkInLight] and blow them with a vortex cannon and add lasers for visual effects. Although, his initial motivation was to build a device that could shoot lost frisbees out off the trees in his backyard disc golf course, and as avid enthusiast of shooting things through the air using a propane torch, he opted for a vortex cannon to avoid the risk of injuries shooting a projectile may cause.

With safety in mind from the beginning, [NightHawkInLight] chose to build the cannon in ways that won’t expose him or people following his footsteps to any toxic fumes. The barrel is formed by securing a roll of terrace board and simply pulling it into a cone. A series of PVC pipes and adapters build the combustion chamber that fits the terrace board barrel on its one end, and the propane torch nozzle on its other end. For easier aim and stability, he also adds a tripod mount.

Since air vortices are, well, air, and therefore not visible by themselves, they don’t offer the most visual excitement. [NightHawkInLight] solved this with a fog machine attached to the barrel, and a laser line module, which you can see for yourself in his build video after the break. In a previous vortex cannon project we could also see a more outdoorsy approach to add visibility to it.
Continue reading “Blowing Rings With Cannons, Fogs, And Lasers” →

Prop WWII Machine Gun Courtesy Of Home Depot

May 16, 2018 by Tom Nardi 7 Comments

There’s perhaps nothing worse than working on a project and realizing you don’t have the part you need to complete it. You look through all your stuff twice, maybe three times, on the off chance it’s hiding somewhere. Perhaps even reach out to a few nearby friends to see if they might have something you can use. Forget local stores, what you need is so specific that nobody’s going to keep it in stock. You’re stuck, and now everything has to be put on hold.

That’s precisely what happened to [Nathan Cragun] recently. He needed a Japanese Type 96 Light Machine Gun for a particular scene in the independent World War II film he’s working on, and couldn’t find one anywhere. Out of options, he ended up building a replica with parts from the hardware store. OK, so it isn’t exactly like being short a passive component or two on that new PCB you’re putting together. But while we can’t say a project of ours has ever been short a 70+ year old Japanese machine gun, we can definitely relate to the feeling.

To start his build, [Nathan] printed out a full size diagram of the Type 96 and starting placing PVC pipes on top of it to get a sense for how it would all come together. Once the basic tubular “skeleton” of the weapon was completed, he moved on to cutting the rest of the parts out of EVA foam.

The major pieces that needed to be made were the stock and receiver, but even small details like the spiral ribbing on the barrel and the sights were created to scale using pieces of foam. In a particularly nice touch, [Nathan] even made the magazine removable. If we had to guess, some Japanese soldiers will be shown reloading the weapon onscreen for added authenticity.

The important thing to remember with a filming prop like this is that it doesn’t need to look perfect, just close. It might be used in the background, or seen only for a second during a fast pan. Even in professionally produced TV and movies, many of the props are little more than carved foam. With the excellent job [Nathan] did painting and weathering this build, we have no doubt it will look completely believable in the final production.

We’re no strangers to prop builds here at Hackaday, but they are generally of the science fiction or video game variety, so a historical build is a nice change of pace.

AH-1 Cobra Tap Handle Pours On The Fun

May 7, 2018 by Tom Nardi 19 Comments

Ayn Rand said, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.” As far as we’re concerned those are words to live by, and something that’s exemplified by most of the posts on this site. She also said some really suspect stuff about the disabled and Native Americans and reality, but you’ve got to take the good with the bad and all that.

We don’t know how much Rand [Will Weber] has read, but we’re willing to bet he’d agree about overdoing it. He recently documented a very cool 3D printed tap handle that’s designed to look like the B8 flight stick from an AH-1 Cobra helicopter. But this is no static piece of plastic, in the video after the break, he demonstrates how each button on the flight stick triggers a different weapons sound effect.

The 3D print is separated up into a number of sections so that the stick can be assembled in pieces. Not only does this make it an easier print, it also allows for the installation of the electronics.

For the Arduino aficionados out there, we have some bad news. Rather than putting in a general purpose microcontroller, [Will] went the easy route and used an Adafruit Audio FX Mini Sound Board. These boards have their own onboard storage for the audio files and don’t require a microcontroller to function. It makes it super easy to add sound effects or even music to your projects; just pair it with a power supply, a couple of buttons, and a speaker.

The finish work on the printed parts looks excellent. We can only imagine how much fun [Will] had sanding inside all the little nooks and crannies to get such a smooth final result. While some might complain about the idea of a tap handle needing to be recharged occasionally, we think the satisfaction of firing off a few rockets every time you grab a glass is more than worth it.

While this isn’t the first unique tap handle we’ve covered here at Hackaday, it’s certainly the most flight-ready. Continue reading “AH-1 Cobra Tap Handle Pours On The Fun” →

Colossal Hydraulic Hulkbuster Is Classic Colin Furze

May 3, 2018 by Ben James 14 Comments

[Colin Furze] is back at it – once again shrugging off the confines of feasibility and laughing in the face of sanity, all whilst sporting the signature tie with unrivalled style.

Teaming up with [James Bruton], the result of their collective talent this time is a hydraulic hulkbuster suit, at a frankly ridiculous scale. This is the third and final episode of the build process, with the first two covering the legs and body.

To demonstrate the strength of his latest toy, [Colin] tapes himself to the arm of his creation and promptly gets swung into a wall. We still don’t entirely understand how [Colin] survives his antics, but we’re very glad he does.

The steel frame is a masterclass in welding and fabrication, providing support for three hydraulic pumps, the accompanying rams, some seriously hefty bearings (think 1 m diameter), and one Colin. As if a giant moving steel behemoth wasn’t enough, each arm houses a weapon: a flamethrower and a power-fist. All parts are sourced from eBay.

The control electronics and 3D-printed skin are pretty nifty too – you can see [James]’s first video here.

We’re hard pressed to pick our favourite Furze projects, but we have to mention the flamethrower guitar and hoverbike.

Continue reading “Colossal Hydraulic Hulkbuster Is Classic Colin Furze” →

Training The Squirrel Terminator

April 30, 2018 by Tom Nardi 31 Comments

Depending on which hemisphere of the Earth you’re currently reading this from, summer is finally starting to fight its way to the surface. For the more “green” of our readers, that can mean it’s time to start making plans for summer gardening. But as anyone who’s ever planted something edible can tell you, garden pests such as squirrels are fantastically effective at turning all your hard work into a wasteland. Finding ways to keep them away from your crops can be a full-time job, but luckily it’s a job nobody will mind if automation steals from humans.

[Peter Quinn] writes in to tell us about the elaborate lengths he is going to keep bushy-tailed marauders away from his tomatoes this year. Long term he plans on setting up a non-lethal sentry gun to scare them away, but before he can get to that point he needs to perfect the science of automatically targeting his prey. At the same time, he wants to train the system well enough that it won’t fire on humans or other animals such as cats and birds which might visit his garden.

A Raspberry Pi 3 with a cheap webcam is used to surveil the garden and detect motion. When frames containing motion are detected, they are forwarded to a laptop which has enough horsepower to handle the squirrel detection through Darknet YOLO. [Peter] recognizes this isn’t an ideal architecture for real-time targeting of a sentry turret, but it’s good enough for training the system.

Which incidentally is what [Peter] spends the most time explaining on the project’s Hackaday.io page. From the saga of getting the software environment up and running to determining how many pictures of squirrels in his yard he should provide the software for training, it’s an excellent case study in rolling your own image recognition system. After approximately 18 hours of training, he now has a system which is able to pick squirrels out from the foliage. The next step is hooking up the turret.

We’ve covered other automated turrets here on Hackaday, and we’ve seen automated devices for terrifying squirrels before, but this is the first time we’ve seen the concepts mixed.

Milspec Teardown: AH-64A Apache Data Entry Panel

April 30, 2018 by Tom Nardi 93 Comments

It’s time once again to see how those tax dollars are spent, this time in the form of a “Data Entry Keyboard” manufactured by Hughes Helicopters. This device was built circa 1986 or so, and was used in the AH-64A Apache. Specifically, this panel would have been located by the gunner’s left knee, and served as a general purpose input device for the Apache’s Fire Control System. Eventually the Apache was upgraded with a so-called “glass cockpit”; consolidating various vehicle functions into a handful of multi-purpose digital displays. As such, this particular device became obsolete and was pulled from the active Apache fleet.

The military vehicle aficionados out there may know that while the Apache is currently a product of Boeing, it was originally designed by Hughes Helicopter. In 1984, McDonnell Douglas purchased Hughes Helicopter and took over production of the Apache, and then McDonnell Douglas themselves were merged with Boeing in 1997.

So it’s somewhat interesting that this device bears the name of Hughes Helicopter, as of the time it was manufactured, they would have been known as McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Systems. Presumably they had to work through existing stock of components that already had Hughes branding on them, leaving some transitional examples such as this one.

But you didn’t come here for a history lesson on the American military-industrial complex, you want to know about the hardware itself. So let’s crack it open to see what we can learn about this piece of aviation history.

Continue reading “Milspec Teardown: AH-64A Apache Data Entry Panel” →

Firing Bullets Through Propellers

April 25, 2018 by Steven Dufresne 39 Comments

Early airborne combat was more like a drive-by shooting as pilot used handheld firearms to fire upon other aircraft. Whomever could boost firepower and accuracy would have the upper hand and so machine guns were added to planes. But it certainly wasn’t as simple as just bolting one to the chassis.

This was during World War I which spanned 1914 to 1918 and the controllable airplane had been invented a mere eleven years before. Most airplanes still used wooden frames, fabric-covered wings, and external cable bracing. The engineers became pretty inventive, even finding ways to fire bullets through the path of the wooden propeller blades while somehow not tearing them to splinters.

Continue reading “Firing Bullets Through Propellers” →