flamethrower

24 Articles

Protect Your Property With This Fire-Breathing Billionaire

November 12, 2022 by 16 Comments

Let’s face it: if you can’t trust a fire-breathing billionaire industrialist to protect your stuff, who can you trust? (Video, embedded below.)

This one is straight out of the Really Bad Ideas™ files, and comes to us from [Marc Radinovic]. His story on this one is that he wants to protect the stuff in his new house, and felt that a face-recognition system with a flame thrower would be the best way to address that. And to somehow make it even better, said system would be built into a ridiculous portrait of everyone’s favorite plutocrat. The guts of the system are pretty much what you’d expect — a camera and a Raspberry Pi running OpenCV and a face recognition library, a butane reservoir and a solenoid valve, an arc lighter as an ignition source, and an Arduino and some completely not sketchy at all wiring to control all pieces. And LCD displays for [Elon]’s eyes, of course.

The system is trained to recognize [Marc]’s face and greets him cheerfully when he’s in view. [Non-Marc] people, however, are treated a bit less accommodatingly, up to and including a face-melting fireball. Effigies of other billionaires got the treatment; strangely, [Marc]’s face-recognition algorithm didn’t even recognize another [Mark] as a human face, which when you think about it is pretty darn funny.

So, certainly not a practical security system, and definitely not something you should build, but it’s pretty good fun anyway. It reminds us a bit of the fire-breathing duck we saw years ago.

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A circular wheeled robot sits on a white background. There is a green tank of butane/propane in the center surrounded by wires and electronics.

Doomba: Purifying Your Floors With Fire

October 4, 2022 by 8 Comments

If you’ve ever thought that your floor cleaning robot eating the fringe on your rug wasn’t destructive enough, [Kyle Brinkerhoff] is working on a solution — Doomba.

This blazingly fast RC vehicle has a tank of butane/propane gas nestled snugly amid its electronics and drive system to fuel a (not yet implemented) flamethrower. Watching how quickly this little bot can move in the video below certainly made our hearts race with anticipation for the inevitable fireworks glory of completed build. Dual motors and a tank-style drive ensure that this firebug will be able to maneuver around any obstacle.

As of writing, the flamethrower and an updated carriage for the drivetrain are underway. Apparently, spinning very quickly in circles can be just as disorienting for robots as it is for us biological beings. During the test shown below, the robot kicked out one of its drive motors. [Kyle] says the final touch will be putting the whole assembly inside an actual Roomba shell for that authentic look.

With spooky season upon us, it’s always good to have the cleansing power of fire at hand in case you find more than you bargained for with your Ghost-Hunting PKE Meter. While there’s no indication whether Doomba can actually run DOOM, you might be interested in this other Doomba Project that uses Roomba’s maps of your house to generate levels for the iconic shooter.

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Mind-Controlled Flamethrower

May 12, 2021 by 16 Comments

Mind control might seem like something out of a sci-fi show, but like the tablet computer, universal translator, or virtual reality device, is actually a technology that has made it into the real world. While these devices often requires on advanced and expensive equipment to interpret brain waves properly, with the right machine learning system it’s possible to do things like this mind-controlled flame thrower on a much smaller budget. (Video, embedded below.)

[Nathaniel F] was already experimenting with using brain-computer interfaces and machine learning, and wanted to see if he could build something practical combining these two technologies. Instead of turning to an EEG machine to read brain patterns, he picked up a much less expensive Mindflex and paired it with a machine learning system running TensorFlow to make up for some of its shortcomings. The processing is done by a Raspberry Pi 4, which sends commands to an Arduino to fire the flamethrower when it detects the proper thought patterns. Don’t forget the flamethrower part of this build either: it was designed and built entirely by [Nathanial F] as well using gas and an arc lighter.

While the build took many hours of training to gather the proper amount of data to build the neural network and works as the proof of concept he was hoping for, [Nathaniel F] notes that it could be improved by replacing the outdated Mindflex with a better EEG. For now though, we appreciate seeing sci-fi in the real world in projects like this, or in other mind-controlled projects like this one which converts a prosthetic arm into a mind-controlled music synthesizer.

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Aladdin Lamp Shoots Flames With A Snap Of Your Fingers

May 13, 2020 by 4 Comments

Despite their dangers, even Marie Kondo would not convince us to abandon flamethrower projects because they literally spark joy in us. To make this flame shooting Aladdin lamp [YeleLabs] just used a 3D printer and some basic electronics.

The lamp body consists of two 3D-printed halves held together by neodymium magnets. They house a 400 kV spark generator, a fuel pump plus tank, and a 18650 Li-ion battery. The fuel pump is actually a 3 V air pump but it can also pump liquids at low pressure. As fuel [YeleLabs] used rubbing alcohol that they mixed with boric acid to give the flame a greenish tint. The blue base at the bottom of the lamp houses the triggering mechanism which magically lights up the lamp when you snap your fingers. This is achieved by a KY-038 microphone module and KY-019 relay module connected to a Digispark ATTiny85 microcontroller. When the microphone signal is above a certain threshold the relay module will simultaneously switch on the spark generator and fuel pump for 150 ms.

Although they proclaim that the device is a hand sanitizer it is probably safer to stick to using soap. The project still goes on the list of cool flamethrower props right next to the flame shooting Jack-o-Lantern.

Video after the break.

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This Ugly Christmas Sweater Can Set You On Fire

January 11, 2020 by 9 Comments

While Christmas may have just passed, there’s just enough time left in winter to justify wearing your ugly Christmas sweaters for a few more days. If you’re not one of the lucky ones with an old sweater from Grandma, you can still turn your least favorite sweater into the most epic flame-throwing Christmas sweater there ever was.

[JAIRUS OF ALL], maker of explosive and other dangerous ideas, came up with a DIY ugly Christmas sweater that shoots flames on command. In order to produce the flame-throwing effect, he uses piping from a fish tank airline hose with a T connector attached to one end and epoxied to the middle of the sweater. The piping runs down the sweater to a can of butane fuel that he can control from the nozzle. Once the fuel is being released, he uses a lighter to initiate the flames from the sweater.

The flames are quite impressive, so definitely use caution if you intend to replicate this build in any way. It would be helpful to have a friend with a CO2 fire extinguisher nearby as well.

For a less life-threatening build, fellow builder [Price] created a Christmas tree-themed sweater lined with LEDs and USB-powered figurines, connected to a power supply in his pocket.

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It’s Never Too Early To Prepare For Halloween: With Flamethrowers

May 10, 2019 by 3 Comments

Using a legitimate flamethrower is on the bucket list for a lot of us. Even Elon Musk got into the action with his Not-A-Flamethrower flamethrower. For the rest of us non-billionaires though, we have to come up with clever reasons to build our own like “Halloween is only six months away”. [HandsomeRyan] took this approach six months ago to great effect, and recently released the files on Thingiverse for us all to enjoy.

The cover for building this project was making a Jack-o-Lantern shoot flames out of its face on-demand. The build is based around a car door locking solenoid, which has plenty of kick for applications like this. [HandsomeRyan] upgraded his old wood design with fancy 3D-printed parts which, with the help of the solenoid, deliver a blast of flammable material across a candle inside the Jack-o-Lantern via an aerosol can hidden in the pumpkin.

Part of the elegance of this project is that a car door locking solenoid is typically controlled by remote, meaning that if you want this to be remote-controlled the work has already been done for you. If you need a more timely excuse for building one of these, the Fourth of July is a little bit closer, which should work in a pinch as an excuse to build something crazy even if you’re not American.

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Henry The Hoover Gets A Weapons Upgrade

December 1, 2018 by 12 Comments

In this day and age of unprecedented military expenditure, we’re used to seeing weapons upgrades across all manner of war fighting hardware – tanks, helicopters, attack aircraft, you name it. We’re somewhat less accustomed to seeing the same on a domestic appliance. Regardless, we now have Henry the Hoover packing some serious heat.

Originally a mere vacuum cleaner, Henry was given movement through two motors and gearboxes sourced from a children’s ride on vehicle. A tank was created out of copper pipe to store the flammable gas (which appears to be butane, as used in cigarette lighters), and discharge is controlled with a solenoid valve. Ignition is then handled by a pair of electric ignitors fired by relay. It’s all controlled over a standard hobby radio controller, so you can stand at a safe distance while flambeeing your rug.

It’s a dangerous project, but one that is particularly fun when Henry’s dazed and amused countenance is taken into account. But then again, you might like your flamethrowers wrist mounted, instead. Video after the break.

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