[Ashish] is bringing office warfare to the next level with a motion sensing water gun. Not only does this water gun automatically fire when it detects motion, but it also takes a photo of the victim and publishes it on Twitter.
This hack began with the watergun. [Ashish] used a Super Soaker Thunderstorm motorized water gun. He pulled the case apart and cut one of the battery wires. he then lengthened the exposed ends and ran them out of the gun to his control circuit. He also placed a protection diode to help prevent any reverse EMF from damaging his more sensitive electronics. The new control wires run to a MOSFET on a bread board.
[Ashish] is using a Lightblue Bean board as a microcontroller. The Bean is Arduino compatible and can be programmed via low energy Bluetooth. The Bean uses an external PIR sensor to detect motion in the room. When it senses the motion, it activates the MOSFET which then turns on the water gun.
[Ashish] decided to use Node-RED and Python to link the Bean to a Twitter account. The system runs on a computer and monitor’s the Bean’s serial output. If it detects the proper command, it launches a Python script which takes a photo using a webcam. A second script will upload that photo to a Twitter account. The Node-RED server can also monitor the Twitter account for incoming direct messages. If it detects a message with the correct password, it can use the rest of the message as a command to enable or disable the gun.


Before the group arrived, the native dinos didn’t do much else than run a preprogrammed routine when triggered by someone’s presence… which needless to say, lacks the appropriate prehistoric dynamism. Seeing that their dated wag, wiggle, and roar response could use a fresh breath of flair, the park’s technical projects coordinator [Mark Butler] began adapting one of the dinosaur’s control boxes to work with a Raspberry Pi. This is when [Lucy] and her group were called upon for a two-day long excursion of play and development. With help and guidance from Raspberry Pi expert, [Neil Ford], the group learned how to use a ‘drag and build’ programing environment called
A faulty wire, a discarded burning cigarette, or a left-on curling iron can trigger sparks of fire to engulf everything nearby until all that’s left is brittle mounds of smoldering ash. Which is why smoke detectors are so important. They are life saving devices that can wake people up sleeping inside, well before the silent, but deadly carbon monoxide starts to kick in. But what happens if no one is home, and the alarm begins to blare? The place burns down into the ground without the owners knowing.