Star Trek Inspired Pocket Doors

December 6, 2010 by Mike Szczys 60 Comments

Do you have enough confidence in your hacking abilities to build a project into the walls of your home? [Marc] used his skills to build an air-powered sliding door for his bedroom. It is similar to the sliding door you’d find on the Enterprise, two sections that slide nicely into the wall to let you pass. Although the picture above shows the internals, he followed through and ended up with a fully finished room that looks fantastic. A compressor in the attic provides the pressure necessary to move the door sections. It is automated, but uses a button press or keypad combination to run instead of detecting motion. Of course, since he’s using a PIC microcontroller to drive the system there’s always room for future changes. Check out how great the finished look is in the video after the break.

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Water-blob Launcher

December 3, 2010 by Mike Szczys 39 Comments

This rifle-shaped water cannon looks great and packs a big punch. We guess you could say that it’s a water balloon launcher, but the balloons are torn off and drop like the wad from a shotgun shell when fired. So we think this launches water blobs, or orbs, or something along those lines.

[Wolf] built it using PVC and some brass fittings that allow for the injection of compressed air. There’s a slick valve system that he developed which we don’t get a great look at in the build pictures. Fortunately, there’s an animated GIF that shows the various stages. Using his valve there’s no need for any electrical system like a lot of other pneumatic launcher systems use.

Just like the water-filled ping-pong gun, you’ve got to be careful with this thing. As you can see in the clip after the break there’s lethal force behind these projectiles. Especially when [Wolf] swaps out the water balloons for big steel darts.

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Build A Confetti Cannon For Your Next Party

November 8, 2010 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

[Scott] built a confetti canon to spice up the party. It’s pneumatic and re-purposes a fire extinguisher as the air tank. He had a refillable extinguisher that used water instead of chemical retardant. After emptying the water and ensuring all of the pressure had been release he swapped the hose and nozzle for a sprinkler solenoid valve. Securing the extinguisher’s actuator lever with a pipe clamp holds the internal valve open, leaving the solenoid to control the pressure release. This way the canon can be fired electronically, or manually.

This type of solenoid valve is a popular choice with pneumatic canons. We suppose you could even adapt this for use as a T-shirt cannon.

[Thanks BoBeR182]

My What A Large Capacitor Bank You Have

July 18, 2010 by Mike Szczys 43 Comments

[Daniel Eindhoven] put together this 11,344 Joule capacitor bank that he says would be perfect for weapons such as a rail gun, coil gun, or electrothermal-chemical gun. He machined a couple of aluminum plates to act as a positive and negative bus. The two are separated by a denuded sheet of PCB (making us wonder how he got the copper to peel off like that). Once charged there’s the little problem of how to discharge the system without getting bit, which [Daniel] solved by building a pneumatic switch. We didn’t find the test-fire footage very interesting but we did embed the demonstration of his switch after the break.

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Automatic Pneumatic Drum Kit

November 23, 2009 by Jake W 16 Comments

Move over Steve and PEART… there’s yet another robotic drummer in town. [Fauzii] tipped us off to his own MIDI-controlled creation – WizardFingers. According to him, WizardFingers is already capable of 64th note rolls at over 250 beats per minute. That’s on every drum simultaneously. Each drum is hit with a lever attached to a linear pneumatic actuator. A laptop running MAX/MSP generates MIDI sequences, which are sent to Doepfer MTC64 board. All of these actuators are hooked up to the board, which sets them off in sequence.

[Fauzii] ultimately hopes to develop AI software that will allow WizardFingers to compose its own tunes on not only a drum kit, but bar chimes and an organ as well. His site documents the whole concept quite well (just watch out for wild cats).

Halloween Props: Skeleton Springs From Coffin

October 23, 2009 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

skeleton-from-coffin

[Tony’s] trying to scare the kids again this Halloween. This year’s creation is a skeleton that springs up from a coffin. His creepy coffin is built from plywood and in the classic style it gets narrower at each end. Inside, there’s a full-sized rubber skeleton affixed to a 2×4. Pneumatic rams are used to lift the lid and spring forth the skeleton from the dead.

He’s planned his performance well. The finished system uses a fog machine and looped audio for ambiance. A motion sensor detects innocent victims approaching, kills the music, opens the coffin lid, and adjusts the lighting. The coffin is right next to the door so when the doorbell is pushed and the skeleton springs upright this should scare the bejesus out of you. See how effective this in the video after the break. Continue reading “Halloween Props: Skeleton Springs From Coffin” →

Halloween Props: Low Cost Popup

October 5, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 3 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJoedH9thds]

[Backroads] has put together this nicely detailed writeup explaining how to make a low cost popup prop. He’s using a single pneumatic valve and a home made PVC piston to raise and lower a scary mask. He’s using an off-the-shelf 110v AC valve controller to control the valve. A flickering light, a “screamer” and a fog machine help fill out the project. The result is quite nice. We would be tempted to put a pressure sensor in front of it to optimize the scare timing.