pressure

35 Articles

Printing With Pressure

June 4, 2010 by 17 Comments

The video of [Thibault Brevet’s] printer makes it look like he’s actually designed a vinyl cutter (watch it after the break). But at the end of the printing process you see that the top layer was actually a piece of carbon copy paper and the magic was happening underneath. The print head applies enough pressure to transfer the blue-ish printing ink onto the paper giving the result seen above. He’s driving this with an Arduino and feeding data using Processing.

[Thibault] left this link in the comments from the LEGO printer post. Shame on him for not tipping us off as soon as he posted info on this hack. Don’t underestimate yourselves, if you hack it we want to hear about it!

Continue reading “Printing With Pressure” →

Theo Jansen: Like The Professor From Gilligan

March 24, 2010 by 56 Comments

[Theo Jansen] is building lifeforms that will live and thrive on the beach. He calls them StrandBeest and uses PVC electrical conduit, plastic tubing, and lemonade bottles as building material. The many-legged creations are amazingly advanced, able to count steps, sense and flee from the water’s edge, and protect themselves from high wind. He gave a TED talk back in 2007 that we’ve embedded after the break; it’s uncanny. See examples of his creations using fans and sails to store wind energy as compressed air in the lemonade bottles, then use that pressure for locomotion. He also demonstrates a binary step counter and water sensor. Continue reading “Theo Jansen: Like The Professor From Gilligan” →

Keep Tabs On Your Car Without OBD-II

March 16, 2010 by 37 Comments

[Steve] let us know about his MultiDisplay car monitoring system. Unlike traditional systems that rely on interfacing with the OBD-II protocol and existing car computer, the MultiDisplay uses an Arduino and custom shield with a combination of sensors; including temperatures, pressures, throttle, Boost, and etc. The data collected can then be displayed on a 20×4 LCD or streamed to a PC with visualization and event recording.

It’s nice to see half a years worth of work finally be complete and presented in such a clean and professional manner, keep up the good work [Steve]

Live High Altitude Balloon Launch

January 21, 2010 by 22 Comments

[Terry] is planning to launch his high altitude balloon within the next few days. As we’ve seen before he has gone for a general setup – GPS tracking, environment sensors including temperature and humidity and pressure, and 2 on board cameras – all with an expected height of about 100,000 feet. What makes this project unique is the transmission of live telemetry data to a Google Maps or Google Earth interface.

The planned launch date is Sunday the 24th about 00:00 UTC so long as the Civil Aviation Safety Approval for the launch is passed.

As a final note [Terry] wanted to let inspiring balloon launchers to check out the UK High Altitude Society – who have been an invaluable source of information.

Pinch Control2: Laser Drawing

September 28, 2009 by 4 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uXIqQxarYI]

[atduskgreg] posted this cool looking rig.  That’s a batting glove, chopped up and equipped with a flex sensor and a pressure sensor. The end goal was to create a new method of drawing. You can see he’s interfaced with the servos decently. It seems fairly responsive and intuitive. Looking at his results though, make us wonder if all that effort was worth it. We would probably apply this rig to some kind of animatronics.

SparkFun Kegerator Goes To Eleven

September 10, 2009 by 19 Comments

sparkfun-kegerator

It started with a simple need: keep tabs on SparkFun Electronics’ in-house kegerator so the beer won’t run out at inopportune times. But of course SparkFun and “simple need” make strange bedfellows…throw beer in the mix, and you know this can’t end well. The result, as you might imagine, reads like a who’s-who of electronics hackery buzzwords.

Arduino? Check. Custom PCB? Check. Web interface? Check. Twitter feed? Check.

They’ve assembled a nice build tutorial on how this all went together, including code, example circuits, an explanation of some of the sensors used, and links to other tutorials for such things as Twittering and persistent storage in EEPROM using Arduino. Not to mention the eye candy: a custom Arduino shield (solder mask and all), custom acrylic tap handle, custom SparkFun pint glasses. They never do anything halfway, do they?