We Made It Into The RedBull Creation Finals!

July 11, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 13 Comments

We are quite happy to announce that we’ve made it into the next round of the Red Bull Creation contest. Our entry was fairly simple, but just amusing enough to get us by. I’m assembling my team here in springfield missouri at Squidfoo as well as setting up some full time Skype sessions with writers elsewhere.

We currently have no idea what the topic will be, but we do know that we will have 72 hours to complete it, starting the 19th. Red Bull will be filming the entire process so you can watch as we build. We are not a well trained team and we are all very strongly opinionated. We’ll be lucky if we complete anything in that time!

I’d like to address a couple common thoughts:

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Laser-charged Glow In The Dark Message Board

July 10, 2012 by Mike Szczys 3 Comments

This entry in the Red Bull Creation contest uses a laser to charge up a glow-in-the-dark message board. The concept is something we’ve seen several times before. Since light can excite a phosphorescent surface, moving pixels of light over that surface leaves a fading trail. Most recently we saw a spinning ring message board. This contest entry is different in that the board is stationary and the print head moves.

It’s basically a two-wheeled robot with a laser diode which can swivel perpendicular to the direction of travel. In this way, the laser prints the rows, and the motion of the robot takes care of advancing the columns. Since laser light has incredible intensity it is able to excite the phosphors much more thoroughly than LEDs. So the message will last longer than that spinning ring project or this awesome turntable hack. Don’t miss the video after the break that shows off the hack along with a bag full of theatrics.

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Cool Master Advanced Beer Delivery System

July 9, 2012 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

The Cool Master is a beer delivery system which Innovation Thirst built as their qualifying entry for this year’s Red Bull Creation contest. It’s one of the best beer delivery concepts we’ve ever seen. Instead of tossing you a beer directly from the fridge, this offering brings the cold beverages directly to you. It even manages to de-cap the bottles before serving.

Mobility is provided by a six-wheeled base which allows for a zero-turn radius. The cooler acts as the body of the robot, and hides a hopper which carries a stock of bottles on their sides. When you want a beer, the bot approaches you, tilts the next bottle to the upright position, removes the cap, then raises the vessel on a beer elevator until it pushes its way through the rubber orifice in the cooler’s lid. Right now the device is operated using an RC controller, but there’s always room for adding autonomy and the ability to restock from a refrigerator. Don’t miss the demo video after the break.

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Tug Of War… With Your Mind, Man!

July 8, 2012 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

Challenge your friends to a little mental Tug of War thanks to the Omaha Maker Group’s Red Bull Creation contest entry. The power struggle is all in your mind, and can only be won if you’re able to concentrate deeply and quickly. The headsets worn by each competitor monitor brain waves over a ten second window. If you concentrate more deeply than your opponent they’ll get a squirt of water in the face. If no one is concentrating well the contest is a draw the measurements start again. The screenshot above was taken from the test footage found after the break.

Hardware details are scant on this one. Obviously the Bullduino is the centerpiece of the build, taking readings from the headsets. A motor moves the water nozzle along a slit cut in the top of the sphere. Progress during the 10-second window is displayed by that nozzle, which starts in the center yellow ‘safe’ zone and moves to one side or another to enter the green ‘kill’ zone.

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CNC Zen Gardening

July 6, 2012 by Mike Szczys 9 Comments

The Harford Hackerspace in Baltimore, Maryland just went public with the zen garden they built for the Red Bull Creation contest. It’s a CNC creation that will help ease your frustration with that DIY 3d printer that you just can’t seem to get calibrated correctly.

On the hardware side the base of the machine serves as a sandbox. Finding the correct grain size of the medium was one of the more difficult parts of the build. The stylus is driven along three axes using a gantry common in CNC builds. The pulleys and some brackets were 3d printed, with the remained of the brackets being laser cut from wood. The Bullduino commands the stylus via a stepper motor control board, and drives the LEDs via a bank of MOSFETs. Limiting switches were also included to ensure an error didn’t result in damage to the device.

After the break you can see a build montage put to one of the greatest 8-bit game soundtracks of all time. The one thing we wish they would have shown is the built-in leveling bar that is responsible for “erasing” the garden.

Update: The Harford Hackerspace members came through with a new video that shows the ‘erasing’ process. You’ll find it after the break.

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Automatic Beverage Delivery System

July 5, 2012 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

Members of theTransistor, a Provo, Utah based Hackerspace, are showing off their entry in the Red Bull Creation contest. This is an all-in-one energy drink delivery system. It can take a warm can of Red Bull from a reserve rack and turn it into a chilled cup of goodness in no time. And it (kind of) cleans up after itself too!

The process starts when a can is opened by lancing it through the side walls. At the upper right corner of the rig you can see the apparatus that is responsible for this beverage extraction technique. The drink drains from the newly created openings into a funnel below. It then enters a heat exchanger the team built by surrounding an aluminum pipe with several copper pipes. The copper has ice water circulating through them from the orange bucket that serves as the reservoir. By the time the drink gets to the cup on the bottom left it is ready to drink. The empty can is crush, falling into a bin and making space for the next in the 16-can backup supply.

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The Most Surprising Game Of Simon You’ve Every Played

July 4, 2012 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

How does one take a game of Simon and make it extremely awesome? The folks at the North Street Labs — a Hackerspace in Portsmouth, Virginia — have found the secret and it’s all in the execution. They turned this chair-desk into a coin-operated Simon game that hides a huge surprise.

We suppose you should be able to guess the secret. Most coin-operated sidewalk attractions are rides, and so is this. As their Red Bull Creation entry the team built a base for the desk around a 2000 Watt floor buffer. These are the kind of things that you’d see a janitor in the 1980’s using to polish the tiles of your middle-school. This one just happens to shake the bejesus out of a player who makes a mistake. To help suck you into the game this won’t happen right away. You have to make it past at least four rounds before making the mistake.

The rest of the game is as expected. The playing area is nicely milled from a piece of wood with acrylic windows serving as the buttons. Apparently the biggest problem with that part of the build is finding a way to hold everything together despite the intense vibrations. See for yourself in the clip after the break.

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