Hackaday Prize 2023: Hydrocleaner Nips Pollution In The Bud

October 6, 2023 by Kristina Panos 1 Comment

It’s unfortunate, but a lot of trash ends up in our rivers and, eventually, our oceans. Cleaning efforts can be costly and require a lot of human power. One of the ways to keep trash out from reaching the ocean is to attack it at the river level. That’s the idea behind [Xieshi Zhang]’s Hydrocleaner, a semi-autonomous river cleaning robot.

One current method for removing trash is by remote-controlled boats with nets attached. These typically travel in one direction, sort of sweeping left and right and probably missing trash in the process.

Hydrocleaner is capable of turning back and forth, ensuring a much more complete clean-up. The camera spots trash, and the twin-pontoon design allows it to flow easily between them and into the net behind. Currently, the brain behind this boat is a Jetson Nano, although this is a work in progress. The eventual idea is that the boat would navigate itself using GNSS guidance and would navigate toward the trash.

Of course, you could always fight trash with trash.

Printed Catamaran

June 15, 2021 by Al Williams 8 Comments

If you want to send some instruments out on the lake or the ocean, you’ll want something that floats. Sure, if you need to be underwater, or if you can fly over the water there are other options, but sometimes you want to be on the surface. For stability, it is hard to beat a catamaran — a boat with two hulls that each support one side of a deck. If that sounds like the ocean sensor platform of your dreams, try printing the one from [electrosync].

The boat looks super stable and has a brushless motor propulsion system. The design purpose is to carry environmental and water quality monitoring gear. It can hold over 5 kg of payload in the hull and there’s an optional deck system, although the plans for that are not yet included in the STL files.

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Targeting Rivers To Keep Plastic Pollution Out Of The Ocean

September 17, 2020 by Lewin Day 49 Comments

Since the widespread manufacture of plastics began in earnest in the early 1950s, plastic pollution in the environment has become a major global problem. Nowhere is this more evident than the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. A large ocean gyre that has become a swirling vortex full of slowly decaying plastic trash, it has become a primary target for ocean cleanup campaigns in recent years.

However, plastic just doesn’t magically appear in the middle of the ocean by magic. The vast majority of plastic in the ocean first passes through river systems around the globe. Thanks to new research, efforts are now beginning to turn to tackling the issue of plastic pollution before it gets out to the broader ocean, where it can be even harder to clean up.
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The Illuminated Waterways Of The United States

September 20, 2017 by James Hobson 8 Comments

A recent convert to the ways of the laser cutter, redditor [i-made-a-thing] was in want of a project and — stumbling on some waterways maps on Etsy — launched into fabricating an illuminated map of all the waterways in the United States.

The map itself was laser-cut out of 1/4 inch plywood at his local makerspace. Thing is, smaller rivers and tributaries were too narrow at the scale [i-made-a-thing] wanted, so he ended up spending several hours in Photoshop preparing the image so larger rivers would be laser-cut — and not break off– while the rest would be etched onto the surface. After testing the process by making a few coasters, he was ready to get started on the real deal.

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The Flow Of Time Draws On A River

November 30, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 23 Comments

river

You would think Hackaday would see more projects from public art exhibitions. They really do have everything – the possibility to mount electronics to just about anything in a way that performs interesting but an ultimately useless function. So far, though, [Richard Schwartz’s] Flow of Time is on the top of a very short list of public art installations we like.

The idea behind the build is a German phrase that means something similar to ‘time trickles away’. [Richard]’s project implements this by printing the current time onto the surface of a flowing river in [Richard]’s native Innsbruck.

The build uses five micro piezo pumps to dispense food coloring from a bridge. Every minute, an Arduino pumps this food coloring in a 5×7 pixel digit to ‘write’ the time onto the surface of a river.

Surprisingly, [Richard]’s installation doesn’t require much upkeep. The pumps only use about 70ml of food coloring a day, and the entire device – including the Raspi WiFi webcam – is solar powered with a battery backup.

You can see a video of the time printing on a river below.

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