Umbrella Antenna Protects You From Rain, But Not The Way You Think

November 16, 2023 by Dan Maloney 8 Comments

You never know when you’ll be called upon to [MacGyver] your way out of an emergency. We can’t imagine what kind of situation would call for whipping up a satellite ground station for NOAA weather satellites from junk, but hey, it could happen.

And when it does, you’ll be ready — as long as you have an umbrella, some foil tape, and various bits and bobs like wire and an RTL-SDR dongle. That’s what [saveitforparts] used for his field-expedient build, at least in the first instance; as you can imagine, builds like this take a lot of tweaking to get right. The umbrella and foil tape form the main reflector for the antenna, with a pie tin, a scrap of wire, and some random twigs being used to build the antenna’s helical feed. Attached to a SAWbird LNA/filter and an RTL-SDR plugged into a dodgy second-hand phone, he was able to get at least some kind of data from one of the GOES satellites, but it wasn’t great.

Switching the feed to a commercially available log periodic antenna worked much better, with some partial decodes of weather map data. Actually, getting anything at all with a setup like this is impressive enough for us to call it a win. It shows that the umbrella approach to antennas is valid; but then again, we already knew that.

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Shady Air Umbrella Given New Lease On Life

December 4, 2021 by Matthew Carlson 12 Comments

Many infamous Kickstarter projects have ultimately flopped or failed, leaving backers frustrated and angry. Often pitched with a splashy convincing video that happens to have critical components conveniently offscreen. [Allen Pan] was reminiscing about one such project, the air umbrella, and decide to redeem the project by making his own.

The basic idea of the air umbrella was a device that could create a cone of fast-moving air over your head to deflect air. Going off of the specs listed on the original Kickstarter page, [Allen] made a simple prototype that did nothing. Suspicions confirmed, he decided to keep going by buying a powerful electric leaf blower. A nozzle was 3d printed that could direct the air into the needed disc. Early testing with the mist function on a garden hose seemed promising, and they worked their way up to progressively larger raindrops.

Finally, the clouds of California smiled upon them, and it rained. [Allen] was ecstatic that his umbrella worked. He couldn’t hear much out of one ear as he was holding a leaf blower next to it for a few minutes, but it’s a small price to pay to stay dry with the Air Umbrella.

If you’re curious about more false Kickstarter claims, why not read up on this tiny Arduino compatible board making some dubious claims.

[Header image courtesy of Air Umbrella Kickstarter page]

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Failed: Air Umbrella

January 25, 2020 by Al Williams 43 Comments

About five years ago, a Kickstarter popped up for the air umbrella. It wasn’t long before the project fell apart and the company made at least some refunds. Old news, we know. But [The Action Lab] recently explored the physics behind the air umbrella and why it wouldn’t be very practical. (Video, embedded below.)

Notice we said not very practical, not unworkable. It is possible to shoot rain away from you by using pressurized air. The problem is you need a lot of air pressure. That means you also need a lot of battery. In particular, [The Action Lab] used a leaf blower and even with that velocity, there was only minimal water deflection. In other words, you are still going to get wet.

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The Umbrella That Tells You The Weather

December 25, 2018 by Lewin Day 12 Comments

Most people can tell you the various uses of the umbrella — it keeps the rain off, pokes sleeping train passengers awake, and can be used as an improvised defensive weapon when tension in the hot dog line reaches boiling point. A true Englishman would never deign to employ their brolly so imprudently, of course, but they might just give it an upgrade by packing in a full weather station.

Please do not message us to complain about the redundancy of a rain sensor on an umbrella.

The build uses the Particle Photon as the brains of the operation, interfacing it with several sensors. There’s a DHT11 to handle temperature and humidity measurement, an Adafruit barometric pressure sensor, along with a custom-built anemometer using a brushed motor with 3D printed wind cups. Finally, a breadboard is turned into a rain detector, based on the same principles as those used in automotive applications.

The Particle Photon uses WiFi to tether to a smartphone, deliver the collected data to the cloud via Adafruit IO. This enables the data to be collated and processed further on a PC. Yes, it’s 2018, and they have the internet on umbrellas now.

As we reach further into the depths of winter, it’s one project that could very much come in handy, and [The Gentlemen Maker] has been kind enough to share the code on Particle.io. If that’s not good enough, perhaps you could use your umbrella as a WiFi antenna. Video after the break.

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Hacker Maketh Kingsman Umbrella

September 15, 2017 by Inderpreet Singh 11 Comments

Yes! Someone made the Kingman umbrella and yes it can shoot and yes it has a display on the inside. [James Hobson] just put up a video on YouTube for this excellent project detailing the process that went into creating this live working prop and it is amazing.

The build starts with finding a rugged umbrella and was tested by standing on it as well as decimating a few household objects. Compress CO2 cartridges provide the fuel for propelling blow darts as well as other non-lethal forms of ammunition. The coolest part of the project is the screen inside the portable that allows you to see-through the dome. This is accomplished by a combination of a small camera and a portable mini projector. Simple yet awesome.

The camera is mounted near the muzzle whereas the projector is sliced-up and integrated into the grip. The handle in question is itself 3D printed and includes a custom trigger into the design. Check out the video for a demonstration of the project.

Movie props have a special place in every maker’s heart and this project is an excellent example of imagination meeting ingenuity. After seeing this video, security agencies are going to be giving umbrella owners some suspicious looks though creating own of your own could be a very rewarding experience. If you are looking for a more obvious prop, then check out the PiPBoy Terminal from Fallout which is sure to get everyone’s attention. Continue reading “Hacker Maketh Kingsman Umbrella” →

Umbrella Drones — Jellyfish Of The Sky

October 24, 2016 by Steven Dufresne 41 Comments

Mount an umbrella to a drone and there you go, you have a flying umbrella. When [Alan Kwan] tried to do just that he found it wasn’t quite so simple. The result, once he’d worked it out though, is haunting. You get an uneasy feeling like you’re underwater watching jellyfish floating around you.

A grad student in MIT’s ACT (Art, Culture and Technology) program, [Alan’s] idea was to produce a synesthesia-like result in the viewer by having an inanimate object, an umbrella, appear as an animate object, a floating jellyfish. He first tried simply attaching the umbrella to an off-the-shelf drone. Since electronics occupy the center of the drone, the umbrella had to be mounted off-center. But he discovered that drones want most of their mass in the center and so that didn’t work. With the help of a classmate and input from peers and faculty he made a new drone with carbon fiber and metal parts that allowed him to mount the umbrella in the center. To further help with stability, the batteries were attached to the very bottom of the umbrella’s pole.

In addition to just making them fly, [Alan] also wanted the umbrella to gently undulate like a jellyfish, slowly opening and closing a little. He tried mounting servo motors inside the umbrella for the task. These turned out to be too heavy, but also unnecessary. Once flying outside at just the right propeller speed, the umbrellas undulated on their own. Watch them doing this in the video below accompanied by haunting music that makes you feel you’re watching a scene from Blade Runner.

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Real World Race Track Is Real Hack

June 22, 2016 by Steven Dufresne 16 Comments

[Rulof] never ceases to impress us with what he comes up with and how he hacks it together. Seriously, how did he even know that the obscure umbrella part he used in this project existed, let alone thought of it when the time came to make a magnet mount? His hack this time is a real world, tabletop race track made for his little brother, and by his account, his brother is going crazy for it.

His race track is on a rotating table and consists of the following collection of parts: a motor, bicycle wheel, casters from a travel bag, rubber bands (where did he get such large ones?), toy car and steering wheel from his brother, skateboard wheels, the aforementioned umbrella part and hard drive magnets. In the video below we like how he paints the track surface by holding his paint brush fixed in place and letting the track rotate under it.

From the video you can see the race track has got [Rulof] hooked. Hopefully he lets his brother have ample turns too, but we’re not too sure. Some additions we can imagine would be robotics for the obstacles, lighting, sounds and a few simulated explosion effects (puffs of flour?).

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