Makers
Early Bird Maker Faire Bay Area Tickets
Is it too soon to start early birding tickets to the Greatest Show (and Tell) On Earth, Maker Faire Bay Area? Definitely not. Between now and March 14th you can buy discounted Maker Faire tickets–but prices go up March 15th.Filed under: General
Feedback for automated water and food pet dispensers
[Enrico] figured out a way to fully automate his pet food and water. The system is in two parts, the water trough as seen on the left, and the food dispenser whose control hardware is shown on the right. The system is even hooked up to the network so that he can make sure it didn’t break down while he was away.
The water dispenser uses parts from a sprinkler system. Since it’s mounted outdoors it doesn’t matter if the water overflows a little bit. So [Enrico] set up the timer to run the water for three minutes every day. This acts as a backup system since the trough already has the ability to refill itself.
The food dispenser started as a commercial unit. To get feedback from the system he added a couple of magnets to the agitation motor and reads them with a hall effect sensor. In addition to an IP camera that monitors the area around the feeder (so [Enrico] can actually see his dog eating) there is a webcam which monitors the STM32 Discovery board which monitors the feeder. It tracks the number of times the dispenser has run.
Filed under: home hacks
Engadget’s Talent Show for Hardware Makers
Got a great invention the world needs to get their hands on? Engadget is offering a hardware talent show of sorts called Insert Coin to help choose tech's next great gadget. The winner will be chosen by a panel of judges at Expand in San Francisco March 17 and will walk with a $20,000 cash prize and a guaranteed Engadget review. Submissions will be accepted up until Feb. 8 so get busy. 
3D Printed Mendocino Motor
I got to play around with Chris Connors’ Mendocino Motor at Maker Faire New York last year. It consists of magnetically levitating pencils turned into motors with magnets, magnet wire, and 3D-printed joists. The Mendocino Motor floats in its own magnetic field and converts light into electricity and magnetism, which [...]
HDD POV clock takes the best from those that came before it
The concept behind this clock has been seen before, but [Dieter] tried to combine the best aspects of several projects into his HDD POV clock (translated). The basic principle of the design is to cut a slot into the top platter of the hard drive. This will let the light from some LEDs shine through. By carefully synchronizing the LED with the spinning platter a set of differently colored hands can be shown to mark time. We’ve been looking at the project for several minutes now and we’re not quite sure if the lines marking the 5-minute segments on the clock are generated in the same way as the hands, or if they’re marks on a faceplate on top of the platters. Check out the clip after the break and let us know what you think.
Past HDD clock project include this one, or this other one. Some of the design improvements include a better motor driver (which [Dieter] pulled from an old VCR) and the inclusion of an RTC chip to keep accurate time without the need to be connected to a computer. We also think it’s a nice touch to sandwich the hardware between two picture frames for a nice finished look.
Filed under: clock hacks
3d printed hexapod robot
This hexapod was made almost entirely via 3d printing (translated). The parts that you need to supply include a few fasteners to make connections, twelve servo motors, and a method of driving them. As you can see in the video after the break, all those parts come together into a little robot that functions quite well. The only thing that we think is missing are some grippy feet to help prevent slipping.
[Hugo] calls the project Bleuette. It is completely open source, with the cad files and source code available on his Github repository. There is additional information in the wiki page of that repo. This gives us a good look at the electronic design. He’s controlling the legs with an Arduino, but it’s all dependent on his own shield which features a PIC 18F452 to take care of the signals used to drive all of the servo motors. The board also has some peripherals to monitor the current draw and regulate the incoming power.
Filed under: robots hacks
What We Can Learn From Hackerspaces
Open source advocate Catarina Mota spoke at TEDxStockholm about the increasingly cool and important role hackerspaces play in world society. Check it out!Filed under: Hackerspaces
Modulator box connects iPod to Tesla coil
This pass through audio modulator lets you playback stereo audio on two Tesla coils. But don’t fret, you can just use mono files if you only have one coil on hand. On one side there are inputs that connect to the audio source. The other side drives the Tesla coil, switching it on and off based on the relationship between a reference voltage and the audio signal. As you can hear in the video after the break this sounds great as long as you have the right kind of source audio.
The song played in that clip is the Duke Nukem 3D theme. [Daniel] started with a MIDI file and removed the chimes and drums to make the playback a little cleaner. The demo uses just one coil because the other was destroyed during testing when feedback between the two became a problem.
For some reason this reminds us of that singing Tesla coil hat. If you’re already on our mailing list (sign up in the sidebar) you know we’re getting pretty close to unveiling our own awesome Tesla coil project. It doesn’t sing… yet.
Filed under: misc hacks
Today on Food Makers: An Interview with Tim Burton of Burton’s Maplewood Farm
On this week's episode of Food Makers, a Google+ hangout on air, I'll be talking to Tim Burton, not the director, but the man behind Burton's Maplewood Farm in Indiana In New England and America's upper Midwest, the sap is flow in maple trees and that means sugaring season is near. Tim will talk about the craft of maple syrup, the tools of the trade, his sought-after barrel aged syrup, and the upcoming National Maple Syrup Festival. Sounds sweet, doesn't it? Tune in right here at 2pm PST and 5pm EST. 
Really, really geeky wedding invitations
Being real, ultimate geeks, [Bill] and [Mara] didn’t want to settle for plain, paper-based wedding invitations. No, they wanted something cooler, and came up with their own DIY electronic wedding invitations.
Since they would be making the invitations themselves, [Bill] and [Mara] needed a simple circuit that could be easily mass produced. They turned to the classic microcontroller-powered blinking LED circuit powered by an ATtiny13.
The first order of business was producing 50 printed circuit boards for each of the invitations. For this, [Bill] picked up an Xerox Phaser laser printer off of ebay and a few sheets of copper-clad kapton film. The etch resist was printed directly onto the kapton film and etched in a bath of ferric chloride, effectively making a flexible PCB.
These circuit boards were soldered up and laminated between the printed invitation and the card stock cutter with the help of a Silhouette Cameo paper cutter. After the cards were assembled, the battery was wired up and the cards shipped out.
The microcontroller inside the card was programmed to be asleep most of the time, waking up only every few seconds to check a light sensor to determine if the card was opened or not. If the microcontroller sensed the card was open, the lights began blinking, making it one of the most memorable wedding invitations [Bill] and [Mara]‘s guests will ever receive.
You can check out a demo of the invitations after the break.
Filed under: led hacks
Controlling a Raspberry Pi with real life redstone
We’ve seen computers built in Minecraft out of redstone, the game’s version of electricity, circuits, and digital logic. We’ve even seen a few redstone contraptions controlling real-world devices. [Angus]‘ build, though, takes things to a whole new level. He’s created a bridge between Minecraft circuits and their real life counterparts using a Raspberry Pi.
[Angus]‘ build relies on a mod for Minecraft servers running as a Bukkit plugin. Blocks powered by redstone are labeled with an in-game sign, and messages regarding the state of a block are passed over the network using the MQTT protocol.
The hardware side of the build is a Raspberry Pi with a PiFace expansion board. With this setup, [Angus] can control LEDs on the PiFace by toggling Minecraft levers, or light up redstone lamps using the PiFace’s buttons.
If you’d like to try this out for yourself, you can grab the Bukkit plugin over on [Angus]‘s git. Check out the video of the real life redstone in action after the break.
Filed under: Raspberry Pi
Results from Arduino Hackathon at AT&T’s 2013 Developer Summit
Sara Streeter wrote in to let us know about the hackathon that Axeda put on for AT&T’s 2013 Developer summit. The projects were Arduino-based and sensor-enabled, and featured NFC, geotracking, emergency response, and all kinds of monitoring.
Mr. Tea is a hot plate and magnetic stirrer in the same enclosure
Not being a coffee drinker [Hunter Scott] wanted a way to make tea while lurking in his workshop. Well it’s not exactly rocket science, as all you need is water at the right temperature and a vessel in which the tea can be steeped. But we do commend him on not only building a nice little hot plate enclosure, but rolling a magnetic stirrer into the other side of the box.
You heard us right, the stirrer is not combined with the plate, but resides on the underside of the same PSU enclosure. The plate itself is from a unit he bought at the store and cannibalized. The light switch dimmer lets him adjust the heat it puts out. When not hot, he can flip it over and use the stir plate. This consists of a hard drive magnet attached to a PC fan. For the stirrer itself he encased a neodymium magnet in some thermoplastic. The magnetic combination works well together with a demonstration which shows it stirring water through the base of a tea-cup.
Filed under: chemistry hacks
Automated Doors for Theatre Effect
For a theatre production, [Jason] needed a way to automatically open and close doors as a special effect. His solution, hosted on Github, lets him remotely control the doors, and put them into a ‘freak out’ mode for one scene in the play.
Two Victor 884 motor controllers are attached to an Arduino that controls the system. A custom controller lets [Jason] actuate the doors remotely, and LEDs are used to display the state of the system.
On the mechanical side, two wind shield wiper motors are used. These are connected to custom arms that were printed using a Lulzbot AO-100. The arms allow for the door to be automatically actuated, but also allow for actors to open the door manually.
The result is a neat special effect, and the 3D models that are included in the repository could be useful for other people looking to build automated doors. In the video after the break, [Jason] walks us through the system’s design and demonstrates it in action.
Filed under: robots hacks
Finding the cheapest board house
The prices for custom made circuit boards has never been cheaper, but surprisingly we’ve never seen a comparison of prices between the major board houses. [Brad] took the time to dig in to the price of 10 boards manufactured by Seeed Studios, OHS Park, and BatchPCB. He made some pretty graphs and also answered the question of where you can get your circuits made cheaply.
[Brad] got the prices for boards up to 20 cm x 20 cm from Seeed Studio’s Fusion PCB service, OSH Park, and BatchPCB. These results were graphed with Octave and showed some rather surprising results.
For boards over 20 cm2, the cheapest option is Seeed Studios. In fact, the price difference between Seeed and the other board houses for the maximum sized board is impressive; a 400 cm2 board from Seeed costs $150, while the same board from OSH Park is close to $1000.
Of course most boards are much smaller, so the bottom line is for boards less than 20 cm2, your best bet is to go with OHS Park. If you don’t care when your boards arrive, or you need more than 10 or so, Seeed is the way to go. As far as the quality of the boards go, OSH Park is up there at the top as well.
Filed under: hardware
Ask Hackaday: What’s an easy way to build a potentiometer for a soldering iron?
[Lee] wrote in to share the work he’s done in building a controller for his soldering iron. The idea started when he was working with an ATX power supply. He figured if it works as a makeshift bench supply perhaps he could use it as the source for an adjustable iron. To get around the built-in short-circuit protection he needed a potentiometer to limit the current while allowing for adjustments. His first circuit used a resistor salvaged from an AT supply and a trimpot from some computer speakers. That melted rather quickly as the pot was not power rated.
This is a picture of his next attempt. He built his own potentiometer. It uses the center conductor from some coaxial cable wrapped around the plastic frame of an old cooling fan. Once the wire was in place he sanded down the insulation on top to expose the conductor. The sweeper is a piece of solid core wire which pivots to connect to the coil in different places. It works, and so far he’s managed to adjust a 5V rail between 5A and 20A.
How would you make this system more robust? Short of buying a trimpot with a higher power rating, do you think this is the easy way to build a soldering iron controller? Let us know by leaving your thoughts in the comments.
Filed under: Ask Hackaday
MIT Media Lab’s month in Shenzhen
When you’ve got a month worth of blog postings it’s pretty difficult to choose one photograph that sums it all up. This one shows the tour group from MIT Media Lab in ESD garb ready for their tour of Okano SMT and Speaker Factory. It was part of a tour of Shenzhen aimed at bringing graduate students up to speed on what it means to manufacture products in the city. Luckily, Freaklabs member [Akiba] was one of the staff members of the program and blogged extensively about the experience. At first glance his page full of post abstracts looks really boring, but click through because both his recount and the commented images associated with each day are fun and fascinating ways to tag along with the group.
If you’re really good with faces you can pick [Bunnie Huang] out of the lineup above (he’s the third from the right). He had the original idea for the program and brought aboard a few others to help make the thing a success. The group toured a wide range of factories and parts markets in the city. This included your traditional electronics manufacturing venues but there was even a side trip to a diaper and feminine napkin plant to see the non-electronic factories in operation. In addition to tours there were lectures by industry members like HAXLR8R, a group that specializes in helping start-ups navigate the manufacturing jungle.
Filed under: misc hacks
Houston Hosts its First Maker Faire
Robotics, 3D printing, fast electric cars, e-textiles, gourmet food trucks, and lots of hands-on making at Houston's first-ever Maker Faire.
Personalized Pez Dispenser Heads
Toronto's 3D-printed jewelry company Hot Pop Factory received a client request to come up with a fun 3D-printed holiday gift for each of their employees, and I think they knocked it out of the ballpark with what they came up with: 3D scanned and printed Pez dispenser head toppers!
Book Review: Bend, Not Break by Ping Fu
Ping Fu is the founder of 3D software pioneer Geomagic and a true believer in the transformative power of 3D technology. 3D Systems acquired Geomagic in December and now Ping serves as the conglomerate's chief strategy officer. This month, Ping published Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds, a powerful, deeply personal memoir that chronicles her life in China as a victim of Mao's "Cultural Revolution," a U.S. immigrant, and later a successful entrepreneur, visionary, and technology advisor to President Obama. It's an inspiring, moving book about personal resilience, the value of vulnerability, and the power of making that deserves a wide audience. 
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