Home

The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for the kitchen, garage and backyard from food to furniture to fun & games for your family.

Food Design Competition

The sixth Food Design competition just announced their call to entries: Participation in the competition is free and is open to all those who want to put to test their abilities in projects linked to the theme of Food Design. Particularly architects, professionals, artists, craftsmen and designers creatives, high school students, university students and students […]

Pretty with Pool Noodles

By Jessica Wilson When I was a kid we didn’t have pool noodles, we had boogie boards. While boogie boards were very cool in their own 1980s way, they were not nearly as versatile as the candy-colored pool noodle. There are all kinds of nifty things you can do with a pool noodle. You can […]

Brilliant low-tech soil moisture sensor

Brilliant low-tech soil moisture sensor

Two galvanized nails set in a plug of plaster-of-Paris. That’s it. The Cheap Vegetable Gardener, who created the sensor for an automated grow box project, explains:

Technically a gypsum block measures soil water tension. When the gypsum block is dry it is not possible for electricity to pass between the probes, essentially making the probe an insulator with infinite resistance. As water is added to the problem more electrons can pass between the probes effectively reducing the amount of resistance between the problem to the point when it is fully saturated where the probe has virtually zero resistance. By using this range of values you can determine the amount of water than exists in your soil.

[via Hack a Day]