Inductively Charged PVC LED Lantern Mod
Fifteen-year-old John Duffy is the subject of Gadget Freak Case #216, over at Design News, with his clever modification of Steve Hoefer’s Eternal Flame Indestructible LED Lantern from MAKE Vol 30.
Technology
Introducing the Gooseberry Board
Seems like there are a number of low power ARM SoC boards hitting the market recently. If the Beagle Bone, Raspberry Pi, and Via APC piqued your interest, you might want to also take a look at the recently announced Gooseberry. It’s an Allwinner A10 ARM SoC with 512MB RAM, 4GB onboard flash (up to 16GB with MicroSD), b/g/n Wifi, and goes for £40
Motion-Activated Sprinkler
I can imagine all sorts of uses for Phil Tucker’s motion-detect sprinkler home defense system. Testing a motion activate sprinkler. A TRENDnet IP camera triggers a GPIO output read by an Arduino which then triggers a relay/solenoid valve to turn on a sprinkler. IP camera already records video and sends email alerts.
Hacktastic Horizontal Helical 3D Display
Besides being a generally cool idea, French inventor Michel David’s volumetric display prototype gets serious wacky-contraption style points. Michel puts the cost of his machine at €40, and though his results are definitely proof-of-concept quality, I have to agree with Mike Szczys that the prototype itself “looks like a DaVinci sketch.”
DIY Color-Changing Light Tubes
Audiobody hacks together music using DIYer-friendly electronics, which they describe in how-to videos — like these cool light tubes! How did we make our Color Changing, LED Light Tubes? In this video we show you exactly how we did it. The design is much simpler than you think. Try building one yourself and let us […]
Silk Screened Circuits on Ceramic Ware
This concept from designers Ami Drach and Dov Ganchrow is called “+/- hot plate.” The plates are silkscreened with conductive inks to create circuit traces, in this case simple resistive heating elements arranged in artful patterns. If the traces will hold up to soldering…
An Introduction to the Arduino
This video is a vey basic introduction to the Arduino. So if you have a friend or relative who has been asking “what’s an Arduino?” You can point them here. They’ll get an overview of what it is and what’s possible with it.