DIY Projects

Wolfgang Puck is releasing self-heating coffee- can’t wait to pick one up and use it for some projects! It took a California company named OnTech seven years and $24 million to create the self-heating cans, which are activated by pushing a plastic button on the bottom. Water flows into a sealed inner cone filled with quicklime, which is mostly calcium oxide. A chemical reaction heats the coffee to a pleasant 145 degrees in six to eight minutes, the amount of time it might take to order, pay for and receive a latte from a barista. Link.

This fellow has a few cool projects, I like the TV Fish Tank- A friend of mine had a broken television, and for whatever reason, I decided I should make it into a fish tank. As a word of warning to anyone who may attempt something similar, this project has been a little difficult, mostly because I’ve never built a fish tank before, and it’s hard to get something that looks good and is also capable of holding 120 lbs of water. It’s easier if you use a smaller tv. Link.

Extensive guide and resource on setting up your own soda fountain. I’d really like to make one of these one day, looks like post-mix is the way to go “For the vast majority of home users, the Post-mix system with ice bin will be the preferred method. The bin should be insulated, so you can get away with adding ice only every few days, or possibly even every week if the insulation is really good and you load the bin down with lots of ice”. Link.

Here’s a pretty neat idea- inflatable laptop bags. Next visit to the mega-mart I’ll look for something cheap to make one out of clear plastic and then just inflate the whole thing while I’m traveling to expedite my trip through security. Although I suspect it might actually delay things more with the type of soldery / wirey things I usually carry. Via jorn . Link.

Great project on i-hacked.com. Using a simple laser pen pointer, a few misc parts, and about 15 minutes, you can make a simple laser communicator that converts a sound source into light that travels across a room, and back into sound with very little quality loss. Link.

Caya sent this in- “This is a lovely old book I found online today. It outlines how to make all the old amusements kids used to enjoy- how to make many kinds of kites, how to catch frogs, and many, many other fun things. It is very low-tech (late 19th century in fact) but it is very “how to” perhaps your team would enjoy reading it, or maybe Make readers would enjoy it also“. Link.

Standard PC components mounted to a $20 rack-mount shelf. This is a project from about 3 years ago, when anything “Rackmount” was even more expensive than it is today (not that Rack PC’s are all that cheap now…). With a system board that has on-board Ethernet, and 1U power supply from ebay, this could easily be a $20 or $50 1U setup as well. Thanks Brian! Link.