Northwestern University professor Malcolm MacIver’s GhostBot is a robotic fish that can swim forward, backward, and vertically using its incredible ribbon-like fin. Ghostbot’s locomotion is inspired by a knifefish in MacIver’s aquarium, which a colleague observed making an unexpected, vertical movement. Further observations revealed that while the fish only uses one traveling wave along the […]
Ãœbernerdy Swiss lighter-than-air fish that flies with electronic muscles? What’s not to like? The actuators on the airship work – like biological muscles – in an agonist-antagonist configuration. While the actuators on one side of the airship are activated, the corresponding actuator on the other side contracts. Thus the body and tail fin are excited […]
Flickr user fotogra4er replaced the fluorescent tubes lighting his aquarium with LEDs. Which, of course, make way more light and way less heat for the same amount of energy. Then he upped the ante by cooling the LED lighting bank by circulating tank-water through it, which exploits what waste heat the LEDs do generate to warm the tank-water, and in turn saves power that would otherwise go to the tank heater.
Earlier this week I posted a Flashback to Eric Smilie’s sourdough bread tutorial that first appeared on the pages of CRAFT Volume 04. Visiting Eric’s site, Awesome Pickle, I found this great tutorial on how to make pickled herring. As a bonus, he included pictures and directions on the proper way to fillet fish. Thanks, […]
ZeroEdge Aquariums makes these groovy continuously-overflowing fish tanks. I’m afraid to ask what they cost, but it seems like a do-able remake.
Cheap automatic aquarium feeder on the go. – More DIY How To Projects Zach, one of my 9th grade students showed me this last week. Hey, maybe you should really mess with your fish by modifying this idea to feed them every time you download files to your thumb drive. It really could be feast […]
From the MAKE Flickr pool Feurig etched a well-planned fish-shaped circuit to hosts a slew of pink LEDs as scales. Great work – though it would be nice to see all those lovely copper traces exposed in the final product. A lot of work goes into designing circuitry and etching your own provides an excellent […]
