Author Archives: Gerrit Coetzee

Shop Made Squareness Comparator

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[Stefan Gotteswinter] has a thing for precision. So it was no surprise when he confessed frustration that he was unable to check the squareness of the things he made in his shop to the degree his heart desired.

He was looking enviously at the squareness comparator that [Tom Lipton] had made when somone on Instagram posted a photo of the comparator they use every day. [Stefan] loved the design and set out to build one of his own. He copied it shamelessly, made a set of drawings, and got to work.

[Stefan]’s videos are always a trove of good machine …read more

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Electronic Message In a Bottle

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We remember going to grandfather’s garage. There he would be, his tobacco pipe clenched between his teeth, wisps of smoke trailing into the air around him as he focused, bent over another of his creations. Inside of a simple glass bottle was something impossible. Carefully, ever so carefully, he would use his custom tools to twist wire. He would carefully place each lead. Eventually when the time was right he would solder. Finally he’d place it on the shelf next to the others, an LED matrix in a bottle.

Well, maybe not, but [Mariko Kosaka]’s father [Kimio Kosaka] has done …read more

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Hacker Places To Visit: Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris

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The best way to pull off this deception: tell your significant other that you’d want nothing more than a romantic week in Paris. Arrive in Paris, stash your bags, and then take either the number three or eleven Metro. When you get to the station that looks like the inside of a giant steam engine, Arts et Métiers, get out. You’re now ten Euros away from one of the coolest museums a hacker could visit.

A significant portion of modern science’s beginnings is sitting in the Musée, polished and beautiful. Most of them are housed in cabinets so old they’re …read more

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Copper Thermite Explodes and Smolders Successfully

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It was quite a surprise to learn that thermite isn’t just rust and aluminum powder, but describes any combination of metal powder, metal oxide, and optionally fuel mixed together in a reactive ratio.  [sciencewithscreens] shows us some of the properties of a copper (II) oxide based thermite.

We can only assume he has a thing for copper as an element. After growing his copper crystal it wasn’t long before he followed a winding road of copper based experiments and found himself with a supply of copper (II) oxide after rendering it from common household chemicals. He had two missions for …read more

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Absolute 3D Tracking With EM Fields

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[Chris Gunawardena] is still holding his breath on Valve and Facebook surprising everyone by open sourcing their top secret VR prototypes. They have some really clever ways to track the exact location and orientation of the big black box they want people to strap to their faces. Until then, though, he decided to take his own stab at the 3D tracking problems they had to solve. 

While they used light to perform the localization, he wanted to experiment with using electromagnetic fields to perform the same function. Every phone these days has a magnetometer built in. It’s used to figure …read more

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An ESP8266 in Every Light Switch and Outlet

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[Hristo Borisov] shows us his clever home automation project, a nicely packaged WiFi switchable wall socket. The ESP8266 has continuously proven itself to be a home automation panacea. Since the ESP8266 is practically a given at this point, the bragging rights have switched over to the skill with which the solution is implemented. By that metric, [Hristo]’s solution is pretty dang nice.

It’s all based around a simple board. An encapsulated power supply converts the 220V offered by the Bulgarian power authorities into two rails of 3.3V and 5V respectively. The 3.3V is used for an ESP8266 whose primary concern …read more

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Grinding Gears: Figuring Out The Ratio

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Practically any combination of motor and gearbox can be mathematically arranged to fit all sorts of problems. You could lift a crane with a pager motor, it just might take a few hundred years. However, figuring out exactly what ratio you need can feel bit backwards the first time you have to do it.

A gear is nothing more than a clever way to make two circles rotate in concert with each other as if they were perfectly joined at their circumferences. Rather than relying on the friction between two rotating disks in contact, the designer instead relies on the …read more

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Wanhao Duplicator i3 Should Put an End to “Cheapest Printer” Kickstarters

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Is the Wanhao Duplicator the best printer on the market? Not at all. Is it a contender for best low-price printer?Definitely. If you consider it a low priced kit printer instead of a finished product then it’s possible that, in its price class, it is hands down the best out there.

For somewhere between 300 and 500 dollars, the Duplicator is a hell of a printer. Also selling under the name Cocoon and Maker Select, the printer is a thin folded sheet steel frame clone of the Prusa i3. I opened the box expecting the most flagrant cost cutting I …read more

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Furuta Style Inverted Pendulum Is King of Geek Desk Ornaments

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Newston’s Cradle is thought of as the most elegant of executive desk toys. But that 20th-century dinosaur just got run off the road as [Ben Katz]’s Furuta pendulum streaks past in the fast lane, flipping the bird and heralding a new king of desk adornments.

This Furata pendulum has wonderfully smooth movement. You can watch it go through its dance in the video after the break. Obviously you agree that this is the desk objet d’art for the modern titan of industry (geek). Just don’t stop at watching it in action. The best part is the build log that [Ben] …read more

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Automate Git and Upgrade Your Battle Station With a Custom Peripheral

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[mfaust] wakes up in the morning like a regular person, goes to work like a regular person, types in tedious commands for his software versioning utilities like a regular person, and then, as a reward, gets his coffee, just like rest of us. However, what if there was a way to shorten the steps, bringing us all closer to the wonderful coffee step, without all those inconvenient delays? Well, global industry is trying its best to blot out the sun, so mornings are covered there. [Elon Musk’s] thinktank proposed the hyperloop, which should help with the second step. [mfaust] built …read more

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