Author Archives: James Hobson

You Probably Don’t Want To Find This Toilet In Your Washroom

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Ok, this one is a bit bizarre, but in perfect keeping with the subject matter: a talking toilet ripped from the pages of the Captain Underpants children’s books. Hackaday.io user [hamblin.joe]’s county fair has a toilet decorating contest and at the suggestion of their neighbour’s son, [hamblin.joe] hatched a plan to automate the toilet using an Arduino in the fashion of the hero’s foes.

Two Arduinos make up this toilet’s brains, an Adafruit Wave Shield imbues it with sound capabilities, and a sonic wave sensor will trigger the toilet’s performance routine when someone approaches. A windshield wiper motor …read more

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A Wii U That Is Both Computer And Console.

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Legendary sudomod forum user [banjokazooie] has once again demonstrated their prowess in Wii U console modification — this time by transforming it into a powerhouse portable computer!

We loved [banjokazooie]’s RetroPie Wii U mod, and happy to see them back again with this build.  What’s in this thing this time around? Buckle up ’cause it’s a ride: an Intel M5 processor core M on their Compute Stick, 4GBs RAM, a 64GB solid-state drive, a 2K LCD touchscreen, Bluetooth, WiFi, a 128GB SD card slot, two 3.7V 4000 mAh batteries, a Pololu 5V,6A step-down voltage regulator, a Teensy 2.0++ dev board, …read more

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Going Digital: Upgrading A Boat’s Analog Gauge

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The odds are that many of you do not own a boat that you get to tinker around with. [Mavromatic] recently acquired one that had — much to his consternation — analog gauges. So in order to get his ship ship-shape, he built himself a custom digital gauge to monitor his vessel’s data.

Restricted to the two-inch hole in his boat’s helm, trawling the web for displays turned up a 1.38-inch LCD display from 4D Systems. Given the confined space, a Teensy 3.2 proved to be trim enough to fit inside the confined space alongside a custom circuit board — …read more

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Worried About Running Out Of Filament Mid-Print? Join It!

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If you’ve ever cringed over throwing away any printer filament you know wouldn’t cover your next small part — let alone an overnight print — you may appreciate [starlino]’s method for joining two spools of filament together.

While there are other methods to track how much filament you’re using, this method removes some of the guesswork. First, snip the ends of the filament on a diagonal — as close to the same angle as possible. Cover both ends with shrink wrap tubing — 2mm tubing for 1.75mm filament for example — ensuring that the two ends overlap inside the wrap. …read more

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Portable Stir-Fry Range

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If you love a good stir-fry, you know that it can be a challenge to make on your stove at home. Engineer gourmet and Youtuber [Alex French Guy Cooking], in collaboration with [Make:], whipped up a portable range capable of making delectable stir-fry.

There are three major problems when it comes to cooking stir-fry: woks are typically unstable on normal burners, those burners don’t tend to heat from a center point out, and they usually aren’t hot enough. [Alex]’s 12,000BTU portable stove is great for regular applications, but doesn’t cut it when it comes to making an authentic stir-fry.

To …read more

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A Flexible Sensor That Moves With You

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If you have a project in mind that requires some sort of gesture input or precise movements, it might become a nettlesome problem to tackle. Fear this obstacle no longer: a team from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard have designed a novel way to make wearable sensors that can stretch and contort with the body’s natural movements.

The way they work is ingenious. Layers of silicone are sandwiched between two lengths of silver-plated conductive fabric forming — by some approximation — a capacitance sensor. While the total surface area doesn’t change when the sensor is stretched …read more

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Stealing Joules From An Aluminium-Air Battery

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While batteries are cheap and readily obtainable today, sometimes it’s still fun to mess around with their less-common manifestations. Experimenting with a few configurations, Hackaday.io user [will.stevens] has assembled an aluminium-air battery and combined it with a joule thief to light an LED.

To build the air battery, soak an activated charcoal puck — from a water filter, for example — in salt-saturated water while you cut the base off an aluminium can. A circle of tissue paper — also saturated with the salt water — is pressed between the bare charcoal disk and the can, taking care not to …read more

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Dog-Operated Treat Dispenser

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Every good dog is deserving of a treat. [Eliasbakken]’s dog [Moby] is a certified good boy,  so he designed a dispenser with a touchscreen that his dog can boop to treat himself when he isn’t barking up a ruckus.

Adding a touchscreen to a treat dispenser when a button would suffice is a little overkill, but we’re not here to judge. [Eliasbakken] is using a BeagleBone Black — a Linux-based development platform — as this dispenser’s brains, and a Manga touchscreen that is likely to see a lot of use.  A wood-like material called Vachromat was laser cut for the …read more

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Wire-bots, Roll Out!

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Designing and 3D-printing parts for a robot with a specific purpose is generally more efficient than producing one with a general functionality — and even then it can still take some time. What if you cut out two of those cumbersome dimensions and still produce a limited-yet-functional robot?

[Sebastian Risi] and his research team at the IT University of Copenhagen’s Robotics, Evolution, and Art Lab, have invented a means to produce wire-based robots. The process is not far removed from how industrial wire-bending machines churn out product, and the specialized nozzle is also able to affix the motors to the …read more

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The Most Straightforward Wind Turbine

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We can all use a little more green energy in our lives at home. So when [ahmedebeed555] — a fan of wind power — ran into durability troubles with his previous home-built turbine, he revised it to be simpler than ever to build.

Outside of the DC generator motor, the rest of the turbine is made from recycled parts: a sponge mop sans sponge, a piece from an old CD drive case acting as a rudder, the blades from a scrapped fan, and a plastic bottle to protect the motor from the elements. Attach the fan to the …read more

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