Collaborate Disseminate
Some projects take but a single glance for you to know what inspired them in the first place. For this over-engineered robotic bottle opener, the obvious influence was a combination of abundant free time and beer. Plenty of beer.
Of course there are many ways to pop the top on …read more
Continue reading Over-Engineered Bottle Opener Takes the Drudgery out of Drinking
When [John Saunders] wanted an automatic door for his shop, rather than settle for a commercial unit, he designed and built a proximity-sensing opener to ease his passing. Sounds simple, right?
Fortunately for us, there are no half-measures at Saunders Machine Works, thanks to the multiple Tormach workcells and the people who know how to use them. The video below treats us to quite a build as a result; the first part is heavy on machining the many parts for the opener, so skip ahead to 8:33 if you’re more interested in the control electronics and programming.
The opener uses …read more
Continue reading Touchless Shop Doors Over-Engineered to a Blissful Level
The eternal enemy of [James Puderer]’s pockets is anything that isn’t his smartphone. When the apartment building he resides in added a garage door, the forces of evil gained another ally in the form of a garage door opener. So, he dealt with the insult by rigging up a Raspberry Pi to act as a relay between the opener and his phone.
The crux of the setup is Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) — a Google service that allows messages to be sent to devices that generally have dynamic IP addresses, as well as the capacity to send messages upstream, …read more
Sometimes, a simple fix is the best solution. Lacking extra funds for a proper remote-controlled gate-opener after the recent purchase of their farm, redditor [amaurer3210] built one as a birthday gift for his wife.
Supported on pillow block housings, a 10″ wheel is connected to the motor by via a 3D printed pulley and a timing belt turned inside-out to allow for slippage — in case of obstacles or manual opening of the gate. If you’ve ever worked with belts in your builds, [amaurer3210] adds that during sizing he uses a few layers of fiberglass tape as a stand-in for …read more
