Collaborate Disseminate
Thanks to the relatively recent rise of affordable board production services, many of the people reading Hackaday are just now learning the ropes of PCB design. For those still producing …read more Continue reading PCB Thermal Design Hack Gets Hot and Heavy
Windows may be important for letting natural light and warmth into a room, but sometimes they let in too much, or let your artificial warmth out instead. Researchers at Oxford have developed a new smart window coating that can be tuned on the fly to em… Continue reading Tuneable smart window coating traps heat in winter, reflects it in summer
Heating and cooling buildings is a major consumer of energy, especially older ones that weren’t built with modern energy efficiencies in mind. Now, engineers at Fraunhofer Institute have developed a modular facade powered by solar panels that can heat … Continue reading Modular building facade heats and cools rooms with solar power
Berkeley Lab engineers have developed a roof coating that can keep a building warmer or cooler, depending on the weather. When it’s warm out, the material will reflect sunlight and heat, but this radiative cooling automatically switches off in winter, … Continue reading Smart roof coating reflects heat in summer and traps it in winter
When we’re hot and sweaty, we prefer cool mesh-like clothing, but otherwise … mesh just doesn’t keep us warm enough. A new dual-purpose fabric was designed with that conundrum in mind, as it features cooling vents that open upon absorbing sweat.Continu… Continue reading High-tech fabric opens cooling vents when made wet with sweat
Compressor efficiency might not sound like the most exciting topic in the world, but consider this: the hotter the world gets – and the wealthier its developing countries become – the more air conditioners will come online. According to the IEA, fans a… Continue reading Super-efficient linear compressor could vastly reduce air con power use
You may have heard of electrochromic windows or sunglasses that can be electronically switched between clear and tinted states. Well, the same technology has been applied to a new material that could both heat and cool buildings, if mounted on their ou… Continue reading Electrochromic material could help buildings heat up and cool down
There are many parts of the world which lack infrastructure, but that get a lot of sunlight … which makes buildings uncomfortably hot. A new system could help, as it uses a combination of sunlight and salt water – but no electricity – to produce a co… Continue reading Sunlight and salt water join forces in electricity-free cooling system
The typical freezers found homes and restaurants play an invaluable role in preserving foods until they’re ready to be eaten, but an alternative technology promises to not only use far less energy, but improve food quality at the same time. Known as is… Continue reading Low-energy freezing technology keeps food fresh without forming ice
Hypersonic aircraft that fly many times the speed of sound might one day carry people from the US to Australia in just a few hours, but with all that velocity comes a hell of a lot of heat. One way scientists hope to prevent them overheating is by havi… Continue reading Tiny heat exchangers may let hypersonic plane fuel double as coolant