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If you live in a house that has more people than washrooms you have probably come across the situation where you are waiting for one to free up. Sven has come up with a solution, use a microcontroller to capture usage information and graph it so that you can see what the typical usage patten is like! Have a look at the recent graphs for some additional details. "This project is about nearly daily statistical analysis and reporting of loo usage. Ever wanted to know when is the best time to go to the bathroom?
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This Rolling Apple Power Mac G4 Cube hack will allow your computer to tell you how it feels. If you are over working it could turn and roll away. Via: The NXT Step "This creation utilizes all of the default electronics from a LEGO Mindstorms NXT set. Crammed into the iconic Apple Power Mac G4 Cube’s famous "8-inch" (acrylic) cube are a LEGO NXT programmable brick, 3 interactive servo motors and all 4 sensors: touch, sound, light, and ultrasonic. It operates in 2 modes:
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You may remember the Hexapod Robot that Matt Denton built. I think this new Chiara Robot could give Matt a run for his money as far as features and power. Chiara was developed at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tekkotsu lab, best of all it will be manufactured and sold by RoPro Design, Inc. David Touretzky, Gaku Sato, Ethan Tira-Thompson, and David Rice have done a great job on this system. I can’t wait till it gets released to see what its full potential is! "Chiara Features:
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It is nice to see all of the ways we can reduce our energy consumption. For example the hacked Kill a Watt (now called the Tweet-a-Watt) can help you monitor your power consumption. Intel is making processors that are will use less energy by changing the way some fundamental things are done, this equates to a $2 billion dollar saving in energy fees. Google been growing at an amazing rate and this means that their data centers also need to grow, you can read about their attempts to offset their impact on the planet here. HP has made some cool videos and started a Power to Change campaign that get the point across in a simple way. I must say that I am often guilty of keeping many computers running all night just to save a few minutes in the morning. I think I might have to reevaluate how I use energy. |
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Remember the 64 RGB-LED Color Table that was featured last week? Well believe it or not there has been a tremendous amount of work completed on the project since then. Now you are able to connect the table to a computer and turn it into a low resolution TV or play a game of Tetris! It will be interesting to see what the final project that Edo is working on will be capable of.
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Rich Harley from Suspicion Industries sent in some pictures of a vehicle that they just completed. This is what I call a office away from home! I know where to go if I ever start a career as a super secret spy! Instead of a limo could I rent this van for an evening? “Here is a rather large home project we have completed - a surveillance * onboard power system/batteries (10 hour runtime), plug sockets etc We’ve also added a Pan-Tilt-Zoom Camera connected to the computers
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It has been almost a year now since the Disney movie WALL-E was released, Hacked Gadgets featured some mods that were made but there has been a huge WALL-E following and countless hours spent making case mods, reproduction robots and other hacks. Thanks to the huge WALL-E mod community for the interesting creations, if you only have time to look at one hack scroll down to the bottom and look at #1 you will be amazed! I couldn’t find any build details on the above video, I think that it was created for Disney to promote the movie but if you have some additional information I would love to hear about it.
10. WALL-E Laptop
This video shows the amazing process of turning a normal looking laptop into a WALL-E Laptop. The airbrushing technique is wonderful.
9. LEGO WALL-E
From far this WALL-E build looks like the toy you can get from the store, it isn’t until you look closely that you can see it is all LEGO! "A few months ago, I decided to build Wall-E, from the Disney movie that is just around the corner. Meant for a display in July, I finally was able to focus on the model and build it within three weeks - with lots of down time. Wall-E uses 2 Power functions IR controllers, so he can move and move his neck up and down. Also, his arms are on ball joints, so while not motorized, they can be posed. A mount is on the side for the arms to rest, but can be replaced with grill plates to be more accurate."
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The goal of this project is to get an overview of the bathroom usage and to get an idea of the loo usage patterns. With the help of statistical analysis it should be possible to get the desired information on a mathematical foundation. For that purpose an electrical switch is attached to the bathroom’s door’s lock. When the door is locked the switch is closed thus closing a circuit and igniting "occupied" lights in the rooms. This information also flows to a microcontroller that registers the status change and writes this information together with a timestamp that comes from a radio controlled DCF77 clock module into a file on a USB storage. This file is being read into a database a web application server is connected with. A CherryPy web application server contains all the the logic to evaluate and report the desired information as flash charts."
It still looks real cool to see a computer case driving around on a table!
