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I have worked in quite a few companies where the employees have a dedicated desk or work space, some had lockable drawers but in most cases everything was unlocked. I have never had any issues with things going missing but Youtube user RuthJ180 didn’t have the same experience as I did. In her case some of her fancy pens and change was going missing. A mini spy camera and an Arduino came to the rescue. You can see in the video above captures a bunch of random office stuff, but it also caught the lurking thief poking around where he had no business being. I can’t stand dishonest people, I hope he was turned in and fired. |
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Our friend Rick Crammond has built a Hauksbee Generator. “The idea is that a triboelectric (electrostatic) effect occurs from sliding hands on glass. The voltage generated ionizes the gases in the globe, creating a blue plasma glow inside. Our rotating globe is a pyrex lab flask containing air under a partial vacuum, is mounted on a bicycle axle with skateboard bearings, and driven by a remote-control model aircraft electric motor at up to 8000 rpm…” |
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If you hate when you don’t have a partner to play ping pong with you why not build a robot. Ulf Hoffmann is an industrial mechanic and has some creative ideas. His Ping Pong Robot (translated) is quite amazing, you can see it in action above. The videos below demonstrate the building blocks to get to where the robot is today. Via: Laughing Squid
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Long time reader Maximilian Malihas built a great looking CNC machine called the Ripper. It looks nice and rigid, you can see in the video that the unit is very versatile and would be at home in any workshop. If you want to build your own there will be plans on the site soon, for now there are a ton of build pictures and documentation. ”The 3-Axis CNC was not designed for a specific application – ripper fusions the needs required for fast shape-cutting in wood/PVC and the strength and stiffness required for milling in aluminum and copper. It brings the precision down to fractions of the human hair – and can be build using simple tools!”
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With a used printer and a handful of inexpensive parts you can make your own old school plotter. I remember when plotters were all the rage, if you had a high end one it could even handle multiple colored pens and change them automatically. If you are interested in creating some technology of the past the Junk Plus Arduino blog demonstrates how to make your own. ” Junk (the hardware):
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The Time Plotting Clock mechanism is fantastically simple, 3 tiny servo motors allow the erasable marker to be moved along the drawing surface and raised when no contact with the surface is desired. This allows the pen to write the time. There is also a tiny eraser located in the upper right corner, when the next minute is ready to be drawn the pen grabs the marker and erases the previous time before drawing the new time. Thanks for the tip Stan. “You need:
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When you walk through the garden section of your home store in the summer you will see a bunch of misters spraying the plants every now and then to keep them moist. Johnny Klaus has built a system that will mist his plants using an Arduino that is pumping a spray bottle using a 12 volt door lock motor. I think this system could also be used to keep those darn kids off my front porch, just have an Arduino count the number of door bell rings in a 10 second time frame and if it is greater than 3 give them a spray of water! |
