Steve Marriott wanted to have some automated outdoor lights. They will be controlled by an Arduino that will monitor some PIR sensors to see what is going on and turn lights on based on activity. A few tictac boxes were used to mount the outdoor electronics in. The project changed over time based on community help. The end result is a a completely automated lighting system that looks great and provides a ton of light.

Instead of purchasing a Tesla Power Wall jehugarcia shows us how a DIY version can be put together. The EV West facility has a large flat roof which makes laying the panels nice and easy. The roof is crazy high so getting them up on the roof looks like it was not that simple. The video at the top shows a bit of the solar panel installation and the lower video is an update on the system showing how the system is wired. This system is basically used to charge EV vehicles but there are some regular outlets that can be used for regular plug in equipment if there is a power failure. The Tesla car batteries are mounted in a standard electrical off the shelf enclosure. There is no continuous battery monitoring on the battery packs but rather a header that a battery balance monitoring system can be plugged into whenever they would like to check the levels.

If you are looking to have some fun with the network of your big vehicle this video would be fun for you. The CAN bus is probably the vehicle bus that you have heard about but there are many other bus standards that are used when digging into your semi truck. Instead of purchasing a $100,000 truck they built a truck electronic emulation systems.

 
jehugarcia shows us what is Inside the TESLA Model S Battery. There are lots of bolts holding the battery pack together. Why are they ripping apart this huge battery? To make smaller battery packs to power other electric cars. As you can see from the video this pack is built like a tank. It is not meant to be services since it is all glued together. With a bit of elbow grease they can get into it though. Nice to see they are taking lots of precautions when working with the discrete modules since they hold a ton of energy and could cause some major destruction! This obviously wouldn’t be worth it to take a new battery apart but this one was taken from a crashed car where the battery survived.  If you want some of these modules for your project you can get them at EV West.

 
CubeAMSPro100 has completed a UNI-T UT61E Backlight Touch Mod which adds some interesting features to the UNI-T meter. With a wave of a hand over the top of the meter he can now command the backlight to turn on or off. This isn’t a simple hack and it involved installing a custom PCB to handle the magic.

Pop bottles normally find their way into the trash or recycling but if you have some time you can make some interesting rockets with them. The 2 stage water rocket above was launched to a height of 864 feet.

 
This one quick to build the rocket portion, most of the bottle work is for looks and a bit of stable flight purpose. The neck of the bottle is simply friction fit to the multiple wraps of duct tape on the pipe that increased the diameter to provide a snug fit. The end of the tube has a cork stuffed in the end with a bottle cap and filler nozzle glued in place. This adds some safety since the cork can easily pop out if over pressured. An alternative would have been to glue an end cap to the pipe and drill a hole to mount the filler nozzle.
 

 

 
This Oobleck filled water rocket didn’t behave the way I expected. Oobleck is liquid and can be poured but when a hard force is applied it firms up. The Oobleck reacts to the high pressure and delays the launch until it is slowly forced out of the nozzle.

 
This alcohol powered rocket is great since it can be fired with the push of a button. A simple BBQ lighter is used as the spark source, a bit of rubbing alcohol fumes is used to power it but this design should be great with other things such as propane and hair spray.
 

 
There are lots of uses for MOTs (microwave Oven Transformers).  The guys from Make it Extreme have come up with a great new use. Convert them to a Heavy Lift Magnet. They take a number of transformers, chop the top off the laminated core and weld them to a heavy base plate. They are then wired to a common power source and the surface of the transformer that will touch the metal being lifted is machined flat. The only limitation that I can see is that not all of the transformer sections might be touching the metal object being lifted. The lifting capacity for some free MOTs is quite impressive!

Thanks for the tip Curt