Harmon Wood

Once upon a time, a nerd met a girl. Things happen as they do, and eventually [Ben] wanted to create the be-all, end-all engagement ring. (here’s a cache) It’s a simple titanium affair with 23 stones around the perimeter. What makes this ring so cool, though, is that it lights up whenever [Ben] and his girl are holding hands.

The metalworking portion of the build was about as easy as you would expect machining titanium to be. After the ring was cut off its bar stock, [Ben] brought it over to a mill where 23 holes for each of the stones were drilled. The stones were affixed to the ring with  jewelers epoxy and the entire ring was buffed to an amazing shine.

The electronics are where this project really shines. Putting a battery of capacitor inside a ring is nigh impossible, so [Ben] decided to power the LEDs with an inductive charging circuit. A coil of wire wound around kapton tape serves as the inductor and a small SMD capacitor powers three very bright and very tiny LEDs.

The inductive charging unit itself is a masterpiece of hackery; [Ben] wanted the ring to light up whenever he and his ladyfriend were holding hands. To do this, [Ben]‘s inductive charger is also a wearable device: a large coil of wire is the charger’s transformer and was would to fit around [Ben]‘s wrist. The entire charging circuit can be easily hidden under a jacket sleeve, making for a nearly magical light-up ring.

An awesome piece of work, and one of the best jewelry builds we’ve seen in a long time. You can see the inductive coupling and shining LEDs in the video below.

Filed under: led hacks, wearable hacks

The VertiBOT is a self balancing robot project taken on for the purpose of exploring how the sensors work in conjunction with some PID algorithms.

[Miguel] didn’t roll any extras into the build. But you have to admit that makes it look interesting. There’s almost nothing to it and yet, as you can see in the clip after the break, he accomplished everything he set out to.

The body and wheels are 3D printed, with black bands for tires to help give it some traction. Note the connection in the center of the body which allowed him to make a longer part by printing in two stages. On the electronic side of things he’s using an Arduino Nano. A level converter lets it communicate with the 6 DOF IMU board which is used to detect movement. Three potentiometers provide a way for him to tweak the PID loop without having to bother with reflashing any code. And of course there’s an option to control it remotely thanks to a Bluetooth module also in the mix.

Filed under: robots hacks

I may sound like I’m being over enthusiastic in this video. I’m not. Everyone who has seen this thinks it is simply amazing.

My father, an ex navy man, has told me stories of glowing water since I was little.  Being a person who was obsessed with all things that light up, this always stuck with me. I saw a headline one day that someone was making an algae-light. Sadly when I clicked on it, the algae was just there to create oxygen. It was a cool idea, but not what I was hoping for.

That slight disappointment drove me to create a night light using glowing algae. The process could be extremely simple.

1. Buy Algae.

2. set up light for algae (it needs a 12 hour light cycle and putting it in a window sill would kill it due to heat). It needs bulbs labelled 6500k or higher.

3. shake algae at night (it only lights up when agitated, and when it is on its “night” cycle).

I really wanted to add more to this project though, so I decided to put the algae in a klein bottle and build a custom base for it that would allow me to move a BB around inside the bottle using magnets. This would in turn, hopefully, agitate the algae and make it light up.

I built the base with a DC motor in mind. I dropped it in and added power, but the spin was way too fast and the BB wouldn’t “latch” onto a magnet. I was going to build a small Hbridge to do PWM, but I didn’t have the stuff in my drawer-o-parts and didn’t want to make a trip to the store. So, I stuffed a servo in there instead. It worked, and I thought the BB going back and forth was a cool bonus. You can download the files for the base here.

To get a nice strong light, you have to shake the algae pretty vigorously. I suspected the BB just wasn’t going to perturb them enough to really shine. As a backup, I took one of my kids toys, a “tornado machine” that was basically a water tight tube with a spinning paddle at the bottom. I was right, the tornado machine was much much brighter, but sprung a leak.

The part that is really frustrating is that I just couldn’t catch the effect on video. It seemed bright to my eyes, and a long exposure photo shows it off fairly well, but none of my cameras would get video. I’ve seen videos of this stuff, so I was especially annoyed.

Ultimately, I have moved it to a larger container next to my side of the bed and added some other miscellaneous algae. I tap on it and the result is like a tiny fireworks show in front of my eyes. It is so bizarre and beautiful.

Here’s a .gif I found of the effect. This isn’t my set up, but you can see what I’m talking about here.

Filed under: 3d Printer hacks, Featured

I can't get over how adorable this five year old is, riding in the back seat as her dad launches his GT-R.

This got posted on r/Cars and it is just the cutest thing I've seen.

We should make bones about how she should be in a car seat, but she's just so happy. Like we said in our article 'Ten Ways To Make Your Kid A Gearhead,' just drive with them. If you have a mind-bending sports car like the GT-R, all the better.

And here's the little lady's face one more time when the boost is on full and the Nissan is in full melt-your-face mode.

Many of you enjoyed the Red Bull Go Fast Mix put together for Jalopnikreaders exclusively by DJ EROK, but pointed out not every song was available for everyone. EROK heard your calls for sonic justice and, like a DJ Batman, pounced onto his Soundcloud with an improved mix for the people, which we've embedded below.

Not only is the new mix completely accessible, EROK threw in a few songs that weren't available on Spotify. Enjoy.

Home | Archive | Forums | Real Life Store | E-Mail | Deutsch

Patton Oswalt is set to appear in the next episode of Parks & Recreation. This is an 8-minute deleted scene from the episode in which Oswalt describes his incredible plan for Star Wars: Episode VII at a Pawnee town meeting. The whole thing is improvised, and it's absolutely brilliant. He even brings Boba Fett back and connects the Star Wars universe with the Marvel Universe. Check out his pitch and let us know what you think!

Here’s a thermoelectric generator which [x2Jiggy] built. The concept uses heat from a flame, biased against cooler temperatures produced by that huge heat sink making up the top portion of the build to produce electricity via the Peltier effect.

The build is passively cooled, using a sync assembly that takes advantage of heat pipes to help increase the heat dissipation. A nearly flat heat sink makes up the mounting surface for the hot side, which faces down toward a flame driving the generator. [x2Jiggy] started the project by using a can, wick, and olive oil as the heat source. He managed to get about 2V out of the system with this method. What you see here is the second version. It swaps out the olive oil lamp for an alcohol stove. The cans with holes punched in them act as a wind screen while also providing a stable base. This rendition produces about 3V, but it doesn’t sound like there are any precise measurements of what it can do under load.

Filed under: green hacks

[Ed] got pretty creative with a hack that adds a pressurized water tap to his Jeep Wrangler. The tap on the rear passenger bumper now lets him hose off the vehicle after mudding, rinse his SCUBA gear after a dive, and just generally comes in handy.

If you want running water you’ve got to have a place to put it. This is actually what sparked the idea for the project. [Ed] noticed that the bumper was hollow and had some drain holes on the bottom. After plugging those and adding a fill hole to the top he found that he had a reservoir for about seven gallons. To get the water out he added a pump deigned to be used on an RV. It’s got features that make it work perfectly for this application: it runs off of battery voltage, it will turn on and off automatically when the tap is opened based on water pressure, and it will shut itself off if the reservoir runs dry. He designed a bezel to give the spigot a professional look. Just out of frame in the image above is an attachment for pressurized air. His next planned project for the Jeep is to add an air compressor.

After the break you can see a demo of the installed system, as well as a water pump test.

Finished Demo:

Pump test:

Filed under: transportation hacks

It’s easy to dismiss this one at first glance. But once you hear [Tychsen81] playing the thing you’ll want to know more.

He posted the demonstration way back in 2009. It wasn’t until a year later that he filmed the particulars of how the thing was made. The strings are actually bass guitar strings, an A and D string that are tuned down to E and A to play along with Black Sabbath’s “Ironman”. The neck is made out of two boards. One serves as the fingerboard, which is fretless. The other is mounted under that in order to provide negative space for the bridge while keeping the strings at the right height for the fingerboard. The water bottle helps to amplify the sound and that’s why the bottom end of the strings pivot on the bridge, pass through the neck, and are anchored on the bottom edge of the bottle.

We’ve embedded both the demo and the build videos after the break.

If this gets you thinking about making your own instruments you will also be interested in the Whamola.

“Ironman” Demo:

Build video:

[Thanks Herb]

Filed under: musical hacks

[Bill Porter] is a married man now, and evidently his new wife, [Mara], is awesome. They put together one of the geekiest weddings that included custom side-lit LED centerpieces.

Instead of laser engraving the dozens of plastic panels for each centerpiece, [Bill] tricked [Mara]‘s Silhouette Cameo home vinyl cutter – the same one they made their invitations with - into engraving acrylic panels. They’re made out of very thin plastic, but the fact that the couple were able to snap apart the engraved plasic after putting sheets though the machine is very impressive for something that’s generally used for scrapbooking.

As for the base of each centerpiece, [Bill] whipped up a few enclosures on his 3D printer and built a few battery packs out of 18650 lithium ion cells. The nine LEDs in each base were leftovers from a previous project involving LED strips, perfectly suited to run for a few hours in a reception hall.

It’s a great build for a wonderful occasion, and we’re really impressed with the plastic cutting ability of the Sihouette Cameo. Very nice work there.

Filed under: led hacks

A team of scientists at Oxford University has used a custom 3D printer to successfully create synthetic tissue that mimics properties of living tissue. Unlike projects underway by Organovo, the Oxford University team did not culture cells from existing, living tissue and expand upon them, but instead utilized water and oil to create a network [...]

In a breakthrough that could be a game-changer for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, researchers at Virginia Tech have discovered a way to extract large amounts of hydrogen from any plant. Current methods of producing hydrogen are expensive and they generate greenhouse gases. If this new method of hydrogen extraction proves to be as successful as initial [...]