DIY Hacks

Ducted Fan Bike

Ducted fan vehicles haven’t exactly caught on yet but they look like tons of fun. Remember the Ducted Fan Scooter we featured earlier this year? Rich Olson from Nothing Labs has built this Ducted Fan Bike, it uses 3 ducted fans that are mounted to the rear of a bike, some controls on the handlebars are used to interface with an arduino. The arduino then controls the fan speed controllers.

Automatic Dogfeeder Project

If you have animals, feeding them is a boring daily routine. This Automatic Dogfeeder Project allows you to load a big hopper full of food and program when it should do your dirty work. Future plans for the design include adding wireless capability to the feeder. Via: Embedds “The plan was to make an autonomous dogfeeder using an Atmel AVR microcontroller, a cereal dispenser, a DC motor and some electronics.

DIY Segway

This DIY Segway actually outperforms the real Segway in top speed. You can see a an automatic English translated version here, as you can see from the quote below the Google English translation is not bad but not perfect. The software was written in Bascom and assembler. I didn’t realize that the original Segway cost 100 million to develop, the 2000 pound build cost for this one seems like a

Print Resist Directly on PCB with Modified Ink Jet Printer

Ryan Pourcillie hacked his inkjet printer to have a straight through path so that he could print resist directly onto a copper clad board to make a custom PCB. He then uses special ink in the printer which can act as a resist since the normal ink jet ink would just be eaten away in the etchant tank. “Materials: – Obviously you’ll need some form of an Epson inkjet printer

Larsen Scanner used to Indicate Computer Status

Mike Szczys from Jumptuck has put his larsen scanner to good use by using it as a status indicator on his computer. He is interfacing it to the computer using the parallel port which seems to be a dying port these days. “I decided to finish up my Cylon Eye (Larson Scanner) project by adding it as a status indicator for my computer. I record over the air programming and

DIY Stroboscope using a Three Phase DC Motor

We have seen some Stroboscopes in operation before, for this  DIY Stroboscope that uses a Three Phase DC Motor which eLabs put together I think the actual stroboscope is the simpler part of the build. Since the project is using a three phase motor actually getting the motor to run is in my mind a huge part of the project. I love the reuse of computer related stuff in this

Solar Pop Can Heater System Build Roundup

Solar Pop Can Heating Systems are getting quite popular these days. As heating costs rise everyone is looking for ways to save on their energy bill. Most people are aware of insulating and using good weatherstripping to keep the heat in and the cold out but many don’t know about the alternate heating methods that are available. One of the alternative heating methods that is gaining some traction is capturing