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November 6, 2009

Fake skylight uses solar panels to light LEDs

Wish you had a skylight, but don't have the ability to cut a hole in your roof? MAKE subscriber Chris did to, and wrote in to share his solution to the problem: a pv+led-based 'fake' skylight. The concept is pretty simple, but with a nice result. He had some unused capacity on his PV (photovoltatic) solar panel, and basically hooked up a bunch of high power LEDs directly to it. To achieve the 'skylight' look, he built a custom metal box with a glass diffuser screen, and mounted the diodes inside of it. He has a nice write-up on his site, along with a calculator to determine how the LEDs should be connected. Excellent work!

November 5, 2009

Beautiful scrap wood butcher block table

I love this. Instructables user wholman has gathered together a bunch of scrap wood from "dumpsters, back alleys, vacant lots, abandoned buildings, recycling yards, and architectural salvage centers" and laminated it together using all-thread. Then he's very carefully smoothed and polished only one side of the finished block, leaving the underside rough to show off the process. Beautiful.

November 2, 2009

Large collection of repurposed train cars

Paul Overton calls this great round-up of creatively reused rolling stock from Web Urbanist a "megapost." I like that term. There's railroad-car homes, offices, hotels--even a railroad-car footbridge. [via Dude Craft]

November 1, 2009

Ocean power

Capturing the same powerful forces that destroyed the Tacoma Narrows Bridge shortly after it was built in 1940, researchers at the University of Michigan are developing a new way of generating electricity with the slow moving currents found in most of the rivers and oceans of the world.

VIVACE is the first known device that could harness energy from most of the water currents around the globe because it works in flows moving slower than 2 knots (about 2 miles per hour.) Most of the Earth's currents are slower than 3 knots. Turbines and water mills need an average of 5 or 6 knots to operate efficiently. Michael Bernitsas
Michael Bernitsas, professor in the Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, stands before a prototype of his VIVACE hydrokinetic energy device.

VIVACE stands for Vortex Induced Vibrations for Aquatic Clean Energy. It doesn't depend on waves, tides, turbines or dams. It's a unique hydrokinetic energy system that relies on "vortex induced vibrations."

This technology is hoped to be easier to site than traditional windmills and hydropower generators. [Thanks, Amon!]

October 31, 2009

William Kamkwamba at MIT

Recently, William Kamkwamba spoke at the Technology and Culture Forum at MIT.

William Kamkwamba, is a senior at the African Leadership Academy, a pan-African high school in Johannesburg, South Africa. A 2007 and 2009 TEDGlobal Fellow, Kamkwamba has been profiled on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and his inventions have been displayed at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. He's often invited to tell his story at such venues as the World Economic Forum in Africa, CES, Aspen Ideas Festival, Maker Faire Africa and the African Economic Forum.

During the evening, William was introduced by Amy Smith, and spoke with his coauthor Bryan Mealor, an American journalist covering Africa. Together, they told stories of life in Malawi and William's experiences making and fighting to learn in the midst of a devastating famine.

After the break, there is more video from the evening.

Read full story

October 23, 2009

D-Build: Finding parts from old homes

Here's what looks like a great, culturally sensitive way to tear down old buildings. D-Build, a project started in Syracuse, NY, is aiming to document and catalog entire decommissioned buildings as they are taken apart.

All well and good, but what does this have to do with makers, you ask? Well, the other half of their equation is to provide a market where you can purchase the raw materials taken from the houses, and even sell things back that were made with them.

This seems like a excellent way to recycle usable building materials, that would probably otherwise just end up in a dump. [via core77]

October 22, 2009

Eternal flame replaced by LEDs

Must. Resist. Yakov Smirnoff. Joke. This is a war memorial, after all, and to a particularly nasty bit of a particularly nasty war, at that. Still, in the same way that Italians can laugh about the fact that, yes, it can be a bit of a pain to renew your driver's license in Italy, or that Estadounidenses can admit that, yes, we have been known to occasionally over-commercialize certain things, even patriotic Russians will see that there is something of the stereotypically Russian in this story.

This memorial was erected in Ukraine shortly after WWII to commemorate the legions of fallen dead. For 50 years its eternal flame burned natural gas piped in under the Soviet administration. Then...well, things fall apart, as everyone knows. With the breakup of the USSR, the flow of free natural gas into Ukraine stopped and it became too expensive to keep the torch lit. I'm sure it was a sad day that finally saw the flame go out.

Apparently it sat unlit for several years until this compromise solution was achieved: The flame would be converted into a cell-phone tower, the antennae concealed by a round facade bearing a pixelated flickering LED-flame image funded by the cell-phone company. One of those capitalistic solutions where everyone wins, but only kind of.

To my eye, this is in awful taste. But the story, I think, is kind of beautiful. If it's really true that the only two alternatives were to leave the flame unlit or to replace it with a cheesy simulation, I think, ultimately, that I would have made the same choice. And as we continue to oxidize the world's supply of hydrocarbons, sooner or later the sensibility of keeping fossil-fuel flames burning "eternally," only for symbolic purposes, may well become an issue in other parts of the world. [via Hack a Day]

October 19, 2009

Train an army of children to recycle bottles for you

There's an odd synchronicity here with last week's post about the coin-scavenging-crow training machine. This time it's a whack-a-mole style video game that you play by dropping glass bottles into the slots when they light up. See it work around 0:40.

In a side note, Volkswagen's Fun Theory Award is now definitely on my radar. Besides this project, their competition to incentivize socially-useful behaviors by turning them into entertainment also produced the world's deepest rubbish bin and the subway staircase piano keyboard. [via Hack a Day]

October 17, 2009

Log radio is better than bad, it's good

A beautiful wooden radio from designers Solène Le Goff and Christophe Gouache. Solar and/or wind-up powered. [via Dude Craft]

October 16, 2009

Energy-harvesting rocking chair

Rochus Jacob designed this energy-harvesting rocking chair. It works by storing energy while you rock during the day, then lights up the attached OLED lamp at night. It is a neat concept, however there is no reason to wait for future technologies to build one. Just start with this human-powered fan design, add a small generator and a standard LED, grab your whittling project, and you should be set to go. [via gizmodo]

October 15, 2009

Open source sourcing

This is a really cool idea, an open source project dedicated to the idea of tracking, documenting, and mapping where all of the components for our everyday goods come from. It's supply chain transparency. [Thanks, Laura Cochrane!]

SourceMap - Visualizing Supply Chains

Train an army of crows to gather treasure for you

Josh Klein developed a machine that trains crows to trade coins for peanuts. Literally, for peanuts. So you fill this thing with peanuts and set it out, say, in a public park, and the crows will scour the ground for loose change, carry it to the machine, and drop it in a slot in exchange for food. The project, dubbed "CrowBox," made a big splash when he unveiled it back in 2007. Now he's made the complete plans for the CrowBox freely available online so you can roll your own. And there's no reason you couldn't train your fly-monkeys-fly to gather other crow-portable objects. Twenty-dollar bills? Keys? iPods? Human eyes? The possibilities are endless. Set one up at the beach! Train seagulls to trade whole wallets for pre-shucked oysters!

October 14, 2009

Coffee sleeve iPhone stand

The onslaught of DIY iPhone stands continues. This time around we find ourselves in a cafe with a warm beverage and the need to watch BMX stunt videos. Luckily we remembered to bring along our nice utility scissors and the Barista was kind enough to include a cup sleeve with the drink. The overall execution and reuse of recyclables on this project should gain high marks for those keeping score at home.

In the Maker Shed: Sneaky Green Uses for Everyday Things

Sneaky Green Uses for Everyday Things by MAKE Magazine contributor Cy Tymony combines the sneaky fun of his 'Sneaky Uses' series with the growing interest in green living. The result is an easy-to-practice manual for conserving energy.

Features

The book includes 40 projects using green techniques with step-by-step instructions, as well as illustrations and directions for an Earth-friendly existence.
Projects are enjoyable for kids and also engaging for adults.
Made from 100 percent usable information that really does conserve energy and improve the way we live.
Contains sneaky things we can do to go green and includes a helpful energy reduction section that is full of tips and resources, making energy conservation easy.

October 13, 2009

Pedal powered computer

The OLPC Afghanistan team rigged up this pedal-powered generator for the OLPC. Using the generator from their Freeplay hand crank, the system is set up so that students can actually generate enough electricity to power the computer while they are using it.

It's a pretty simple setup, but seems to make sense in this context. Anyone want to set up a 'green' coffeeshop filled up with these things? [via neatorama]

How-To: Build a driftwood xylophone

Almost every time I go out to the beach I notice something somebody has made out of driftwood. This can range in size from the delicate ornamentation of sandcastles to massive driftwood forts. It's as if we're programmed to take advantage of this abundant natural resource the instant we come in contact with it. The compulsion to fabricate something with your bare hands out of a couple of weathered sticks and whatever's laying around can be overpowering. Once I carved a functioning flute for no apparent reason.

Heeding the call of stonewashed lumber, experimental musical instrument maker Bart Hopkin and his percussionist friend Joyce Kouffman head out to the beach in this video to show us how to build a driftwood xylophone. [Thanks, Sara!]

October 11, 2009

Real-time energy monitoring

A few months ago, I met Mike Costa at Design Continuum. He had a Chumby on his desk which was set to monitor the energy usage of the building. At the time, he was working out the technical details of the system, and now has posted up some info about the project. Here are some highlights:

Real time power monitoring has been proven to effectively reduce power consumption due to waste. It is intuitive to consider that humans need some sort of feedback in order to recognize the presence of waste. For example if one leaves the faucet open one has sound and sight feedback indicating there is waste. What sort of feedback do we have for electricity? None really, this is why these systems can help with waste reduction

The system uses images from a camera to track changes on the power meter, which is then fed through the network, converted to data and ported to the Google Powermeter. The data can then be viewed online from any browser. The history page gives some more context on the data. Check out more about the project's impact on the Analysis page.

The data can be sent to any device as long as the device has internet access and can read a RSS feed. So a web browser can display it, as well as a cell phone that has internet access. The data that the Chumby takes comes from this address. The Chumby application is a simple flash movie that reads from the above RSS feed and displays the data. The color changes from green to red as we use more electricity, so at night, the text will be green/yellow. This is a link to the exact same flash movie that is running on the Chumby. It updates in real time. The data is being served from a web server I built.

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