Greg Miller prides himself on his dumpster-diving ability. To motivate others to take up the terrestrial sport he developed this Tesla coil built completely from trash (Coral cache link). The power supply is from a neon indication he discovered behind a frat house. The capacitor bank is built from high voltage caps discovered in televisions. […]

Be cautious what you state when you are shown a industrial product that you believe you might make yourself, you may discover yourself having to make great on your promise. When he was shown a crowdfunded alarm clock coffee maker, [Fabien-Chouteau] said “just provide me an espresso maker as well as I can do the same”. […]

3D printing is a technique we’ve all been using for ages at home, or via Shapeways, but if you are designing a product, 3D printing will only get you so far. It’s crude, slow, expensive, and has lots of limitations. While it’s great for the prototyping stage, ultimately products manufactured in volume will be manufactured […]

Zaragoza, Spain hacklab La Remolacha (“The Beet”) sports a logo which responds to human interaction with a beet plant growing in the space. Sensors keep track of temperature as well as humidity for both air and ground, while buttons add a lot more water, plant food, light, and music. The shape and activity of the visualization […]

This is exactly what it looks like. [Oleg] calls it soldering in inert atmosphere, but it’s just a toaster oven reflow hack dropped into a container full of carbon dioxide. Why go to this trouble? It’s all about solder wetting. This is the ability of the molten solder paste to flow into all of the tinned areas […]

In February, Google and Mattel introduced their hi Barbie Internet-connected toy. This Barbie has an internal microphone, a WiFi connection to Google’s voice recognition services, and a speaker to carry on a “conversation” with the targeted child. Like the folks at Somerset Recon, we’d say that this is an Internet of things (IoT) device that’s […]