Drink a lot of beer in the bottles and have too much recycling every week?

Don’t worry, you can turn your empty beer bottles into powerful solar-powered LED beer lanterns that will light up your house at night for free.

Al Gore and company have helped us to see that our planet is in peril. Lend a hand, make a toast, and help illuminate ways for saving Earth — all at the same time! It’s easy to do your part: recycle, refill, and recharge. Just take your fave beverage bottle (keep the cap), drop in a flexible solar panel, a step-up switching regulator circuit, a rechargeable battery pack, and a powerful LED, cap it, and you’ll have a self-sufficient garden lantern that is ideal for shedding some light on solving environmental issues. You will have to choose your bottle carefully, though. Clear glass rules. Also, wide-mouth bottles are easier to convert than narrow opening long-neckers. Like your grandfather who built ships in discarded bottles, put a modern spin on bottle building while being conscientious of your world. Cheers!

via popsci

You know that cat’s litterbox can become potentially dangerous to your health with its deadly fumes, especially for pregnant women.  Now, here’s a cool way to make a self-ventilating cat litterbox so you don’t have to worry about all that invisible bad-for-your-health fumes.

I recently saw a post on Apartment Therapy showing a homemade “Cat Jet” ventilation solution (http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/at-email/tools-for-pet-living-the-cat-jet-and-the-roomba-email-from-9108-062199) using a bathroom fan to vent the noxious fumes of a litter box from the inside of the house to the outside. As a home automation geek I immediately was inspired to take it up a notch by combining similar hardware to a series of timers.

Behold: Alan’s Automated Cat Jet! Total Cost? $80.

Consisting of one bathroom fan, one bathroom vent kit, one Smarthome Appliance module, and my home automation system, Alan’s Automated Cat Jet shows once again that with technology, anything is possible.

via bb gadgets

You know when it comes to New Years and Independence Day, you always get to see some really exotic, beautiful fireworks.  Well, all those fireworks are nowdays controlled by an ignition control system but here’s how to make one for yourself.

At the heart of my firework ignition system is an SX48 running at 50 MHz. I was able to make full use of the SX’s 36 IO pins. Thirty lines are dedicated to the 30 channels. Two lines connect to a MAX233 chip for serial port control. Another line is connected to a 7805 (TO-92) which monitors the state of the arming key. The remaining 3 lines are used to communicate with the PIC A/D converter via an SPI interface. The system was built with cost as an important factor. At $10 the SX48 Proto board was an easy choice with its incorporated 5V regulator, led and all the difficult surface mount soldering already done for me. I also designed 2 pc boards using the freeware version of Cadsoft’s Eagle. The interface board connects the SX48 Proto board and contains the MAX233 chip, A/D converter and 30 LEDs to represent the state of each of the 30 channels.

via hackedgadgets, DIY Page

You know those telepromopters that TV news reporters use to read their daily news?  Well, here’s a simply way to make a teleprompter for any type of presentations.  (This one is an example for a church but I don’t see any reasons why you wouldn’t use it outside god’s house.)

1. Whatever you do…. no matter what…. and this is job #1 so pay attention…. always have a paper copy of your notes in your suit pocket.     Allow me to repeat myself — Have paper backup of your talk.    To sum up this point:  Make sure you have your notes on paper, and easily accessible in case your computer dies.
2. Write your talk, refine it and get it to the point where you would normally print it out as notes. In my case I work from a hybrid of a bullet point outline & written-out quotations.
3. Enter those notes,  page by page into a power point presentation.   Use huge font, as it is irrelevant how many slides/pages you use.
4. Get a “wireless presenter”    You plug a small receiver into any USB port, then hold the tiny clicker in your hand.  My clicker is 1-1/2 inch across, 3-1/2 inches long and about 1/2 inch thick.  It fits easily, and unobtrusively into your hand.   No one will even notice it.

via ldsym

Here’s a really useful DIY for those of you with concrete floors.  Basically this DIY shows you how to paint your concrete floor with epoxy finish.

Why is this good?

Well, you can give your concrete floors a new shiny finish with your favorite color without spending a bunch of money on new wood flooring or whatnot.

I did this to one of my former job offices, (well, I hired someone to do it) and it’s a really good solution for turning a warehouse into an office. (that’s what I did)

It sure beats spending more than $2000 on hardwood flooring.

If you have a garage that you park a vehicle in or use as a project work area then you probably keep wishing the floor looked a little better. Well with a few gallons of Epoxy Paint and a weekend your floor can look better then new.

via yourepair

Here’s a cool set of DIY colo-changing LED coasters.  Basically, it runs on solar power, LEDs light up in red for hot drinks and blue for cold drinks.

Looks pretty simple to make, maybe a good idea for your next circuits projects.

Smart Coasters are cast-plastic coasters for your drink that light up red when you put a hot drink on top and light up blue with a cold drink. The design is fully analog– no microcontrollers and no programming– and they incorporate a solar cell so that the whole thing is hermetically sealed: waterproof and washable. Complete step-by-step DIY instructions are included for both the electronics and the resin casting.

via evilmadscientist, hungryscientist

Here’s a cool DIY hydroponics system you can make for growing all types of your favorite plants indoors.

This is a great way to keep your plants constantly filled with nutrients, now don’t burn your house down with lamps that are too powerful.

The air pump has become a staple component in most systems for various reasons. Moving water with air makes complete sense to me while solving several issues and being cheap, reliable and easily serviceable. Pump maintenance is algae free and time will tell just how reliable.

via instructables

I will probably never figure out the original name for Go-Karts but here’s a really cool DIY electric go-kart someone has made and you might want to refer it if you want to make your own in the near future.

This year, the Summer Engineering Workshop team was interested in making an electric go-kart. (Some kind of obsession with things you can ride…) But to make things more interesting, we decided to add a 110F ultracapacitor into the mix. Capacitors store electrical potential energy; much less than a battery, but you can charge and discharge them more quickly. Research into automotive applications of capacitors (in hybrids, for example) has led to development of ultracapacitors with increasing energy density and decreasing price.

Research is research. We were also interested in having some fun. So, we wanted to see if we could very simply integrate an ultracapacitor into a stylish electric go-kart. One of the simplest ways to do so is to use it exclusively to store energy recaptured from the kart as it brakes. Then, put this energy at the driver’s fingertips in the form of a power “assist,” or, less formally, boost! While it’s likely not the best solution for full-size autos, we wanted to make a tangible demonstration that the technology is closer to reality than many might think.

The site is very informative and even provides free circuit schematics for the electricity parts, I highly suggest you to check this one out.

via make, DIY Page

Do you ever wonder how to make a Portable Movie Rail System for making your own homemade professional movies?

Well, now you can hack one of these cool portable movie rail systems yourself by following some of these pics which are pretty easy to understand.

We often  see chase
scene movements in film. This picture needs to be rather stable.

Professional rail system is heavy, and expensive to use. We find it hard to carry around
and use.
What we need is a low cost, lightweight and portable rail system.

On one weekend, my colleague Murdoch has done some research online. He
found that low-cost DIY rail system is very doable. And use only common materials at we see every day.

via bordesign