Here’s a great DIY on how to make a solar heater. Although the one he made is not functional you can probably easily make it functional by adding an inlet pipe and outlet pipe plus a small PC fan. But the theory is very impressive and this thing could be made more efficient with a little bit more work.

Using the same equipment and methods, I determined the outlet temperature to be about 95 degrees - thus a 15 degree temperature differential. Not 110 degrees, but not bad , considering I didn’t even break $50 in materials - most of that being the plexiglas window.

Obviously don’t have the inlet and outlet attached to the garage - figures that the day I finish the furnace, it’s 80 degrees and sunny and it looks like we’re finally done with winter. Dad recommends wiring a pusher fan at the end of the inlet tube to keep the air circulating through the furnace.

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Wow, check out the cool paddle boat this guys in China made for under $20!

Li Zhiyuan assembles a paddle boat made of recycled materials on the river at a park in Hefei, east China’s Anhui province, April 23, 2007. Li, the designer of the paddle boat, spent one and half months making the boat using trashed wood, bottles, cans and bicycles which cost him less than 100 yuan (USD 12), local media reported.

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Check out the Rotating House! They must have put a lot of work on it. Think about all the water pipes, electrical wires, and etc… that’s rotating with it…

The Everingham rotating house is a 24-metre diameter octagon with a 3-metre, 360-degree verandah. The exterior walls are mostly glass and steel, and it has a COLORBOND® roof.

The entire structure, weighing approximately 50 tonnes, rotates up to 360-degrees if and when desired, within a 180 degree retainer wall and a 180 degree fixed deck and railing.

The concept is the result of nearly a decade of intermittent research, planning and design, and ten months of construction over a two year period consuming all disposable time. The project was completed in March 2006.

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Check out the inclined solar cooker and the vast range of solar cooker HOWTOs here.

Solar cooker available, generally fall under two categories. One is box type and the other is parabolic reflector focusing type .The cooking ability of existing box type simple solar cooker is seems to be not satisfactory in comparison to the cost involved. .Parabolic reflector focusing type cooker needs frequent adjustment to track the apparent motion of the sun .For these reasons this type of parabolic reflector solar cooker is not much popular.

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Oh boy, I am looking forward to this cool giant nose picking machine powered by human hamster wheels! (at the Maker Faire)

Here’s a fun interactive toy in the Rube Goldberg style. The “coin” is a 10′ human hamster wheel. Participants walk on the wheel. This turns a pulley which turns a large disc from an electrical spool which lifts a see-saw lever which lifts an “arm” which twists a finger into the nose of a 12 foot face suspended on a 23 foot tower.

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Check out this cool Pizza Box Solar Cooker which is very simple to make and you can cook pizza if you don’t have a microwave or an oven. This Pizza Box Solar Oven can reach up to temperatures of 275 Fahrenheit! Nice…

Check out these really large solar cookers you can use to cook some food. Maybe they will be able to commercialize this and let people cook some steaks on it instead of using up our precious earth resources.

One of the easiest beginnings for a parabolic solar cooker can be found in thousands of backyards across the United States-the satellite dish, from the large C-band to the small digital dish. What happens to these relics once they are discarded? They are large and awkward and not easily recycled. Building your own solar cooker is a great way to reuse these parabolic-shaped units while reducing waste in the landfill.

Wow, check out this cool energy saving house!

The balcony rail is a solar vacuum tube to heat water. Photovoltaics on the roof rotate independently to track the sun, generating four to six times the energy needed for the house, making it beyond zero energy and into “das Plusenergiehaus” or a “Plus-energy House.” If that is not enough, there is on-site composting, chemical free sewage treatment and rainwater catchment.

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Wow, check out this cool sound trigger circuit DIY for High Speed Photography!

The general use is quite simple: setup a noisy event to trigger the flash. Since I am using the Sigma EF-500 Flash, which have an internal “dumb slave”, I activate a led to tell the flash when to fire. A more general solution can be found here.

he circuit consists of 2 parts. The first part is a very simple microphone pre-amplifier. The second is the light generator, to trig the Flash.