You can now watch races using power tools!

It’s a rocket. Stuck through the back of a skull, sitting on an aging belt sander rigged to a pair of sawed-off skis. And it can haul butt down a track.

Scott David and his 10-year-old son, Cal, built El Diablo del Muerte (“the Devil of Death”) for last summer’s first annual Seattle Power Tool Drag Race and Derby. Inspired by earlier events in New England and the Bay Area, such races are now popping up around the world. The rules are simple: Build something that gets its drive from a handheld power tool (loosely defined). Each race pits two rigs against each other on wooden tracks, 60 feet long and one foot wide. The winner is the first to reach the end, but judges value originality as much as speed.

Besides El Diablo, the Seattle race featured a papier-mâché gremlin on a mini motorcycle and a rocket-powered toaster with AOL CDs for wheels. The gutsiest was an angle grinder/Rollerblade hybrid that launched off a ramp and nearly landed in the bed of a pickup truck down the block. El Diablo won several heats, but Cal is already looking ahead. Next year, he’s thinking his entry ought to shoot ping-pong balls.

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wow… :-]

The ultrasonic sensor and computer software provide a convincing illusion of direct interaction.

“Another installation exercise. Idea copied from another installation for ease. Ultrasonic range finder is used to detect distance of object form it and data is processed in flash, and displayed in form of grass. Same technique can apply to many other skin like running people (from the UFO… )”

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Here’s the video for the Bike POV earlier.

Nice “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year”, guys! (or girls)

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Nicely done RGB Bike POV! POV stands for Persistence of Vision, check out wikipedia definition
if you don’t know it yet.

The whole thing is based on a pic16f628A, with some SMD mosfets to power the led’s. Those are very bright RGB led’s with SMD resistors for smaller PCB size and lower weight. That’s important too when keeping in mind that a heavy weight could give a unbalanced wheel. When all the led’s are on ( 32 led’s, each 3 colors, it draws 10Watt, but normally it will use less than 1 watt. Power comes from 4 NiMh AA cells. And there lifetime before charging is very long.

Keeping the rotation synchronized with showing the text is possible by 2 reed sensors. So each rotation shows twice the image. You could do it once, but that means half the refresh rate.

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I picked up couple broken monitors at the garbage can nearby where I work last week. (Yes, I am such a el cheapo, I have to go to the dumpster for some hackable parts. Regardless, I also found some PCI serial cards which I needed badly for FREE!)
Well, I am planning on some visualizing device…and this VGA expropriator might help me…

Play the video to check out the cool effects of the VGA Expropriator. There are lots more videos and pictures in the creators site.

“Video synthesis tends to be dominated by digital technology these days however analogue video synthesis techniques can still offer a great many advantages in terms of aesthetics, performance, simplicity, and adaptability. Not to mention the non-linear surprises which can come from working in the analogue domain. This “VGA Expropriator” will be the first in a series of proprietary analogue hardware devices which seek to explore the possibilities of digital/analogue hybrid technology in video/audio performance and studio production contexts. The first offering here is essentially a new design with it’s creative process making ample use of circuit-bending methodologies.”

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This is the coolest watercraft I’ve ever seen, now you can be a dolphin!~

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Here’s a cool way to make your own battery pack with a little voltmeter!

I have a 10 cell ‘AA’ NiMH battery pack (12V @ 1.6AH) that I use for backpacking. It needed a home! I also wanted a voltmeter built-in so I could keep track of it’s condition and charging (I live in the woods, you have to keep chasing the sun with your solar panel..). Radio Shack didn’t have any cases / boxes that suited me so I got thinking about that Super-Sized Giant Altoids tin I had and thought it might work. Bingo! The battery pack, LED voltmeter ( www.rainbowkits.com ), switches and connectors all just fit!

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Kinda cool and creepy video for the day~

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Somebody in Japan hacked up this wii power glove, awesome!

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