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After reading a bicycle-powered hydrofoil build we posted a few days ago, [James] sent in the project that earned him an iron ring from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada. It’s a pedal-powered hydrofoil made of carbon fiber and a Titanium drive shaft [James] and five other students in a mech eng senior design class [...]

Tags:  hydrofoil lot pedal james nova-scotia canada nova-scotia-canada mech-eng drive-shaft transportation hacks  

Over the last year, [James] has been a part of a few commercial projects that used a thermal receipt printer as part of the build. Something must have cracked in his mind, because [James] spent a lot of time developing a way to print customized content on receipt printers, connecting these printers to the Internet, and sharing [...]

Tags:  printer part receipt james thermal-receipt-printer receipt-printers commercial-projects parts  

While his wife was out-of-town [James] jumped at the opportunity to do some snooping around with her Chevy Tahoe’s parking assist sensors. We can understand how pulling parts out of someone’s car would make them none too happy. But we find it hilarious that it’s a leased company car he’s tinkering around with. But we’re [...]

Tags:  wife parking car james chevy-tahoe company-car sensors microcontrollers  

The Swiss plan to clean up the near-space environment. They just announced a debris removal device which they plan to launch in three to five years. The first goal of the program is to scoop up two satellites. Both of them are Swiss owned, but there’s something very James Bond like that pops into our heads [...]

Tags:  space junkyard way bond james debris-removal two-satellites space-environment robots hacks  

This is [James'] latest android build, a set of legs that use gyroscopes for balance. He started off by planning the build with some LEGO pieces to get an idea of how each foot and leg joint would fit together. This let him achieve one of his goals. From the start he wanted to create [...]

Tags:  testing stability android james lego-pieces stability-testing gyroscopes robots hacks  

[James] is one of those guys on a quest to control everything with one device. His tool of choice is an Android phone, which can do quite a lot right out of the box. But he was never satisfied with its lack of IR remote control abilities. He fixed that feature-gap by building a Bluetooth [...]

Tags:  prototyping bluetooth control james translator-james one-of-those-guys gap android hacks  

[James] builds all sorts of robots and superhero costume replicas at home, so he is always searching for a better way to get consistent results when using his vacuum table. A lot of people use their oven or exposed heating coils from electric frying pans to warm the plastic sheets, but [James] wasn’t really interested in going [...]

Tags:  vacuum table form james electric-frying-pans heating-coils vacuum-table tool hacks  

[James] built himself a robotic band from obsolete computer parts. The band needed something to play, and [Marilyn Manson]‘s Beautiful People fit the bill. While it’s not the Rock-fire Explosion, having the [James]‘ band cover [Marilyn Manson] is nearly as terrifying. [James]‘ original plan was to cover Mad World, but the stepper motors were drowning [...]

Tags:  robot band computer marilyn-manson james rock-fire-explosion stepper-motors fire-explosion musical hacks  

When you cut something out, you lose a bit of material in the process. Think of a table saw and the sawdust it produces, that’s the waste material lost in an area the width of the blade. It’s really easy to measure that, just measure the blade. But [James] started wondering about a good way [...]

Tags:  material accounting blade james material-loss waste-material laser-cutting tool hacks  

You can get class credit for the coolest things these days. Take for instance, this Automatic Chessboard that [Brian] and [James] built for the final project in one of their classes this spring. We just looked at a robotic chess setup on Monday that used a gripper mounted on a gantry to move the pieces. [...]

Tags:  automated class chess james brian chess-set chessboard gripper home entertainment hacks  

[James] didn’t like losing detail when scanning in photographic negatives, so he repurposed an old scanner and turned it into a lightbox. The Flickr set of the build shows [James] installing a compact fluorescent bulb in the body of the scanner. Aluminum foil reflects the light, and the scanner glass is painted white for diffusion. [...]

Tags:  scanner lightbox diy james scanner-glass compact-fluorescent-bulb aluminum-foil classic hacks  

A new project from [James] targets the iPhone with this wild generative art in an Augmented Reality environment (free) app for 3GS and 4 running running iOS 4+. Powered by the String augmented reality library, and written in C + OpenGL the combo present a power AR platform offering over 100,000 polygons on screen with [...]

Tags:  reality whistle art james 3gs generative-art reality-environment iphone hacks  

[James] designed a digital controller in MatLab, but he really wanted to see if it would work in a real-world application. To test out his linear quadratic regulator design, he decided to build a self-balancing robot. His goal was to built a robot that can keep its balance even when external forces are applied, all [...]

Tags:  controller robot self-balancing james regulator-design linear-quadratic-regulator digital-controller robots hacks  

[James] came up with a way to make small numbers of high-contrast instrument panels cheaply, and without too much labor. We’ll make with the bad news right away; you’re going to need a laser cutter to use this method. Traditionally, panels that look like the one above are etched onto special composite that has one [...]

Tags:  etching way panel james laser-cutter instrument-panels high-contrast laser hacks  

[James] is interested in reverse engineering some integrated circuits. One of the biggest hurdles in this process has always been just getting to the guts of the chip. He used acetone to dissolve the plastic case but had trouble getting through the epoxy blob. Commonly, the epoxy is soaked in nitric acid for a few [...]

Tags:  epoxy decapping reverse james integrated-circuits plastic-case acetone chemistry hacks  

This touch screen relies on measurements from two range finders to track your finger as you press buttons. [James Alliban] put this together as his first Arduino project. We’re familiar with [James'] background because of his informative augmented reality business card. As the Arduino picks up data from the range finder it sends it to a Flash [...]

Tags:  touch range screen james-alliban james range-sensors press-buttons range-finders multitouch hacks  

We normally advocate wearing a helmet when biking in case you get hit by a car. In this case the guy on the bottom of this double-decker bicycle should wear a helmet to avoid a boot to the head. When we started watching the video after the break we thought that [James] had just built [...]

Tags:  bicycle helmet case james boot-to-the-head bicycle-built-for-two transportation hacks