The Tech Savvier: 5/16 Hacked Gadgets

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Web Monitoring of Water Usage using an ioBridge
May 15, 2009 at 4:51 pm

You may remember the Household AC Power Monitoring System using Clamp Meters that Jason Winter made which was featured earlier this year. Web Monitoring of Water Usage using an ioBridge is his latest project. As you can see from the pictures he lives in a climate where water pipes don’t freeze. Up here in Canada we are not so lucky. If you prefer the instructions in an Instructables format it is located here.

"The water meter comes with a 6 ft section of cable. My ioBridge module was in my house above. I drilled a tiny hole in the floor and ran a long section on 2-conductor wire from my ioBridge module, through the hole in the floor, to the water meter. I just soldered the wires, covered them with heat-shrink tubing and tucked the wires behind the water line to keep them from getting exposed to the elements. I just connected one wire to ground and the other to a digital input. The water meter contains a reed relay contact switch. As the meter reads each gallon of water, it connects and disconnects the switch. All ioBridge needs to do is read the numbers of times the switch closes to get the number of gallons used. The latest revision ioBridge modules have built in pull-up resistors, so I didn’t even need to add them myself "

Mechanical Digital Clock
May 15, 2009 at 2:54 pm

Mike Saunby got his hands on one of the most interesting old clocks I have ever seen. It does time and date which isn’t any great feat by todays standards but have a look at the complex electro-mechanical goodness that makes it tick. The big question here is who made the thing, there are no markings on the clock to give us any clues. Anyone know? There are some high resolution pictures here.

"The clock mechanism

The clock relies almost entirely on electro mechanical switches. The time source is a drop in "module" comprising a 240V 50cps synchronous electric motor with gearbox giving one RPM. Attached to this is a cam which activates a switch that looks to have been taken from a relay similar to those used elsewhere in the clock. This gives one pulse per minute.

The rest of the mechanism is built from relays and uniselectors and counts minutes, tens of minutes and hours. These are displayed in two rows of lamps, the top row being hours (1 to 12) the first five lamps of the second row being tens of minutes and the remaining ten lamps being minutes (0 to 9). Further sophistication (complication) is found in the alarm and reset operations.

The calendar mechanism

This is entirely mechanical. Every 12 hours a lever is pressed and this advances the day dial, e.g. A.M. Mon advances to P.M. Mon. There’s also a date dial and a month dial. The month dial has a cam to set the number of days in the month. February has 28 days on the cam, but every 4 years this is advanced to 29 by an extra lever pushed into place by an extra wheel that advances every 6 months and completes one revolution every 4 years. A nice touch!"

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faderTouch - Rear Projection Single Touch Controller
May 15, 2009 at 10:39 am

VJ Fader is a video performance artist based in Los Angeles who is trying out the MSAFluid technology that was created by Mehmet Akten. The effects are very soothing.

Thanks VJ

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Fireball V90 CNC Router Motor Driver Controller Build
May 15, 2009 at 7:35 am

In the past post about the Fireball V90 CNC Router the assembly of the actual router was shown. This time you will see how to make the motor controller to drive the CNC machine. There are many options to choose from. I decided to purchase the motors and control electronics from Probotix since they know what goes best with the Fireball V90. The build details below describe the first of two build phases. All that has been done so far is enough to operate the machine.

I used an old computer case for the driver controller, this gave me tons of room to add additional components in the future and also saved me a few bucks in the process. I also purchased additional components which will be added to the controller in the future. These future enhancements will include adding a supply current meter, volt meter, limit switches, a remote e-stop, temperature sensors and a remote control device. There are also lots of additions that are being developed for the system, these are being made by Probotix as well as system users. A good example of a user contribution are these products that Mike Phillips from MCPi have put together.

Keep your eyes open for some cool projects that this CNC machine is sure to have a part in soon!