Month: November 2006

Here’s a relatively easy project that can save you some money, energy, and in this builder’s case, unnecessary trips to the basement. It’s a power outlet controlled by the serial port of a PC. The builder made it so that, whenever he printed anything out, the printer would turn on and stay on for 30 minutes, shutting down if no new jobs came through. This serial-controlled switch was especially useful in that the printer in question is in his basement not near his desk and prior to the switch, he’d have to go down there and turn the printer on before printing a job. This fix nicely automates the process.

He created a Perl background daemon to run on his Linux server which houses the serial port he used. He used a solid state and a mechanical relay to do the power switching.

[Via hackAday]

You may have seen the earlier Ionic Cooling Project that Jared Bouck featured on his site. Readers of the project raised concerns about a system that ported ionized air over the PC’s components, possibly generating too much ozone and damaging parts. So Jason did a second version which is external and ports the air out of the case.

[Via hackAday]

This is an amazingly cool project that’s relatively easy to build with a high geek cred payoff: a “Time Fountain,” a fountain that appears to suspend the drops falling from it. Basically, it’s a little desktop pump-powered fountain with Fluorescein liquid (a fluorescent dye) in the water and UV LEDs controlled by a PIC16F628. By timing the strobe of the LEDs to the dye flow, you can appear to suspend the drops, make them go backwards, even manipulate them. Very cool.

You definitely want to watch the video. The project posting is followed by a nice long thread about the Time Fountain, where to find the parts, programming the PIC, and more.