In order to monitor our power consumption at our house, I set out to install a  TED (The Energy Detective) system.  The system monitors current flow into the house using inductive taps.  In our case, we have two panels each of which required two inductive clamps (on the incoming power lines near the top of the photo). Each pair of inductive clamps connects to a small box at the base of the power panel.  The [...]

The Tweet-a-Watt was one of the first projects I built from an article in Make magazine. I’ve since built many more.  It also introduced me to Limor Fried and her company Adafruit.  It turns out I already had the very Kill-a-Watt unit in use which was to be modified for the project.  So mostly I needed the XBees and some other parts.  The full Adafruit tutorial is here. The XBee was a tight fit in [...]

My daughter wanted to dress as Hermione Granger for the Halloween party at her school. We thought we’d jazz it up a bit with a special book she could hold — one which might play the Harry Potter theme song from within if it’s held in a certain way. Well, we could have really gone overboard and embedded an LCD or OLED in the pages themselves but the music would have to suffice this time [...]

I’ve enjoyed assembling Gakken kits for some time. Ever since I had seen videos of Theo Jansen’s work, I’d wanted to build models of his work.  Then I heard about the Gakken kit but it wasn’t yet imported to the U.S.  I was fortunate enough to pick one up in Japan at the Miraikan museum shop in Tokyo where they’d just finished an exhibit of his work (I also sought out other Gakken kits while I [...]

While I was in Japan I was able to visit one of the leading science museums in Tokyo — the Miraikan. I recognized a few of the exhibits as things I’d seen described in blogs over the years — like the robotic floor tiles that move with you riding them so that as you step you really stay in place. The photo below shows a rather interesting simulation of internet routing. I was also surprised [...]

There is a wonderful museum which exhibits working automata of the Edo era in Japan.  It’s called Shishi Kaikan and it’s located in Takayama, Japan.  The automata are mechanical marvels.  A couple of these have been modeled by Gakken and are available as scaled down kits.  I’ve included videos of a few of the larger displays below.  I’m calling these “automata” but the Japanese word is Karakuri which is a sort of puppet meant to surprise [...]

In December I received and mounted the Moore Pattern Kinetic Sculpture that Jeff Lieberman designed (from a KickStarter sponsorship). Although the motor is very quiet, I used an X10 module and motion sensor to only activate the sculpture for a couple of minutes when people approach. I used the X-10 MS16A sensor (for about $15). These later generation X10 motion sensors are nice in that they have a programmable internal timer and can send the [...]

As part of a larger project I had a need for an inexpensive XY table.  I’ve built a couple of high-precision CNCs before but in this case I didn’t need such high accuracy and was willing to make some compromises to keep the cost low.  I found an excellent instructable and proceeded with the build with a couple of minor refinements. Things went fairly smoothly during the construction.  One has to be rather careful when inserting parts onto [...]

I’m getting this blog started to share a few of the after hours projects I’ve completed and am currently working on.  I also tend to be an early adopter of various products and will try to share some of those as well.  If you spot a project you’d like more detail on just post a comment and I’d be glad to give more details.