Posts from the Home Hacks 1 Category at Hack a Day

Plumb in your espresso machine (cheap)

Posted Mar 16th 2008 11:27PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: misc hacks, home hacks

A while back, I wrote up a how-to on some mods I made to my ECM Giotto espresso machine. After giving it some break-in time, I finally wrote up my cheap plumbed in espresso trick. Plumbing kits use a $50 solenoid that requires special plumbing. My version uses a $12 fridge solenoid, easily adds on to my previous mods, and only requires some tubing size adaptation.

DMX light control for home automation

Posted Feb 5th 2008 6:44PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: home hacks

Generally, the only time I've ever seen DMX in use is for stage productions. [Dan] sent in his home light control project - he used a RS-232 to DMX interface and a bunch of commercial DMX dimmers. His light switches were replaced with potentiometers connected to the system via CAT5 cabling. The POTs send 0-10v up the line to the dimmers, and the manual control can override the automated(DMX) settings. The system is simple, robust and responsive - avoiding the delay pitfalls usually incurred by systems like X10.

Arduino controlled Espresso Machine

Posted Dec 26th 2007 11:35PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: misc hacks, home hacks

The arduino is really starting to become prevalent for hardware hacking. [Nash] used one to take control of his Gaggia espresso machine. (They're really decent little machines) He popped in a LCD display, some solid state relays to control the pump and the heating element, and an AD595 to interface a K type thermocouple. It looks like an excellent hack, but for the love of god man - get a better grinder!

He describes the original mod here, and added a small gallery of internal shots here. From the latest comments, it looks like the guys are RepRap project are even interested in the thermocouple PID control that [Nash] implemented.

Silent X10 mod (cheap SSR)

Posted Dec 19th 2007 10:11PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: misc hacks, home hacks

I'm feeling a bit retro for the holidays, so here's another classic: If you've got a non-dimming X10 switch, you've experienced the incredibly loud, obnoxious sound that it makes when you switch it on or off. (Mine's in my stairwell) There's a simple mod to silence the thing: remove the ~~triac~~ relay and replace it with a solid state relay. SSRs are a bit expensive, running at least $10 each last time I checked. [Willis Dair] realized that he could build his own, inexpensive SSR with an optoisolator and an alternistor(AKA Triac). The resulting circuit runs about $3 in parts.

1-wire thermostat control

Posted Oct 24th 2007 10:10PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: home hacks

For some reason, computer controllable thermostats are pretty freakin' expensive. I found a reference to a 1-wire thermostat in this(mirror) sample senior project on home automation. It turns out that Dallas Semiconductor put one together a while back as an application for their TINI platform. (web-application server on a chip). The write-up has since vanished from their site, but I found it thatnks to archive.org. The thermostat used to run about $50, and a similar model still seems to be produced. The 1-wire interface is pretty simple - Maxim's TINI board to control it: not so much. Just using the 1-wire interface with an inexpensive thermostat and controlling from a PC seems pretty viable to me. Just in case, I mirrored the 1-wire interface schematics here.

Breathing Walls with Shape Memory Alloy Wire

Posted Oct 3rd 2007 4:43PM by Fabienne Serriere
Filed under: misc hacks, robots hacks, home hacks

When you need something quietly bending or moving, don't underestimate SMA's (or Shape Memory Alloys). The Living Glass project by architects [David Benjamin] and [Soo-in Yang] catalogs an experiment in building interactive, flexible, "breathing", walls out of SMA wire and microcontrollers. Although they use Basic Stamps, the project could easily be extended to more cost-effective microcontrollers for large surfaces. The project is well documented with videos (AVI) of each prototyping step and even includes the ideas that were ultimately scrapped. Even if you don't build a wall of interactive gills, this project should give you plenty of ideas for uses of SMA wire embedded in semi-flexible materials.

Remote control your blinds

Posted Sep 16th 2007 11:02AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: misc hacks, home hacks

I was dredging my brain for interesting topics to cover and this vertical blind hack popped into my head. The page isn't the prettiest, but it's the hack that counts. The mechanism is constructed from PC board. A motor fitted with a ball chain drive gear pulls the chain in either direction. When the end of travel is reached, a micro-switch is triggered by the stand off that's actuated by the chain. The motor is driven by a pair of relays that latch to form a simple direction control. When power is triggered on or off, the motor starts moving until the stop is triggered.

GardenMon(itoring project)

Posted Jul 23rd 2007 10:26PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: misc hacks, home hacks

[Ken_S] sent in his GardenMon (coral cache) project. It's a set of light, humidity, moisture and temperature probes that monitor the surface and below ground conditions in his garden. He's using several picaxe micro controllers to take readings with a variety of off the shelf and commercial sensors. Once he started collecting the data, he added a programmable servo controlled watering valve with a configuration that he tweaks accordingly.
The site is on geocities, so use the cache.

I had a few requests, and this fits, so I added a home hacks category.

Plumb in your espresso machine (cheap)

DMX light control for home automation

Arduino controlled Espresso Machine

Silent X10 mod (cheap SSR)

1-wire thermostat control

Breathing Walls with Shape Memory Alloy Wire

Remote control your blinds

GardenMon(itoring project)

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