Anyone want to work together for the Baltimore Hackathon?

[Mike Graham]

I signed up for the Hackathon and would love to work as part of a
team. Is anyone planning anything?

One idea I had was to build a solar cooker. For those who aren't
familiar with solar cookers, they are exactly what they sound
like—they use the sun to cook food, bake, boil/pasteurize water, etc.
Simple designs (like boxes and some others) are capable of getting to
300–325° on a sunny day, even in the middle of winter. More
sophisticated parabolic designs can get even hotter and operate on
days with more clouds. An electronics element could be added to adjust
the solar cooker to follow the sun to maintain optimal efficiency.

Mike

[Kevin]

I made a baaic one when I was a kid out of construction site scraps, tar paper and a storm window. I cooked hot dogs and they tasted like tar paper and I was so happy. It couldn't fail since it was so hot that I could have cooked it on the sidewalk.

Are you thinking a fixed tilt with motor controlled rotation? And maybe some
photo detectors on a dome?I have a shop where the box can be easily built and I could help program a microcontroller but I don't have any.

Thanks,
Kevin

Sent from my iPhone

[Claude]

I'm working on a all in one custom Mame cab that plays every game system with a few custom upgrades if anyone wants in you can see more of my mods at http://www.youtube.com/blkoutczw

Sent from my iPhone

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[Todd Blatt]

Claude, we've got one of those at the Node that needs some love =)


Todd Blatt
tbl...@gmail.com
@tblatt on twitter
443-599-9196

www.custom3dstuff.com

[Mike Graham]

I'm not sure what would work best. I was thinking of a
motor-controlled tilt and a fixed yaw, which I think makes more sense
if we test this time of year. Combining this tilt with one the other
direction that is manually set might make it good for many seasons.
(Depending on the design this could be as easy as jamming a brick
under one side of the base.)

There are some analog circuit designs that can use some photocells and
adjust without any processing at all, though I bet we could make
something better with a microcontroller. For an extra layer of cool,
we could instead program it to work based on the date/time/location
without any sensors at all. (I have an arduino that could be used and
it's pretty easy to pick up PICs on short noticed.)

By far the coolest solution would be to outfit a heliotropic plant
with an accelerometer and use its tilt as a basis for our adjustments.
It's obviously not very robust, but I think people would love it.

I have access to the node's tools as well as our shop at my workplace
too. I'm taking the CCBC Fab Lab introduction course Monday after
which point I could cut out nice parabolic pieces on their shopbot
too. (They're closed that weekend, so I may have to make such pieces
earlier if I do that.)

Mike