FOR THE BIRDS
Wanting to make his low-maintenance
chickens even lower maintenance, Alan
Graham devised an automated henhouse in
his garage with an infrared motion detector,
automatic lights, a heater, and an automated door. Graham gets text alerts when
the ladies get out in the morning and when
they come back in at night. Check out his
build instructions, where he shows how to
rig the system with a computer or without.
makeprojects.com/project/a/1450 —GM
MI CASA ES SU CASA
WikiHouse is an open source construction set: a pool of
3D models of houses and a plugin to help convert them
into CNC cutting files, shared under Creative Commons.
The WikiHouse SketchUp plug-in turns 3D models into
labeled 2D milling sheets that can then be cut on a CNC
and put together, like a very big piece of flat-pack furniture. The plug-in script is available on Github for others
to build on and improve. wikihouse.cc —LC
DdaCh
TAPROOM
Michael Meyer has the right idea when it
comes to home automation and drinking
beer. Using a chest refrigerator as the base
for a three-tap bar, Meyer brought the taproom to the living room. The configuration
chills three 5-gallon kegs and uses a Dwyer
Love TSS2 temperature controller and two
temperature probes to monitor the two-stage system and minimize foaming in the
beer lines. Complete with IR remote to set
the mood lighting with multicolor LEDs.
Brilliant! See his build photos for more
ideas. imgur.com/a/n8eHd —NR
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