While working at a local shop, Earl Cogswell, jr. saw the need for people to have a clean, secure way to store their propane tanks during transit to and from the filling stations. As he filled up tanks for people, he could see that often women were jamming the tank in with their groceries, and other times they were loose in the backs of pickup trucks.
Cogswell asked his suppliers for something to secure the tanks, but couldn't find anything. Thus was born the idea for the Tank Nanny, a skid-free plastic holder that provides a snug fit for the standard 20-pound propane tank. It costs $18.95 and has a built-in seat belt loop.
As a result of the problem he saw and the design process he went through with his family, he has developed a product called Tank Nanny.
Cogswell, 44, sketched the design on napkins and backs of envelopes. His wife, Donna, and daughter Jennifer, an engineer for Pratt & Whitney in Connecticut, helped with the details. Another daughter, Jessica, designed a website, posters, and brochures and created the Tank Nanny logo - a female figure in silhouette.
Maybe you think his idea is brilliant, or maybe you have been getting by with milk crates for decades, but you have to hand it to him for running with his idea. If you had an idea for a product that the world could use, would you know how to bring it to market? Where do you turn to for support on your design ideas? Let us know what you think in the comments.
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A group of student makers took kite arial photography to a new level: weather balloon photography. They certainly are undercutting NASA's budget, spending very little on their project, and fabricating most of the structure and electronics themselves.
Mail Online has a decent writeup. Nice of them to copyright the photos for the students, isn't it?
Building the electronic sensor components from scratch, Gerard Marull Paretas, Sergi Saballs Vil, Martm Gasull Morcillo and Jaume Puigmiquel Casamort were able to send their heavy duty £43 latex balloon to the edge of space and take readings of its ascent.
Under the guidance of teacher Jordi Fanals Oriol, the budding scientists, all aged 18 to 19, followed the progress of their balloon using hi-tech sensors communicating with Google Earth.
'Meteotek was our experiment to see if we could accurately measure the Earth's atmospheric conditions at 30,000 metres, take pictures to prove the experiment and then recover the instruments attached to the balloon after its deflation,' said team leader Paretas, 18.
'We were overwhelmed at our results, especially the photographs. To send our handmade craft to the edge of space is incredible.'
Their use of Google Earth was integrated into the project and provides some nice mashups of their data.
It's great to see the progress of their build in photos and text on their blog. Their site also provides a choice to use Google translate, which helps people from other cultures access their work.
Thanks Tom!
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This system could also provide a good solution to temporary housing following disasters, it is enclosed, sits off the ground, folds up and provides some storage for personal effects. People can participate in the project by donating a unit or more to organizations in need.
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Mrs. Muyonjo is a housewife in a remote village of Ivukula in Iganga district, Eastern Uganda. She used to ride her bicycle for twenty miles in order to come to the nearest small town with electricity to charge her mobile phone battery. Not any more.
One day, she fell victim to unscrupulous individuals. "I will never give my telephone to the village battery chargers again. I gave them my new phone for charging, and they changed my battery and instead returned to me an old battery whose battery life can only last for one day." Unable to find the money or time to charge the battery daily, she decided to find an alternative charging solution. "I looked at what was readily available to me and came up with my own charger. I devised this method to enable me charge my battery every day. It works perfectly."
In Uganda, as in many other countries, cell phone use has become huge. Access to charging technologies, however is not so huge.
The solution Mrs. Muyonjo came up with was pretty good for a first iteration. Long term, she and her neighbors would probably be happier with a device that has a voltage regulator, ability to sense a complete charge, and of course, a renewable energy source. Could such a device be made from electrojunk? Make: Online readers, what can we come up with? Bring out your ideas for charging circuits, working and theoretical and let us know in the comments and MAKE Flickr pool.
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Make: television Season One has come and gone. But in case you missed it, we'll be rolling out the ten episodes of our premiere season again.
Episode Three, take two, coming at you:
Enter the alternative universe of Jake Von Slatt, a leading Steampunk Maker, who turns modern technology into Victorian works of art. In the Maker Workshop, John Park mounts a remote control camera on a painter's pole to take stunning aerial photographs, and Cy Tymony demonstrates some sneaky uses for magnets. The Maker Channel presents a theremin orchestra, a smoke ring generator, a pulse-jet bike, and a video-hack method to paste yourself with a beer into congressional hearings on C-SPAN.
Get the m4v of Episode Three, or subscribe in iTunes. Watch the individual segments of Episode Three and find instructions for the Pole Cam after the jump.
All episodes, individual segments, and PDF instructions of our Maker Workshop projects from Make: television Season One can always be found at our Episode Guide. You can also watch Make: television videos on YouTube, Blip, Vimeo, or download our torrents at LegalTorrents.
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During World War II, British brainiacs helped save their country and defeat the Nazis. Recently, the equipment they used has been rebuilt and the surviving members got together for a reunion.
The Bombe was the brainchild of Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman, and the 210 machines manufactured by the British Tabulator Machine Company did vital work cracking encoded German military traffic - a feat which shortened the war by two years, Bletchley Park suggests.
The original devices were destroyed after the war on security grounds, but in 1970 a set of blueprints turned up at Bletchley and the idea to reconstruct a Bombe was born. The rebuild team, led by volunteer John Harper, has finally succeeded in putting the beast together:
Nice of them to recover that lost knowledge. Were you involved in the rebuild of the Turing Bombe? Let us know about the experience in the comments.
Check out MAKE, Volume 17: The Lost Knowledge issue!
Joseph Herscher from New Zealand made this super-impressive Rube Goldberg machine about Cadbury creme eggs. I'm not going to say any more about it, just watch; such fun! Via Core77.
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