Thursday, July 20, 2017

Charge Your Phone on an Iron Throne

Game of Thrones season 7 is finally here! [Hoecrux] is celebrating by building a GoT inspired cell phone charger. No, this isn’t a 3D print, nor is it vacuum molded. This iron throne was hand made from hundreds of cocktail swords. The frame of the chair is made from medium density fiberboard (MDF). The frame is covered with upholstery foam, then a layer of thin gray foam which forms the surface of the chair.

[Hoecrux] then began the painstaking process of hot gluing 600 cocktail swords to her creation. Each sword had to be modified by cutting off the loop guard. Some of the swords are bent, which was achieved with a heat gun. The completed chair was finished with a coat of black spray paint, followed by dry brushing with acrylic silver paint.

This particular iron throne charger is built for an android phone. [Hoecrux] embedded a micro USB cable in the base of the seat. If you’re of the iOS persuasion, you can substitute a lightning cable.

Check out the video after the link, and while you’re at it, get a look at this beach ready solar charger setup.


Filed under: classic hacks, iphone hacks

from iphone hacks – Hackaday

Monday, July 17, 2017

Hacking iBeacons For Automating Routines

Every self-respecting hacker has an automation hack somewhere in his/her bag of tricks. There are a lot of modern-day technologies that facilitate the functionality like GPS, scripting apps, and even IFTTT. In an interesting hack, [Nick Lee] has combined iBeacons and a reverse engineered Starbucks API to create an automated morning routine.

By creating a mobile app that scans for iBeacons, [Nick Lee] was able to reduce the effort made every morning while heading to his office. When the app encounters a relevant beacon, a NodeJS app sitting in the cloud is triggered. This consequently leads to desired actions like ordering an Uber ride and placing an order for an iced latte.

[Nick Lee] shares the code for the Starbucks application on GitHub for anyone who wants to order their favorite cup of joe automatically. This project can be easily expanded to work with GPS or even RFID tags and if you feel like adding IoT to a coffee machine, you could automate all of your beverage requirements in one go.


Filed under: iphone hacks, software hacks

from iphone hacks – Hackaday