Team Topic - Deconstruct: Zombie Apocalypse
The Rabbit Hole is a global hackerspace, but also a brick-and-mortar in Rochester, MN that consists of a group of engineers and tinkerers who work at Mayo Clinic and IBM. Each of us have a plethora of projects in progress and we love helping others with their's! We encourage everyone to jump with us into the rabbit hole to expand and enhance their projects!
Posted on: March 1, 2013
We’re still cleaning up the Rabbit Hole from all of the excitement – and thanks to inspiration from The Deconstruction, we’re actually reverse engineering the circuit of one of the projects (Solar Lantern) for a Learning-to-Solder class we’re hoping to host in the upcoming future:
The fun never stops!!
The group also agrees that the Recyclotron would be much improved with a laser….in whatever form it comes 
Posted on: February 25, 2013
Final video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCHQqMoU4Jg
Wow. Over 48 hours later and I think our team is getting hackathon withdrawals! We’re putting our update posts on the tymkrs blog and if you didn’t get a chance to follow it in real time, you can see the posts now! So here are some links for you to follow if you’d like to get to know the Rabbit Hole better, or if you have questions about the projects. Go Team Rabbit Hole!:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/tymkrs
Blog: http://tymkrs.tumblr.com
IRC Chat: https://qwebirc.afternet.org/?channels=tymkrs
Youtube: http://youtube.com/whisk0r (We’ll have some outtakes and extra footage from the 48 hours)
Rabbit Hole Site: http://tymkrs.com/rabbithole
Zombie Music: http://soundcloud.com/tymkrs (Played for watchers during the stream 
)
Instructable Documentation!: http://www.instructables.com/id/Deconstruction-Rabbit-Hole-Phase-1/
How the Can Crusher Counts Cans
Modern garage door openers are required to have a sensor beam that prevents the garage door from closing when the opening of the garage is blocked. We thought it would be great to reuse these sensors as a fun way to count how many cans have been crushed, thereby allowing us to estimate how many millions of dollars the recycling center will pay us. The basic plan is to read the sensor output through use of an Arduino Micro controller system, the Arduino will also keep the count and output the count on the digital display of a reclaimed old dartboard.
The garage door sensors are tricky in that they are manufactured to be hard to defeat essentially by adding a pulse in the output. To understand how this works a good video is found here http://youtu.be/GbmufXgpl14 The sensors we had were just like the ones in the video, the transmitter has a yellow LED when powered and the reciever has a Green LED when aligned. We simply tap in to the wires going to the green LED on the receiver. Thus when a can comes through the loader, it breaks the beam and turns off the signal being sent to the arduino.
The 7-segment chips from the dartboard were easy to remove thanks to use of a “solder sucker”, basically melting the solder and vacuuming it up. Problem is, each of these chips require 7 digital output ports from the Arduino …so if we power 2 digits, we would use up all our output ports. Luckily at the Rabbit Hole we were able to obtain 2 74HC595 shiftout shift register chips. Shift Register chips allow you to control a 7 segment with only 3 output ports. See this tutorial for details http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ShiftOut
Now with extra ports available we were able to use them to control fun this such as, LED lights, the Dancing Toy Robot and even play sounds from a reclaimed sound effects board. We did find that the USB Robot required too much power to be powered straight from the Arudino so we connected to a relay switch from the Arduino. In the finished product, the Dancing Robot and “Sound and Light show” happen every time twelve cans have been crushed (show runs until next can is crushed).
Procedure:
Assembly:
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Whattttt - won’t be long before we close up this 48 hour shop!
Project Updates/Current Status:
Bike Trailer [Done!]
Solar Powered Lantern [Done!]
Automatic Can Crusher
Posted on: February 24, 2013
46 hours in! Wheee! Tune into our show and tell – somewhere between 7-8pm CST . For adless streaming: http://tymkrs.com/videodesk - select Toymaker Television on the right drop down menu. And to join in chatting (we can see it in the shop and respond instantaneously!) - https://qwebirc.afternet.org/?channels=tymkrs
Project Updates/Current Status:
Bike Trailer [Done!]
Solar Powered Lantern [Done!]
Automatic Can Crusher
Rationale for choosing the theme of “Zombie Apocalypse”:
One day, the undead will rise and come for all of us. Instead of making silly decisions like splitting up the team or going off for resources alone, we can prep now! Our projects were chosen to fulfill certain purposes:
We have the recyclotron which can both be used to crush cans and – if given a chance – act as a projectile launcher! Or if the launcher portion doesn’t work, we can just use it brute force!
The bike trailer will be highly useful because bikes are not only light and durable, but don’t require anything but your two legs! The trailer will let us lug around the recyclotron and lanterns.
The solar power lantern is perfect to keep people’s morale up even when the lights go down. And it doesn’t even require anything but natural light!
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Every awesome event has an awesome team – and here at the Rabbit Hole – we’ve got folks who we know could survive the INEVITABLE zombie apocalypse . Here’re some of their body parts!
Matt – “Bruzer” – Known as “The Punisher Guy” by the IRC following our Decon project, he does software, hardware, woodware, and everything in between!
Tim – “Can Crusher” – The Recyclotron was his idea and baby . Should be known as the food provider since he picked up food for us a bunch of times and even helped jumpstart a car!
Jon – “The bolt spiller” – Jon’s bike trailer was the subject of much discussion and hardware store trips! But he also spills bolts all over the place 
Peter – “The ‘What are you DOING’ guy?” & “Is this safe??…” – A brilliant EE who we found entangled in hundreds of wires at any given time of the project. Need a circuit to work? He’s your man.
Will – “The camo shirt guy” – He got the foosball table up and playable and helped out with the projects, thanks man!
Ken – “The beekeeping laser guy” – He keeps bees and works on lasers for a living! Crazy! Also solved all problems with the electronics of the solar-powered lantern – thanks!!
John V. – “The hammer dude” – Also from the Rochester area and saw a link to the Decon projects and came over on a whim! Helped with the solar lantern – thanks!
Whisker – “Whisker” – The one who set up our streaming, chat, and net system = crucial.
Addie – According to the internets I’m “tokengirl” – Hah. Always wanted to make a solar lantern and a japanese style lantern too – now we have both in one! Also into chinese painting!
And *drumroll*
THE INTERNETS We have to thank the Tymkrs IRC for teasing us, encouraging us, helping us, and being the awesome global portion of the team! WooHoo Internets!
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44 hours in! We’re coming down to the last hours! We’ll be trying to do our show and tell somewhere between 7-8pm CST . For adless streaming: http://tymkrs.com/videodesk - select Toymaker Television on the right drop down menu. And to join in chatting (we can see it in the shop and respond instantaneously!) - https://qwebirc.afternet.org/?channels=tymkrs
Project Updates/Current Status:
Bike Trailer [Done!]
Solar Powered Lantern [Done!]
Automatic Can Crusher
Learning Arduino programming on the fly! Peter’s working on getting the IR sensors to work properly so we can get can counting set up.