Øyvind Nydal Dahl

Here is a really cool and huuuge recycling machine we built for a music festival in 2010. It is an interactive recycling station. The idea was to make recycling fun.

When you put garbage in it, the machine detects it and moves the ball on the left side one step up. When the ball has made its way all the way to the top, it is released down a pinball-ish slope while a “Tivoli” kind of tune is playing with lots of blinking lights.

The machine was on display for the first time at Øyafestivalen 2010 in Oslo. It was a real hit! Lots of people came by and recycled their garbage to get the ball to the top. People even picked up trash from the ground to put in it =)

In the following video, you can see it in action at Øyafestivalen. Elias (from thing-printer.com) is pretending he doesn’t know what it is and asks one of the girls who work there how to use it.

There are so many cool things you can make with mini radar circuits. I thought I’d share some examples from my time in the radar business. Then end with a few examples of where you can get a hold of a radar circuit.

Just to be clear: A radar is a sensor that uses electromagnetic waves for sensing. This is NOT ultra-sound. This is the real deal.

Last week I got the idea that I wanted to build a prototype circuit board that would tell me when to water my plants. I got the idea from an interview I did with Massimo Banzi (co-founder of Arduino).