PVC Pipe goal posts

The girls have been going to summer "soccer" practice over at a local gymnasium  They've really been enjoying it and I thought it be fun to set up a goal at home for them to have a play with.  I noticed that the goal posts at the gym are made out of one of my favourite materials: PVC pipe (see here, here and here for more evidence on my apparent obsession).  So, I had a look online to get some inspiration by seeing what designs other people have come up with.  If you perform an image search for "pvc soccer goal" you should get a pretty good overview of the basic designs.

Afer sketching something on our blackboard and making sure the girls were excited by the idea we headed out to OSH to pick up the bits.  We decided on a goal which measured 4' wide, 3' tall and 2' deep and came home with 4 x 8' lengths of 1" pipe, 6 x 90 degree elbows and 4 x Tees.

Here it all is, cut to length all ready to be put together (this took less than 10 mins):

The lengths are: 2x 3'7"; 2 x 3'; 2 x 2'; 4 x 1'6"; and 2 x 1'.  Working out the lengths of the diagonal braces was the first time I've used Pythagoras' theorem in ages.

Here you can see my little helper, 'helping out' midway through the build (she was keen to get playing, bless her):

And here's the final product being put to good use:

I was hoping to find some netting at the same time as the pipes, but we had no joy.  It seems to work well enough without the net for now though (the kids have been enjoying it anyway).

I know things have been a little quiet around here recently.  It's mainly because we've just had a 50% increase in the number of girls in the house (sorry Lin, I'm not counting you).  If you're interested in meeting the latest addition, take a look at Lin's post - here.  Yes, this was from a month ago... as you can tell, Lin is much more on the ball than I am :)

PVC Pipe Dressing-Up Rack

We started playing around with PVC piping at home quite some time ago (see the marshmallow gun post) we quickly realised that it was a cheap and easy medium for building simple things (take a look at the projects page on this site: http://pvcfittings.com/ for a ton of examples).  The kids 'building box' outside has a load of pipe and connectors in it for impromptu creative fun. Most of these bits were left over from Carys' pirate-superhero-mermaid birthday party where we put together marshmallow-gun party favour bags (If you're interested you can read about that on Lin's blog post over on FilthWizardry).

The kids have most of their make-believe/dressing-up items in a single toy box in their bedroom.  The original lid on this didn't stand up to the test of multiple children piling into it day after day, so it's been an 'open plan' box for most of it's stay.   On a daily basis we find the complete contents of the dressing up box emptied onto the bedroom floor.  I guess that's the only way the kids can find the clothes for that day's dressing up desires.

We're a bit tight on space in the kids bedroom, so it seemed like a good idea to build a clothes rack that'd fit inside the box; then we could hang up most of the clothes for easy access and keep the hats, crowns and other accessories in the box itself.  At least this way they wouldn't have to completely empty the box each time and we wouldn't have to tidy it up every day!

This is actually something I've made twice now (hence deciding to post about it)...  The first one was dismantled and used to build random things out in our backyard a few months back; we soon realised the folly of our ways when we were once again greeted with the dressing up clothes piled on the floor day after day.  Time to build another!

It's really, really simple.  The fixtures and piping are 1/2" schedule 40 PVC.  They're available in Lowe's, Home Despot, OSH, ACE hardware etc.  and they're pretty cheap.  This was today's shopping list from the local Lowe's:

1. 8 * 5' of pipe = $8.96 ($1.12 each) - I bought extra for other fangling.
2. bag of 10 tee junctions = $1.95
3. bag of 10 thread to slip adapters = 20c
4. bag of 10 elbow joints (90 degree) = $1.80
5. 4 x 3-way corner elbow = $5.28 ($1.32 each).

Ok, so $18 may not seem that cheap, but there's left over material for other projects and the rack itself will get re-used as something else when it's no longer needed.  On the other hand, good luck finding something that'll exactly meet your requirements for $18 ;).

Here's everything I used:

I measured the inside of the dressing up box (before deciding on the parts) and sketched out how I wanted the rack to look.  Then it's just a matter of measuring, marking and cutting the pipe and then sticking it all together.  You don't even need glue/cement, unless you want the final 'product' to be permanent and durable.

Here's a load of in-progress shots to give you a feel:

And here's the final frame.  I added a little nubbin afterwards for Ffion to hang her handbag collection on... you can see it in the action shot below to the left of the ballerina.  I replaced a tee junction with a 4-way and slotted in a small bit of pipe terminated with a pipe cap (all left overs from previous messing/building).

The shoes are now all paired up and hung up as well.  I think these were the main culprits of the 'toss everything on the floor' routine.  Fingers crossed for a slightly tidier bedroom from now on.

Saving a Disney Princess Remote Controlled Car

During a trip to Savers I spotted this Disney princess car:

I noticed the sensors in the head and tail lights, they looked like IR receivers. At first I thought the LED in the body of the car was an IR LED and that the IR receivers detected the IR light bouncing off objects in the cars path (not that the tail lights would make much sense in this context), but when I got it home and put batteries in it, the LED turned out to be just a colour changing LED put there for decoration.

A while back I headed over to Noisebride on a Monday night to check out their circuit hacking/soldering workshop (hosted by Mich Altman). During the workshop I put together one of Mitch's kits - "The Trippy RGB Waves" kit (here's my Noisebridge post if you're interested in reading about the experience). The point is that this gizmo uses an IR LED and an IR receiver to detect overhead objects. The LED pulses IR light at 38KHz (not to be confused with the actual frequency of IR light which is ~ 3THz or 3 x 10¹² Hz) which the IR receiver detects if there's an object above the LED reflecting the pulses back down.

I wondered if the car has a similar set-up and was just missing the remote control (which would have a pulsing IR LED). First off I tried a regular remote control, which had no effect so then I tried pointing the Trippy RGB LED kit at the car and voila! It reacted to the light. So, I set about creating a wand/gun for the kids to use to interact with the car.

First off I tried setting up a 555 timer to pulse an IR LED at 38KHz. It worked but the signal was weak (maybe I got the values off a little). I decided to use a microcontroller instead. The ATtiny range are pretty cheap - I bought some ATtiny45s for $1.20 each which is ~3x the cost of a 555. The hardest part was finding/creating a housing for the circuit. I looked around and decided to make my own out of PVC piping. They look like tiny guns and work a treat :)

Methods:

Here are the final "guns".



Ingredients:


The pipe is 1/2" PVC piping from Lowes (Home Depot have it too).

• PVC elbow joint
• PVC pipe (cut to a v.small length 1 1/2")
• PVC pipe cap
• Coin battery holder (3v, 20mm)
• 8-pin DIP socket
• momentary push button
• IR LED
• ATtiny45 (originally made with an ATtiny13).

The plastic dome is the case from a 25c toy from our local taqueria. The base fits snuggly on the end of the elbow joint and I've used it to cover the battery holder in the final 'product'. The piping paraphernalia was all left over from the marshmallow-gun fun.

The wiring is all very straightforward. The hardest part was adjusting the elbow joint so that my coin cell holders fitted snuggly inside (and getting the pushbutton in place).

So, first off is to drill some holes: 1 in the end cap for the LED and one in the elbow joint for the pushbutton. Then I used a rotary tool (Proxxon) to carve out some of the innards of the elbow joint until the battery holder fitted snuggly inside.

Then I soldered one short and one long lead to the pushbutton and fitted it into the elbow joint (see below).

Then I soldered a long ground lead to the battery holder and connected the short positive wire from the pushbutton and placed the battery holder in the end of the elbow joint.

Solder on the DIP socket. Using a socket was a great choice for me because it turns out that the code I was running was not getting the best results from the car. Having the socket let me replace the uC after I'd worked out the kinks. I guess it'll also let me easily recover the uC when the kids are bored of this toy. I stripped a little bit of insulation from near to the end of the ground lead and soldered it to the ground pin (rather than adding a couple of wire ends at that point).

Then it's just a matter of connecting the LED, placing the uC in the socket and fitting the remaining piping.





I made two so both girls could play. Although that also opens up a huge opportunity to fight over who's in control as well...



And here's the code (for some reason the car reacted best if the IR was pulsed for ~170 microseconds with a 400 microsecond pause before the next set of pulses):

/*
 * IrLedPulse.c
 *
 * Distributed under Creative Commons 3.0 -- Attib & Share Alike
 *
 * Created on: Dec 26, 2009
 *      Author: Paul
 */
#include <avr/io.h>
#include <avr/delay.h>

#ifndef F_CPU
    #define F_CPU 1000000UL
#endif


// Use Timer 0 to pulse the IR LED at 38KHz
void pulseIr()
{
    TCCR0A = 0 | (1 << COM0A0) | (1 << WGM01); // COM0A0=1 to toggle OC0A on Compare Match

    TCCR0B = 0 | (1 << CS01);    // 1/8 prescale
    OCR0A = 104;  // to output 38KHz on OC0A (PB0, pin 5)

    _delay_us(170);   // delay 170 microseconds

    // turn off Timer0 to stop 38KHz pulsing of IR
    TCCR0B = 0;  // Stop Timer0 (turn off IR emitter)
    TCCR0A = 0;  // Disconnect OC0A from PB0 (pin 5)
}

int main(void)
{
    DDRB |= (1 << PB0); // set PB0 to output
    PORTB = 0xFF; // all PORTB output pins high (LED off).
    while(1)
    {
        pulseIr();
        _delay_us(400);
    }
}

PVC Pipe Marshmallow gun

This post is a bit of a diversion from the normal electronic fangling, but it's such an easy and fun project that I wanted to share.

I was flicking through a recent purchase, "The best of instructables (volume 1)" , and I landed on page 232 - "The marshmallow shooter". It's labour day (sorry: "labor day") which means that we were having a lazy Monday at home so we decided to take a trip to Lowes to pick up the necessary bits to make a few shooters.

That's all you need (and some marshmallows). The pipe is 1/2" schedule 40 PVC, it was 89c for about 5 feet of the stuff (enough for 3 shooters). I also picked up a few different fittings: three way junctions, four way junctions, elbows (with different angles), caps and some couplings (to use as mouthpieces). I also picked up a pipe cutter; I've experienced the "joy" of using a hacksaw for cutting pipes (those ones get a brief mention on filthwizardry: music tree) . This time I decided on an easier option.

First off we cut up the pipe into various lengths, short pipe for the handles and longer ones for the main body. We washed all the bits thoroughly.

Here's all the parts that went into our first three guns:

Next up I showed the girls how all the parts fit together. I helped to tighten the parts, but that was all the intervention necessary. It's all very easy and simple. I think I'm going to get a load more of the piping and fittings and just let the kids play with it free-style sometime soon.

After getting all the parts together, they decided their creations needed to be decorated before we could use them :) We had a strange coincidence here: before heading to Lowes we popped into the local Savers (they were having a labor day sale) and what did we find in the book section? A book on making marshmallow guns (here's the Amazon link)! Very weird! Being from Savers, it didn't come with any of the piping, but it did have most of the stickers left (not anymore though!).

Time to try out the beautified guns on Lin.

They had a great time blasting (and eating) the mini marshmallows. The great thing about using marshmallows is that, strangely, there was no mess to clean up afterwards...