Halfway between inspiration and engineering

We see a lot of hacks where the path to success is pretty obvious, even if it’s littered with all sorts of complications, landmines, and time-wasters. Then we have other hacks that are simply out of the box. The work itself may not be that impressive, or even “correct” by engineering standards, but the inner idea that’s so crazy that it might just work shines through.

This week, for example, we saw an adaptive LED backlight TV modification that no engineer would have ever dreamed up. Whether it was the simplest solution or he used parts he had on hand, (Mousa) solved the problem of assigning brightness to LED backlights by taking a small screen, streaming the same movie on it, pointing it at a set of light sensors, and driving the LEDs inside his big TV from there. No image processing, no math, just light hitting the LDRs. It’s crazy, and it involves lots and lots of wires, but it gets the job done.

Similarly, we’ve seen an answer to the wet 3D filament problem that’s as simple as it gets: it’s basically a tube with hot, heated air passing through it that the filament has to pass through to get to the hot end. We’ve seen many technical solutions to getting the filament wet, ranging from a few ounces of prevention in the form of various desiccant storage options, to a pound of cure – putting the spools in the oven to bake them. We’re sure that drying the filament inline isn’t the easiest solution. RIGHT way of doing it, but we are glad to see that it works. The idea is there when you need it.

It’s not like there’s anything fake with the mindset of an engineer. Quite the opposite: more often than not, taking things one step at a time, quantifying all the unknowns, and thinking about the path of least resistance gets you to the finish line of your project faster. But we still have to admire the wacky hacks, where the most logical path isn’t always the most beautiful. It’s a good week on Hackaday where we get both types of projects in equal doses.