Technabob » ikea

IKEA Sunnan Solar Lamp Modded Into iPad Charger

Range — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 15:00:49 +0000

When you think about it, having a solar charger is a good idea, especially if you find yourself outdoors frequently, and your gadgets often run out of juice. If you’d rather not just go with an off-the-shelf charger, you can always mod an IKEA Sunnan solar lamp to become your iPad charger.

In order to complete the hack, you’ll need to replace the stock batteries with higher capacity ones. Then, the battery compartment has to be modded to accept Voltaic Systems small 2-Watt solar panels. Finally the lamp has to be re-wired to accommodate Adafruit’s MintyBoost charger module.

The resulting hack adds a USB charging port, while at the same time allowing you to still use the lamp, which is cool and that makes it even more useful. You can check out the whole procedure here.

[via Ikeahackers]

$2 DIY Felt iPad Case Courtesy of IKEA

Range — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:00:56 +0000

iPad cases are a dime a dozen, but any case that costs $2 is definitely worth a look, especially when it looks like this and can be easily made with some IKEA stuff. This felt iPad case was conceived by Sah-Rah and I have to say that it looks really nice.

While her hack calls for a couple of 99¢ IKEA Nedda chair pads, any bits of felt will do. She also used an old scarf for the liner, which is important to keep your tablet pristine.

All that’s left is to cut out the necessary pieces to just slightly larger than your tablet, then sew in the liner. Once that’s done, just do the sew the felt layers together on three sides, and you’re done.

[via IKEA Hackers]

IKEA Desk Lamps Turned Upside Down to Make Chandelier

Lambert Varias — Sun, 08 May 2011 12:00:21 +0000

IKEA Hacker reader Jason is one very creative fellow who recently had one of those so simple it’s brilliant ideas: a chandelier is just a bunch of lamps hanging on the ceiling, so why not put a bunch of desk lamps together to make a chandelier?

Jason used three IKEA Tertial lamps, which are IKEA’s cheapest desk lamps at $9 (USD) a pop. He then made a hollow base out of plywood to house the electrical wiring, and used a bicycle wheel spoke to secure the lamps to the base.

Each of the arms can be moved independently, and the whole setup is attached to a dimmer. The end result? A cheap, yet versatile and classy chandelier. Awesome hack Jason. Now I’d like to see you make a desk fan out of a ceiling fan.

[via IKEA Hackers via Unpluggd]

Live the Green Life With IKEA’s Solar-Powered Table Lamp

Hazel Chua — Fri, 06 May 2011 12:00:10 +0000

There’s no need to burn the midnight oil (or candle) anymore when you need to get some studying, reading, or work done on a night when your power dies on you. That is, if it was a really sunny day earlier and if you have one of these colorful and simplistic IKEA Solvinden Solar-Powered Table Lamps.

I’ve been hearing a lot about green and clean energy for the past few years now, so it was only a matter of time before people got around to making these lamps, don’t you think?

As you can see, IKEA’s solar-powered lamps come in four colors: two basic ones (black and white) and two bright ones (cyan and apple green.) They come with 3 rechargeable batteries that store energy from the sun via the solar panel found at the top of the lamp.

To charge your lamp up for a maximum usage time of four hours, simply put the lamp under the heat (or, more appropriately) light of the sun for a good 9-12 hours. You’ll need around 15 hours on a cloudy day.

They aren’t available for purchase online though, so you might have to take a trip down to your local IKEA store to get one (or two).

[via Tech Fresh]

Salad Bowl Speakers Serve Up Scrumptious Sound [Ikea Hack]

Technabob — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 17:30:07 +0000

While you could fill your salad bowl with lettuce, tomatoes, bacon bits and honey dijon dressing, that would be pretty boring. Personally, I prefer my salads to be made from anodized aluminum, magnets, and wire. Yum.

UK modder HoopsOnToast was shopping at his local IKEA store when he realized the potential to make some nifty orb-shaped speakers by gluing together pairs of 8″ Blanda Matt solid birch hardwood bowls.

The speakers get their sweet sound from a pair of full range (100Hz – 20kHz) Bandor 50mm drivers, mounted into the sliced-off face of one of the bowls.

Word is that the cabinets sound simply brilliant, and they only took about 3 hours to put together. And since IKEA offers the bowls in multiple sizes, you could build a full surround sound system using these (front speakers in the 8″ bowls, surrounds in the 5″ bowls, and subwoofer in the 11″ bowls).

…croutons not included.

[HiFi WigWam via IKEA Hacker]

Inky, Blinky, Pinky, Clyde and Ikea

Technabob — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 13:19:57 +0000

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve bought a piece of furniture from Ikea, spent countless hours assembling it, only to have some slightly out-of-the ordinary use cause it to fail catastrophically. That’s exactly what happened to this artist when he overstuffed his drawers with his drawers and tried to move them. But rather than take the pile of scrap wood and leave it for the bums in the alley, he took his broken eggs and scrambled him up some Pac-Man.

Pixel Party’s handmade wooden ghosts are cut from the remnants of a dilapidated Ikea dresser. Each ghost is about 7-inches square, painted in bright colors with paper eyeballs, then coated with a shiny coat of gloss epoxy. According to the artist “he’s so shiny, you’ll want to lick him”. Trust me, I picked up one his bright red Blinkies at this weekend’s Renegade Craft Fair, and epoxy gloss doesn’t taste very good.

He’s currently got a Blinky for sale over on Etsy for $30, but plans on cranking out complete sets of all four ghosts this January for $100. In the mean time, be sure to check out Pixel Party’s online shop, as well as his Flickr albums.