Home Archive by category "Possible inventions" (Page 75)

Category: Possible inventions

#1336: SpeakerSpacing

It seems the guidelines for optimal placement of one’s speakers in a room are reasonably straightforward.

Today’s invention is a pair of speakers which are set on movable stands. The speakers can be driven vertically upwards and downwards and the stands are also mobile, being driven across the floor by onboard motors.

The system comes equipped with a remote control unit (containing a wifi transmitter). Sit down, holding this facing the speakers, in your listening chair and they will automatically dispose themselves adaptively to suitable positions and heights (relative to the corners of the room, the listener and each other).

The remote allows the selection of different test music and also fine tuning of speaker location/orientation.

#1335: Mufflemuzzle

Today’s invention is a silencer for that neighbourhood dog whose owner is unable to stop it barking all the time.

Since each dog has a pretty characteristic and consistent nuisance-bark wavelength, this would take the form of a simple muffler device with a resonator chamber which would be adjustable in length to allow cancellation of that particular animal’s bark.

At night, the dog would wear a muzzle fitted with a silencer of this type made of lightweight plastic material.

#1331: Eccentricones

Today’s invention is an autonomous central barrier on a motorway -except that it’s not central.

Sensors count cars moving in either direction and adjust the barrier’s lateral position (a set of linked, mobile robot cones, shown in red) so that whichever side of the road currently has the bigger traffic flow gets the wider carriageway.

This smooths the movement of vehicles and reduces any tendency to tailbacks and jams.

#1328: Chewver

I often use a vacuum cleaner to clean up rubble and nails etc when I’m working on house restoration. I hate it when something gets stuck in the hose and I have to dismantle the whole thing to deal with the problem.

Today’s invention is a device which fits on the end of a vacuum cleaner hose (the hose should be made translucent, so you can see what’s happening inside, but that’s another story). The device has slightly smaller diameter than the hose itself, so any potential blockage will occur at the inlet.

When the system detects an increase in motor load due to choking, it activates a set of internal jaws which hammer backwards and forwards ‘chewing’ the plug into fragments small enough to be ‘swallowed’. These are driven by a motor powered by a cable from the cleaner body.

The jaws would be located more than a finger’s length from the inlet. If after multiple chewing motions, the motor load had not decreased, then the motor would be automatically switched off, to allow manual clearance.

#1326: Digityping

“So, just type in ‘ colondoublebackslashwww.domain.nnn ‘ after the prompt; obviously without including the quotes and stuff”

This is the kind of instruction which tech support geeks give to newbie customers, and which usually results in great frustration at both ends of the phone line.

Today’s invention is a browser plug-in which shows an animated finger moving slowly across a keyboard illustrating exactly the correct sequence of keystrokes and without any possible alternative interpretations.

This would require that an image of a finger was stored hovering over each key and that a realtime image interpolation be constructed of the movement between eg A and B.

(It just occurred to me that a keyboard which could be remotely controlled in player piano mode, the keys being depressed in sequence by internal magnets, as if by some ghostly hand, might also help avoid misunderstandings when illustrating keyboard techniques).

#1325: Bakeshaker

Today’s invention is a device which can be used in any oven to minimise the amount of time for which the oven door is open. Every such opening wastes huge amounts of energy and makes the kitchen more like a sauna.

The device is in the form of an insulated hinge device which grips the bars of one of the horizontal dividers. The other end of the device clips onto a baking tray. A small radio-controlled motor opens and closes the hinge (reflecting user-selected amplitudes and frequencies).

This has the effect of repositioning the food items in the tray in order to achieve uniform cooking, without the potential for burning one’s wrists.

A more advanced system could be equipped with a temperature probe capable of oscillating the food in response to the readings taken.

#1324: Scrumtunnel

These days, young people aren’t allowed to do cross country running beside my local river “because they might fall in”. I’m even told that certain education authorities are considering banning many aspects of school rugby because they are too dangerous to be effectively insured.

I spent 9 years of my life playing rugby and I recognise that there are some real dangers here…especially when big and small players collide.

Today’s invention is a two-way scrummage tunnel which allows two junior packs to push each other but without the danger that either front row will crash into the ground and damage their necks or spines.

Made of tough foam, it would accommodate the heads of players comfortably and allow them to push with their shoulders whilst supported from below.

The tunnel would have many slots parallel to the push direction to enable players to see inside the tunnel and contend for the ball.

When a scrum was over, the tunnel could be rolled to one side of the pitch.

#1323: Sublimatic

Conventional bullets are designed to be weighty, so that they can be aimed successfully over long distances without deflection (and also so that they will inflict great damage on impact).

Today’s invention is non-lethal, long distance round…a bullet which is heavy enough to accurately carry far but on reaching its target, its mass has decreased so that it delivers only a warning sting.

Bullets would be stored in an insulated magazine and made of dry ice. Solid carbon dioxide sublimes to vapour at a fixed rate (which is increased by friction with the air) so that the impact will decrease sharply with increasing range -and in a predictable way.

#1320: PipeDriver

Digging trenches for underground piping is so Victorian (not that I’ve got anything against Victorian construction: most of it is still standing).

These days, if you want to lay down pipes without closing the roads and building a trench network, directional boring techniques can be used, but it’s all pretty elaborate, costly and short-range.

Today’s invention is a way to build underground conduits without disrupting the streets above too much.

A hammer (orange) is used to drive a stiff, thin-walled curved pipe underground. The hammer arm length and pipe bend radius can be selected beforehand according to the required distance to be piped.

Segments of pipe are attached together in a sequence (using different bend radii can provide extra directional control).

When the pipe surfaces, it can be driven backwards by the hammer, attached to a reamer of slightly bigger diameter. Finally, a conduit (perhaps containing fibre cables) can be driven through the arc-shaped tunnel and cemented in place.

#1315: LabourHarbour

I’ve been talking to some engineers this week who design harbours. There is a fashion for vaguely annular ones, apparently, among the super-rich.

When they have walls (ie they aren’t just jetties), wave action is intensified within them (acting as lenses) and the boats on the inside end up crashing up and down on 10m waves.

Today’s invention is to make use of this by designing a harbour which can accommodate larger vessels. This would have a conical underwater base into which debris from the ships would fall after waves had smashed them together for a few days. The cone could be dragged onshore using a winch and the contents reprocessed to smaller scales.

The noise would be dreadful, but this would eventually reduce even ships to fragments in a lower cost way than having people with blowtorches do the job in months.