#822: Stayreel

The old vacuum cleaner seems to occupying me a lot lately. Why, for example, does that damned spring-loaded reel never actually pull all the power cord back in when the loathsome vacuuming task is done?

Today’s invention is a possible improvement that might make retrieval of the various components of dust collection, slightly more tolerable.

A cleaner consists of three modules: a hose reel (blue), a fan/motor and a dirt hopper. Instead of having to cart about all that hose, the reel is detachable, plugs directly into a wall socket and stays in one place. It contains a decent sized spring, ratchet and gearbox so that the cable can be easily dragged out and then slowly, but relentlessly, hauled back in afterwards.

The other end of the cable (yellow) is plugged into the slimmed down fan/hopper unit.

When cleaning is complete, this cable connector can be easily flicked up out of its bayonet-fitting. The electrical disconnect activates the cord withdrawal mechanism and the yellow connector is dragged back, shielded from causing and sustaining damage (or getting snagged) by a light conical collar (grey).

#821: Pilepounder

Despite all the hoo-ha about whether bagged or bagless vacuum cleaners are better, there seems to have been comparatively little attention paid to what happens to dirt trapped in rugs and carpets. In the old days, people would simply take their rugs out and beat them on the washing line.

Today’s invention attempts a slightly more convenient version of this approach.

Each rug or fitted carpet would have a ferrous plate placed beneath it (yellow). The plate would be about the size of a vacuum cleaner head, coated in ptfe and be multiply perforated.

A vacuum cleaner brush head would be fitted with an electromagnetic ring (yellow). As the cleaner moves across the carpet, sliding the plate along with it, the magnet is switched on and off rapidly so that the plate beneath the carpet oscillates up and down and beats the dust into the airflow moving through the plate’s perforations.

The cleaner would work as normal on wooden floors, for example, and the plate would need to be returned to a known starting position after each usage.

#820: Slotrace

Thinking up weird things that can connect to the USB slots in a computer is now something of an art form.

Today’s invention brings an element of gaming to the USB toys arena.

A modified thumbdrive consists of two parts as shown. The outer part contains a small motor, powered from the computer. This drives a spindle with a wire wrapped around it.

The rate at which the motor winds in the outer part of the drive ( a ‘car’ which is free to roll on a set of small wheels) depends on eg how quickly the computer user can answer questions on the screen. The completion time would be recorded on the computer for each competitor.

Other games for ubergeeks might involve storing programs on the thumbdrive eg intended to ‘bid’ competitively for processing resources from the CPU in order to make their car move inwards faster.

Several adjacent USB slots would allow a parallel car race to be simulated.

#819: FlourPower

Almost any finely-divided organic material, eg flour, will produce an explosive mixture in an air suspension. The stuff which a vacuum cleaner picks up is mostly skin cells and other forms of organic dust.

Today’s invention is to make a self-powered vacuum cleaner.

It contains a small combustion chamber which admits some aerated incoming dust and periodically ignites this to explode, driving a piston which in turn powers the cleaner’s fan. Obviously a small, battery-powered starter motor would be required to initiate the airflow.

#818: Gausshy

Instructions for maintaining the health of one’s laptop often include an exhortation not to “Place the laptop closer than 5 inches to electrical appliances that generate a strong magnetic field, i.e., motor, magnet, TV, refrigerator, or large audio speakers.”

Given that these machines are inherently mobile and that we are increasingly surrounded by some pretty strong magnets, today’s invention is a magnetic field detector embedded within portable computers. At its simplest, this might consist of a couple of small compasses and maybe an optical device for measuring the speed with which they change direction.

If you are about to move your machine next to a motor which is running say behind a partition wall, a warning would sound and an arrow appear on screen saying …”Move your machine in this directly quickly“.

#817: Readaware

I pay a daily visit to a number of websites. One of the best for content is wired.com (even though the page structure and navigation are laughably poor).

The trouble is that the content often does not update as fast as I can read and the individual items are not maintained in their original order…so I end up scouring each page for items of interest amongst a rag-bag of other stuff, some of which I have already dealt with.

Today’s invention is a browser plug-in which remembers the history of which articles I clicked on yesterday and simply doesn’t load those elements of a webpage ever again (unless I explicitly ask for this to happen).

The plug-in might also detect those items which I scrolled past without clicking and exclude those from today’s page too…if I didn’t care about them yesterday, I care less today. (This might be adopted in connection with search engine results. Those entries the browser knows I scrolled through, but didn’t click on, might be used as weighted examples of what not to look for when a button marked ‘rerun the search based on unclicked items?’ is pressed).

All this cuts down the time required to get to the good stuff (and might well expose the relative dearth of real, original, readworthy content).

#816: ClickCredits

I’ve often watched a movie and just avoided all that scrolling text at the end. The credits are a throwback to the era of magic lanterns -almost nobody, except casting agents, proud parents and film geeks, reads them.

Today’s invention is simply to make the credits on DVDs interactive. This would include having popups explaining what the hell a dolly grip actually does, but more importantly, if you liked the score you could click a link that would allow you to buy the music. Or, you could visit the website of some minor actor, or the art director, or whoever.

By actually sharing the credits effectively this represents an extension to the Openpay approach in which the reliance of hugely-paid stars on the teams which surround them is acknowledged. It would be almost free to implement and actually add value to the viewing experience as well.

#815: Illegideas

I find that having hard-to-read writing is a source of creativity in itself, so that when re-reading what I scribbled yesterday, many other, unintended interpretations come to mind.

For people who find having ideas is hard work, there are now many tools which pump out random combinations of words to help unstick the mental gearwheels.

Now it’s also easy to make a computer font from your hand-formed characters.

Today’s invention mashes these together so as to create and printout a list of word triplets in one’s own semi-legible handwriting. These can then be viewed later and are a surprisingly suggestive source of novelty.

#814: Brakebombs

When a vehicle collides with some high-inertia object, the occupants have a tendency to keep going…until they are stopped by hitting a seatbelt, a windscreen, or each other. For improved safety in a car crash, it’s necessary to decelerate people much more gradually…which is why we have seatbelts with progressive tensioning and airbags.

Today’s invention is a way to augment these systems or to replace them in situations where airbags aren’t appropriate…such as racecars. This amounts to a gradualised form of reactive armour for non-military purposes.

Beneath the surfaces of vehicles, a large number of small charges would be fitted. These would each have a force-sensitive actuator, so that they would fire, and slow the vehicle down, only if the intensity of impact was high enough (thus avoiding explosions when contacting pedestrians). If such bomblets are unacceptable, then springs could be used -held in a pre-compressed state by an impact-sensitive clip. The reactive units could be fitted in regions of maximal impact probability…ie around the front and rear surfaces.

These positions might house multiple layers of charges, so that they would experience a braking force proportionate to the degree of local indentation. Such a system could be used to reduce the need for mechanical ‘crumple zones’ and thus make vehicles physically smaller and more manoeuvrable.

#813: Inkognito

If you have printed material which needs to be kept very secret then storing it in a lockable cabinet is of only limited use. Occasionally, for example, an embassy will need to store printed documents which, in the event of a revolution or some other storming of the building, require to be destroyed.

Forming them all into an effective bonfire is surprisingly difficult, especially at very short notice. Shredding such big volumes is just impossible. Today’s invention is a system to address this issue which can be attached inside a normal filing cabinet or cupboard.

In the event of a threatened takeover, embassy staff would press a button on the back of each cabinet which would cause the contents of a tank of solvent inside it to be sprayed into the drawers. (alcohol would be a reasonable fluid to use, although benzene or petrol might be quicker).

A tray at the bottom would collect the residue and allow it to be returned to the tank for another spray cycle. This would make all the ink run and thus be indecipherable within seconds.