SOLAR POWERED TATTOO

“Jared from Artistic Encounter Tattoo in Dallas, Texas performing what could possibly be the world’s First solar powered tattoo, using a rotary tattoo machine and a solar panel purchased from the local hobby shop! Our piercer, Ryan ‘Miley Cyrus’ Marsh was the lucky guinea pig for this ground-breaking experiment.” LINK, Via: Youtube

Electric fireflies

Tom Padula's solar-powered electric fireflies are just one example of the kind of awesome homebrew tchotchke coming to the San Francisco Maker Faire this weekend. These things sound great: tinsy, solar-charged intermittent garden-blinkers that give you the fireflies you always wanted.

"The slightest breeze moves them around, and the motion combined with the light is mesmerizing," says Padula, who will be selling his digital lightning bugs for $10 apiece at the fifth annual Maker Faire Bay Area, which will be held this coming Saturday and Sunday, May 22 and 23, in San Mateo, California. The annual event, put on by O'Reilly Media, is a celebration of DIY culture, arts and crafts, and will likely draw more than 70,000 attendees, organizers say.

Padula's fireflies weigh 0.2 ounces (7 grams) and are attached to an 18-inch monofilament line. Six solar panels charge NiMH batteries, and a microcontroller drives the LED. The units are dipped in epoxy for weather resistance.

"All the real work happens in the code, from determining ambient light level, to controlling the LED intensity and keeping track of how long the pattern has been active so as to turn off after two hours, like real fireflies do," says Padula.

Maker Faire Preview: Electronic Fireflies to Light Up Your Backyard, Via: Boingboing

Solar Quest

Explore solar power 'hot spots' from the deserts of Spain and Nevada to cutting edge technology centers around Europe. LINK: Youtube

Melting steel with the sun

The same science responsible for frying ants is at work on a larger scale in this clip from James May's "Big Ideas" series. What you've got here is a solar furnace, a carefully arranged array of mirrors that catches heat from the sun and reflects it, focusing it to point—effectively taking a lot of disparate, comfy sunbeams and gathering them together in a tight bundle. By their powers combined, the reflected beam can reach temperatures of 3,500 °C (6,330 °F). Watch in wonder and terror as the beam turns a hot dog to char and melts steel.

Thumbnail courtesy Flickr user gi, Via: CC, Via: Boingboing

World's Largest Solar-Powered Boat

PlanetSolar is a boat powered entirely through solar energy. At 31 meters long and 15 wide, it’s the largest in the world:

The 60 tonne catamaran (or is that trimaran?) has cost 18 million euro ($24.4 million USD) to create at the Knierim Yacht Club in Kiel in northern Germany and will be launched waterside next month with sea trials due between June and September. To achieve to full photovoltaic capture there are solar covered flaps that are extended at the stern and amidships.

SunPower has provided approximately 38,000 of their next generation all black photovoltaic cells, an efficiency of at least 22%, which they believe to be the highest efficiency solar cells commercially available. Maybe it’s buried somewhere on the PlanetSolar site, but I missed what storage medium the boat will use once it has harnessed the sun’s energy.

Link | Photogallery | Photo: Christian Charisius/Reuters, Via: Neatorama

World's Largest Solar Office Building Opens in China

This is the largest solar-powered office building in the world, recently built in China. Spanning a whopping 246,000 square feet, it features exhibition centers, research facilities, meeting and training facilities and a hotel, all juiced up by the sun.

[China.org, Via: Ecofriend, Via: Inhabitat, Via: Gizmodo]

Solar Powered Kinetic Animal Sculptures

Development of the Eadweard Muybridge / Theo Jansen inspired kinetic paper animals. Featured are a solar powered horse followed by a horse and some Giraffes controlled by a Basic Stamp 2 micro-controller. LINK: Youtube