You take your air quality seriously, so shouldn’t your monitoring hardware? If you’re breathing in nasty VOCs or dust, surely a little blinking LED isn’t enough to express your displeasure with the current situation. Luckily, [Tobias Stanzel] has created the AqMood to provide us with some much-needed anthropomorphic environmental data collection.

To be fair, the AqMood still does have its fair share of LEDs. In fact, one might even say it has several device’s worth of  them — the thirteen addressable LEDs that are run along the inside of the 3D printed diffuser will definitely get your attention. They’re sectioned off in such a way that each segment of the diffuser can indicate a different condition for detected levels of particulates, VOCs, and CO2.

But what really makes this project stand out is the 1.8 inch LCD mounted under the LEDs. This display is used to show various emojis that correspond with the current conditions. Hopefully you’ll see a trio of smiley faces, but if you notice a bit of side-eye, it might be time to crack a window. If you’d like a bit more granular data its possible to switch this display over to a slightly more scientific mode of operation with bar graphs and exact figures…but where’s the fun in that?

[Tobias] has not only shared all the files that are necessary to build your own AqMood, he’s done a fantastic job of documenting each step of the build process. There’s even screenshots to help guide you along when it’s time to flash the firmware to the XIAO Seeed ESP32-S3 at the heart of the AqMood.

If you prefer your air quality monitoring devices be a little less ostentatious, IKEA offers up a few hackable models that might be more your speed.

Braun was once a mighty pillar of industrial design; a true titan of the mid-century era. Many of the company’s finest works have been forgotten outside of coffee table books and vintage shops. [Distracted by Design] wanted to bring one of the classics back to life—the Braun HL70 desk fan.

The original was quite a neat little device. It made the most of simple round shapes and was able to direct a small but refreshing stream of air across one’s desk on a warm day. In reality, it was probably bought as much for its sleek aesthetics as for its actual cooling ability.

Obviously, you can’t just buy one anymore, so [Distracted by Design] turned to 3D printing to make their own. The core of the build was a mains-powered motor yanked out of a relatively conventional desk fan. However, it was assembled into a far more attractive enclosure that was inspired by the Braun HL70, rather than being a direct copy. We get a look at both the design process and the final assembly, and the results are quite nice. It feels like a 2025 take on the original in a very positive sense.

Files are available on Printables for the curious. It’s not the first time we’ve contemplated fancy fans and their designs. Video after the break.

River tables are something we’ve heard decried as a passé, but we’re still seeing some interesting variations on the technique. Take this example done with bronze instead of epoxy.

Starting with two beautiful slabs of walnut, [Burls Art] decided that instead of cutting them up to make guitars he would turn his attention to a river table to keep them more intact. Given the price of copper and difficulty in casting it, he decided to trim the live edges to make a more narrow “river” to work with for the project.

Since molten copper is quite toasty and wood likes to catch on fire, he wisely did a rough finish of the table before making silicone plugs of the voids instead of pouring metal directly. The silicone plugs were then used to make sand casting molds, and a series of casting trials moving from copper to bronze finally yielded usable pieces for the table. In case that all seems too simple, there were then several days of milling and sanding to get the bronze and walnut level and smooth with each other. The amount of attention to detail and plain old elbow grease in this project is impressive.

We’ve seen some other interesting mix-ups of the live edge and epoxy formula like a seascape night light or this river table with embedded neon. And if you’re looking to get into casting, why not start small in the microwave?

Ground-source heat pump systems are one of the most efficient ways to do climate control, but digging the wells can be prohibitively expensive for the individual citizen. What if you could do it at a larger scale?

Starting with a pilot to serve 37 commercial and residential buildings in Framingham, MA, Eversource is using its experience with natural gas drilling and pipe to serve up a lower carbon way to heat and cool this neighborhood. While district heating via geothermal has precedents elsewhere in the country, Boise is a notable example, it has remained a somewhat niche technology. Once networked, excess heat from one location can be used elsewhere in the system, like data centers or industrial facilities being used to heat homes in the winter.

As gas utilities look to transition away from fossil fuels, their existing knowledge base is a perfect fit for geothermal, but there are some regulatory hurdles. Six states have passed laws allowing natural gas utilities to expand beyond just gas, and bills have been filed in six more. This will likely accelerate with the formation of the Utility Networked Geothermal Collaborative which includes many utilities including giants like Dominion Energy who are looking to expand their energy portfolios.

If you want to dig more into district heating systems or geothermal energy, we’ve covered cogeneration from power plants to serve up the heat instead, doing it with wind, or even using old coal mines for geothermal heat.

[Dylan] has a fancy bed that can be set to any temperature. Apparently this set him back about $2,000, it only works if it has Internet, and the bed wants $19 a month for anything beyond basic features. Unsurprisingly, [Dylan] decided to try to hack the mattress firmware and share what he learned with us.

Oddly enough, it was easy to just ask the update URL for the firmware and download it. Inside, it turned out there was a mechanism for “eng@eightsleep.com” to remotely SSH into any bed and — well — do just about anything. You may wonder why anyone wants to gain control of your bed. But if you are on the network, this could be a perfect place to launch an attack on the network and beyond.

Of course, they can also figure out when you sleep, if you sleep alone or not, and, of course, when no one is in the bed. But if those things bother you, maybe don’t get an Internet-connected bed.

Oddly enough, the last time we saw a bed hack, it was from [Dillan], not [Dylan]. Just because you don’t want Big Sleep to know when you are in bed doesn’t mean it isn’t useful for your private purposes.

If you’re taking any medication, you probably need to take it in a certain dose on a certain schedule. It can quickly become difficult to keep track of when you’re taking multiple medications. To that end, [Mellow_Labs] built an automated pill dispenser to deliver the right pills on time, every time.

The pill dispenser is constructed out of 3D printed components. As shown, it has two main bins for handling two types of pills, controlled with N20 gear motors. The bins spin until a pill drops through a slot into the bottom of the unit, with the drop detected by a piezo sensor. It uses a Beetle ESP32 as the brains of the operation, which is hooked up with a DS1307 real-time clock to ensure it’s dosing out pills at the right time. It’s also wired up with a DRV8833 motor driver to allow it to run the gear motors. The DRV8833 can run up to four motors in unidirectional operation, so you can easily expand the pill dispenser up to four bins if so desired.

We particularly like how the pill dispenser is actually controlled — [Mellow_Labs] used the ESP32 to host a simple web interface which is used for setting the schedule on which each type of pill should be dispensed.

We’ve featured some other pill dispenser builds before, too.

Thanks to [Prankhouz] for the tip!