Todd Medema and Scott Martin at Fabricate.IO want to solve the problem of late night illumination. On late night trips across the house or while entering a dark house shelves were sometimes knocked over. Toes were stubbed and roommates were roused from their sleep by the lights being flipped on.
Their solution is MOVE Lighting - hallway runner lights that consist mainly of LED lighting strips, motion sensors and standard electrical connections. The lights are expected to run as part of a Kickstarter campaign in the next month, and as of this writing over 93,000 users have downloaded the instructions to build their own lights through the Instructables website.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Automatic-Hallway-Runner-Lights/
An off-the-shelf Jameco photocell is the sensor that the team has specified for the lighting system, and a standard LED strip and power supply is recommended. Todd suggested that an enterprising engineer / hacker could easily convert the project to battery operation instead of requiring AC current.
MOVE lights are cool - they solve a problem that quite a few different teams are working on currently, with an easy elegant solution using easy to find components. This isn't the only thing that Fabricate.IO has done, however. Their Instructables page is full of great ideas and projects for novice builders and experienced hackers alike.
Low cost workbenches, gesture control devices for Python, electric bike conversion kits, and a levitating coffee table are some of the projects that are currently available on the Fabricate.IO page . I'm not brave enough to try the watermelon / shrimp pizza and my ears are one hundred percent against the DIY membrane bagpipes that I'm sure the kids would love to play for hours on end.
Todd and Scott are exactly the kind of makers we need to keep the engineering profession moving forward - they love building but also love spreading their projects and the joy of making to others. Based on the list of upcoming projects I'm excited to see the collapsible chair that turns into wall art, and expect someday soon to write a follow up article discussing their remote control, fire-breathing duckbot.