DRM Chair (Chair that self-destructs after 8 uses)

source: wired

When you give a group of makers a vague instruction to deconstruct an idea and build something out of it in 48 hours, you get some outlandish results. It’s exactly what the team behind The Deconstruction wanted for its two-day, global hacker competition that took place this past weekend. The projects from over 50 participating teams varied from full-length musical albums and an iPhone-powered disco ball to a Rube Goldberg machine that demonstrates the process of photosynthesis.

On the whole, these projects are here to remind us that makers aren’t always 3-D printing fanatics or hardware hackers — they can include anyone, whether a musician, designer, engineer, or child. The official winners of the event will be announced later this week.

Meanwhile, here are six of our favorites.

Self-Destructing Musical Chair

A team of current and former design students in Lausanne, Switzerland’s University of Art and Design deconstructed the game of musical chairs. To team Les Sugus, the game was finite, so they wanted to create a chair that, too, was finite. The group designed a seat that would only survive nine sittings — one for each member of the team — until it automatically destructs.

To do this, Les Sugus constructed a chair with cast wax joints. They then attached an Arduino board to the chair, along with a contact switch to detect that a person is sitting in it. A solenoid hits the chair and signals the number of seatings left, and a relay box finally switches on the self-destruct heating system to melt the wax away. Slowly, but inevitably, the chair is destroyed, hilariously sending the final sitter to the floor.