Episode: 4675
Title: Yard Inflatables
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4675/hpr4675.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:16:35 (official HPR transcript)

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4675, for 2026-07-03
Today's show is entitled, "Yard Inflatables"
The host is operat0r and the duration is 00:11:20
The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "modular inflatable systems, emphasizing durability and efficient design for lawn ornaments."
You are listening to a show from the Reserve Queue.
This show was submitted in January 2026 to cover occasions like this
where there are gaps in the schedule.
Hello everyone, welcome to another sort of hacker public radio with the host operator
So today I'm talking about
You know Christmas sheet time after the holidays New Year's
My idea around modular and flatable stuff with the lights and
The problems so you buy these
lawn ornaments that are cheap and
They defense crap out or they get wet or
Any of the above usually what happens is that the little box
The little charging box plug-in box gets wet because it's been left outside
It's not really an outdoor charger or a adapter or
You know put it out there and it gets wet and then gets rusty and then the motor gets rusted and then the little crappy like PC van motor
Crips out
And I looked online for like more PC motors
And I realize kind of what does happen is
For a couple of reasons you can replace them
But then you know you have to take apart and it's annoying and you know
It's only gonna last maybe a season or two and then just gonna crap out again and like what's the actual problem?
Well the problem is we need to deliver air to these
nylon inflatables
That's not compromised by the elements as easily
What I purchased was the pretty big
Kind of industrial blow fan from like you know inflatable with that come I think about two of them
They're like 30 bucks a piece or something like that. I'm just a big huge turbine fan that blows will blow up like
You know a six foot seven foot by seven foot inflatable
And then it will to almost explosion so it's a series fan so
But that's that I've got that fan and now I wanted to deliver that to you know, maybe a tiny little
miniature you know
Dollar store inflatable. Well that's not gonna work as it's too too much. So the idea there's we have three or four at a time
Into my idea and what I've kind of had my white belt was a modular system. So
It's a bit of a mess, but the idea would be to have the main blower
Which is you know a serious like turbine blower this plastic and kind of weather weather resistant and that blower has a bigger has a big attachment to it, you know
I don't know maybe I don't like the size of a
tube for a firework
War is actually what I'm using for connections for connectors. So it's about that size and then it splits off three ways
Actually the the tube for the
For the thing is just a nylon so kept my wife sewed together like a nylon tube
She got some like nylon fabric or something and she made a big outlet and then that splits out into three different ways
One in the middle and two on each side
The middle one is larger
The other
Two outside ones because generally you know you have one or two big ones and then smaller ones after that whatever for us for our use cases at least
So she built that and you know what I ended up doing was using zip ties to
Make that put the pieces together
So I would kind of cut out the existing hole or use the existing hole in some way
zip ties some kind of fasten or fasten some kind of zip tie around and then I would use the cut outs of these kind of fiberglass
Launching tubes for fireworks and the idea would to be to make it modular like a click modular like I got a plastic clipping module or
Maybe even zip ties or whatever however, we want to make it module there. You can mine is not really modular
I just wrap it around and then zip tight and maybe flip it so what you can do is put the
Put the thing on the worthless and then take the fabric and flip it around the zip ties
And then leave a little hole and you'll see this in some of these setups leave a little hole so you can pull the zip cord
So you've put the fabric on its side so there's more than just like one layer
Protecting it to kind of keep it all together and it gives it a little bit of squirmy around where can move around
So anyways you put the zip tie on there and you flap it around you flip it around with the fabric while you've got like a little hole in there
And you can have like multiple layers
So anyways you've got that connected and you've got your you know three way below or it works
The problem there is eventually you've you've now you've screwed up the whole system because usually there's like some dumb lights
within the whole thing right
Which you have to think of is these things come with like a little crappy blower and then they come with some you know crappy
Lights to light up the inside so I actually had existing 12 volt
Ali deboves that were pretty bright
Honestly almost too bright and I built kind of a modular system similar to the other one where I had kind of just bare wires
Essentially and a 12 volt power supply that sits in like a plastic bag and then that plastic bags that's in like a
You know a little protective plastic a container deal for outside and it has kind of sort of modular
Where I have these little clip on deals
You can buy it like clip on wire connectors the various kinds in various ways
But you don't want to make it permanent because you want to be able to move around so like we have a
Spider that goes up on the second floor and
That has to be longer and it has its own blower and it hasn't failed me yet
But I don't know what I'm going to do once it fails because it can't connect to the main blower
So whatever
But the idea there is the the lights are coming off a single adapter
Dessing a 12 volt adapter pi ours any number of food me one ornaments. So it's kind of cool
It the wires are a bit of a mess ideally what my thought is to
Make the system modular in some way and it still have a cloth based of course
But have like nylon cloth and then have it so where you can attach
split and join multiple
Air feeds
And you can maybe like a little like a little gate
So you get a just amount of air bleeding out from it because sometimes there's too much air coming in
And then also with that you can have the lights
Kind of modular also so you would have this long piece of nylon tube with
lights inside of it
Or a long piece of nylon tube and that's the end you'd have maybe three lights and you could just unplug which ones you didn't want
Maybe there's space to feed a part or something right
So the idea would be you'd have this long
Overleave long tube of nylon and then inside of it would have the wire
I think you would plug that into the main pub
But that that's kind of you know kind of like a second step
That way you don't have the wires are all over the place and you're tripping over whatever
now you just have the tubes for the for the for the
For the lights for the air and then inside of the tube you have the wires and they're kind of sort of protected by the elements
Because they're inside of this nylon tube. So it's kind of my next approach is to
Combine it into one seamless sort of thing where you can
unplug and plug modules into it and
You know if you got something like this and you got it
Effectively cheap cheap enough to where people would be like oh, okay. I'm tired of buying new lawn ornaments
That would be something you could actually sell to people now once I started doing this
I started using it after about the third fourth year. I realized
Some of our original
inflatables were starting to split their cells in half
Start to split at the seams. So it's only it's only so gonna they're only gonna last so long and
And people will tell you that kind of do 10 repair you can buy like a spray can and it's like a spray it
He's a slash
Kind of just a slack that you put on your tent and that will help with the the word starting to split apart
And that really only lasts a long also I kind of made a DIY version of it like you mix
I don't know you mix something up and
Mix some epoxy up with the alcohol and you put in the spray can or something. I don't know what it did
But it's essentially made the same thing
I'd probably could have gotten a little bit more mileage out of one of the ones that we had but
I was pretty bad and our Halloween one is starting to get
After probably 10 years
a long time of usage it's starting to kind of thread rip itself apart
So I'm starting to kind of spray on like some slack or some kind of gooey adhesive kind of sort of thing to keep it goo together from leaking
So that's kind of one other thing is it you know you had to kind of buy a decent
Quality inflatable for it to last long because
With the system you know you're gonna last five years. I mean, it's gonna outlast any of your inflatable
So if you have it crappy inflatable, it's only gonna last you like three years before it starts
Meeting more and more and more air to fill up
What you can with the system you can just pump more air into it
And a lot of times I have to you know, I have the time I have to un-done sit them a little bit because they're too much air is coming in through
the main floor
But the idea the other is you can you know
You can a little bit of both you can kind of be energy efficient by
Sealing what you can and then when you can't you just let it blow a warrior into it and
That's kind of one of them we have is like that. It's one of the things that I like and I've been able to kind of repair a little bit
But you know, it's starting to show it's age and why not so anyways
I'd be interested in any thoughts of how to make it modular and
Make it so it's easy for people to use and connect
There's got to be some other examples of
Setting up something like this this modular and cost effective that we could like mass produce
3D print parts for you know 3D print
You know, movable connectable parts for it and then like you know have some kind of way to get the wires in there also and make that modular to where you just plug in
You know you've had the little the little module
The connector module female and male and the female and male would have a point where you put in the LED mount
The LED plug mount for each one or whatever you're plugging in out of it
But that's an interesting idea I've had and I've always been frustrated with all of lawn ornaments
Anyways, that's my little rant about lawn ornaments that's down here way on the bottom of my list of
massive amounts of
Hackerpope radio episodes. I should be doing take it easy
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