Hey there!
For a school project we have built a fully automatic operated car wash street. It can be controlled by three different platforms, a PLC, PC(National Instruments) and Arduino controller. All three systems can be connected to the car wash and do the same routine.

a washing routine:
The customer choses a wash program he likes, pays, the barrier will open, and a highlight will turn from red to green. Then he drives the car onto the conveyor belt which will start running after a few seconds.

The conveyor belt pulls the car from behind one of the front wheels of the vehicle.
First the car gets scanned by a radar sensor. Then the washbar will adjust itself to a suitable height. And the LEDs will turn on to *spray* some water on the car as it goes by. Next up is the gate that rubs the car clean, while rinsing the car again with some waterLED's. Then the car get's a nice finish with wax (LEDs). And lastly all will be dried by a total of six spinning fans.

We also made a control panel that gives allow's the customer to chose a washprogram of his choice. With or without wax, or washing the bottom of the car. And also the controlpanel shows which motor's or leds are active and indicates what signal is coming from the radar sensor.

*Of course no real water is used, the leds are there to simulate water or wax coming out.

Metropolis, my second ball machine. It has a total of 12 different paths, 16 if you count all small sidepaths as well. And it consists of many new elements I designed myself.

Building time: Oct '09 - Aug '10

Metropolis in the making

October '09 - May '10

Beware of the treasonous beasts lurking in the depths of the ocean! This guy has 12 legs driven by a motor in the center. The legs work the same as "strandbeest" by the kinetic sculptor Theo Jansen.

A motorized Knex Train. It runs on the older rollercoaster track and can go through corners.
Also the smoke moves when the train makes a turn and it has two working whistles.

Here's two different sword designs

Instructions can be found here:

http://static01.instructables.com/id/Knex-Starwars-Lightsaber-Design/

The dutch Catalogue published by k'nex in 2000/2001.

The dutch Catalogue published by k'nex in 1997/1998.

The dutch Catalogue published by k'nex in 1998/1999.

Here's my first ball machine. It has 4 paths. I made it on the space that I have next to my bed because I thought it was to empty there...
Anyways, building it was sometimes very frustrating because I had little so little space (I cant even stand up straight there)