[MAKE Magazine - daily] - MAKE Magazine

Hello there, here are your daily updates from the MAKE blog - 2008/11/27. DIY designer mirror remake Smashing a remote control Smart Car A tour of the RI State Crime Lab Speaker for bike commuters Portland Event: Dorkbot PDX 0x02 Wired makes a scannercam DollarFan - What could you do? Can art feeds more than the intellect Think Anatomy learning site Toy mechanic HexPummer Lantern kits from Solarbotics VGA to USB power mod Arduino Gift Guide! Thanksgiving papercraft redux Innovation in America... A gathering storm? @ The Economist HOW TO - iRobot dead cell battery fix DIY 12AU7 tube preamplifier Iron Man suit powered by BeagleBoard and Arduino Build: Gakken Mechamo Centipede A very serious binary alarm-clock iPhone fetches itself DIY Navy - Oberon Class Submarine for sale... & Erik and the submarine MIDI drumbox with a vintage voice Human puppet is triggered by impulses Giant inflatable octopus Planeboat Memories Zero-gravity coffee cup How-to: Tin box made from a can Flowers by Jan van Nuenen Tim Shopbots Stools Processing 1.0: Officially non-beta Another look at the Arduino MIDI touchpad HOW TO - Make a "Net data meter" DIY designer mirror remake Sean Ragan tells the maker's tale of how his friction-only mirror hanger came into being: Sometimes I like to peruse the snooty design catalogs. On the one hand, while I'm sickened by the notion of anyone paying thousands of dollars for a chair, those "name" designers often have clever ideas that are easily liberated to create accessible DIY design. And that's the elaborate preamble I require to justify why I was once leafing through a book, published in early 2001, called The Dream Catalog: A revolutionary, new, illustrated directory of the most beautiful, stylish and amazing objects available on the Internet. It is exactly what it sounds like--porno for consumer whores. But among the pretentious affronts to decency I came across a simple wall mirror (unfortunately named "Hopi") that was suspended from a single peg in the wall by a rough manilla rope threaded back and forth through holes drilled in the glass. There were no knots in the rope, and the mirror had no frame. Just a piece of silvered glass, with holes, and a bit of rope threaded through them. The mirror was supported by friction against the rope alone. And lo, friends, I was charmed. So for several years I had a to-do mouldering in one of my bottomless to-do piles: "Reproduce Hopi mirror on the cheap." I bought a mirror from the thrift store and took a hunk of manilla rope off the shelf. I liberated the mirror from its frame and, considerably later in the process than I probably should have, began to consider the problem of drilling holes in the glass. I learned how it could be done using brass tubing of an appropriate diameter mounted in a drill over a slurry of water and silicon carbide grit. And then real life intervened, as it often does, and the project stalled. All those bits are still in a box in a storage shed out back. And so like but then this weekend I was helping a buddy run a garage sale, and emong the detritus I discovered a round mirror about 20" in diameter that was secured to a circular frame by screws through four holes drilled in the glass. So I plunked down $5 and took the thing apart, recovering the precious drilled glass and discarding the rest. I stopped at the hardware store on the way home that evening and bought 6' of 5/16" manilla rope for less than a buck. I had a spare coathook in the junk box. And it took about 5 minutes to thread the rope through the holes, mount the coathook on the wall, and hang up the mirror. Strike one long-time, albeit relatively minor, personal goal. And the moral is....oh I dunno. "Always be on the lookout for useful junk?" Or how about, "Learn to recogn/ize the potential value of every little feature of a found object?" Or maybe just, "If you can find a mirror with holes drilled in it you can hang it from a rope all groovy-like." Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Remake | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • Smashing a remote control Smart Car Seriously, what is not to love about this video? Proper accents, a remote control car crashing into a concrete barrier at highway speed, lots of camera angles, slow mo replays, picking through the wreckage in the post-crash analysis. And then they do it again to a second car! From 70 miles an hour to naught in one second, energy to move tons of concrete...The steel cage has certainly done its' job really well, you can still see the original shape...Its only when you come round the front that you see that Massive Impact. The Smart Car sure is tiny, but it has a surprising ability to handle the impact of crashes. Cars have significantly different safety design aspects to alter the way they protect passengers in an acident. Th older cars of the 80's and before, were largely made of steel, and had rigid frames. Modern automotive design has many softer features intended to shift the energy of impact away from the passengers. It is much easier to find out how a car will perform in an accident than in the past. How well would your car stand up in an accident? Has your vehicle been designed with shock absorbing crumple zones? Do you know how to drive for maximum safety? How about that remote control action? Have you ever rigged up a car to be controllable through radio or other systems? Add your photos to the Make Flickr pool, and comment in with your tales of success/failure and adventure! Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Transportation | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • A tour of the RI State Crime Lab Robert Bruce Thompson (author of Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments) and Barbara Fritchman Thompson (co-author with Bob on Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders) are hard at work on a new book that is going to bring DIY CSI to your home or basement lab: Illustrated Guide to Forensics Investigations (coming from MAKE in 2009). One of the tech reviewers on the book is Dennis Hilliard, Director of the Rhode Island State Crime Lab. I stopped by the lab recently, and Dennis treated me to a full tour of it. It's a really impressive facility. They provide forensics services to state and local police, and in some cases federal authorities. Although I've been told that real forensics is not all that much like what you see on TV, it's actually not that far off. There are many computers, lots of test firings, and plenty of hands-on science. There doesn't seem to be any of the soap opera-like drama you see on TV, and Dennis tells me that in much of the US, the scientists are not police officers. Because of this, the forensic scientists often work with police officers to teach them how to gather, preserve, and process evidence, and also a bit of the scientific method. But the key difference is that unlike TVs, the computers don't do all the work. Instead, scientists use the computers to reduce uncertainty (always comparing the known to the unknown), and make the call themselves. Flickr set: November 2008 visit to the RI State Crime Lab Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Science | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • Speaker for bike commuters DIY Coffee Cup Bike Speaker from Robert Edwards on Vimeo. Robert Edwards of co(act)lab built this clever amp/speaker inside a travel mug. Pop it into the bottle cage on your bike and you're ready to roll to the music. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Bicycles | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • Portland Event: Dorkbot PDX 0x02 For those of you in Oregon, here's a dork-tastic event on December 7th: DorkbotPDX brings you Collin Oldham, Shelly Farnham and Steve Davee Come join us for an evening of geek meets art. The fine folks at AboutUs will be hosting us for this event, which takes place December 7th at 6PM. AboutUs is located at 107 SE Washington St, Suite 520. Feel free to bring snacks and drinks to share. Please spread the word! Collin Oldham: The RT (radio trowel) and The Cellomobo Collin spent the 2005-2006 academic year at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) where began to develop the electronic musical instruments he is presenting today. The RT (radio trowel) uses a capacitive sensor array based on Max Mathew's radio baton to detect the position of the trowel on the playing surface. The trowel's movements control sound synthesis parameters, including filters which process live sound from a contact mic attached to the trowel. The cellomobo is a computer music instrument that attempts to model the behavior of a bowed string. It gives haptic feedback to the bow at audio rate to simulate the stick-slip action of a bowed string. This feedback stream finds it way back into the audio stream, creating a unique hybrid of digital and analog synthesis. Collin Oldham is a cellist who has performed around the world with such varied and luminous artists as Placido Domingo, Kiri Te Kanawa, Rosemary Clooney and Aretha Franklin. He's active as a session player, and has recorded with the Decemberists, Richmond Fontaine, and Elliott Smith, among many others. Shelly Farnham: Dorkbot Dorkbot Dorkbot + Seattle I am that rare combination of geek, artist, and scientist and when I first met Dorkbot Seattle I felt like I'd *finally* found my people -- where technology is artistic medium, science is art, and geeking out is just a whole lot of fun. My one complaint was that Seattle Dorkbots were not collaborating enough, and when I took over as Seattle's "Dork Overlord" it was my main mission -- to cultivate the creative geek community. In this talk, I will review the best of Dorkbot Seattle's art, geekery, and science, and discuss how we have worked to increase cross-disciplinary collaboration through our meetings, workshops, and art shows. Shelly Farnham received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology at UW in 1999, after which she worked at Microsoft Research for seven years studying community technology. A few years ago she quit to join the start up world, and is now co-founder of Pathable (professional networking for events). In her "spare" time she paints, does collaborative installations, and instigates people to have more fun creating stuff. Steve Davee: Not to kill a thought: The impact of language on curiosity, creativity and scientific inquiry. This talk explores how easy it is, even with the best of intentions, to stifle creative thought and true learning when it comes to working with children in the areas of science, math and engineering. We will investigate examples of simple but powerful changes in language, with the intention of provoking the best of creative potential and shared inquiry. Steve Davee is a math and science teacher at Opal Charter School and a Media Specialist for the Center for Children's Learning at the Portland Children's Museum. He is a recovering Biochemist with a background in physics and over 20 years of volunteer and work experience in education. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Events | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • Wired makes a scannercam On Wired's How-to Wiki, they decided to try their hand at building Mike Golembewski's Scanner Camera project, featured in MAKE Volume 14 and in the Sept 19th episode of Make: Weekend Project (see both below). Charlie Sorrel, author of the piece, did what looks like a nice job with the build, but the results look like something from a questionable episode of Ghost Hunters (if that's not redundant). We asked Kip Kay of Weekend Projects for any tips he can offer Charlie: Here is what I discovered about focusing. You have to really play with the focusing elements and the distance to the object. I got some pretty good results as seen in the video from about 4 feet away. But the results were nothing like what the original author, Mike Golembewski achieved. I think he had an actual lens on his rather than a magnifying glass for the pictures in the article. (He did mention he had built a better one) Before taping the camera to the scanner, you should tape on a piece of tracing paper over the back which allows you to see the image and get it focused properly. Wired's How-To Wiki: Make a Scanner Camera More: Weekend Project: Scanner Camera Weekend Project: Scanner Camera (PDF) Mod a flatbed scanner to take photos that decontruct time and motion with wild results! Thanks go to Mike Golembewski for the original article in Make Volume 14 View the PDF Scanner cam portraits at American Maker Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Imaging | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • DollarFan - What could you do? Enlightenment in the checkout line. After forgetting the liter of olive oil that I went to the store to get and had to return for, I saw on my return trip, down on the bottom shelf of the rack in the chute to the register was a ratty box of beat up plastic fans. Summer is long gone, so they were marked down to $1. Cheap enough to grab two and chuck them onto the conveyor belt. With the oil and a few other shiny objects that I had missed on my previous run. On the way home, I realized that these little fans might just be a gold mine. A dc motor would cost about a buck, a battery pack with a switch, the same, and a hub for the shaft of the motor that you could attach a wheel to might just be hard to make quickly. Action packed with lots of features and priced to move. The personal fan, battery pack, motor holder, hub, what could you do with this if you had a dozen? two dozen? a hundred? a thousand? What kind of projects come to mind? I was thinking little car, attach a cd to the hub, but there are other ideas as well. What are the ideas you think of when you see these? Certainly they could be used to explore fluids and movement of air. How about cooling and thermodynamics? Screw into the plastic, and you have a mountable system. Hack into the switch, and turn it on and off based on a sensor with an Arduino. Just what could you do with these? Have you tried any projects with them? Do you have any in a drawer in your house? Do they have them at the local junk store/gas station/thrift shop/lost and found?Try out some projects with these little fans. Make some pictures and post them in the Make Flickr pool. Make a video, post it online and use the tag dollarfan Post your ideas in the comments and lets see what we can come up with! Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • Can art feeds more than the intellect Canstruction '08 features some very awesome works built entirely from canned foods - Canstruction is an international charity competition that opened last Thursday at the Winter Garden and Courtyard Gallery of the World Financial Center, featuring giant structures built entirely out of cans of food. Top architectural and engineering firms in over 100 cities across North America participate in Canstruction, collecting millions of pounds of food for local food banks -- the New York City show features local architectural and engineering talent. At the close of the competition, all of the food from the show will be donated to City Harvest. - Canstruction More: Canstruction - Sculptures made from can stacking Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • Think Anatomy learning site Street Anatomy has launched a cool new sister site, Think Anatomy. I found that reading an anatomy textbook, sitting in lecture, and dissecting in lab weren't enough to really master anatomy. So I turned to the Internet to find resources like dissection videos, interactives, games, quizzes, etc., to supplement my study material. It took a lot of time to sift through the results and put together a list of valuable online anatomy resources. That's where the inspiration to make Think Anatomy started. I wanted to make a site that anatomy students could use to find study aids without having to use a major search engine like Google. So after many many hours spent searching, reviewing, and categorizing anatomy sites, Think Anatomy is finally ready. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Kids | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • Toy mechanic All parents should be trained as toy mechanics before they accept the gig. For, no matter how many high-quality, wooden, German toys you give your young ones, at some point they're going to fall in love with a fragile, mass-produced hunk of plastic. Knowing how to fix it will save money and forestall its trip to the landfill. This is my son's Buzz Lightyear action figure. (I'll admit mine's in the original box in the garage.) The wires that connect the upper arm "laser" button to the LED in his forearm are routed through his elbow joint in a less-than-perfectly engineered fashion. They've been severed four times. The first three times, I soldered them back together and kept them running through the elbow joint. The fourth time, I decided I'd had enough of that, drilled some holes, and routed the wires outside the elbow entirely. With a bit of braided wire tubing it looks pretty cool. Doesn't Robosapien look sort of like this? About a year ago these figures became hard to find in toy stores. When they returned they had a poor substitute for Tim Allen doing the voiceover. It's pretty unholy sounding. That's another reason why I'm willing to repair this guy as many times as necessary. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Toys and Games | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • HexPummer Lantern kits from Solarbotics One of the new kit releases I got a big kick out of at Maker Faire Austin was the HexPummer Lantern from our compadres at Solarbotics. This is an add-on to their popular HexPummer, a kit version of a cool BEAM circuit that creates throbbing LED light that "PUMMs" when darkness falls and the circuit slowly dumps the power from the solar cell and rechargeable batteries that have been soaking up and storing the day's sun. Put this inside of a handsome little laser-cut Japanese lantern with geeky silhouettes (or seasonal ones) and you have the HexPummer Lantern. This is a great entry-level kit, something that the builder will have fun showing off when s/he's done making it. Solarbotics even made special MAKE and Maker Faire Austin Lantern kits. These kits, and the HexPummers, are available in the Maker Shed. HexPummer Kit (Pummer only) Our Price: $27.50 Lantern Kit (Lantern only) Our Price: $7.50 Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Electronics | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • VGA to USB power mod This Instructable details a simple little hack to get USB power out of a VGA port, to power external disc drives, DVD players, and the like. All you need is a male to male VGA gender changer and a female plug from any old USB extension cable. VGA to USB power! Best Of Instructables Our Price: $34.99 Sale Price: $29.99 You Save $5.00! Instructables.com has become one of the most popular magnets for makers and DIY enthusiasts of all stripes. Now, with more than 10,000 projects to choose from, the Instructables staff, editors of MAKE: Magazine, and the Instructables community itself have put together a collection of home, craft, food and technology how-to's from the site. The Best of Instructables Volume 1 includes plenty of clear, full-color photographs, complete step-by-step instructions, and tips, tricks, and new build techniques you won't find anywhere else. Highlights from the book: * 336 pages, 6-5/8 x 9-3/8, same dimensions as The Best of MAKE and MAKE magazine. * Over 120 projects! * Projects cover everything from food hacking and making home furnishings from junk to building robots and CNC milling machines. And in-between you'll find projects on arts, crafts, costume-making, tool tips, themed photo galleries, and tons more. * There are also the results of the Community Choice contest winners (the best of Instructables as voted by its members) and links to their projects. * There are key user comments from the site throughout, called User Notes, and even a section in the back for you to keep your own User Notes as you build the projects. We tried to involve the Instructables community as much as possible in the creation of the book (we were in direct communication with several hundred authors!). We hope the results do this maker community proud. It was a thrill ride to be sure. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Computers | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • Arduino Gift Guide! The Arduino open-source microcontroller platform can be programmed and equipped to perform a nearly endless list of functions. It's likely the best all-around centerpiece to a modern electronics project. But one of the tasks Arduino is best used for is straight-up fun - the open design means there's an Arduino board suitable for almost any project, and a wealth of add-on "shields" extends its abilities with ease. Updated! - This list keeps growing, and growing and ... Starter kits Arduino Starter Kit - The best way to get going with the very capable microcontroller platform, the starter kit sets you up with a bunch of basic parts necessary for tinkering plus a wealth of knowledge in the included 400+ pages of Making Things Talk, by Arduino developer Tom Igoe. Features - 1x Arduino Diecimila 1x Mini Breadboard 1x 3 ft. USB Cable 10x 1K Resistors 2x 10k Resistors 3x Red LEDs 2x Green LEDs 1X Superbright Blue LED 1x Momentary Tactile Switch 2x Interlink Force Sensing Resistors 1x Protoshield Kit (unassembled) Making Things Talk by Tom Igoe 24" each of Red, Blue & Black AWG jumper wire 9V Battery Case w/DC Plug (some assembly required) Yes, even a 9V battery Price $89.99 Arduino Starter Pack - A different take on the Arduino survival kit, this pack from Adafruit includes potentiometers, a DC wall adapter, and a nice selection of LEDs - Arduino Duemilanove - including 4 rubber feet 3' USB cable Protoshield Kit Tiny Breadboard 9V DC regulated wall adapter 9V Battery case with switch and a 2.1mm plug 10K potentiometer, 1K potentiometer 2 small pushbuttons 5 red diffused bright LEDs, plus one each of red, green and blue ultra-bright LED 5 100 ohm resistors, 5 1K resistors, 5 10K resistors CdS photocell sensor 4 pieces of 18" long jumper wire in red, black, yellow and blue Price $65 Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arduino | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • Thanksgiving papercraft redux Macula offers a free download of this boxy little Thanksgiving turkey papercraft - a fun holiday project for kids! Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Kids | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • Innovation in America... A gathering storm? @ The Economist Innovation in America... A gathering storm? @ The Economist- LISTEN to the growing cries of despair coming from some leading business people, and you might imagine that corporate America's competitiveness could be the next victim of the global financial crisis. But Jeffrey Immelt, the boss of GE, the world's largest industrial firm, sees opportunity amid the woe. "Companies and countries that really play offence vis-à-vis technology and innovation are going to come out ahead," he said this week at an event in New York to present GE's coming innovations in health-care technology. With those words, he touched on a debate that has been heating up for many months. Even before the financial crunch began, many businessmen were worried that America was losing its lead in innovation to India and China. They were particularly upset that Asian rivals had been investing with more gusto in teaching young people mathematics and science, and in advanced scientific research. America's National Academy of Engineering even issued a report last year, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm", arguing that America's "economic and strategic security" was in question because of lack of investment. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Culture jamming | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • HOW TO - iRobot dead cell battery fix Mikey's HOW TO - iRobot dead cell battery fix... I have three iRobots which help clean our house. I bought them about two years ago. As the one year warranty was coming up I called iRobot and asked them to help with various issues. They basically replaced all three of them. Now that I am at the one year point with the replacements I'm running out of options as things break. I can either fix it myself, or buy more shit. Obviously, I don't want to pay for anything. This morning I took apart the battery pack in the Dirt Dog vacuum cleaner. After about 30 minutes of cutting, sawing, and taping I had a battery pack that was performing like a new one. Now instead of getting 10 minutes of lousy vacuuming I get over a hour of powerful cleaning. This saved about $60 which is the cost of buying a new replacement pack from iRobot. More: Photos & Instructable on fixing the batteries... MAKE - 06 Roomba Tronic Take a tour into the underground robotic relentlessness of Roomba hacks, robots in the streets of Austin, and robot fighting. Roomba Hacks - MAKE 10 Don't let your Roomba just collect dust when you can hack, mod, and take over the world with your own (cleaning) robot army. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • DIY 12AU7 tube preamplifier Gio sent in a link to this interesting preamp. The builder was able to make the preamp with parts on hand. I'm not sure I would have the tubes, but the rest of the parts are fairly common. [Thanks Gio] I was pleased with how well it turned out, at 30 bucks it looks pretty professional with the solid gold plated jacks on the black case. A neat feature I added later on is the ability to adjust the brightness of the front LED. The yellow LED is to indicate that the tube filaments are active. More about DIY 12AU7 tube preamplifier Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Electronics | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • Iron Man suit powered by BeagleBoard and Arduino The BeagleBoard is an incredibly little embedded system. It's Linux-powered, easy to hack, and has lots of connectors; everything from an expansion port with GPIO/I2C/SPI on up to HDMI. Pair it up with Arduino (don't miss our great Arduino gift guide), and you're unstoppable. Enrique wrote in to tell us about the amazing BeagleBoard-powered project he made for his son: For Halloween, my son wanted to be Iron Man. In about 2 months time, I integrated various gadgets into a store-bought costume. The most powerful components were BeagleBoard and Arduino. If I had more time, I would have added an overhead display in mask, a webcam for night vision, a 3G modem connected to BeagleBoard and maybe more. ;) The suit is really tricked out: Repulsor Air - Blows air with CO2 air pump on hip and hose back to his hand. Repulsor Missile - Using CO2 air pump can also launch a paper missile. Repulsor Sensor/Light - A magnetic switch sensor lights his repulsor hand light and fades out and in his glowing eyes. Arduino handles this effect. Repulsor Sound Effect(s) - Originally not working. Worked around problem by using right-mouse, middle-mouse button and configured Elightenment17 to playback sound effects using Mplayer script. Mouse buttons activated by Arduino Digital output triggered by sensors. Arc Reactor - A LED night light from Costco embedded in his chest. BeagleBoard: Powerful Computer - With BeagleBoard already running in JARVUS box on my son's back need to add other features. Possibilities: Web cam, mobile router with hotspot and a head-mounted display, VoIP, streaming video of Iron Man view. Arduino: Super Input/Output Board - Handles repulsor effects but can add other sensors to enable even cooler special effects!! LinuxNerd: My son in an Iron Man Suit! Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • Build: Gakken Mechamo Centipede After having such a great time making the Gakken Inchworm, we decided to try the Gakken Mechamo Centipede. It's nicely packaged, too, and also comes with its own tools; it just needs 6 batteries. This kit only had directions in Japanese - there was no English version included. Since we had experience with the Inchworm, we decided to see if we could put it together just using the pictures, but we found it helped a lot to look at the English instructions periodically. (If you decide you need the text in English, it's available as a PDF through the Maker Shed Centipede link - you do need to download the Japanese font to view any text at all, even the English, which is odd, but it only took a minute.) There was an errata page in the kit that had corrections for steps 5 and 7, but the errata page looked the same as the page in the Japanese instructions. The online illustrations for steps 5 and 7 were missing some little spring washers, so we assumed the kit had come with updated instructions. The little cranks are numbered; take care to assemble them in the correct order. They also have to be aligned in a specific configuration for the leg movement to work correctly. This was definitely a harder build than the Inchworm was. So many legs! There were just more parts in general, you had to keep track of the numbered parts, and it was a more complicated build. But again, it's a forgiving kit, you can backtrack easily if you've put something in backwards. One battery pack wire came loose during the build, but it just took a quick solder to fix it and we were good to go. When we put the batteries in for testing, we found that one of the leg cranks kept getting hung up on a nut that was sticking out just a hair too far - we had to take out the spring washer behind the nut to fix that. All in all, it was a fun build - it might not be the best kit for a first project, depending on the kid and their level of patience. The motion is totally awesome! I lived in Korea for a while when I was a kid, and one morning there was an amazing many-legged bug that kind of flowed across the bathroom floor - this reminded me of that bug, the motion is very realistic (but mechanical, and slower!). In the Maker Shed: The Gakken Mechamo Centipede kit is available through the Maker Shed. More: Gakken Mechamo Crab build and mod Build: Gakken Mechamo Inchworm Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Kids | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • A very serious binary alarm-clock This hefty clock uses classic bells and binary display - and it knows where you are! The case measures about 15×13x8 centimeters. The bells which I happened to have lying around are from a very old telephone and were the remains of my very first electronics project (which was about seven years ago). The most remarkable feature of this alarm clock is the fact that it uses a microswitch mounted in my door to detect if I left my room. It can only be disabled when the door is open. This thing could probably intimidate you to wakefulness - Ultimate Alarm Clock [via Hacked Gadgets] Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • iPhone fetches itself Here's an interesting video of another walking iPhone. Then it rings, instead of you getting up to pick it up, it walks over to you. Ah, maybe Apple will build this into iPhone 4G. via Suicide Bots Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in iPhone | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • DIY Navy - Oberon Class Submarine for sale... & Erik and the submarine DIY Navy - Oberon Class Submarine for sale - I bet those pirates might pick this up on the cheap... The Otama is a decommissioned Australian RAN Oberon class submarine of 2030 tons displacement surfaced.Apart from the removal of classified communications and sensor equipment, OTAMA is in the same state that the crew left it, an operational Oberon class submarine, with a full outfit of spares and equipment. MADE ON EARTH: Erik and the Submarine Photography by Andreas Nilsson makezine.com/go/eriksub From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 13, page 23 - Johanna Hallin. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Transportation | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • MIDI drumbox with a vintage voice R Scott's analog MIDI drum machine puts circuitry from an old organ's rhythm section under digital control - The 8 knobs on the top of the case control Master Volume, Kick, Clave, Snare, Conga, Low Tom, High Tom, and Hi-Hat levels. The two LEDs indicate power and midi activity. […] The drum sound circuitry was taken from a broken old Farfisa organ. I removed the entire rhythm accompaniment assembly and later built a power supply for it, turning it into a stand-alone drum machine. MIDI control was implemented via a custom kit from Highly Liquid. Combining pre-existing analog synth boards with new controller hardware is an awesome idea that coud be applied in a number of creative ways. Head over to the site to hear samples and get more of the story - analog MIDI drum machine More: MegaDrum MIDI trigger MIDI glockenspiel Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Music | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • Human puppet is triggered by impulses This researcher connected a bunch of electrodes to his face to stimulate his nerves and tendons causing him to become a human puppet for the duration of this video. Although we don't conduone this type of thing here at Make, it's still pretty amusing to watch. via Suicide Bots Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • Giant inflatable octopus This giant octopus was spotted in the Shoreditch area of London. Inflatable and made to catch passing wind drifts, the octopus moves in sync to appear as if it's alive and grappling the building. Interesting idea that definitely scared a few locals as the comments at the link below suggest. via Monster Munch Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • Planeboat Memories Photograph by Albert W. Starkweather It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a ... boat? Technically, it's a planeboat. And to Dave Drimmer of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the live-aboard craft was home for 20 years. The vessel has a colorful history. Its name, Cosmic Muffin, comes from singer Jimmy Buffett, who caught a glimpse of the yacht on a sailing trip and wrote it into his 1992 novel, Where Is Joe Merchant? But the planeboat started out as infamous aviator Howard Hughes' personal Boeing 307 Stratoliner in 1939. Rumor has it Rita Hayworth had a hand in decorating its 12-foot-wide interior. In 1964, under different ownership in Florida, the plane was grounded by Hurricane Cleo. It didn't stay on land for long. After buying it as scrap for $70 in 1969, the vehicle's new owner decided to salvage the ailing aircraft and turn it into a motor yacht. Then in 1981, current owner Drimmer answered an ad in the local classifieds: "Unique houseboat, great bachelor pad." "It was in horrible condition and almost everyone tried to talk me out of buying it," Drimmer says, "but it had a strange and wonderful appeal that compelled me to grab it." With trashed floors, a leaking, rotted hull, and no motors, propellers, or rudders to speak of, Drimmer had his work cut out for him just making the boat livable. With the help of friends, he stopped the leaks, rewired the electrical system, installed a water heater, air conditioning, and fridge, and renovated the head (that's bathroom in boatspeak). Powerful motors installed in recent years have made it seaworthy once again. Drimmer lives on land these days, but the planeboat is docked nearby. He's always willing to give tours and charters, and to talk on and on about the strange conveyance he once called home. He kinda misses the old girl. "My house doesn't move around at all," he says. "I really enjoyed the motion of the ocean. And being in a fuselage sometimes felt like flying." >>Now Boarding: planeboats.com From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 15, page 23 - Megan Mansell Williams. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Made On Earth | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • Zero-gravity coffee cup Astronaut Dr. Don Pettit demonstrates what is likely the most convenient method for enjoying a beverage in space - using a simple cup with airplane-wing-like shape which uses a liquid's surface tension to draw the beverage evenly towards the mouth - When Dr. Don Pettit lived aboard the International Space Station in 2002, he became known for his "Saturday Morning Science" sessions, during which he would demonstrate really cool, simple microgravity experiments. Earlier this month, Pettit returned to space, this time as member of space shuttle Endeavour's crew on a mission to upgrade the outpost. After 10 days of hard work, the STS-126 crew got some time off Sunday morning and Pettit took the opportunity to film a special episode of Saturday, err, Sunday Morning Science. Not sure if it's safe enough to use around a sensitive control panel, but very cool all the same. - Sunday Morning Science Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Science | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • How-to: Tin box made from a can Here is a great use for an empty soda can. Just be careful of those extremely sharp edges when working with any thin metal, especially aluminum. Soft drink cans are easily recyclable as scrap metal, but I fancied trying something a little more direct - a simplified form of tinwork. All that's needed for this project is a strong pair of scissors, a cork-backed table mat, a pointed object (a scriber or just a ballpoint pen), a little bit of tape and some fine abrasive paper. Plus of course an empty aluminium drink can..... More about How-to: Tin box made from a can [Vintage Glam] Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • Flowers by Jan van Nuenen Flowers by Jan van Nuenen was created using a Monome controlling Ableton Live via a max/msp patch called boiingg. I really like the combining of music and video into one piece of performance art. Live generates a string of midinotes with velocity 0 to 20 and back to 0. The velocity channel is used to tell the game engine which frame of the loop will be displayed. In this case, a loop of a growing flower is playing from frame 0 to 20 and back. So you can re-animate the flower by changing the velocities. Framerate can be changed by changing bpm in live. This technique also allows you to change in and out points of the loop live. More about the making of Flowers [wire to the ear] Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Music | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • Tim Shopbots Stools Tim is a high school senior doing an independent study. An important part of his work is to learn and document his process with the Shopbot. In order to improve on this first design I modified the top to be 14 inches in diameter as opposed to the original 16 inch diameter, which some people said was too big. I used part wizard's vector modification tool to alter this. I had recieved positive feedback on the handles, so I kept those by sliding them towards the center in part wizard. I cut too more legs for this new top to sit on using an irregular piece of scrap plywood. By modifying the angle of the toolpath I could very efficiently use the wood. I found that plywood is thicker than avantech when I tried to fit these legs together, they were much more difficult and ended up slightly warped, creating a tip in the stool. The top still slid on just fine. Tim was enrolled in the Engineering the Future course several years ago. The ETF curriculum was developed by the Museum of Science in Boston. and learned some effective ways of working with the Design Process. Shopbot is a great tool. Are you using it? Does your school have computer controlled tools? Does your school encourage students and teachers to be innovative and creative while making real things? Have you seen great projects done with CNC tools? Post your pictures in the Make Flickr pool, and add your ideas to the comments. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Furniture | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • Processing 1.0: Officially non-beta Processing is officially out of Beta! Yep, after 162 iterations of the ever-so-popular open-source programming environment, they have officially released version1.0. Check out the link at the end of the post to download your copy today and start learning about this amazing program. [image: Solar demo, 2008. Robert Hodgin] Editors note: We posted about this earlier today, sorry for the dupe' but it's exciting - so I'll leave this post up too - pt Today, on November 24, 2008, we launch the 1.0 version of the Processing software. Processing is a programming language, development environment, and online community that since 2001 has promoted software literacy within the visual arts. Initially created to serve as a software sketchbook and to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context, Processing quickly developed into a tool for creating finished professional work as well. Read the full press release here. [image: Solar demo, 2008. Robert Hodgin] Processing is a free, open source alternative to proprietary software tools with expensive licenses, making it accessible to schools and individual students. Its open source status encourages the community participation and collaboration that is vital to Processing's growth. Contributors share programs, contribute code, answer questions in the discussion forum, and build libraries to extend the possibilities of the software. The Processing community has written over seventy libraries to facilitate computer vision, data visualization, music, networking, and electronics. Get the latest version of Processing here. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • Another look at the Arduino MIDI touchpad Collin posted about the Arduino MIDI touchpad a few months ago. At the time, there wasn't too much information about the project. Now you can get the code and read more about the build on the Arduino forums. It's always great to see Makers share their code! Thanks ludo! More about the Arduino MIDI touchpad In the Maker Shed: Make: Arduino Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arduino | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • HOW TO - Make a "Net data meter" Antique voltmeter displays current air quality from the web - By Tom Igoe... One thing that disappoints me about computers is how little character they possess. Antique instruments of information display, like Victorian pendulum clocks, barometers, and compasses, and Babbage’s calculating engines, have a presence that modern computers lack. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Electronics | Digg this! • Email to a friend • Related • • Stop by the Maker Shed store and check out THE place for open source hardware, Arduino & Arduino accessories, electronic kits, science kits, smart stuff for kids, back issues of MAKE & CRAFT, box sets, books, robots, kits from Japan and more.

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