Hello there, here are your daily updates from the MAKE blog - 2009/01/03.
Watching Make: television on TV and online!
More:
If you see Make: television on your local public television station over the weekend let us know, better yet - take a photo and post a picture in the Make: television photo pool, if someone posts something really clever there might be a special treat from the Maker Shed in their future. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Make: television | Digg this! Call for creative reuse ideas
Here's a call for trash to treasure ideas: We are seeking submissions for 1000 Ideas for Creative Reuse, an upcoming book by Garth Johnson of ExtremeCraft.com, which will feature 21st Century craft and design, all made with recycled, upcycled, repurposed and reused items. We are looking for the best examples of paper and book arts, jewelry, clothing, home and personal accessories, furniture, art, and miscellanea for possible publication. We invite designers, artists, visionaries and crafters of all stripes to submit their work. More info here. Doesn't look like you get anything other than pride of publication for your entry, but still worth checking out! Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Announcements | Digg this!New Year's art hat party Every year, some friends of mine throw an "Art Hat" party for New Year's Eve. We get together and each construct a hat that we wear at the stroke of midnight. We parade around in the hats while banging on their pots and pans. Last year, we had a bonfire in their front yard and make a tremendous racket outside (their Arlington neighbors must LOVE them). This year, it was too bloody cold, so we made our joyful noise inside the house. The hats people put together on the fly are pretty impressive. My hat (seen here) was made of paper I corrugated (with a paper crimping tool I have), a paper plate, red grommets, computer keyboard membrane, LEDs, a Blinky Bug circuit, and chocolates (the platform for the bug). This is the hat the next day so it's a little worse for wear. I had a very...er complicated year I needed to dance off. Happy New Year! Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Crafts | Digg this!Brother Quattro 6000D HD sewing machine...
Solar power for your electronics gear
25C3 is underway and includes excellent presentations. Via hackaday, here's some coverage of "Solar-powering your Geek Gear:" [script] selected a four segment folding solar panel after some research. he pointed out that solar is currently more of a necessity technology than money saving since the panels can be very expensive. for connectors, he recommended ones that were safe, polarized, and difficult to short, like the ria connect 230 series he used. most of the device plugs were easily purchasable, but some had to be salvaged from old ac adapters. a key component of his setup was the adjustable voltage regulator. it's based on the ltc3780 buck-boost controller which is 98% efficient and can be adjusted from 4v to 25v. More, including the author's slides and paper, here. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Green | Digg this!Takira shows the thermistorThermistors are pretty cool little items. They convert heat into resistance. By having the temperature available as resistance, you can use the value to control other things like circuits and programs. Photo cells do the same thing with light, and they are in lots of common devices from night lights to dimmers on clock radios. How could you use a thermistor with your shiny new Arduino? What could you measure with a thermistor? Have you got any videos like this where somebody demonstrates an interesting device? This video came from a summer youth program in Boston. Does your community have a similar opportunity for teenagers to learn incredible things and work on neat projects? Show your ideas in the comments, and iinclude your photos and video in the Make Flickr pool. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in How it's made | Digg this!Local DIYers reclaim old junk and turn it into functional, useful stuff
When Ryan Bollig got frustrated with the short battery life of his wife's battery-powered Swiffer Vac, he didn't take the inconvenience in stride by throwing out the appliance and buying a newer, more powerful model.Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Events | Digg this! Why Braille is brilliantInvented by Louis Braille at the age of 15, the idea came from a soldier who had served in the Napoleonic army in Poland and had attempted to devise a system that could, with night-time manoeuvres, allow messages to be sent and instructions to be passed from hand to hand. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Retro | Digg this! Winner of "What you're making in 2009"Here's the winner of the quick "What you're making in 2009" contest, send me a note Brent to collect your prize, a Maker's Notebook! Posted by: Brent on January 1, 2009 at 11:07 AM Resolving to Complete my Solenoid Project I'm resolving to complete my solenoid project this year. Scavenged dishwasher solenoids and assembled a voltage regulator board to allow an arduino to control the output of water through the valves. Essentially the valves fill the room with rain, and as a participant walks underneath the valves shut off leaving them dry, but standing in the middle of a shower. Seems like I've been working on this one for a long time, but I knew nothing about soldering, plumbing, electronics, blob detection prior to the project! If anyone's interested, more of my project details are up on my blog.Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Announcements | Digg this! Make: television -- scripting processOnly one more day until the Make: television show premieres! These photos of me and Bill Gurstelle are from the VCR Cat Feeder we built for the first episode. Here's a look at how we scripted the segment: The process of writing the scripts for the Maker Workshop segments was pretty organic. Executive Producer Richard Hudson, Producer Michael Smith, Technical Consultant William Gurstelle and I started off shooting bullet points at each other via email. Once we knew what the major build steps were, they would format those into individual shots, including where the cameras would be, where I'd be standing in the workshop, a props/tools breakdown, and the script itself. Once we got on set for rehearsal day, we'd run through this a number of times, refining what I'd be doing on camera, and adjusting the talking points. It was a lot of fun and chaos as we all brainstormed and threw ideas into the air to see what would work. We realized as we went that it was better for me to hit talking points as naturally as possible, rather than memorize a script. Those talking points were what we followed on the shooting day, along with the refined camera locations and set directions. If you're not familiar with this project, it uses the timer function on a VCR to schedule the feeding of your cat. Seems pretty straightforward. However, as Bill and I started building ours we both realized that VCR drumhead motors have a feedback loop to shut things down if the RPMs drop below a certain speed. This means you can't use them to turn much without either defeating the feedback sensor (not too easy as it turns out) or using some gearing to turn the high RPMs into high torque. We were on the phone a lot cursing VCRs, but in the end, Bill's pulley wheel design saved the day. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Make: television | Digg this! Free, print n' make personal organizing tools I don't know about you, but every new year, I come out of the gate with a new commitment to be more organized and work-efficient in my never-ending, nerfarious plans to take over the world. In searching out new organizing tools, I found this line-up of eight print, fold, make paper tools at Unplggd. I've been using the Hipster PDA version of the D*I*Y Planner (seen above) for years and still swear by it. I've also used the PocketMod and the printable graph paper. And while we're on the subject, my fave electronic organizing tool for '08 was Evernote. I LOVE this app! One wheeled self-balancing skateboard project
John is working on a one wheeled self-balancing skateboard project and he's just posted a how-to! After reading a Make magazine article on the self balancing unicycle of Trevor Blackwell I thought about trying to build a one wheeled skateboard style device. I then found a self balancing skateboard on the net built by Ben Smithers and decided I would definitely have a go at this. The aim of this project is to build a skateboard type device just for fun, based on Segway self-balancing principles. Some skateboards of this type already have been built by others and links to most of the relevant webpages are listed. It reminds me a little of the chain driven back-spinning "bouncing bomb" hanging below the Lancasters in the "Dambusters" raids. It has turned out looking like a piece of "steampunk" technology, i.e. it looks like a cross between modern electronics and Victorian steam technology. This is a work in progress............Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this! Happy birthday Isaac Asimov! Three Laws of Robotics and The Last Question...
Neave Planetarium Paul Neave has a wonderful site to wander through, it's full of little toys and wiggly kind of stuff. I really liked the Neave Planetarium; you can virtually explore the sky from any point around the world. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Kids | Digg this!Weekend Project: Simple Laser Communicator Check out the complete Simple Laser Communicator article in MAKE: Volume 16 "Simple Laser Communicator" Paper-cut illustrations by Yulia Brodskaya
Michelle @ CRAFT points us to these incredible paper illustrations by Russion illustrator and graphic designer Yulia Brodskaya. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Paper Crafts | Digg this!Weekend Project: Simple Laser Communicator (PDF)
Colony adds iPhone connectivity to networked sound sculptures"Colony" is an interactive, multi-player performance art project by Australian artist Troy Innocent. The project employs a freely downloadable iPhone app ("Colony" from the App Store) that allows up to 30 people to contribute to a shared sound environment by playing a number of networked totems in the physical location. Visitors without iPhones can also trigger the instruments as they walk through the environment. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!Shouting in the datacenter increases disk latency
Puzzlemation in actionJohn posted this vid of the Puzzlemation led matrix modules in use for those who didn't catch them at Maker Faire. This really gets across the impressiveness of the project - pretty easy to imagine this device being a popular evolution of the classic jigsaw design. We'd likely be assembling scenes from our fave DVDs in a full-motion-video version not too long after. More: MeatricityMeatricity is the electricity generated by the muscle power of humans or other animals. After a great day working on project ideas for Alternative Energy module in next summer's Learn 2 Teach / Teach 2 Learn program at the South End Technology Center, I drove by a huge workout gym sort of filled with beautiful people transferring energy. The idea of using people and animals to generate electricity is nothing new. Hand cranked or shaken flashlights are pretty popular, there are even examples of bicycle powered generators to illuminate holiday decorations. In Make 5, the Made on Earth column features a project where a person's backpack generates electricity as the wearer moves around. The Rodent Powered Night Light is an excellent example of the pet power version of Meatricity. Certainly westerners have a much larger appetite for using power than they have desire to generate it, but many of our devices now have small rechargeable batteries that could be reloaded by having a passive or active generation scheme available. So how about it? Could we as a culture generate more of our electricity from the muscle we carry around? What kinds of benefits would meatricity provide to us and our kids? How would exercise equipment need to be redesigned to capture the energy of the user? Could we see it as morally superior to use Meatricity than power generated from burning fossil fuels? Add your ideas in the comments, and contribute your photos and videos to the Make Flickr pool. Related:
Electricity Exploration Kit ConceptThis morning, Ed Baafi, Amon Milner, Jacob William, and a number of the youth leaders at Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn developed an idea of how to teach electricity to youth with a new kit idea. What we are looking to do is reinvent the Alternative Energy module in the summer program. The kit will be flexible enough that experimenters can have hands-on experiences with power generation, storage and output. We also hope that they will be able to add on various technologies as they become available to the experimenter. The Electricity Experimenters' kit helps promote exploration and understanding of the ways that people can use store, and generate electricity. A focus is made on allowing the user to interchange a number of different modules for generating, making use of and storing small amounts of electric current. These modules will enable youth to gain hands on experience with creating, storing and using energy for personal exploration. The result of exposure to this kit is that we want people to be able to think, say and believe: I can make a choice between clean and nonclean generation and the electricity is the same. How do you teach electricity? What do you do to help people understand the systems in their lives? What could you add to this kit idea to make it better? What information would you want people to have when they do experiments with electricity? Do you have any existing projects that could be used with a kit like this? How would you make the physical objects? What activities would bring out valuable learning outcomes when experimenting with electricity generation, storage and use? How can we use modifiers like voltage regulators and resistors in ways that don't confuse experimenters? What do you tell or show people that helps them understand the workings of a multimeter? Add your comments to the discussion, and post your photos in the Make Flickr pool. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Kits | Digg this!DIY V12 Lamborghini Diablo
The base is roughly eighteen feet square. Two openings are at the front for a window and a door, one at the side for the main workshop doors. The cement base is six inches thick laid over a hardcore base of bricks, concrete lumps and old engine blocks and heads a neighbour needed rid of. The base was laid in four sections due to its size over a period of two days. Excavation of the hole was done with a digger I borrowed in easter to dig a pond.
More about this amazing DIY V12 Lamborghini Diablo Pedal to the People - 15-person bicycle-truck
Called the Busycle, this bicycle behemoth moves under the power of 28 human legs, plus a driver. And while it can only go about 4 miles per hour, the infectious camaraderie of its passenger power-train just might make it exhilarating. Boston-based artists Heather Clark and Matthew Mazzotta had an idea and a lot of energy to see what they could accomplish. Starting with a $1,000 grant from the Berwick Research Institute in Roxbury, Mass., they set to work with limited engineering skills and some borrowed tools. "We used almost all recycled, reused, and donated materials," says Mazzotta. "Bed frames and weight equipment from Harvard's recycling program to make the frames of the bikes, an old Dodge Van from a moving company as the base of the Busycle, parts from all the bike shops in Boston, and a Mack truck steering wheel from 'The Foot,' a big, bearded guy who runs a tractor-trailer junkyard. We even got some new materials like tube stock and pillow block bearings donated from different Boston businesses." They posted on Craigslist for anyone interested, and about 65 diverse volunteers joined the effort. "We quickly realized that the talent and support we were seeing in those that wanted to help warranted a much bigger Busycle than we had originally planned on making. And $1,000 to get space [and] buy tools and materials was not going to cut it." A donation from Sparqs Industrial Arts Club really made a difference; they also helped train volunteers. On a multi-city tour this past June, the Busycle collected stories, ending each route with a storytelling session. "As for the Busycle's future, we found that the Busycle is not a practical technology," Mazzotta says. "The way we made it on our little budget, it goes too slow. But what it did do was bring a bunch of unique people together, all from different backgrounds, to work together." From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 7, page 26 - David Albertson. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Made On Earth | Digg this!Minty soldering jigBob Hickman, Minty Amp maker, sent us a howto on making a jig for small form factor soldering projects. I often have to solder up a bunch of PCBs that are the same size, but have a bunch of fiddly components on them. His hack allows you to place all of the components and then solder them all at once, which is pretty handy even if you're not soldering a bunch of boards at the same time. The trick is to cram a bunch of flame retardant foam inside and close the top cover, sandwiching the components onto the PCB. You can then move things around as you please and your hands are free to work the solder and iron. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in hacks | Digg this!More Recent Articles
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