I recently purchased two remote control cars for my nephews from a dollar store. The cars came with three rechargeable AA batteries and also a cheap AC charger that connects to the car, but unfortunately grew hot when plugged in (a classic wall wart). So I'm giving them the cars with a solar panel and withholding the AC chargers. The best part is how easy it was to make it all work as I piggy-backed on the car's built-in charging circuit.
Today is the birthday of Linus Torvalds. Linus is the creator of Linux, the free software kernel that helped make the open source software revolution happen. Happy birthday, Linus!
In addition to being a grandmaster hacker, he also has a great sense of humor:
It's probably no surprise to anyone who hangs out here that we love what we do at Maker Media and we're always looking to do it better, to reinvent ourselves, to grow and expand, while staying creative and true to our mission, which is, ultimately, to serve YOU, the greater maker community. We're now in the process of planning what we want to do on Make: Online for 2010.
Since one of our internal themes for the year is "Maker Community," and how we can expand our relationships with individuals and groups in the wider maker/hacker/DIY communities, we thought we'd ask all of you to help us brainstorm the year. What would YOU like to see more of on Make: Online in 2010?
Here are a few of the things we already have in the pipeline:
* A redesign of the website * More guest author stints (who would you like to see guest-author?) * More guest columns, a la George Hart's Math Mondays * Expansion of the Make: Science Room, with more, exciting projects, videos, etc. * More in-depth how-tos in Make: Projects * More instructional videos, a la MAKE Presents, perhaps a series on mechanical engineering * Support for Make: Electronics, with instructional videos, step-by-step projects, kits in the Shed, etc.
Now, tell us about YOUR ideal Make: Online in 2010...
(We'll choose three posters and give them a free Maker's Notebook, so they can sketch out their year in DIY.)
My friend Jon Singer has been experimenting with creating a relatively-cheap, straightforward flashlamp-pumped dye laser. This first-blush version uses caps he bought on eBay. As he refines the design, he hopes to avoid as many commercial components as possible. This proof-of-concept build was attempting to answer the musical question: Is a dozen Joules enough to threshold a dye? Answer: yes.
Jon also recently called me, excited, 'cause he'd managed to get three dyes to oscillate in the same cuvette to create RGB laser light! The guy's a monster. Half the time, I don't really understand what he's talking about, but I always feel smarter for having done so. See his "RGB 'White' Dye Laser Light from a Single Cuvette" research report here.
Clever design from Thingiverse user vik, which lets you mount and simultaneously fire a devastating barrage of nine party poppers at unsuspecting revelers. "I should've marked it with FRONT TOWARD FRIENDS," he comments.
The seven-piece SOMA puzzle has been a classic since Piet Hein invented it in the 1930s. The Math Museum has a giant SOMA, one meter on each side, for visitors to play with. This one is stuffed with foam so you can climb on your creations.
It is easy to glue together 27 wood cubes to make your own set. There are seven pieces to the puzzle --- all the possible ways to have at most four blocks and at least one bend. Note that two of the pieces are mirror images.
Once you make a set of pieces, you can challenge your spatial abilities by assembling them into many different constructions. Here are a just a few things you can make, each with the same seven pieces.
It is a fun group activity to make a much larger SOMA by assembling cardboard boxes. Instructions are online here.
David Mellis, of Arduino fame, wrote in to share this radio that he built with Dana Gordon. Noting that most personal fabrication projects seem to be aimed at niche markets, they designed a radio that could be enjoyed by anyone. Their hope is to enable individuals to produce and sell small-scale products profitably. They have an excellent write-up on their website, complete with schematics, board designs and drawings.
Ordinary copy paper can be made highly conductive by treating it with a simple water-based dispersion of carbon nanotubes. Bing Hu and other graduate students under Stanford researcher Yi Cui published a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) describing the use of such conductive paper to create high-performing prototype supercapacitors, batteries, and fuel cells. He also studied the wear resistance of the nanotube ink and found that it bonds very tightly to the paper; his data show that soaking, rinsing, and wringing-out in water does not significantly affect the properties of the treated paper. The supplementary information for his PNAS paper is freely available for download and describes his experimental methods in detail, including the recipe for his ink and the trick of reloading a commercial highlighter with it. [via Science Daily]
I received the most special gift this Christmas. My husband, Chris, was holed up in our garage most nights since November, feverishly working on a secret project for me. He's never attempted woodworking before, but tackled this project with absolute determination. I'm a huge space geek, and have been fascinated with the night sky almost all of my life. I've talked of wanting a good telescope, and it would have been very easy for him to just make a stop by the store to pick one up. That he spent weeks working on this for me makes it the most special gift I've ever received.
Watching him get so excited about the project's progress and work through difficulties and come up with ingenious solutions of his own was so much fun. My only disappointment was that I couldn't be out in the garage working with him. When he unveiled the telescope on Christmas Eve, I was stunned and very excited. When I looked through the eye piece and gazed upon the moon - crystal clear and full of gorgeous craters - I started crying. We've already taken it out almost every night since Christmas Eve, and I can't wait to get it out to a truly isolated spot to really see what she can do!
There's just a little leftover staining to do, but otherwise the scope is complete and working beautifully. Now Chris thinks I should sew a nice dust cover for it.
Hannah Perner-Wilson made this stretch sensitive bracelet that doesn't light up until you wear it. It's knit from resistive and traditional yarn, and also uses conductive thread.
This guy converted a garbage truck into a mobile home. I love the storage drawers, which have cut-outs in them for all of the kitchen tools and dinnerware so that it doesn't knock about when the house is in motion. [via Steven Robert's Facebook page]
Update: As several people have pointed out in comments, this is NOT a converted garbage truck, but an actual camper/mobile home called the TerraCross. Snopes even has a page on it. Regardless of what it's called, or how it was made, I still think the cut-out drawers, the original inspiration for posting it, are cool. But otherwise, sorry for the hoodwink.
University of Rochester Associate Processor Chunlei Guo has developed a technique that uses a femtosecond laser to blast nanoscale features into the surface of a piece of metal--pretty much any metal. These tiny features interact selectively with white light to reflect a particular color--pretty much any color. It's also possible to achieve a near-perfect black finish and iridescence. If the process can be made economical (it's very slow at present, requiring about half an hour to treat a dime-sized area), it could be a complete game-changer when it comes to finishing metals. Guo gives the example of a bicycle factory that could use only a single laser to make parts of any color or color scheme.
Bunnie's blog points out a rather sweet hack by xobs which swaps Chumby's LCD display for TV output. It requires new firmware + minimal hardware modding - def seems worth it for those looking for bigger display options. Read more in the Chumby wiki.
Eventually somebody loses track of what glass they're drinking out of at almost every dinner party I attend. That's what those little wine charms are for. I really dig this LED wine charm instructable from billr. They're geeky, festive, and yet another excuse to add an LED to something that would otherwise forgo illumination.
an interactive sculpture/instrument made with harvested electronic parts. You can modulate both the sounds and the images by shading the light on the photocells. The lcd screen (from a discarded pda) is excited directly by the voltage output from the oscillator.
When you connect an odd number of digital logic inverters in a ring, you'll get a Ring Oscillator - one of the simplest types. This configuration has no stable state, so the 1s and 0s chase each other around the ring, creating oscillations. Normally this isn't easy to visualize, but Make Flickr Pool contributor ellindsey000 made a pendant that illustrates the principle beautifully:
This actually looks much better in person -- I'm at the 26C3 conference, where someone (sorry, I'll try to get your name!) built a replica based on ellindsey000's photos. The LEDs are ultraviolet, causing different spots in the center marble (which contains uranium) to glow. What the video above doesn't show is that the UV LEDs are barely visible and the glow inside the marble seems to move almost as if it was a liquid.
The schematic matches the construction in circular symmetry - both are beautiful:
More pictures: complete gallery, including how it looks in daylight.
Here is another how-to from Jeff, this time he describes using a 555 timer as an external clock for the Arduino. It's a really interesting technique on how to get a fairly accurate external interrupt at lower frequencies.
The key here is an 'external clock'. Rather than have the Arduino keep track of when to perform the next task, you have an outside signal that says "Now!" and fires an interrupt which the Arduino responds to. If your source fires every 100 milliseconds, then 10 times a second, the Arduino will receive an interrupt which will stop any processing currently happening and immediately execute the interrupt handler. For every tick of the clock, the interrupt handler will execute.
Happy Birthday Johannes Kepler! Kepler is best known for establishing laws of planetary motion (explained in the above vid series) which later helped form the basis of Isaac Newton's work on gravity. His research in the field of optics resulted in the invention of the "Keplerian" refracting telescope.
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