In these budget conscious times, schools who want to integrate modern interactive technologies have a choice, buy a SmartBoard , or build your own for a fraction of the cost. Johnny Chung Lee has done some of the groundbreaking work with the Wii, the build instructions and downloads can be found on his site. In addition to the Wiimote, you'll need an infrared light emitting pen, which you can build yourself for short money.
Since the Wiimote can track sources of infrared (IR) light, you can track pens that have an IR led in the tip. By pointing a wiimote at a projection screen or LCD display, you can create very low-cost interactive whiteboards or tablet displays. Since the Wiimote can track upto 4 points, up to 4 pens can be used. It also works great with rear-projected displays.
Rather than spending thousands of dollars per classroom, students and faculty could make them in-house while helping to transform the school into a more technology-rich learning environment. With a project like this in your school, it could be a great way to do some electronics, system design and get a taste of mass production of the components. While this may not fit in to your current curriculum to have students build these systems, it could be a great way to collaborate across subject areas, or it could provide a great after school club activity.
Has your school built one of these $40 smartboards? How well do they work in comparison to other interactive display systems? Let us know about your experiments and experiences in the comments. [Thanks Rachel!]
Your one-stop shop for chocolate guns, chocolate bullets, and chocolate grenades is ChocolateWeapons.com. I'm holding out for the chocolate suitcase nuke. [via Boing Boing]
In 1882, Felix Klein imagined sewing two Möbius Loops together to create a single sided bottle with no boundary. Its inside is its outside. It contains itself.
Take a rectangle and join one pair of opposite sides -- you'll now have a cylinder. Now join the other pair of sides with a half-twist. That last step isn't possible in our universe, sad to say. A true Klein Bottle requires 4-dimensions because the surface has to pass through itself without a hole.
It's closed and non-orientable, so a symbol on its surface can be slid around on it and reappear backwards at the same place. You can't do this trick on a sphere, doughnut, or pet ferret -- they're orientable.
My favorite is their $18,000 meter-tall Giant Klein Bottle... see the fascinating build photos on Acme's site...
A poster the recipient completes by revealing spot-varnished type with hands made dirty by handling the poster, the back of which is coated with powdered pigment. This is the first of a series of posters.
19"x25" open, 10"x13" closed & packaged hand silkscreened poster with envelope. limited edition. available for purchase.
I know a lot of people turn their noses up at the idea of making annual resolutions. Personally, I'm a ritualist, and an eternal optimist, so I do it every year, even though the resolutions don't usually stay resolute for very long. When we went through this exercise here last year, my resolution was to scratch-build a 3-Bicore BEAM walker. Never happened. But I got close, a couple of times, even gathered all the parts, just never seemed to find the time. Too busy writing about other people making stuff.
Time is actually something we're going to try and make here this year. As you all know, our MAKE "motto" is "technology on your time." A lot of people complain to us that they have a lot of trouble finding ownership of that time to actually work on projects, and to be organized enough to spend what free time they can find, as efficiently as possible. So time and organization are going to be a couple of the themes we resolve to explore here on Make: Online in 2010.
What are some of your maker resolutions for 2010? Please share with us in the comments.
The video shows a fanciful idea of what New York City might look like in 2259, using a tool called City Engine to simulate a lower water level and added skyscrapers. You can do some fun stuff with the tool. For instance, it lays out the buildings based on the terrain you establish, no matter how crazy -- to illustrate this they provide an example of a improbably convoluted city in space. A more down-to-earth example recreates Venice using only a satellite map for reference.
At $3,450 for the "SE" version and almost $5,000 for the Pro version, City Engine isn't cheap, though they'll knock the price down by $500 if you buy by January 23rd. They also have 30-day free trials (you can't export your work) as well as $700 student licenses. Win/OSX/Linux compatible. [Via tinker.it]
The 'No soldering required' bundle is for anyone that doesn't want to solder, yet still enjoys electronics. Yep, there are people who don't want to solder?! It's true! Luckily for them, there are some really fun electronic kits that don't require any soldering at all! Just remember these kits are a lot of fun to build, even if you are a soldering pro.
Arvo's neato 
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