Back in 2008 we wrote about Arne Hendriks's plan to create a crowdsourced restaurant in Amsterdam. As of December, the resulting eatery--called by its founders "the world's first open source restaurant"--has now opened.
At the Instructables Restaurant, which launched as a pop-up event at the historic Theatrum Anatomicum of the Waag in Amsterdam, patrons receive not only creatively-cooked food but also instructions for preparing everything they see, eat and use--including the furniture. For example, someone seeking the recipe for the Tom Kha Gai soup they just enjoyed can either claim it at the restaurant or download it online; and anyone interested in making their own versions of the restaurant's recycled 50-gallon barrel chairs can do likewise.
Everything in the restaurant derives from Instructables, a web-based documentation platform where people share their expertise with others, whether it's cooking, pottery or woodworking. Even the instructions for creating the restaurant itself are now available on Instructables.com.
Instructables Restaurant is the first open source restaurant in the world. Everything you see, use and eat is downloaded from instructables.com. It is an experiment in "digesting free internet culture". Instructables - Instructables is a web-based documentation platform where passionate people share what they do and how they do it, and learn from and collaborate with others. The seeds of Instructables germinated at the MIT Media Lab as the future founders of Squid Labs built places to share their projects and help others. Instructables supports the use of Creative Commons Licenses for uploaded instructables.
Instructables Restaurant Everything in the restaurant is downloaded from Instructables, and what we could not find there, we added to its contents. Download it or take the instruction with you from the restaurant during your visit.
The Instructables Restaurant comes with full instructions for everything. In most restaurants you get to buy and enjoy the food. In some restaurants, if you like the furniture you can buy it. But in the Instructables Restaurant you go home knowing how to make the food as well as the furniture. We give you the instructions and recipes!
The Internet is full of passive information, and more is added every second. By really using and implementing this information not only do you plug into a world of know-how but it's also great for the people who have shared their knowledge. That's why crediting them is important!
The Instructables Restaurant originates from the input of others. This creates a different notion of ownership and the intellectual property of a regular business. A lot of the input comes from others. This is what we like about the idea.
The Instructables Restaurant creates a space between limitless information and reality. It's a 2.0 dock station where digital and real connect and communicate.
The Best of Instructables Volume I. 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 technology how-to's from the site.
I love watching Makers Market filling up each day with amazing new work, with offerings that run the gamut from inexpensive geeky gadgetry to one of a kind pieces of art. One of the discoveries I've recently gone gaga over is the wire and wood tree sculptures by Kevin, dba "kaitrees."
As he explains in the above video, the wires he uses to sculpt the trees are continuous, from root to branches and leaves. The wires in the 21" sculpture above started out at six feet in length! Kevin humbly describes his creations as "funky metal trees." Some of them take over a hundred hours to complete. The above piece he estimates at about 160 hours.
This discussion board is in French, but it's still fascinating and rewarding enough to scroll through the postings to see the progress pics of this scratch-built SLR camera. Really inspiring. [Thanks, Jacek Tomasiak!]
Like my previous What Was I Thinking? projects (light fishture, hangerhedra), this one resulted from an aha! moment that sort of spiraled out of control. Unlike those projects, however, this one has a happy ending, in that something more-or-less good did, eventually, come from it.
It began, predictably enough, with an over-caffeinated trip to the pet store...
In the Make: Online Toolbox, we focus mainly on tools that fly under the radar of more conventional tool coverage: in-depth tool-making projects, strange or specialty tools unique to a trade or craft that can be useful elsewhere, tools and techniques you may not know about, but once you do, and incorporate them into your workflow, you'll wonder how you ever lived without them. And, in the spirit of the times, we pay close attention to tools that you can get on the cheap, make yourself, or refurbish.
Since it's Projects: Failure month, we figured it might be a good idea to cover some first aid in Toolbox, 'cause frequently, when projects fail, danger and injury go hand and hand. Here are a few suggestions for first aid kits and supplies to have on-hand.
Years ago, I contributed to Kevin Kelly's self-published Cool Tools book. As "payment," he sent me the Adventure Medical Fundamentals First Aid kit. I love it and it's become the basis of our home and workshop first aid kit. It's geared towards outdoor use (hiking, camping, and such), but with a few additions, it works great as an overall kit. Along with the tools, med supplies, and medications, it comes with an excellent first aid field manual. It's all stored in a very compact, water-resistant zippered case. At an SRP of $110, this might seem like overkill, but it has pretty much everything you need for just about any type of emergency. If you do any camping, boating, hiking, long-distance cycling, long-trip car traveling, etc., it's worth the price (and you can get it online for $87).
Flickr user llemarie wanted an easy way to upload programs to an Apple I replica computer that he was building, because typing them in by hand was tedious and error prone. To solve the problem, he used an Arduino to build this ASCII keyboard emulator, allowing him to copy and paste programs over to the computer with ease. Of course, it's kind of funny to use two powerful computer to program one hobby computer, but for expediency it can't be beat.
This is a modular case for the Arduino Microcontroller. It has been designed to fit 6 across in a 1U Rack with a little room to spare. M3 Screws are suggested and not included. The holes have not been drilled or tapped, so you can use #4-40 screws as well.
You can have one made in a variety of materials with prices starting at $77.71. Now, that seems pretty expensive for a project case, but I imagine it's much cheaper than having an injection mold made.
I like the rounded corners, in fact I'm jealous of them. Since I tend to make stuff for laser cut construction there are certain unavoidable 90 degree angles. Unless I bust out a router or get crazy with the sandpaper.
During their weekly Take Apart Tuesday, the fine folks at the Crash Space hackerspace in LA were planning to convert an old printer into a pen plotter, by disabling the original electronics and hooking directly to the stepper motors that controlled the print head. Unfortunately, things became more difficult when the discovered that the printer actually used a DC motor and optical encoder instead of stepper motors. Fear not, they eventually figured out how to control it, but not before smoking (a) pot and causing some other mischief. Their project write-up has an interesting discussion about why the DC motor might have been chosen over a stepper, and the issues involved in driving them directly.
A simple and useful hack - Sebastian posted his steps for using an old guitar volume pedal as a general purpose potentiometer/foot control with Arduino. Using a Max/MSP patch, he converted the data to MIDI control channel messages on his computer. More infos over at little-scale.
The correct name for the MakerBot 3D printer is the Cupcake CNC, suggesting that all sorts of attachments could be substituted for the usual plastruder -- in this case, Andrew "Clothbot" Plumb created an assembly out of some makerbotted connectors and a length of MakerBeam, allowing the mounting of the business end of a Dremel Flex-Shaft. The result? A mini CNC mill slash drill press.
Drawdio is an electronic pencil that lets you make music while you draw! Essentially, it's a very simple musical synthesizer that uses the conductive properties of pencil graphite to create different sounds. The result is a fun toy that lets you draw musical instruments on any piece of paper. It's a lot of fun to hack too!
One my students, Danny Geiger, has a Sorenson videophone for communicating using sign language, and it's designed to sit on top of your TV. The problem is that it doesn't work work well with flat screens, so he made a laser-cut stand to support it. He provides the Illustrator file to make your own, which is easily modifiable for your model with just a few measurements.
We're excited to announce that Maker Faire:NC, North Carolina's first Mini Maker Faire, is a go! From their press release:
Maker Faire:NC, North Carolina's first Mini Maker Faire, will be held from 9AM - 9PM on Sunday, April 25 at 1821 Hillandale Rd, Durham NC 27705 in Loehmann's Plaza.
ShopBot has generously allowed the organizers of Maker Faire:NC,, to share their venue following their annual Jamboree (Fri, April 23-Sat, April 24, 2010).
Maker Faire:NC is a fully sanctioned event but is being planned and coordinated by Raleigh/Durham locals. Our goal is to bring together Makers, Crafters, Inventors, Evil Geniuses, Scientists, Artists, and anyone else interested in learning from NC, SC, VA, DC, and beyond.
Just like the bigger Left-Coast version, Maker Faire:NC celebrates things people create themselves -- from James Bond-worthy electronic gizmos to Martha Stewart-quality "slow made" foods and homemade clothes. Inspiration is ubiquitous at the festival and there are surprises around every corner for people of all ages.
"We want [people] to leave feeling inspired -- that they too can create things, express themselves, and engage the world around them. Our goal is to resuscitate the spirit of American creativity and innovation." - Sherry Huss, (San Mateo 2009)
Solarbotics has posted some video from its vault, portions of the 1995 BEAM Games, with BEAM inventor Mark Tilden talking about his VBug 1.5 (built from little more than a couple of Sony Walkmans and an Oven Timer Unit). I bought a BEAM VHS tape back then (I think of this event), which included this footage. It was horrible quality and I had to listen to it over and over again to piece together what he was saying. This is a little better, but still hard to hear and likely for hardcore BEAMers only.
I definitely still remember the impact it had on me and how much rethinking it made do about what constitutes a robot, artificial "intelligence," etc. If a "dumb bot," with basically some analog oscillators and relays for "brains," can successfully navigate a space by simple bump sensor/switches, or simply by bouncing off of things, is it any less successful/intelligent than a robot that has digital processors, code, sophisticated sensors, and builds maps of its world and negotiates those? The BEAM answer is, of course: No.
Every other week, MAKE's awesome interns tell about the projects they're building in the Make: Labs, the trouble they've gotten into, and what they'll make next.
By Meara O'Reilly, projects intern
I've been working on winding coils and testing out a cool new electromagnetic guitar pickup for the upcoming issue of MAKE, so I thought I'd share a modification I did a while ago on the old piezoelectric pickup that was featured on the quick and easy Cigar Box Guitar in MAKE Volume 04.
Here's the piezo buzzer used for a pickup in MAKE's original Cigar Box Guitar, still encased in black plastic.
Piezoelectric transducer discs often come in protective plastic casings, but they're actually much more sensitive without them! I've spent many an hour with needlenose pliers cracking them open like steamed lobsters to get at the ceramic and metal underneath, and I've found the difference in amplification to be definitely worth it.
The original design had the plastic-encased piezo element (a piezo buzzer) inside the cigar box, and it worked fine, but I've learned that it works even better without the plastic case.
One of our old CBGs even had the piezo buzzer mounted directly under the strings, sort of propping them up into alignment with the fretboard, in order to show off the pickup. This was failing for two reasons: first, the point of contact was too broad, causing a buzzing sound as the strings hit the long, flat surface of the plastic, and second, because the piezo disc was oriented at the bottom of the plastic casing, it was protected from some of the most important vibrating bodies on the guitar -- the strings!
I decided to build something where a narrower contact point (or bridge) could directly conduct the vibration from the strings to the disc.
Here's my modified piezo pickup, naked, in direct contact with the bridge, and sounding great.
I cut a small block of balsa wood (about the width of the fretboard and long enough for the disc to rest comfortably upon) to prop up the whole setup. I placed placed the piezo on top of this balsa base, then cut a small piece of a wooden barbeque skewer we had lying around and placed that on top of the piezo as a bridge.
The strings, once wound on, will normally hold the bridge in place (in fact, many types of acoustic guitars have some sort of free-standing bridge like this), but for extra security, I cut both of the rounded ends off a popsicle stick and glued them flush with the balsa block to provide a sort of "baby gate" for the skewer, to keep it from rolling too much.
Voilà ! The smaller contact point, applied directly to the piezo disc and held in place by the strings, conveys the string sound wonderfully.
Dan Morril made a cigar box guitar by following the instructions in MAKE Volume 21. It looks great! I like the way he put one of the tuners on the top of the headstock instead of the side. I might give that a try on one of my future builds.
Dan also posted detailed and humorous build notes, which are well worth reading if you plan to build a cigar box guitar.
I'm extremely satisfied with how it came out. That cigar box was all I could have hoped for, and it sounds pretty freakin' awesome. I expected kind of a course, ragged, thin sound, at least compared to a real guitar. I strummed this sucker and I was completely shocked -- it actually sounds like a guitar!! A real honest to gods guitar!
Like me, you've probably seen lots of photographs of Cherenkov radiation (Wikipedia), which is the striking blue glow that surrounds nuclear fuel rods submerged in water. It's caused by charged particles travelling through the water at a speed faster than the speed of light in water (which is about 75% percent of the speed of light in a vacuum).
But this video of Penn State's Breazeale nuclear reactor "pulsing" is the first time I've ever seen any moving pictures of the phenomenon, which are somehow way more impressive. And since this is a phenomenon few of us will ever have an opportunity to witness first-hand, the 15 seconds it takes to watch the video definitely count as time well spent in my book. Note how the blue glow persists for some time after the reactor itself has been shut off.
The Arecibo Message, one of the most famous messages transmitted as part of SETI, loosely translated, says: "Hi! We're intelligent! We're made of meat! Here's where we live!" Binary designs like the Arecibo message are popular with knitters and cross-stitchers since they can be pixelated easily. We found a pair of fingerless gloves, based on a muffler pattern. We think this type of binary pattern would be good for the message as well. It has also been made into a cross-stitched bookmark. We implemented the embroidered pixels as columns of satin stitching in a single color. The original binary message didn't have any of the color coding that people have added to help explain it, and it seems more elegant to keep it this way. We machine embroidered the pattern on both ends of a piece of linen about 14" x 76". The linen is then sewn together on the back and at the ends, and turned right side out. The edges are stitched down to help it lie flat.
If you're not using your bike's rear drilled brake bridge, you could try BillieGene's Instructable for a recycled rear mudguard. It mounts to the brake bridge to keep your fixie from flinging mud up your back, which is a must for early springtime biking.
What's going on in this cool time-lapse video from Italian YouTuber wwwperiodictableru isn't a chemical reaction in a formal sense. It's not oxidation or some other type of traditional corrosion. Turns out metallic or "white" tin spontaneously changes its so-called beta crystal structure at temperatures below 13 C to the crumbly alpha structure of "grey" tin. It's the same stuff before and after--just different allotropes of the same element. The transformation, known as "tin pest" (Wikipedia), catalyzes itself--once it starts it just gets faster and faster.
There is a popular, if scientifically dubious, story that blames part of the failure of Napoleon's infamous Russian campaign on the fact that the buttons on his soldiers' coats were made of white tin, which was fine in Europe, but decayed into useless gray tin in the brutal cold of the Russian winter, and thereby prevented them from properly buttoning their coats. Implausible for lots of reasons, it turns out, but still a good yarn.
Sunlight Labs, known for opening America's government, had a problem when they recently moved facilities. Creating new keys for team members was becoming costly, so they figured out an alternative method of providing secure access using a WRT54GL, easily sourced components, and a trusty copy of Make: Electronics. [Thanks, Nicko!]
With the firmware installed, I was able to SSH into the router and perform some simple manipulations of the system's GPIOs -- General Purpose Input/Outputs. These connect to things like the system's LEDs and switches, and can be controlled in software. I selected a GPIO that didn't seem to be used by OpenWRT -- it illuminates the "DMZ" LED on the front panel -- and wrote a very simple script to control it. I could now flip a tiny light on and off from a network connection.
In the Maker Shed: Make: Electronics Our Price: $34.99 Want to learn the fundamentals of electronics in a fun and experiential way? Start working on some excellent projects as soon as you crack open this unique, hands-on book. Build the circuits first, then learn the theory behind them! With Make: Electronics, you'll learn all of the basic components and important principles through a series of "learn by discovery" experiments. And you don't need to know a thing about electricity to get started.
In a proud tradition of hackable badges at hacker conferences, the fancy folks behind QuahogCon 2010 have designed a really cool looking conference badge. They've blurred out some of the key information to help prevent people like you and me (yes, I will be attending!) from getting a head start with writing code for the badge. What I can see is pretty intriguing. There is a PCB antenna, an FTDI chip, and a handful of LEDs. Looking at the I/O pins and the fact that this chip is wireless, I've narrowed down the processor to a few options. Can you guess what the are?
I'm not going to reveal my hypothesis, but I am going to reveal another less secret bit of news about the conference. If you register, use the code MAKE20 to get a 20% discount.
The conference is April 23-25 in Providence, Rhode Island. Be sure to try out johnnycakes while you are here!
The Arduino Helicopter Game uses less than 8kb of memory, yet it still features things like day/night mode and score keeping. There are still a few random artifacts that show up while playing the game, and they are looking for some help trouble shooting the code. So what do you think readers? Can anyone help figure out what is causing these weird artifacts? If so, please let us know in the comments.
In the Maker Shed: The Maker Shed has everything you need to get started with Arduino
Read an RPG Book in Public Week is an event that happens three times a year, during the weeks surrounding March 4th, July 27th, and October 1st (starting on the Sunday on or before, and ending on the Saturday on or after). During these weeks, roleplaying enthusiasts are encouraged to take their favorite RPG rulebooks out with them and read them in public -- on the bus, in the coffee shop, at lunch, at the park, or anywhere (as long as it isn't disruptive to work, school, church, or any other functions).
The point is to make the roleplaying hobby more visible, to get it "out of the basement" and into public areas where more people can see it. This will make others more aware of the hobby - some may ask you what your book is about, giving you the opportunity to explain the hobby to them. A few of those may be interested enough to try it themselves. Former gamers may see what you're reading and think about the great times they used to have with roleplaying, and possibly even try it again.
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