What can you make with felt-tip markers, a Wiring board, sensors, motors, and Legos? "Lego felt tip 110" printer connected to an Apple Mac. This is not mindstorms, I designed/built/coded it all from scratch including analog motor electronics, sensors and printer driver, the USB interface uses a "wiring" board.
FAQ: Track name? "Christopher and Raphael just popper Shinichi Osawa distortion disco edit" FAQ: How long did this take? Hard to say, maybe 3 weeks working evenings. FAQ: Just a remake of the 1092a? No, I'd never seen the 1092a until now. However some of the parts came from a 8094 kit amongst others many years ago. It is made to my own design, but I acknolwedge influences and the great work of the official Lego designers !
Lego Hello World [via Dan Morrill] Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in LEGO | Digg this! 
Looking to take a break from tinkering on your latest project this weekend? Here are some fine maker events to check out, from The Maker Events Calendar. Wish your event was on the list? Add it to the calendar! Coming up this week: Steve Lampen: The Joy of Wire @Crash Space
Culver City, CA
Thursday, Jun 3, 2010, 8pm - 9pm Grand re-opening party @Alpha One Labs
Brooklyn, NY
Friday, Jun 4, 2010, 8pm+ F3 Talks @Freeside Atlanta
Atlanta, GA
Friday, Jun 4, 2010, 7:30pm - 9:30pm Open House @FUBAR Labs
Highland Park, NJ
Saturday, Jun 5, 2010, 1pm - 6pm CPUs 0b1100101: Intro to computer processors @NYC Resistor
Brooklyn, NY
Saturday, Jun 5, 2010, 12pm - 2pm Ann Arbor 2010 Mini Maker Faire
Ann Arbor, MI
Saturday, Jun 5, 2010, 10am - 5pm Experimental Garage Sale 2010
Chicago, IL
Saturday, Jun 5, 2010, 12pm - 5pm Bay Area Ham Cram
San Francisco, CA
Saturday, Jun 5, 2010, 8am - 5pm Science For Juggalos @Noisebridge
San Francisco, CA
Saturday, Jun 5, 2010, 6pm - 8pm CPUs 0b1100101: Intro to computer processors @NYC Resistor
Brooklyn, NY
Saturday, Jun 5, 2010, 12pm - 2pm Guitar Effects Workshop @Hive76
Philadelphia PA
Monday, Jun 7, 2010, 7:30pm - 10:00pm Slip Casting @The Steel Yard
Providence, RI
Monday, Jun 7, 2010 - Monday, Aug 16, 2010, 6:30pm - 9:30pm Make:SF June 8th @ reMake Lounge
San Francisco, CA
Tuesday, Jun 8, 2010, 6:30pm - 8:30pm
300 Seconds of Fame @PS1
Chicago, IL
Tuesday, Jun 8, 2010, 8pm - 10pm Hacking Javascript @757 Labs
Norfolk, VA
Wednesday, Jun 9, 2010, 6pm - 8pm Scientific Programming Workshop @The Cowtown Computer Congress
Kansas City MO
Wednesday, Jun 9, 2010, 8pm - 10pm Start planning for: Shakerag Workshops - Processing Foundation Course with Marius Watz
Sewanee, TN
Sunday, Jun 13, 2010 - Saturday, Jun 19, 2010, 9am - 6pm Make:Provo - The Beginning
Provo, UT
Saturday, Jun 12, 2010, 6pm - 7pm EurekaFest
Cambridge, MA
Wednesday, Jun 16, 2010 - Saturday, Jun 19, 2010, 5pm - 9:15pm Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Events | Digg this! 
Spotted in the Electro-Music forums, oldmanfury converted an old guitar distortion pedal into a voltage controlled synth module using an Arduino &digital potentiometer chip - I've talked about doing this forever, so I am happy to finally be able to introduce my 95% complete, voltage controlled DOD Grunge FX-69! Frac-rack modular synths have been in my opinion missing a voltage controlled distortion module, with wave-folders being about as close as I could find. I had a torqued FX69 sitting around, and figured it would sound wonderfully terrible in my synth setup. I'll spare you the history on all of the approaches I thought about taking to add voltage control to an old pedal, and just say that the Arduino Duemilanove along with an analog devices AD5204 I2C controlled digital pot is perfect for this. You end up with a fantastic, easy to program microcontroller with 4 analog inputs that control four 100 kohm potentiometers, and even have PWM outputs you can use for indicator LED's. This design could work for any guitar pedal. And the how-to on the Arduino site did all of the heavy lifting for me! Looks like a sure-fire method for creating some unique sounds. Check out the project's blog entry for more details. More: 
Collin's Lab: Guitar pedal modding with Arduino
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Do you live in or near Provo, UT? Interested in getting a Make: City group started in your area? Well, you are in luck! It just so happens that the fine folks from the Transistor hackerspace are holding a planning meeting next weekend to get things started, and are looking for like-minded people to get involved: Greetings everyone. The members of the Transistor in Provo, UT have decided we'd like to get the Provo do-it-yourself community together and form a Make: Magazine inspired club called Make:Provo. We will be holding our preliminary meeting on Saturday June 12th from 6PM to 7PM at the Transistor (directions here). We encourage everyone who is interested in showing off their DIY projects, who is interested in starting some DIY projects, or who is interested in seeing and talking about DIY projects to attend this, our first official meeting. Topics to be discussed at our first meeting include:
- Meeting Frequency and Duration,
- Typical Meeting Topics,
- Group Project Ideas,
- Any Projects brought in by Attendees We hope to see lots of people and projects there! Make:Provo planning meeting
Saturday, June 12, 2010, 6pm - 7pm
Transistor
560 S 100 W, Provo, UT 84601 Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Events | Digg this! 
Lasersaur is an open-source laser cutter under development by NORTD Labs, with funding provided by Kickstarter. With 35 days to go, 150 people have contributed over $11,000, surpassing the original funding goal of $10K and guaranteeing the project will go forward. Recently I had the chance to interview one of NORTD's principals, Addie Wagenknecht. John Baichtal: First, can you tell me a little about your team? It's just you and one other person, right? Addie Wagenknecht: The team is myself and Stefan Hechenberger. We work under the collaboration name NORTD. We started working together in 2006 while we were students at NYU's ITP Masters Program. At ITP we developed CUBIT (the open source multitouch system) as a thesis project. We gave ourselves 3 months and $1000 (we split the cost two-way) to develop the platform and software including documentation. After graduation we were invited to be Fellows at Eyebeam Technology Center in NYC for the year to follow. At Eyebeam we developed the TouchKit and VirtualAwesome framework. We received international attention immediately for 'demystifying' multitouch and creating an open source option in a world of 15k+ systems, we did it for less then 3k. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Open source hardware | Digg this! 
Learn to convert a common BMX bike grip into a camera handle with this tutorial by fungus amungus: When using a small camera to shoot some video it's easy to fumble with it as you try and move the camera around. With a solid grip that screws in to the bottom of the camera it's easier to hold and you get better footage. And if you're going to be making a grip for a camera you might as well make it look cool and go for a colorful BMX grip. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Video Making | Digg this! 
Darrel of Fort Collins, CO, wrote in with his demo of an Android app that controls servos via audio. This is a demo of an android app that directly controls servos via a special audio tone from your android phone. No micro-controller or electronic components of any kind are needed aside from a battery.
If you would like to try this, connect 3 to 5v to the + and - of your servos, connect the left and right channels of the headphone cord to the signal lines, and connect the headphone ground to the power ground. Do not try this if you do not have some idea what you are doing or you may damage your phone! Also if you get the + and - backwards on a servo header it will burn up the servo. More info at cellbots.com and code on Google Code. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Electronics | Digg this! 
This is a publicity stunt for a company that makes energy drinks called "Mana" and "Health" packaged to look like WoW or other fantasy-video-game potions. What's more, we have hit their video of the robot in action before. But I could not resist that fireball photo, and this link has some good technical info about interfacing with the robot, hacking the release mechanism, and framing that awesome night shot using a blinking LED "tracer" bowling ball. Just don't forget to buy some Mana Energy Potion while you're there! Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Robotics | Digg this! Gosh, I love the resourcefulness of our readers. MAKE subscriber Matt Daughtrey writes: My left arm has been recently sidelined by surgery. I'm a developer and wanted to keep my productivity as high as possible during my recuperation, so here's an approach to one-handed touch typing that others might find useful. With a little Sugru, some ShapeLock, a cannibalized wireless USB keyboard, and the Auto Hotkey program, Matt was able to create a three-button keypad to trigger a "mirror mode" on his regular keyboard so that he can touch-type with his "good" hand while the other hand recovers from the surgery. He explains how it works: The left side of the keyboard is mirrored onto the right-side keys and the idea is that the muscle memory you developed for your left hand when you learned touch typing maps over to your right hand without too much trouble. You can switch between the normal right side of the keyboard ('YUIOP' etc) to the mirrored side ('QWERTY' etc) with the click of a designated button. And it works! One Handed Keyboard Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Computers | Digg this! 
Tricks of the trade: Twisting wire bundles @ EMSL - A common problem that you may come across when building "a box" to do something-- whether a one-off gizmo or bona fide scientific instrument --is the rats nest of wires. A similar problem occurs when you need to run a bunch of basic wires out from your box to other devices. Unless there's a standard cable lying around that does exactly what you need, you can end up with messy tangles of wires outside of your box as well. There are many well-known solutions of course, as varied as elegantly laced wiring harnesses, cable ties and teflon spaghetti sleeving, heat shrink tubing and cold shrink tape, and (possibly for the brave and/or insane) duct tape and paperclips. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Electronics | Digg this! More Recent Articles | |
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