Now there are even more reasons to make Maker Shed your one-stop shop for kits, components, and tools. You’ve always been able to buy Arduinos, Netduinos, and hundreds of cool DIY kits from the Maker Shed store, but what about all of those components and tools you need for that next project?
That’s where our new partnership with Jameco comes in. Now you can order all of the products from Maker Shed, along with the thousands of components and tools offered from Jameco, in one place!
When you pick up a motorshield for your next project, you can easily add a standard DC motor to your cart. But what about stepper motors? Yep, we have them! Gear motors? Got them too! Resistors, capacitors, LEDs, wires, tools, and more! We’ve got you covered.
One of my personal favorite products is the Jameco grab bag. This is a great way to stock your electronics bench with all those miscellaneous parts you always seem to need. There are bags of LEDs, solar cells, resistors, motors, and more. With just a few of these grab bags, your bench will be stocked with all those necessary, yet always seemingly missing, parts.
How about Make: Projects? Maker Shed and Jameco have thought of that, too! Check out my Mini Fume Extractor project. It was originally featured in MAKE Volume 19, and now it’s in Make: Projects. Sourcing the parts for the project takes some time and can be a little intimidating for someone just starting out in electronics.
Now all you have to do is click on the shopping cart link in the “relevant parts” section of the Make: Projects website, and all the parts for the build will be added to your shopping cart automagically. It’s an easy and convenient way to source all of the different components for your builds. In just a few days, the parts will show up at your door, and you’ll be on your way to making this nifty fume sucker. We’ll be adding more parts, and bundles, to Make: Projects every day, so keep checking back to see what’s new.
Currently we have about 1000 components and tools, but it’s expanding daily. Soon we will have 1000s of electrical components and tools to help you with your projects. We just need a little more time to go through the entire Jameco catalog and hand-select the products we think are the best. Yes, that’s right, we’re hand-picking all of these parts! Where else, besides Maker Shed, can you buy an Arduino, some maker-made kits, and a handful of different components, all in one place? Maker Shed is your source for all things electronic!
The awesome automata artist Dug North does a quarterly column, “Dug's Automata Tips, Techniques and Tricks,” on the Cabaret Mechanical Theater website. His latest installment outlines two different methods for making paper patterns for pinwheel gears. Pinwheel gears are relatively easy and fun to make and have various applications, such as above where they’re used in a bevel gear configuration to change the axis of rotation. Be sure to also check out Dug’s previous column on making wooden circles which can be used as the basis for these pinwheels. Dug's Automata Tips, Techniques and Tricks No.3 More:
Peruse our entire Mechanics series In the Maker Shed: 
Cabaret Mechanical Movement
124 pages of diagrams, information, and useful tips on making your own automata. Using the machines and automata from CMT to explain levers, shafts, cranks, cams, springs, linkages, ratchets, drives and gearing, and even coin-op control, this is a great introduction for those inspired to make their own automata. The book ends with a helpful checklist to keep you going. If you don’t even know what a cam is, not to worry, this book is for you as well.
We had two giveaways close last night. In the Make: Arduino Getting Started with Arduino Kit giveaway, the winner is: Fractal LLC Thanks to all who participated (we had over 600 entries) and thanks to Maker Shed for providing this great kit. In the Mechanics Skill Set giveaway of Dustyn Roberts’ Making Things Move, the three winners are: Rob Colby
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Raven Varela Thanks to all who entered this drawing and thanks to Dustyn and McGraw-Hill for the books! To all four of the winners: Email me your mailing addresses and I’ll send out your winnings! This game, designed by Emilie Tappolet, Raphaël Munoz and Maria Beltran, involves manipulating physical cubes as if they were game controllers. Geek Run is a collaborative game prototype played with cubes and a Kinect controller programed with open frameworks and presented at the LIFT11 conferences. By moving cubes on the floor in front of the Kinect, players control different functional elements in the virtual world. The lead character, a geek, follows a series of forking paths; the goal of the game is to help him get to a final destination without getting killed. By placing the cubes in the correct position, the geek avoids the obstacles and/or opens up a new path in the game. As in a choose-your-own-adventure book, your choices open up new possibilities for gameplay.
Engineer, kit maker, entrepreneur, MAKE advisory board member, open source hardware pioneer Limor “Ladyada” Fried is on April’s WIRED cover. This is the first female engineer to appear WIRED’s cover (as well as the first female engineer to appear on such a high-profile tech publication that I can recall). I met Limor exactly five years ago at South by Southwest. She’s one of the most talented people in the world, she works harder than anyone else I know, she puts more value in the world than she takes. Limor, everyone at MAKE is so happy for you. This is a milestone for makers, for women, for engineers, and anyone who makes things for a living. No one deserves the recognition and accolades more than you for all you’ve done and will do. If you look at the media landscape at the moment, it’s interesting to see who we hold as heroes and role models. I took this photo in the bookstore, seeing Limor on the cover makes me think we collectively have a shot at making the world a better place, if we try. 
“We are what we celebrate” – Dean Kamen. 
Chemical and Bio-engineering student Britt Michelsen writes in about her Kryptonite candy, which uses vitamin B2 to make this homemade confection glow.
For some time now, I’ve been playing around with Fluorescein, which is a dark red powder soluble in water and alcohol. It is commonly used as a fluorescent tracer. Though it is used e.g. in eye drops and biochemical research, it can cause adverse reactions (like nausea or vomiting). Because of this, even though only very small amount are needed I don’t think it is safe enough for candy (and it is not easy to get). Sadly most phosphorescent substances aren’t classified as “food grade” (even though they are not toxic). In most “glow under a black light” food Quinine is being used, which is in Tonic Water (in very small quantities). In my opinion for candy it is not suitable thought, because of two major reasons: 1. the bitter taste and more importantly 2. it’s melting point is very close to the temperature you will need to make the candy. So I had to find an other easy to get food grade chemical with a high melting point. My solution: Riboflavin, better known as vitamin B2 or additive E101. It can be found in most vitamin pills, is not toxic and fluorescents yellow under UV light (and even under direct light). The only set back is, that it is destroyed by exposure to light, but in our case it should matter because the process is pretty slow. Tthat is the reason why you should buy your milk rather in opaque containers and not in glass bottles.  
And, depending on how you position the nozzles, sprays them! More coolness from Gerry Chu, whose Kinect-based Motion Emotions I hit yesterday. Gerry’s fountain prototype has at least two Arduino Megas for brains. More: 
Hack your Brain with the Trip Glasses in the Maker Shed! Get comfortable, put on the glasses and headphones, close your eyes (the LEDs are bright!), and flick the power switch. Enjoy the hallucinations as you drift into deep meditation, ponder your inner world, and then come out after the 14-minute program feeling fabulous.
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