Energy Harvesting – Is It For Fools? by Jeri Ellsworth… Extremely funny video! Jeri build’s a pedal powered 1980′s Nintedo excise bike to shows several ways to harvest energy with Linear Technologies power management products. LTC3109EUF – Auto-polarity, Ultralow Voltage Step-Up Converter and Power Manager LTC3588EMSE – Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Power Supply
It’s a little annoying that it doesn’t seem possible to easily embed the video, element14 please change that! 
Right after the Japanese earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, I began jokingly mentioning to friends: “At least Japan has lots of robots that can help.” Then, as the days have worn on, and the tragedies mount, I started seeing comments on Facebook and blogs, asking: “Where are the robots!?” Where are the robots? Japan is known for its cutting-edge robotics development and deployment — it’s even known for its development of emergency robots. In all of the coverage, I haven’t seen any discussion whatsoever about bringing in bots. After the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents, Red Whittaker, of Carnegie Mellon, and later RedZone Robotics, developed robots specifically for nuclear emergency applications. If such robots exist (and can handle some of the tasks being currently undertaken by humans), then why are they needlessly cooking plant workers and JSDF (self-defense forces) if they don’t need to be? Discuss. 
Clever tip from reader Ryan O’Horo. [Thanks, Ryan!] More: 
We’ve featured our fair share of pinhole photography projects here at MAKE, and it’s no wonder. As complicated as cameras have become, it seems amazing that photos can be taken with something as simple as a tiny hole in a shoe box. But if you still yearn for all the creature comforts that a modern-day DSLR affords and you want to experiment with pinhole photography, you’re not out of luck. This quick hack turns your DSLR into a rather advanced pinhole camera. Subscribe to the MAKE Podcast in iTunes, download the m4v video directly, or watch it on YouTube and Vimeo. You’ll need to use a spare camera body cap, which is normally meant for protecting the camera from foreign matter entering through the lens port when there’s no lens attached. If you always keep a lens on your SLR, you can use the body cap that came with your camera. But if you store your camera without a lens, you’ll probably want to pick up a spare. Luckily, they’re quite cheap. Simply cut a hole in the center of the body cap and tape a small piece of needle-pricked aluminum foil. The larger the hole is, the more light will hit your camera’s sensor. The tradeoff is that the picture will be more blurry. 
What’s great about DSLR pinhole photography is that you can combine it more easily with other photography techniques such as HDR or timelapse for an interesting effect. And if your DSLR supports video, you can even shoot pinhole video. If you shoot any cool photos with your pinhole DSLR, share them with the rest of us! Post them to the MAKE Flickr pool.
A fresh batch of Make: Electronics Components Pack 1 are en route to the Maker Shed warehouse. Order yours now, and it will ship by March 25th.
The first companion pack to our wildly popular Make: Electronics book covers all of the experiments (1-11) from the first two sections of the book. We’ve spent (many!) hours sourcing these parts so you don’t have to. This pack will get you right into it and most of these parts are re-used throughout the book so it’s a great starting point. All parts – over 250 pieces! – are spec’d directly from the book and author Charles Platt.
Troy Hartman was building a jetpack that he planned to use to fly out of an airplane at 8000 feet. But before leaping from a plane into thin air, he had a great idea: Why not test it out on skis first? Hartman tells PM how his jetpack ski test worked, how fast he went, and just how close the 1500-degree flames came to toasting his rear end.
[Via PopMech] | 
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