One of the hardest aspects of documenting a project build solo is getting those clear overhead process shots while you work. Our own Adam Flaherty offers up his solution in the newest issue of MAKE, Volume 27. From his intro: Hollywood grips solve this problem with what is known as a gobo arm, a lightweight mount that lets you position your smartphone (webcam, etc.) down where the action is without getting in the way. Commercial units run $100–$150, not including the $30 clamp you attach it to. But for the price of one of those fancy clamps, you can piece together your own Mobile Document Camera Stand using easily sourced parts. It's easy. If you can make cuts with a hacksaw, you can build this project.
Adam’s project is one of six from Volume 27 that we’re sharing on our DIY wiki, Make: Projects. Check it out below in snapshot mode, and head over to the site for a more robust version. And after you build your gobo arm, you’ll be all set up to share your next build with us on Make: Projects. We’ll keep our eyes open for it.
From the Pages of MAKE  MAKE Volume 27, Robots!
The robots have returned! MAKE Volume 27 features a special package with robotics projects for every age and skill level. They play music; they outwit your pets; they learn from their mistakes! In addition, we’ll show you how to build a special aquarium to keep jellyfish, create pre-Edison incandescent lighting, spy via the internet, and make a go-anywhere digital message board! All this and much, much more, in MAKE Volume 27. On newsstands July 26! Buy or Subscribe   Kris Kimmel of Kentucky Space is organizing the first hackerSPACE Workshop, which provides an opportunity for makers learn about building spacecraft from space professionals and engineers. The focus of the workshop is on the CubeSat satellite platform. The workshop is November 11-12 in Lexington, Kentucky.
The workshop will be led by Bob Twiggs, Emeritus professor and former director of the Space Systems Development Lab at Stanford University, now professor at Morehead State University and also with Kentucky Space. Bob is credited with inventing the CubeSat spacecraft, which is now helping to revolutionize space, putting it within reach of more people than ever. Registration Fee is $150 general/$75 student For information on participation in the workshop, please see the workshop page on the Kentucky Space website. At this hands-on workshop you’ll learn: - About the ideation, design, engineering and assembly processes specific to creating your small orbiting (or suborbital) spacecrafts;
- What systems are required to build a fully operational spacecraft;
- About the range of potential satellite "apps."
- The kinds of tests your craft will have to pass before it can be launched;
- About possible launch opportunities including NASA's ElaNa program;
- About building partnerships with NASA, DOD and other organizations;
- How to raise the funds for your project(s) and, most importantly;
- How to ward off the jealous neighbors.
MAKE magazine is a media sponsor of the event. Earlier this year, MAKE organized the Make Space Challenge with NASA, which encouraged makers to design experiments that can fly into space on the CubeSat platform. On Space Challenge page, you’ll find a webcast with Kris Kimel and others, which might give you a taste of what you’ll find at the workshop.
 From the Pages of MAKE:
Volume 24: DIY Space Put your own satellite in orbit, launch a stratosphere balloon probe, and analyze galaxies for $20 with an easy spectrograph! We talk to the rocket mavericks reinventing the space industry, and renegade NASA hackers making smartphone robots and Lego satellites. This, plus a full payload of other cool DIY projects, from a helium-balloon camera that’s better than Google Earth, to an electromagnetic levitator that shoots aluminum rings, and much more. MAKE Volume 24, on sale now. BUY or SUBSCRIBE  
Above Frits stands in front of a camera attached to a multicopter, one of his current projects.
 Frits Lyneborg is co-host of MAKE’s video series, The Latest in Hobby Robotics and runs Let’s Make Robots! the largest online community of its kind, which he started in 2008 as a forum for robot electronics, programming, and funny ideas and inspiration. For MAKE Vol. 27 Frits describes how to make his YouTube sensation, the Yellow Drum Machine, a funky little free-range drumbot that roams, makes beats, and samples.
Tell us a bit about yourself I am 41 years old, and I live in Copenhagen, Denmark, the isle of Amager, where I have my workshop in a little red and white wooden shack. I have a background in developing community websites and working in the music industry. Today I make a living from my two hobbies: robot building and acting. I work as an actor in films and commercials. How can one make a living from making hobby robots, you might ask :) Well, I founded Let’s Make Robots! three or four years ago. The site has turned into a general meeting place, and that has given me connections to almost every player in the industry. From publishing houses like MAKE, to shops, and most importantly, the many talented people out there, and the manufacturers of products related to hobby robotics. I make money very individually, many little deals, and mostly behind the scenes; For one company I work as a consultant on their web presence. For another I developed a new sensor. I design boards, I write manuals, I put people together and form projects, and I hold seminars… anything related to “hobby robotics.” 
Frits’ lab: where the magic happens.
How did you become interested in robotics? I did not know anything about electronics four years ago. As a kid, I was having fun programming my ZX Spectrum computer in BASIC, and that was all the background I had. While shopping around for random cool stuff on the net, I stumbled over PICAXE microcontrollers. I never thought I’d be able to do anything with the mysterious little chips that I had seen on circuit boards. But learning that I could actually program them, in BASIC, and it wasn’t hard at all, it got me all fired up in a creative rush from another world. At a point I got the crazy idea of making a robot, and I thought I was the only one in the world doing so. To my surprise it was very easy and extremely fun — and a very creative process. So I searched the Internet for fellow builders, but all the info I could find was on how complex and technically orientated it was. Everyone wrote about how much planning was needed, and everything I am bad at. That was what made me do the “How to make your first robot” article, that today is Google’s #1 return for searches on “how to make a robot.” You can build a robot in 20 minutes, and it’s easy and fun! Why do you like making robots? I do not think that any creative person who has tried to make an autonomous robot has not felt the magic: you sit with a bunch of absolutely dead parts scattered on a table. There is no life at all. You put them together, in a way you invent, and all the sudden they are longer “dead parts” — you have made “a live thing that is trying to get out to the kitchen” — perhaps even against your will. If you have any creativity in you, that just sparks your imagination; you are sold. 
Tell us about the Yellow Drum Machine you wrote about for MAKE. People always laugh and smile when they watch the video of it or see it in person. The Yellow Drum machine was 100% targeted to be a viral advertising for my then new website. I had made “a community website” (letsmakerobots.com), but obviously. I had no members in it at first, so I figured I’d make something to spark people’s imagination, and send out the signal that “over here we’re having fun building robots, come join in!” As written in the article in MAKE magazine, I was sitting with some parts, and the robot practically made itself, while I was just having fun doing it. I felt like it was already made, I just had to put it together — which was also why the first version was made really, really fast, mostly with hot glue and sticks. It was first put on Google video (which was the big thing back then), and one week, three different videos of it were the number 1, 4, and 6 most seen on the channel. Later, I re-released it on YouTube, where it was featured, and seen by over a million people. When I made it, there was no other drumming robots that I could find. Today, they are everywhere — though I am surprised that they usually are very “robotic,” and not very funky at all in the music they make. I was making the Yellow Drum Machine out of love for the whole process of really creating something — it was a fun weekend project. But I am happy to say that it also served its purpose as a viral video, as it is still drawing people to the website today. I am also happy to finally be able to release a good article about it and a kit, so everyone can build their own version. What kind of robot do you dream of making? I am working on a team doing some really exciting new sensors for SeeedStudio. I cannot reveal details yet, but I can promise you that the world has not yet seen sensors like this — and I am really looking forward to seeing what people make with them — and to play around with them myself, as they will take small easy-to-do robots to a new level of life form. Can you tell us about one of your favorite tools? I prefer simple tools that I master — so I can focus on creating, instead of the process. The multimeter used to see if there are connections, and the hot glue gun must be my favorite tools, just after my DSO NanoScope (small cheap pocket size oscilloscope). One is a random test shot, where you can see how it authentically looks on any average night. The two others are showing one of my latest projects, which is a form of stabilizer for cameras flying on multicopters. It uses the Steadicam (™) principle, and I use the multicopters battery as weight, in an attempt to give a natural balance to the camera. The idea is that servos should only be used to guide and dampen movements, but natural forces of weight and balance should keep the camera in a nice steady position. Time will tell if it works :) More:
See Frits’ Latest in Hobby Robotics video series
From the Pages of MAKE MAKE Volume 27, Robots!
The robots have returned! MAKE Volume 27 features a special package with robotics projects for every age and skill level. They play music; they outwit your pets; they learn from their mistakes! In addition, we’ll show you how to build a special aquarium to keep jellyfish, create pre-Edison incandescent lighting, spy via the internet, and make a go-anywhere digital message board! All this and much, much more, in MAKE Volume 27. On newsstands July 26! Buy or Subscribe  
These Waterloo Labs cats are looking pretty cool! I like their video series, of which this is the fourth. The second video is a how-to. In this episode we show off our Eye Mario system that allows you to play any NES video game just using your eye movements. In this video we give you a basic overview of how this system works.
 
On the TSA blog: You may have heard in the news recently about how a college student unintentionally closed down a TSA checkpoint with his science project. He had shipped it to Omaha, but decided to travel with it on his departure. Let’s be clear, it was completely innocent. He had no way of knowing his improvised mint tin would look like an improvised explosive device (IED) on our X-ray monitor. Most people wouldn’t realize it and the purpose of this post is to inform folks that homemade gadgets (however cool they may be) can look like improvised explosive devices to our officers on the X-ray monitors. So when you pack your bags for a trip, you may want to think about what items you are placing next to others to avoid the hassle of unintentionally creating an X-ray image which could cause TSA to conduct a further inspection of your carry-on and checked bags.
A couple things to mention before we all debate in the comments: - The TSA closed down a TSA checkpoint, not the student.
- It’s a mint tin, it’s not called an “improvised mint tin”.
- This item was in the student’s *carry on* not checked in baggage.
“Further inspection” is understandable, but that’s very different than sending in the FBI and BOMB SQUADS. Based on what is reported here I don’t see any reason why the terminal was shut down. If you have something the TSA wants to look at something in your carry on, they pull you aside and look at it, swab it, x-ray it. The person can explain what something is as it is being inspected (and the TSA can verify what they are saying with explosives testing equipment). I don’t see any reason why this would cause a shutdown of terminals based on how the TSA usually operates. “Further inspection of your carry-on and checked bags” is totally fine (and encouraged!) the FBI and bomb squad coming in? There must be some missing information here, maybe the student got past the check point and they reviewed the x-rays later? If so, this makes more sense. They could also have a new policy that we do not know about where the TSA will pull everyone off a flight if they are holding someone because of a “device”. I’ve emailed the TSA blog contact and asked them to participate here on MAKE. The Omaha Police Department’s bomb squad was called after a suspicious-looking item was found in a carry-on bag shortly before noon at the airport’s north checkpoint in Terminal B. Screening operations were suspended, and the B concourse was evacuated. Operations were not disrupted in Terminal A, according to a Transportation Security Administration official. The item was cleared and airport operations returned to normal about 2 p.m. Breault said the device was harmless, “but it did trigger the proper response due to its suspicious appearance.”
The item in question (above) – wires, battery, mint tin – yah, it looks like almost every single electronic project featured here on MAKE. The TSA knows people make and travel with electronics, they have tests for whether something is an explosive or not. All that said, the TSA does say “Let’s be clear, it was completely innocent”. I’m posting this for the same reason the TSA did, to raise awareness when things like this happen. The TSA isn’t an enemy, they can do better, we all need to know what to expect when we travel with electronics, policies will change – I do think they’re doing the best they can and we as makers can help them do a better job.  
Oh my. Now here’s a street meme I can get behind 100%. From Instructables QA engineer Frenzy, posted as a “test.” I’m not sure he understands the full magnitude of what he has unleashed More:  
Bike Fixation, run by Chad and Alex of Minneapolis, MN, manufactures Bike Fixtation, a bicycle repair kiosk consisting of a vending machine selling drinks, inner tubes, patch kits, and other stuff, a free air compressor and free tools connected by cables to a bike rack. [Via core77]  
 DSO Nano v2.0, from the Maker Shed, is a Digital Storage Oscilloscope designed for basic electronic engineering tasks. The new DSO features an ARM Cortex™-M3 32 bit platform which provides basic waveform monitoring. It has a 320*240 color LCD, micro SD card storage, portable probes, LiPo Battery, USB connection, and signal generator. Perfect for in-field diagnosis, quick measurement, and hobbyist projects. Of course, this is no excuse for a bench top oscilloscope but I would like to see you fit one of those in your pocket!
Features - Portable and lightweight
- Color display
- Waveform storage and playback
- 6 triggering mode
- 1Mhz Analog Bandwidth
- Complete measurement markers and signal characteristic
- Built-in Signal Generator
- Accessories available
- Open Source
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