Our elves Make: Labs Interns have been working on a little something extra for the holiday season. Every order the Maker Shed fulfills comes with bonus holiday cheer in the form of a wooden laser-cut Makey Robot. It’s our only Christmas wish that, when you open your package from the Maker Shed, you immediately hack Makey and send us the pictures. Cover Makey with a mosaic of PCB, glue him to your Festivus Pole, put him on your Christmas tree right next to your Flying Spaghetti Monster ornament, or make a wreath with old wire and cords and add Makey instead of a bow.
Tweet photos with the hashtag #MakeHolidays or #MakeyRobot, or post them to our Facebook wall. We will be on the look out for hacked ornaments, and rewarding the best shots with prizes from the Maker Shed.
Friend of MAKE, Kent K. Barnes, aka kentkb, used his Survival Pack and added blinking LED eyes. He posted shots in his I Made This! Flickr set, and included them in the MAKE Flickr pool. And just like that the holiday season got a little brighter. And a little blinky-er.
We’re giving away amazing kits from our new Make: Ultimate Kit Guide EVERY DAY — thousands of dollars worth of merchandise, including MakerBots!
To celebrate the release of our latest publication, the Make: Ultimate Kit Guide 2012 (and its companion website), we’re giving away at least one of the cool kits reviewed in the issue each day during the holiday season.
Today’s giveaway is a Thingamagoop 2 analog noise machine (value at $110). Here’s the first part of John Baichtal’s review of the Thingamagoop 2 from the Guide:
Analog voltage-controlled oscillators (AVOs) make a variety of intriguing hums, beeps, buzzes, and loops, controlled by buttons, knobs, and sensors. These are fantastic group projects because once the soldering irons are all put down, you get an excellent payoff: you can have an impromptu concert. Bleep Labs, run by Austin, Texas, circuit bender and kit maker John-Michael Reed, produces a few AVO kits that I've built and had fun with.
The Thingamagoop 2 features a square wave amplitude modulator and triangle wave pulse width modulator, packed into a lovely silkscreened metal enclosure. The Thingamagoop's signature component is an LED on a bendable wire antenna called the LEDacle, which looks cool and, more importantly, interfaces with the light sensor hidden in the eye, making for a huge range of possible sounds.
To be eligible for today's giveaway, all you have to do is leave a comment below in this post. The entry period for today's prize will be until 11:59pm PST tonight. We'll choose one person at random, you'll be notified by email, and you'll have 48 hours to respond. The Winners List is kept on the Giveaway landing page. That's it! No purchase necessary or anything else to do. Please leave only one comment per post. You can enter as many giveaways as you like until you win. This giveaway is for US residents only. You also must be 18 years old to enter (Kids: Ask your parents to enter). See the Kit-A-Day Giveaway landing page for full sweepstakes details and Official Rules.
Important Note: If you enter this drawing, when it’s over, please check the place where you registered to comment (eg. Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter). Some people are winning these kits and then not responding when we send them a message using the available means of contacting them. We want to make sure you get your giveaway!
