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I love old tube guitar amps. I wish I'd never gotten ride of mine. Here's a rebuild and mod of 1961 Kay 503A instrument amp.
Tube Amp Rebuild (and Mod) - Link
This book looks great, here's the blurb from Amazon... -
How can you measure the speed of light with a bar of chocolate and a microwave oven? To keep a banana from decaying, are you better off rubbing it with lemon juice or refrigerating it? How can you figure out how much your head weighs? Mick O’Hare, who created the New Scientist’s popular science sensations Does Anything Eat Wasps? and Why Don’t Penguins’ Feet Freeze?, has the answers. In this fascinating and irresistible new book, O’Hare and the New Scientist team guide you through one hundred intriguing experiments that show essential scientific principles (and human curiosity) in action. Explaining everything from the unusual chemical reaction between Mentos and cola that provokes a geyser to the geological conditions necessary to preserve a family pet for eternity, How to Fossilize Your Hamster is fun, hands-on science that everyone will want to try at home.Amazon.com: How to Fossilize Your Hamster: And Other Amazing Experiments for the Armchair Scientist: Books: Mick O'Hare, thanks David! - Link.
Christian sent in his homemade Ms Pacman cocktail cabinet, check out the 10 pages of build photos! - Link.
Cory Doctorow posted (to Boing Boing) an image and link to his Flickr set of photos he took at ComicCon of action figure modders and their cool creations.
Action figures set - Link
Related:
The sGloTaT sonic environment allows participants to originate sound by moving physical objects. It encourages novice users to play by naturally gesturing with two tangible user interface objects emulating a trumpet and tambourine. In this sound space, movements by the users generate visual feedback projected on the floor in the form of a three-dimensional rendering of a cone.Byron built one of the objects from polycarbonate tubing, and I hacked a Bop-it toy for the other controller. Both contain an Arduino mini, BlueSmiRF, and a two-axis accelerometer. The glowing and IR-reflective tape helps the objects be sensed by our motion tracking infrastructure in the SMALLab environment at Arizona State University. You can watch the overview video, download our paper, and look at photos of the objects in progress - Link.
Drocko writes -
Recently I was in the market for a new desk.HOW TO - Make a pack flat plywood desk - Link.I wanted to make a desk that was able to be disassembled and packed flat, made from few and easily obtainable supplies with simple tools.
The desk can be created from the following supplies:
1 4'x8'x3/4" A-1 plywood sheet
2 4' 3/8" steel rod
2 3/8" nuts
2 3/8" wingnuts
8 washers
8 screws
Some woodglueYou will need the following tools:
Tape measure
Circular saw (for other saw for making large cuts in the plywood)
Screwdriver
Coping saw (for cutting the notches)
Several clampsI also recommend a squaring device such as a speed square.
Makefan writes -
This page provides information on how to hack your MyBook World Edition, so as you can improve performance and add new features. MyBook is powered by ARM9 microprocessor, it has 32MB of SDRAM and boots from internal hard drive. The system partition has 2.8GB (only 260 MB is occupied). This means that you have a lot of resources for various improvements.Hacking the Western Digital MyBook World Edition - Link.
This robot, designed by Jeff Terrell consists of dense PVC plastic piping for the body, its head moves 180 degrees left and right, and a strip of red LEDs under his mouth light up when it is speaking. The bot also uses a head mounted video camera and tracking software to integrate computer vision. We just hope that it's AI isn't too good so that it makes its way back to the sewers to find the rest of its pipe-made body.
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Trax writes -
It might be "yet another" «device» controller that operates over phone-line, but this one works for sure :) The task was to build a device that connects to the phone line and has a relay as an output switch. It should also sense if the connected «consumer» is turned-on or off and report to the administrator at the other end of the phone line. The administrator would then call-in the device, log in with the password, and check the state of «consumer», turn it on or off, change password or some other settings. Current version has only one relay.Phone line controller - Link.
Neat selection of eco-product prototypes, pictured here, a solar powered bottle sorter -
The assignment was wide open: Design something based on the principles of reduce, reuse and recycle, and develop it into a prototype product. The results ranged from simple mechanical devices to complex electronic machines, but all served that central purpose in original ways.Students unveil eco-product prototypes - [via] Link.To meet the challenge, seven teams of 18 students in this year's 2.009 Product Engineering Processes class, taught by David Wallace, came up with a wide variety of ingenious ideas, which they presented last week at a packed session attended by about 150 outside engineers and product developers.
Chipwich writes -
We built a beeping flashing toothbrush timer like the one on the Philips SoniCare toothbrush for just a few dollars and plenty of experience and fun.DIY Picaxe toothbrush timer - Link.
This diamond iPhone was made with 420 cut diamonds and sports a total of 5.65 carats. Pretty crazy way to embellish technology that might be getting a major upgrade in the months ahead. We just wonder how many iPhones could be bought for the amount the diamonds are worth.
Amosu Luxury and Customised Mobile Phones - Link, [via]
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This is basic instructions on how to build a portable image projector that uses a green laser instead of normal light. The laser permits images to be cast great distances, and doesn't require focusing - it's always in focus.
Laser Image Projector - Link
The 24th Chaos Communication Congress is underway, and goodness - what an amazing first day! Here are some of my photos...
Some of the sessions I really enjoyed so far...
Steam-Powered Telegraphy
A League of Telextraordinary Gentlemen present the marvel of Telex on the Net - driven by a steam engine
Simulating the Universe on Supercomputers
The evolution of cosmic structure
Building a Hacker Space
A Hacker Space Design Pattern Catalogue
Make Cool Things with Microcontrollers
Hacking with Microcontrollers
Design Noir
The seedy underbelly of electronic engineering
"I can count every star in the heavens above but I have no heart I can't fall in love...".
The image of computers in popular music
Editor's note: Johannes Grenzfurthner gave an AMAZING talk, outstanding work and incredibly fun.
More:
It's been a great year of weekend projects. There's no new video today, but check out a few favorites from this past year!
The most viewed video from our blip.tv views is how to make a catapult with Bill Gurstelle. We made this podcast at Maker Faire!
The most viewed weekend project video on youtube was the tutorial with Matt Stinchcomb about how to screenprint a t-shirt!
My personal favorite podcast of the year was making a power tool drag racer! Thanks to all the guests that were on podcast and for all the feedback, comments and awesomeness of 2007. If you have a favorite, drop a note in the comments or if there's a podcast you'd like to see made in 2008, don't hesitate to drop me a note!
Austringer writes -
I was looking for inspiration for a linkage to remotely open the dust collector port on the back of my table saw. What I found was like getting a drink from a fire hose. You have to poke around a bit since they amazing stuff isn't right there on the surface but they have a ton of pictures of static models and videos of the various mechanisms at work. That they have videos of models made using a 3-D printer is like a creamy center made from pure whipped geekyness.KMODDL - Kinematic models for design digital library - Link.
"Headphones", an art piece by Andre Avelas employs 1,000 individual headphone sets where 960 work as speakers and 40 as microphones in order to create a continuous feedback loop that can be controlled on a nearby mixer. The project included an amplification circuit that added more hum to the feedback chain. Pretty interesting use of commonly found speakers. Check the link below for a sound sample to be posted soon.
Photos of the project - Link, artist site, [via]
Mike writes -
An inertia friction welder powered by a bicycle. Built in 2 months and at a cost of £302. Finished and run for the first time at around 6pm GMT, Saturday 15th December. Thanks go to Andy for the welding, Steevo for the machining, Martin for grafting, Greg for filming and squeaking, Graeme for his yard and cups of tea, JCB for the use of their workshop and Bolton Steam Museum for the flywheel.A bicycle-powered welder - [via] Link.
Really well-done basic introduction to how a Wiimote and Wii sensor bar can be used to create a head tracking system for VR worlds and games. Pretty impressive.
Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the WiiRemote - Link
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Tutorial & files for interfacing with a Velleman K8055 USB board and Matlab - Link.
Here's an interesting take on urban gaming. "Metro-Wardrive" is an adaptive game that changes its level information according to the environment of the player in an urban center. All local SSIDs are turned into enemies which try to capture your "wardrive-cristal". Really cool idea for a portable game that will never give you the same game board twice depending on your location.
Metro-Wardrive - Link
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We recently visited Takeshi Murakami's show at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art's Geffen Contemporary wing. The show was really impressive showcasing over 90 pieces spanning the artist's career, in various media from film and animation to large metal and ceramic sculptures. The show features enormous pieces such as the "Oval Buddha" (2007) (pictured) and a "merchandise" room with hundreds of toys, games, posters, dolls, etc.. from Murakami's portfolio. This show is up until February 11, 2008 so if you are in the LA area, definitely check it out..
Murakami at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) - Link, pic via Scott Waterman
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If you find yourself in an unheated cabin in the woods this winter or your house has really bad central heating, it might be time to slap on these "USB Heating Gloves". In 5 minutes your hands will heat up to 52 degrees Celsius (125 Fahrenheit), which is probably too hot unless you don't mind cooking an egg on your wrist. We just wonder how easy it would be to hack these and use them as a lie detector device that analyzes the content of incoming and outgoing emails and IMs.
USB Heating Gloves - Link, Check out the Lady version
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MAKE and a whole lot of other MAKE-pals will be at the 24C3. We'll see you there! -
The 24th Chaos Communication Congress (24C3) is the annual four-day conference organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC). It takes place at the bcc Berliner Congress Center in Berlin, Germany. The Congress offers lectures and workshops on a multitude of topics and attracts a diverse audience of thousands of hackers, scientists, artists, and utopians from all around the world. The 24C3s slogan is Volldampf voraus! – the German equivalent of “full steam ahead” – a particular request for talks and projects featuring forward looking hands-on topics.MAKE @ 24C3 - 24th Chaos Communication Congress - Link.24th Chaos Communication Congress
December 27th to 30th, 2007
bcc Berliner Congress Center, Berlin, Germany
Ian writes -
In making an electronic circuit exhibiting chaos, one is essentially making an analog computer for the differential equations describing the system. This means that circuits that can differentiate a voltage are needed. In practice, it is convenient to actually do this with electronic integrators, the idea being that the input of an integrator is the derivative of its output. In addition, a nonlinear circuit element must be incorporated, as linear systems cannot be chaotic.Chaos theory schematic - [via] Link.
I wanted a security camera at the front door of my house with two criteria: the camera needed to be wireless and it needed to be accessible for viewing from my computer.
Check out Jake's solar security cam howto. - Link
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I popped over to check out day 0 at the Berlin Convention Center and everything is getting set up for the launch of the twenty-fourth Chaos Communication Congress. Every year for the past 24 years, hackers have gathered to have congress with the Chaos Computer Club to discuss and hear about the latest issues, challenges, and advancements in the hacking world. Plus partake of Club Mate, the refreshing and invigorating hacker beverage of choice. This conference is the place to be between xmas and new years. With their added category for presentations on making and steampunk theme, it's going to be awesome.
C4, the club out of Cologne, is bringing it tomorrow. Here's Sean Bonner's sneak peak at their steam engine powered teletype machine. - Photoset
I can't wait to spend time with the Das Labor peeps and see presentations! Phillip and I are both here, so we'll do our best to keep you in the loop!
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How to adapt existing batteries you may have to battery sizes you need.
Instant Battery Adaptors - AA -> D , C -> D with rechargables NiMH and LiPo - Link
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I managed to get a chance to see the Lightworks show at the Phillips de Pury & Company gallery in NYC right before leaving for the holidays, it was fantastic. I think this is my favorite use of EL wire of all time (thin electroluminescent wire that looks like neon) - Link.
Blake writes -
Skull-a-day recently posted a very crafty latch-hook yarn skull made from a modified puppy design kit. I like the comment about getting a migraine while working the yarn. This has happened to me more than once while crafting and workin' hard to get something done ;)Latch hook skull - Link.
Built during the "Control Workshop" (led by MAKE friend and artist Roger Ibars), the "Symphonie Mecanique" by Camille Roussel and Hrarch Arbach triggers a tape recorder that spins and causes random piano notes to play on an old torn apart synthesizer. Nice way to hack together two aging sound devices.
Symphonie Mechanique - Link
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IEEE has a new video series called IEEE.tv, some interesting stuff. Green engineering and toxins in electronics, fun! -
IEEE.tv is an internet based television network made possible by the members of IEEE.IEEE.tv produces and delivers special-interest programming about technology and engineering for the benefit of IEEE's members and the general public.IEEE.tv can be launched from this page, and it is also accessible for members via myIEEE, the members-only portal.IEEE.tv - Link.
Christmas time is a great time to obtain large numbers of LEDs very cheaply. This instructable uses 80 LEDs from an LED christmas tree light string to make the venerable 3D LED cube. In this case a 5x4x4 cube.
3D LED Charlieplex Cube from Chrismas Tree Lights - Link
Related:
Bidding is over, but check out this PC mod - it's a TV receiver REKORD (Alexander Radio Factory 1961 - "a victory for soviet union - 12 channels, 16 lamps unseen image quality for the working class folks") - Link.
If you are worried about crooks scaling the walls to your house, the colored pencil fence will mark your assailant's clothes before they even get to your door. This should make it much easier to identify them in a police lineup, that is if they don't change their clothes.
Colored pencil fence - [via]
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Jason writes -
High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography is the process of taking several images at different shutter speeds and combining them into a single photo that contains no washed out or underexposed areas. The result is a surreal, almost too perfectly lit photograph that contains a high level of detail throughout the image.Photoshop has a built-in HDR photo merging tool which produces some incredible results without too much effort. The image above, from Ryan McGinnis' excellent Photoshop HDR tutorial, is pretty surreal. It reminds me of a high-res rendering from a video game.
If you're using the GIMP, you can get similar results by carefully masking and merging layers, or you can download and use the exposure-blend plugin which will simplify the process a little. Below are links to both processes - you can see which works best for you.
Whatever package you use, the important thing is to use a solid tripod and only adjust the shutter speed between shots. For the best results, you'll also want to set your camera to RAW mode.
If you still haven't found that special (geeky) someone something, how about giving the gift of mini-humanoid? He farts (and makes fart jokes), he lifts his leg and urinates like a dog, he plays air guitar (and air drums). He's a 6.5" tall frat boy. He's i-SOBOT, at your command. Read my review of i-SOBOT on the Federated Media Gift Guide. He should still be available where all humanoid lifeforms are sold.
i-SOBOT, at your command. Sorta. - Link
Related:
Simple DIY Rock paper scissors electronic game using an Atmel ATTiny2313 chip - Link.
With the "Cornell University Air Mouse Initiative" you can move your air guitar skills over to your PC and jam with the best digital artists this side of the pond. Built as a motion sensing glove with buttons and a PC interface, this project even comes with open source code and a circuit schematic for accelerometer filtering. Just be careful you don't try to win the jamming title back from Bon Jovi's nerdier cousin.
Cornell University Airmouse Initiative - Link
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Jovino writes in -
Once again, we rigged together our make-shift xmas tree. It's fabricated out of modular wire bookshelves connected with bailing wire. Plushies are stuffed all over it. The lights are LED lightstrips set to green (of course), cold cathode blacklights and fluorescent lights. Two 5" televisions battle it out with snow and fire. Hello kitty watches over it all.Maker blinged out tree - Link.
Jeff writes -
I've released another Carl and Jerry free story, this one from December 1958. Carl is sure that a local girl intends to steer him under the mistletoe at a Christmas party and--fate worse than death!--kiss him. Jerry concocts a plan to foil the kiss-crazy girl, but is foiled in turn by his cousin Pat, a true girl-geek who can sling electrons with the best of the boys! - Link (PDF).
More:
What are the "Carl & Jerry - Adventure in electronics"? In the 50's and 60's John T. Frye, W9EGV / Popular Electronics published a series of fiction stories called "The Carl and Jerry stories" - In each story the pair acquired new skills, got their ham radio licenses and used their knowledge of electronics to get out of a jam or solve a mystery - Link.
Martin and I engraved a calendar on our fingernails. As the months pass, we'll cut them off!
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Bre writes -
Martin has a laser lasernlasern.de and we laser etched calendars on our thumbs.A calendar laser etched on to fingernails, clever - Link.
Wheelgirl writes -
It is getting dark at 5:00 pm, and I have a bike shop signs that needs to be lighted at night during the winter holiday shopping season. So I repositioned a solar garden light ($5) in an Altoids box, cut off and took some pieces from some battery-operated IKEA Glansa LED Christmas lights ($1.98), and made some solar LED Christmas lights that don't require a wall outlet for their power. It was less expensive to modify stuff that had already been manufactured than to start from scratch.Solar LED Christmas lights - Link.
Phar writes -
So the local Make:NYC meeting had had a badge contest for its second meeting.. (link here), the gist of the competition is to make a wearable nametag/badge of some sort, of some materials, that could be reasonably accepted as a "badge".. this Instructable is how I built mine for the contest.. pretty much everything that went into the badge was something I had around my workshop from previous projects, and obviously the design can be pushed to do more interesting things. but I'll leave that up to you.Make a name badge from an old GameBoy printer - Link.
I just made a bunch of the TV-B-Gone kits for some friends going to CES, one quick test you can do when you make these kits is to press the button and shine the IR LEDs at a web cam, it will show up as a nice purpley color and you know you're device is working if you don't happen to have a TV (I don't). Most CCD or CMOS detectors will show infrared light when you point a TV remote at it, more so if it's a high powered version.
TV-B-Gone high powered kit @ the Maker store - Link.
MAKE Flickr photo pool member's unboxing and assembly of the monome 40h kit - Link.
Good candidate for (re)make, perhaps blue-screen-of-death pillows too... Link.
Here's your chance to win a BUG module with this contest from PopSci and BUG labs...
We’re excited to announce that we’re launching a special PopSci.com contest with Bug Labs, the folks behind BUG, the open, modular consumer-electronics hardware and Web-services platform that you can use like Legos to build practically any gadget you can dream up. And even more exciting, the grand prize will be a BUGbase and the first batch of four BUGmodules!Launching soon, the BUG platform comprises the BUGbase: a mini Linux computer with 128 megabytes of RAM, a 532-megahertz ARM processor, built-in Wi-Fi, Ethernet and USB, and a rechargeable battery. The first set of four snap-on BUGmodules includes:
With these cool capabilities in mind, the world is yours. What would you do with a gadget that can sense its location, has Wi-Fi capability, accepts input via screen or USB, can detect motion, and is capable of capturing photos and videos?PopSci Bug Labs build-a-BUG challenge - Link.That's precisely what we want you to show us.
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Patricia Piccinini's "Nature's Little Helpers" - amazing! Link.
Download the PDF to check out the detailed instructions and as a special bonus, you can read up all about tensegrity in Bill Gurstelle's awesome tensegrity article from Make: Volume 6! - PDF Link
I'm playing around with a Pleo, a robotic dinosaur - there's a new "behavior" that you can put on a SD card and it will sing holiday songs (see HD video above!). The holiday Pleo file is a file called PLEO.URF - I renamed it to zip and then after decompressing it a .CPGZ file came out and that's where it ended. I'll open it with a HEX editor later and see what I can find. Any suggestions welcome... There's an IR sensor I'll see what it's sending out and what I can send in later too, fun stuff. Skinless Pleo is creepy cool (vid from maker faire).
Oh, the end of the video has some footage of what happens when you grab the Pleo by its tail and pick it up.
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Make these two DIY ornaments to make your tree the envy of all! The first project is a simple tensegrity project. My dad taught me about this as a kid and I was reminded and inspired by Michael at Maker Faire Austin. The second project is a small icosohedron which is a 20 sided geometric shape. I've made these before out of paper plates for picnic geometry, but this is a really great way of recycling magazines into ornaments! Also, if you are younger and have adults wandering around your house with nothing to do, get them making ornaments and feeling productive!
You can subscribe in iTunes and get this podcast downloaded automatically! - Subscribe Link
Mike @ Radar has a good review comparing the OLPC and Amazon's Kindle... different devices, but Mike as you'd expect (O'Reilly/Safari) is looking at these for reading books...
Both the Kindle and OLPC can browse the Web. However, the Kindle was designed to browse Amazon's library of content to purchase. The OLPC has a Firefox browser and it truly operates like it was meant to browse. The Kindle uses Whispernet from Amazon, which is quite impressive in its coverage. It is not painfully slow either. I have read GMail with the Kindle and checked basketball scores on NBA.com. I did a quick bit of math. If you are paying roughly $49 a month for an internet service provider, you could buy a Kindle and use Whispernet for free. After about eight months, your Kindle would have paid for itself in the savings you were shelling out for an ISP. I am not going to do this myself, but it is possible for low-volume browsing and internet useage. I am hoping the browser delivered in the Experimental section of the Kindle improves with time. I believe Amazon has a good opportunity to make this a very compelling device, even more than it already is. I do like the reading quality of the Kindle. The reading experience is excellent if you keep your thumbs off the sides. I have well-trained/controlled thumbs now. I have a Sony Reader as well and, I am sorry to say, that it just does not compete well with the Kindle's intuitiveness and readability.- OLPC and the Kindle - [via] Link.
Nice review of Best of MAKE! -
Much has been made of the rise of the geek thanks to the way in which computers have really come to define the personal experience of many in the 21st Century. Part of that perception just plays into a stereotype that has been around since before the advent of the computer age — so-called geeks are still presented as goofy guys sitting in rooms with physical ability beyond programming software.Best of MAKE - review - Link.Enter "The Best of Make," a compilation from Make Magazine that gathers not only 75 projects that almost anyone can try at home, but which also function as 75 reasons the stereotypes aren't worth paying attention to.
Fake0Name writes -
An evening of me assembling and doing some testing on two different projects at my job. The big board is part of a data aquisition system, The small is a motor controller. I designed them both. Note: Neither board is finished at the end of the video. The small one needs a chip (a MAXII CPLD), which I have to order, And the big one is having issues because apparently digikey sent the wrong voltage regulator. Fortunately, I caught the problem before the errant voltage (2v instead of 1.2) destroyed anything
Related:
HOW TO - SMD soldering (Surface mount devices) - Link.
Solder surface mount parts with a toaster oven... - Link.
Quick helper for surface-mount soldering - Link.
HOW TO - Make a surface mount soldering iron - Link.
HOW TO - Salvage surface mount components - Link.
Hot soldering action (videos) - Link.
Using SMT components in your electronics projects - Link.
Surface mounting with hand-soldering tools - Link.
Neat (and cheap) way to store stuff using PVC pipe - Link.
Related:
PVC Light box / light tent - Link.
Portable PVC conduit antenna mast - Link.
DIY PVC multiple guitar stand - Link.
More DIY Musical Instruments: PVC Recorder - Link.
Low power LED PVC flashlight - Link.
PVC Sprinkler water toy - The KidWash! - Link.
HOW TO - Make a PVC bike rack - Link.
More PVC -
