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Check out Jess Gibson's rather excellent documentary which takes a depper look at the avid
community of grown-ups who enjoy building in colorful plastic brick. Maybe I'm a bit out of touch
here but - do some people really consider an interest in LEGO something to be a shamed of
nowadays? Guess I'd assumed we were well past that point. [via The Stretta Procedure]
NIKO is a collaborative effort
to build a Twitter-controlled robot as part of the Noika PUSH N900 Mod in the USA campaign.
Recently team member Eric posted
this short video showing his progress.
At the end of Sunday I got the N900 posting to Twitter, taking a photo with flash on, posting
to TwitPic, and even got the Lego components working! Here's a video of Niko's first completely
automated movement, camera capture, touch sensor, and posting using just the N900! Read more |
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Minneapolis maker Michael Krumpus, who also sells the EZ-Expander in the Maker's Market, created this lovely
mood lamp made out of
LEDs, an Arduino Duemilanove, and glass vials he bought from the Twin Cities' legendary Ax-Man
surplus store.
This is a mood lamp I build using 16 LEDs of different colors and small glass vials. The square
bottoms of the vials look a lot like glass block, and the glass diffuses and scatters the light in
beautiful ways. The software shows random patterns of light and the brightness of each LED can vary
-- they aren't simply "on" or "off". The Arduino code is pretty complex
because it implements PWM (pulse-width modulation) for all 16 LEDs. The Arduino board only has 5
PWM-capable pins, so providing PWM for all 16 pins is accomplished purely in the code. The lamp
randomly displays different lighting patterns and can be really mesmerizing.
Digg talks about the motivation for supporting open standards based authentication options in the
next version of the site, including Google, Yahoo, OpenID, and Twitter.
Who hasn't looked at the night sky and asked in awe, "How can I capture that?" A motor-driven
star tracker won't let you grab a star, but it will let a camera track the movement of the stars so
you can take spectacular photos. The trick involves setting the proper tracking rate and pointing
the motor in the proper direction. Camera ready ... "Beam us up, Scotty." Read more |
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I love all of the instructional videos that are now available online. At this point, there are
probably very few trades where you couldn't get a decent starter education in the subject just by
studying videos (and other materials) at trade association websites, online trade mags, and
YouTube channels.
The Copper Development Association is producing an excellent video series called Do It Proper
With Copper which illustrates proper techniques for joining and using copper in different
architectural and plumbing apps. Dig those giant 8lb "soldering coppers" (irons) in the above
"Copper Sheet Fabrication" video (which, as the vid points out, actually only weigh four pounds
-- they're rated in pairs). [Thanks, Dale!]
Looking to take a break from tinkering on your latest project this weekend? Here are some fine
maker events to check out, from The Maker Events
Calendar. Wish your event was on the list? Add it to the calendar!
When I visited my cousin last week, his daughter Neeka Mashouf (age 13) and two of her classmates
(Nicole Bronstein and Sydney Schonefeld) were deeply engaged in creating a stop-motion animation
film for a class project, complete with a homemade stage and camera platform. The assignment was
to explain and show examples of Newton's three Laws of Motion in a creative way. They chose clay
as their medium and did all their stitching and editing in iMovie. It was fun to hear them talk
about their learning process. When they first started, they weren't capturing small enough
motions in each frame and the flow was coming out choppy. They went back to the drawing board and
this is what they came up with. Way more dynamic than any presentation I remember doing for
science class in 8th grade. It's exciting to see what this next generation of makers is crafting.
Our pals at Jigsaw Renaissance are looking for new
members so they can afford a new hackspace.
Director Willow Brugh sent us the following:
Jigsaw is a group of multi-disciplinary individuals with a desire to educate themselves and
others. We band together to share space, tools, ideas, and motivation. It doesn't matter who you
are or what you want to do - we want to help you do it*
Why we need a new space: we're currently housed under the West Seattle bridge,
amongst construction and loud transportation. We found a space in Seattle's First
Hill which would be perfect : high ceilings, concrete floors (covered with a thin layer of
carpet), kind neighbors, bus lines, etc. It's big and it's gorgeous.
Why we need your help: Unlike many hacker and maker spaces in the US, Jigsaw is
member supported. We make our rent by all pitching in. To make this new space work, we need more members. While we have the
money to move into the space, we don't have the membership to support it sustainably. We're about
$900 shy per month (which seems like a lot, but we started with a third of the membership base we
needed to move in, gained another third in the last week, and are now left with the remainder).
If you're in Seattle, please consider joining up. Details can be found here on becoming a member.
In the Make: Online Toolbox, we focus mainly on tools that fly under the radar of more
conventional tool coverage: in-depth tool-making projects, strange or specialty tools unique to a
trade or craft that can be useful elsewhere, tools and techniques you may not know about, but
once you do, and incorporate them into your workflow, you'll wonder how you ever lived without
them. And, in the spirit of the times, we pay close attention to tools that you can get on the
cheap, make yourself, or refurbish.
In 1994, I wrote a book called Mosaic Quick Tour: Accessing and Navigating the World Wide
Web. It was, arguably, the first book dedicated the the World Wide Web. The publisher,
Ventana, wanted it to be the first, so they wanted it fast, really fast. I wrote it in 30 days. I
did literally nothing but eat, sleep, and write that book for a month, all in a very crappy,
bottomed-out, office store "task chair." I like to tell people that I sacrificed my right hip to
that book. I have bad arthritis and my hip was already shot, but I had a hip before the book, and
it was pretty much history by the time I was done. I had to have a replacement. It was stupid to
not get a better chair during the writing marathon, but I had tight deadlines every day and
didn't feel like I ever had the time to go shopping. But literally the day the book was finished,
I went to a "bed and back" story and blew about $1300 of my book advance on an amazing chair with
crazy amounts of adjustability and lumbar and neck support. From then on, I've never skimped on
my seating. And neither should you.
We asked a bunch of our readers and staff, through mailing lists and our Facebook page, for input on chairs and work stools.
Here's some of what they had to say. Hands down, the chair-of-note is still the Herman Miller
Aeron. But there were a few others. And one suggestion for no sitting at all.
Chairs
For the past ten years or so, I've had a Herman Miller Aeron Chair ($920) for desk
work and I love it. I'm not alone. Lots of people responded with enthusiastic thumbs-up for the
Aeron. Andrew Righter, of Q Labs, said: "I'm a simple man.
And there's nothing better than this chair." ChopSey, of HacDC,
adds: "it's all about the air flow, configurability, and easing of any pressure points." Dorkbot DC Overlord Alberto Gaitán says: I concur.
I've used an Aeron for almost 15 years and wouldn't buy another chair that isn't fully and
adjustable, with lumbar support, and a mesh seat so one doesn't eventually end up bottoming out."
MAKE contributor Alden Hart writes: "In the tech bubble days, we used an "Aeron Count" as a
predictive indicator of startup failure. The more Aerons, the greater the likelihood of failure.
That said, I love my Aeron, and so does my wife. Got cheap from a failed startup!" HacDC member
Ben Stanfield writes: "As the token fat geek, it might be good to include a couple of options for
those of us who are, euphemistically speaking, "big boned." Of course, that would require
actually finding a decent chair for us, something I've yet to come across. The Aeron is probably
the closest in terms of comfort."
About a year ago I was wandering around Maker Faire Bay Area thinking about polymerization.
Collin had recently posted his
now-world-famous cymatics video, and I was standing around talking to the TAP plastics folks about whether it might be possible to
"freeze" cymatic forms by applying the sound waves to some kind of polymer resin that could then
be solidifed, almost instantaneously, by adding a drop or two of catalyst. I had, you will not be
surprised to learn, been drinking heroic amounts of coffee.
But in the subsequent process of researching fast polymerization reactions, I came across an
intriguing term: Explosive polymerization. Visions of exploding goo bombs pushed schemes
for freezing cymatics to the back-burner, and I started Googling around excitedly, seeking the
inevitable YouTube video that would show me exactly what an "explosive polymerization" looked
like, and if it was as exciting as it sounded.
As far as I can tell, they're aren't any.
Moreover, textual information in the tubes is scanty. The phrase appears in the abstracts of a
few articles in polymer science journals, and in safety warnings associated with certain
chemicals that are prone to explosively polymerize and with those that are prone to initiate the
process. (Including some
safety nightmares that are in both categories.) Inevitably it's considered as, you know, a
bad thing. An uncontrolled, useless, and probably dangerous process to be avoided if at all
possible.
And I'm sure that's all true. But it sounds really neat. And I want to see it.
I mean, taking proper precautions, I can set off a firecracker or other small
conventional explosive, film it, show it off to others, and generally have a good time
learning something about the natural world. And even though I've got a graduate degree in organic
chemistry, I know comparatively little about polymers, and I'm not about to start experimenting
without advice from somebody who knows what from what-not.
So I'm crowd-sourcing the problem. Is there a specialist in the house who knows something about
explosive polymerization? And if so, can you tell me: What is the polymerization analog of a
small firecracker? Some kind of diminutive goo-bomb that will go off impressively but without
injuring bystanders or spraying horrible toxins everywhere? I mean theoretically, of
course. I can't promise to actually do anything unless I can satisfy myself it's really safe, but
maybe somebody can point me in the right direction?
Last weekend, I had the great fortune to visit All Hands
Active, an up-and-coming hackerspace in Ann Arbor, Michigan. When I arrived, they were just
wrapping up a planning meeting for the upcoming Ann
Arbor Mini Maker Faire. They have some excellent plans in the works, but made me promise not
to spill the beans. Afterwards, they showed me some of their current projects, including:
The open source washing machine project aims to rethink
the way we wash clothes around the world, in accordance with economical, sociological, cultural and
environemental aspects. Most of the people in this planet, mostly women, wash clothes by hand in
harsh conditions related to poverty, lack of sanitation, water or energy.
The OSWash project seeks to develop different technologies for different climates and societal
contexts. For instance, one country might have plentiful fresh water but less sunlight, whereas
another environment might put water recycling at the top of the list of needs. Part of the
problem is that many solutions that are cheap by our standards (for instance, using a
Freeduino-based controller) still make the system too expensive for areas that could truly use a
DIY washing machine. [via openMaterials]
This past weekend, Digg CEO Jay Adelson revealed that the social news site is working on a complete overhaul that
will be rolled out over the coming weeks and months. Today, the company provided a sneak peek of
one of the major additions: the ability to login to the site using a variety of third-party
services.
In addition to supporting your Digg and Facebook accounts (which the site already does), Digg
plans to let you use your Twitter, Google, Yahoo, or OpenID accounts. Here’s what that
screen will look like:
Digg says they decided to start with those services based on finding out which services that
their members already use. The data offers some interesting insight into the Digg audience and
its overlap with other online communities and services:
This is just one of many things Digg hopes will spur a new wave of growth at the site, but it
could be a key piece. The company says in a blog post that its Facebook Connect integration increased registrations by
20-30 percent.
They let me loose in the Maker Shed, so I grabbed a tinyCylon
kit, built it, and embedded it in a busted Nerf gun! Please enjoy the video, and watch out
for the noisy lamp.
To modify the kit for flexibility, I soldered the LEDs in at full height; you could extend things
further by adding some wire between the switch and board, or make an extension for the battery
pack. I'd love to hear about other kit modifications people have done.
These kits are great for adding effects to props and costumes. For more details on building the
kit, check out Marc de Vinck's excellent build notes here.
Sequoia Capital partner Mark Kvamme, citing examples from campaigns run on Funny or Die and
AdMob, told an audience of marketers at OMMA Global in San
Francisco today, “If you can harness social media marketing, you don’t have to pay
for advertising any more.”
Kvamme, whose
experience in advertising dates back to the 1980s, when he led advertising agency CKS Group,
justified his argument using Neil Borden’s “Marketing Mix” theory. He said Borden’s
elements of promotion — advertising, direct marketing, PR, point of sale and word of mouth
— are still valid for marketers today, just in different ways.
The biggest difference can be found in the word of mouth category, said Kvamme, who subsequently
called it a tremendous — and cheap — opportunity. “If you take what’s
going on on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on Digg, the masses are starting to make their own
media, and it’s basically free,” he noted. “So if you can figure out how to
work in this world, you can get your message out very quickly.”
Funny or Die’s (one of Kvamme’s Sequoia
investments) recent Presidential
Reunion, which brought together actors who’d portrayed U.S. presidents throughout the
years on “Saturday Night Live” at a cost of $20,000 (primarily flying all the
participants in), according to Kvamme, yielded some 3 million views.
Presidential Reunion was a bit of a passion project for Funny or Die co-founder Will Ferrell, but
Kvamme also pointed to last summer’s relatively unsuccessful movie “The Goods”
starring Jeremy Piven (and produced by Funny or Die co-founder Adam McKay), the expected box
office returns for which were lifted 15 percent through a Funny or Die campaign including prizes
for retweets on Twitter (which led to the movie becoming a Twitter trending topic), featuring on
the front page of Funny or Die and its Facebook fan page, two appearances on the front-page of
Digg for custom Funny or Die content, live-tweeting from the premiere and a live conversation
with McKay on Ustream. It generated “several million dollars in sales for something [the
studio] probably didn’t pay Funny or Die enough for,” said Kvamme.
But the next big opportunity is in mobile, said Kvamme, using AdMob to illustrate (again, another Sequoia company, but at least one
that’s had a successful exit, with Google beating out Apple to buy it for $750 million). With
more than twice the global penetration of the Internet, mobile — especially smartphones
— represent an opportunity to harken back to that “Marketing Mix” theory,
because they can encapsulate all the elements of promotion from one single screen that’s
attached to its owner at all times. An AdMob campaign for the movie “Wolfman” had ads
on mobile media sites ad within applications that users could click on in order to get more
information, share it with their friends, buy tickets directly and set up a mobile calendar
alert.
Sure, Kvamme is pitching his own investments here, but to his credit he said that one of his
favorite and most-visited sites is search.twitter.com, for keeping up with what people are
talking about online. He also talked about Facebook’s opportunity to become the new mass
media — with half its 400 million users logging in every day, “that’s almost
like what broadcast television was 20 or 30 years ago” — and to dominate and grow the
market if it ever does launch its own payment platform inside its trusted environment, just as
PayPal revolutionized eBay.
Here's a fun thing to do with an older robot that you aren't sure what to do with: turn it into a musical instrument! Using a motor to
make music is nothing new, however this approach by LMR user RobotFreak is nice because you can
try it without building any new hardware. This technique works because you can turn a motor on
and off very quickly, causing it to act like a speaker.
Have you always wanted to build a robot but didn't know how? Have you always wanted to turn those
old Debbie Gibson CDs into something useful? Got a use for a $500 gift card? For all these
reasons and more, you should check out The Make: Robot Build Contest. As we announced last week,
the contest will officially start on March 27th, but we'll send out the first Make: Robot
Build Newsletter this Friday, and each Wednesday after that. The contest will run through
May 7th. We'll be running robot build tutorials here on the site (and in the newsletter) until
the contest ends. The build and the contest are designed to appeal to robot enthusiasts of any
skill level, so even if you haven't built a bot before, don't hesitate to join in! We're even
going to give points to those who seem to improve/learn the most during the build process.
You can sign up for the newsletter right here:
Name:
Email:
My original post about the contest is here.
The official landing page for the contest is here.
A convenient parts bundle, put together by contest sponsors Jameco, can be purchased here.
Hydrogen peroxide, H2O2, is not something most people normally think of as "fuel." After all,
it's got no carbon in it. Most people know that, as an oxidizer, it can enhance the burning rate
of fuels, but the familiar "fire triangle" teaches us that combustion requires both an oxidizer
and a fuel, plus a source of ignition, to get started. Turns out, depending on how
concentrated it is, hydrogen peroxide can, under the right conditions, explode all on its own.
The 3% aqueous solution in your medicine cabinet is completely safe, but the hazards increase
rapidly as the amount of H2O2 goes up and the amount of H2O goes down. Up around 85% peroxide,
the stuff is literally rocket fuel, and its spontaneous decomposition in the presence of a
catalyst like, say, metallic silver or manganese dioxide, happens incredibly fast. The rocket
motor in Wendell Moore's famous Bell Rocket Belt (Wikipedia) operated on this principle.
Shown above is a video of the Dragonfly DF1, an experimental aircraft under development by
Swisscopter US. Instead of a traditional gasoline
engine, the Dragonfly has peroxide-powered rocket engines on the tips of its main blades, with a
mechanical take-off to drive the tail-rotor. Large tanks of high-test peroxide supposedly provide
50 minutes of flight at 40 mph.
So why would anyone want a helicopter that works this way? Turns out an H2O2 rocket motor is
vastly simpler than a gasoline engine, mechanically, and thus (at least theoretically) less
failure-prone, and therefore safer. All you need to make an H2O2 rocket is a tank of high-test
peroxide, another tank of inert gas to pressurize it, and a nozzle with a silver-coated screen to
spray the stuff through. [via DVICE]
Seller Moonlight Bindery
offers these cool hand-stitched books with upcycled green Lego baseplate covers in three
different sizes. Shown here is the small version.
This funky book is made from two 5" (16 X 16 dot in geek speak) square green LEGOÂ@ base
plates. The paper is 70 lb. 100% recycled white paper suitable for writing or drawing. There are
10 signatures with 8 pages a signature for a total of 80 pages (or 160 if you count front and
back sides.) Also included are 20 flat LEGOÂ@ pieces (the pieces may differ from the
picture) AND a LEGOÂ@ separator so you can create the cover of your choice! ...All of my
books and albums are made by hand in my home-based studio. So my creations will last I use acid
free paper, cloth, and glue.
The MidiVox
shield turns a basic Arduino board into a standalone MIDI synthesizer with parameters
tweakable via MIDI CC messages. Hook up a MIDI keyboard controller via the onboard 5-pin DIN (aka
MIDI) jack, upload a sketch and play. You may be surprised what sweet sounds can be generated by
a single channel of 12-bit digital-to-analog conversion (I definitely was).
A test drive of the kit's example sketch can be seen synthing just below this sentence ...
If you'll recall, there was a lot of industry flap when DVRs were becoming available because of
the effect that automatic pre-recording of programming would have on TV advertising. Automatic
commercial-skipping features introduced the possibility that viewers could watch TV for the rest
of their lives and never have to see another ad. ReplayTV, an early and promising competitor to
Tivo, was basically destroyed by industry legal action over its automatic commercial-skipping
feature. The fact that you have to fast-forward through commercials on your Tivo today, using
that clunky pop-goes-the-weasel scan routine, is basically a concession to TV advertisers who
would not abide a system that didn't require you to at least watch the ads on fast-forward.
But there is an easier and better way. And while it may be old news to some of you, it was a
revelation to me and all my Tivo-using friends when we discovered that there's an unadvertised
instant-30-second-advance feature built into the Tivo that can be activated by a simple "cheat
code" from the remote.
While playing a recorded show, press select-play-select-3-0-select. If you do it
right, you'll hear three chimes from your Tivo indicating success. From then on until the Tivo
reboots, your forward "chapter skip" button will instantly jump forward 30 seconds, which is the
length of a single TV commercial. If the announcer says "we'll be back in 90 seconds," just punch
it three times and they'll be back right now.
This
article at Lifehacker describes the process, and includes similar tricks for Comcast and
DirecTV DVRs. Thanks to Melody Klingler and Benjamin Bagnaschi for helping me verify that it
works.
The OCC project arose from our need to shoot HDR images for film production using Canon
cameras. Canon has stubbornly chosen to stick to its standard 3-shot method for bracketing shots -
one metered shot and two additional shots one or two stops above and below the metered shot. For
texture shooting, it is sometimes necessary to shoot 5,7,9 or even 11 or more stops of bracketing
around the metered exposure. We've since found that the OCC system can work with other brands like
Olympus and Sigma cameras.
The iPhone is a direct descendant of the Model T Ford -- you can get one in any color you want,
so long as it's black (or white). That's the viewpoint of Peter Semmelhack, founder and CEO of Bug
Labs, whose modular, open-source hardware company aims to fix that shortcoming by making it easier
for people and companies to create their own electronics products using a Linux processor module, a
camera module, a touchscreen LCD module and so on. Read more |
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source hardware |
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This University of Wisconsin-Madison how-to describes the process of making OLEDs.
If anyone follows this tutorial and creates some OLEDs, send us a link, we'd love to hear more!
[via openMaterials via Erik DeBruijn]
Nice to see our friends who are involved in the Handcar
Regatta, namely those behind the Screaming
Vortex (above) and the Hennepin Crawler, get a
little high-brow attention. They, along with some other awesome Regatta rigs, are on display at
the University Art Gallery at
Sonoma State University, in Rohnert Park, CA until March 4th.
Rob Carlson, author of Biology is Technology: The promise, perils, and new business of
engineering life, was recently in the Bay Area to deliver a talk to the California Assembly
Select Committee on Biotechnology. His presentation focused on the role of small businesses and
garage hackers in innovating the new bioeconomy. You can see his slides here.
While he was in the area, he visited some folks doing biology hacking in their garages. On his
blog, he writes:
I spent most of one Saturday hanging out at a garage biology lab in Silicon Valley. When I
walked in the door, I was impressed by the sophistication of the set-up. The main project is
screening for anti-cancer compounds (though it wasn't clear to me whether this meant small
molecules or biologics), and the people involved have skillzzz and an accumulation of used/surplus
equipment to accomplish whatever they want; two clean/cell-culture hoods, two biorobots (one of
which is being reverse engineered), incubators, plate readers, and all the other doodads you might
need. They aren't messing around. I didn't get into the details of the project, but the combination
of equipment, pedigree, and short conversations with the participants told me all I needed to know.
That doesn't mean they will be successful, of course, just that I believe they are yet another
example of what can be attempted in a garage. This sort of effort is where new jobs, new economic
growth, and, most importantly, desperately needed new technologies come from. Garage innovation is
at the heart of the way Silicon Valley works, and it is envied around the world.
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