Don't put away those Christmas light yet! - Running Christmas lights from batteries
MAKE Magazine, Today, 5:00am
Arduino on stripboard
Why would you make an Arduino on stripboard? The maker has a hard time getting PCB's made where he lives. Check out the site for details about the build. As a special bonus, you can see what happens when you solder a capacitor in backwards. BOOM! Read more...
MAKE Magazine, Today, 5:00am
Kyle Fokken: Visceral artist
Kyle Fokken makes amazing mixed media sculptures. Check out the gallery section on his website to see a lot more of these beautiful artworks. Read more...
MAKE Magazine, Today, 4:00am
Subject to interpretation: A Maker's Notebook tale
Jason writes in... I thought you and the rest of the MAKE team might enjoy this story. I had been wanting one of your notebooks for quite some time, and I finally received one as a birthday gift from my wife back in October. She does not fully appreciate my fascination with your blog and is often amused by the eccentric project ideas I get from your website. As a result, she really does not know what the notebook is for or why I thought it would be so cool to have one. Last week, she came out into the kitchen, took me by the hand, and led me to the place where I was last using the book. When we arrived at our destination, she pointed to the notebook and said: "I am pretty sure that is NOT what they meant by 'Maker's Notebook'."... Read more...
MAKE Magazine, Today, 3:00am
Ice mask, reading machine and build a glider-copter
Good project for remake... maybe. Mechanix Illustrated - 1947 Read more...
MAKE Magazine, Today, 3:00am
Make: Flickr pool weekly roundup
From the MAKE: Flickr pool Read more...
MAKE Magazine, Yesterday, 11:00pm
Twitter IRC server, tircd
tircd is an ircd proxy for talking to the Twitter API. It should work with any standard IRC client. After running the Perl script, you authenticate to the IRC server using your Twitter username as your /nick. Join the room #twitter and the /topic will be set to your last update. Any message you type [...] Read more...
Hack a Day, Yesterday, 10:43pm
Wikipedia over DNS
David Leadbeater created a service that distributes Wikipedia entries over DNS using TXT records. Simply looking up a TXT record for any subdomain of his service will pull a summary of the Wikipedia entry for the title of the same name. Read more...
MAKE Magazine, Yesterday, 9:00pm
Parts: Digital proximity sensor (Sharp GP2Y0D02)
The GP2Y0D02 is an infrared proximity sensor with a detection field that extends 80cm. This type of sensor can be used to build collision avoidance systems for robots. We’ll demonstrate this sensor using a single resistor and a multimeter.
Sharp GP2Y0D02 fixed 80cm IR proximity detector (Digikey #425-2064-ND, $14.38). Datasheet (PDF).
The GP2Y0D02 requires a 5volt power [...] Read more...
Hack a Day, Yesterday, 7:08pm
Scavenging motors from washing machines
Here's a useful tutorial on how to harvest a motor from a waching machine, including a section on how to use bridge rectifiers to produce DC from an AC motor. Supposedly these are ideal for driving wind generators, so check out your wind exposure, make an inexpensive generator, and start charging some batteries!
(via hack a day) Read more...
MAKE Magazine, Yesterday, 7:00pm
Next Dorkbot SoCal, Jan 10
My friend Thomas Edwards, Dorkbot DC founder and former Overlord (now living in LA), wrote to tell us about the next Dorkbot SoCal meeting on January 10, featuring three bio-inspired artists.
Deborah Aschheim (above) creates works that blur biology and technology, exploring concepts of memory, architecture, and neural networks through drawings, sculpture, writing, installation and sounds. Read more...
MAKE Magazine, Yesterday, 5:10pm
Light to sound converter circuit
From the MAKE: Flickr pool Read more...
MAKE Magazine, Yesterday, 5:00pm
Homebrew on the PSP3000
[matiaz] has released an exploit which allows homebrew on the PSP3000. It takes advantage of a vulnerability when loading save games on a game called GripShift. You can see the PSP running unsigned code in the video.
[thanks wraggy]
Read more...
Hack a Day, Yesterday, 3:24pm
Natural alternatives to on-demand lighting
Here's a brief overview of non-oil light-producing options from the authors of The Carbon-Free Home. In part:
Increasing the natural daylight in your home is something to take into consideration if you find from your energy diary that you need to turn lights on during the daytime. We are fortunate that our house, designed in the 1930s, has no issues with dark rooms. Every bathroom has a window and every hall has natural light. But some condominiums, apartments, and splitlevel or ranch houses we've seen have a serious lack of daylight. Read more...
MAKE Magazine, Yesterday, 1:00pm
7 color hand held laser projector
[rog8811] sent in this really cool hack where he used the optics sled from a PS3 as a foundation for a 7 color hand held laser projector. Combining a green laser, a blue ray laser, and a red laser, he is able to produce a variety of color including white. There are step by step [...] Read more...
Hack a Day, Yesterday, 12:13pm
FIRST Robotics competition announced
FIRST Robotics competition announced... via /. Read more...
MAKE Magazine, Yesterday, 12:00pm
The Secret Life of Death Clouds
Matt Jones contemplates life by building moving sculptures that fail to replicate it. A graduate student in art at Stanford University, his investigations have led him, among other things, to use an air compressor to animate a respiratory system fashioned from old bicycle inner tubes, and to motorize a carpet of zip ties laced with LEDs to approximate a pulsing, gently respiring, furry hide. His goal: to tease out the vital essence that makes the living live. Read more...
MAKE Magazine, Yesterday, 10:27am
Host a MAKE: television screening event!
Build your own Burrito Blaster Read more...
MAKE Magazine, Yesterday, 10:00am
Penny postcards
USGenWeb, a genealogy site, has a really cool collection of penny postcards, organized by state. I love looking at the old structures - can you imagine driving on this bridge?
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Read more articles in Arts | Read more...
MAKE Magazine, Yesterday, 10:00am
Update on the Twittering power usage project
A lot of folks emailed me about our "Not New Year's resolutions - What are you going to MAKE? What we are making..." How many startups and projects are going to be doing power usage and metering in 2009? TONS - and now many of them seem to be looking at Twitter to pass the information along too.
Here's the latest, we're using a supercap, the Xbee is still parasitic (getting its power from the Kill-a-Watt). This is the one time that a supercap is... Read more...
MAKE Magazine, Yesterday, 9:05am
USB powered soldering iron helps you do projects on the road
MAKE Magazine, Yesterday, 7:00am
mTABLE: Designing furniture with a cell phone
It's amazing that just a few years ago a cell phone was the size of a suitcase. Now you have a camera, calendar, video and music player, all jammed into a phone that easily fits in your pocket. What's next? Well, maybe it's mobile furniture design? I really like the manufacturing process and final results. Check out the link for a lot more examples of tables deigned on a phone. Read more...
MAKE Magazine, Yesterday, 6:00am
Simple PIR motion sensing
One of our readers sent us a link to this very simple PIR circuit. It's a really easy way to conserve battery life on any interactive project. Check out the link for a circuit diagram and more information. Read more...
MAKE Magazine, Yesterday, 5:00am
MPGuino: Open source instrumentation
This is a great open source MPG instrument for your car. It's based on the Arduino micro-controller along with a few other sensors. I really like all these open-source projects that are springing up all over the place. Amazing! Read more...
MAKE Magazine, Yesterday, 4:30am
Parallel parking system
Autoblog dug up this classic mechanical engineering project from 2006. A team of five University of Toledo students constructed a system to help parallel park a car. First, you drive nose first into the space. Hydraulic rams then lower the drive wheel out of the trunk, raising the rear of the car. The single wheel [...] Read more...
Hack a Day, Jan 4, 8:18pm
Hacking at Random 2009 call for papers
With the Chaos Communication Congress concluded, it’s time to start looking towards the next massive European hacker event. This means Hacking at Random August 13-16th in the Netherlands. It’s a four day long camp experience that will feature many conference talks, interactive projects, and more.
The team has selected three tracks in their official call for [...] Read more...
Hack a Day, Jan 4, 7:00pm
Welcome to MAKE... Make: television coverage around the web
Make: television debuted 1/3/2009 7am PST online and on public television (broadcast / cable tv). The series encourages everyone to invent, revent, recycle, upcycle, and act up. Based on the popular Make magazine, each half-hour episode hopes to inspire viewers to think, create, and, well, make. Each episode can be viewed or downloaded DRM-free, in HD on makezine.tv - the show is also available on Vimeo, YouTube, blip.tv and iTunes - We're pretty... Read more...
MAKE Magazine, Jan 4, 5:20pm
Light to sound converter
[Alex] built what he calls a light to sound converter. It reacts differently depending on the type of light: remote controls, light bulbs, TV screens, etc. A photodiode is used with an amplifier to pick up the light change. That signal is dumped through a dual opamp. He swapped in several different types of photodiodes [...] Read more...
Hack a Day, Jan 4, 1:16pm
Tiny projector teardown
The team from Tech-On has taken the time to teardown two interesting microprojectors. The first model they tackled was the Optoma PK101. It’s based around a digital micromirror device (DMD) like those used in DLP. Separate high intensity red, green, and blue LEDs provide the light source. A fly-eye style lens reduces variations between images. [...] Read more...
Hack a Day, Jan 4, 10:30am
Game Boy Pocket backlight
[palmertech] and [Bibin] have both completed backlight projects for the Game Boy Pocket recently. The most difficult part of the transplant is carefully removing the reflective backing on the LCD. After a thorough cleaning, a diffuser and backlight panel were added. [palmertech] used a backlight salvaged from a DS, while [Bibin] built his own using [...] Read more...
Hack a Day, Jan 4, 9:00am