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November 7, 2009

Building a folding table

One problem with making lots of neat projects is that you need a place to display them. And, where could be better than on a table that you built yourself? A nice place to start might be this tutorial on building a folding table, by the folks at HandymanWire. I like their design because it can be made from a single piece of wood, and because it can be folded for storage or easy transportation. [via curbly]

Posted by Matt Mets | Nov 7, 2009 01:00 PM
Furniture | Permalink | Comments (0) | Suggest a Site

Maker Shed weekly wrap-up

A few more products were added to the Maker Shed lineup this week. We finally have more Danger Shields back in stock, along with a bunch of other new products. Earlier in the week, we posted another 45 second in the Maker Shed video, this time it was the Gakken Gennai Hiraga's Spark Generator. Last but not least, don't forget about our Chumby Guts, get 'em while you can!

The Chumby has landed!

Yesterday afternoon I arrived home to see a box on the doorstep. The return address was from the Maker Shed. That could only mean one thing: The Chumby has landed!

My daughter had to draw first blood on the package. We cracked the box and checked out the stuff inside. After going to the hypnotist show to benefit the school drama department and doing strange things on stage, I felt refreshed and motivated to assemble and play with Chumby guts until long past my bedtime.

I didn't take any photos, in large part because of the very helpful images already taken and posted to the MAKE Flickr Pool.

Build instructions are on one double sided sheet of paper. I missed it the first few times I looked through the box because I thought I would find a booklet. There is a link to the instructions pdf on the Chumby guts page in the Maker Shed. The directions are pretty good, but leave a bit to be desired. I found the photos by MAKE Flickr Pool members MTBFO and ewee to be essential. Early in the build, I was wondering which of two sets of small screws to use, and found that the silver ones were likely the ones by checking a photo. I also found the notes on many of ewee's pictures to be really useful.

So now there is a new tooltoy in the arsenal. This should be fun, and already the big question is "How do you case this thing?" Kent Barnes has extended the chumbilical cord that connects the mother and daughter boards and seems ready to move things around. John Park has a nifty laser-cut case. The box that it came in is sized about right for a first enclosure. The next case will probably be a cigar box, which is very alluring lately. You can clothe your naked Chumby guts by following these instructions.

As soon as it was plugged in, the disembodied Chumby woke up, started talking and showed a tour of the basic functions. Within a few minutes, it had upgraded the firmware and brought me to the website to register it. Finding the household wireless was a snap. Over on the Chumby wiki, you can find resources on hardware, software, and more.

In all, this has already been a fun project with few pitfalls. The next steps of customizing the case and configuring the software are exciting prospects at this point. Now that she's awake, my daughter is curious about how each of the widgets work. This will be a fun thing to have.

Have you got a some Chumby guts waiting to be animated? If you've already built yours, please weigh in with your tips and tricks by adding a comment or two. If you have a glamour shot to share or process set of pics, post them over to the MAKE Flickr pool.

In the Maker Shed:

Chumby Guts

Brainwave sofa by Unfold & Lucas Maassen

Brainwave-Sofa-By-Unfoldandlucas-Maassen-Yatzer 3
Brainwave sofa by Unfold & Lucas Maassen... modeled on your brainwaves! via BB.

The design of the Brainwave Sofa is driven by a brain scan. Brain wave activities are being recorded by an electroencephalograph by placing electrodes on the bare skin on the head. Via BioExplorer, a computer program that records biophysical data, processes and visualises it, a three dimensional waved landscape is generated. The x-axis shows the brain wave activities in hertz. The Y-axis shows the amount of activity in percentage. The Z-axis is the time expressed in milliseconds.

Full MIDI drumset with Guitar Hero and Rock Band drums

A demo on how to create an 11-piece MIDI drum kit using Rock Band and Guitar Hero drum sets together. It includes velocity-sensitive triggers and a high-hat open/close pedal.

Create a full MIDI Drumset with Guitar Hero and Rock Band Drums

Hole punched art

Images Holepunched
Gorgeous! ... and likely a future ad campaign for Staples or OfficeMax...

Steven Nicholson is a 2yr student at Plymouth university in the United Kingdom studying Graphic communications with typography. And apparently he is a genius with a hole punch? Check out this self portrait using 10 different sized single hole punches on a a1 piece of paper that he just sent over.

Portable induction accelerator

Here's an interesting take on a coil gun, by Russian YouTube user fuckertrezv. Not content to simply make a high-power electromagnetic device, he designed his to be portable and run on batteries. Once charged, he claims it is capable of accelerating metal rings to over 200 meters per second. It looks well-built, however no instructions are provided. [via hacked gadgets]

Make: Halloween Contest 2009 - WINNERS!

We had a great contest this year, with tons of awesome projects, and frankly we had a heckuva time picking winners. But the votes are all in now, and with the scores finally tabulated, I am pleased to announced the winners of the Make: Halloween Contest 2009.

The envelope please....

Third runner-up: Everett Bradford's "Prometheus Device"

Everett has won an F1 Evaluation Platform (valued at $39.99), plus a $50 Maker Shed gift certificate.

Second runner-up: Eric Kingston's "Silly String Shooting Pumpkin"

Eric has won a PICKIT 3 (valued at $69.99), plus a $50 Maker Shed gift certificate.

First runner-up: Ian Fagan's "Ghostbusters Proton Pack"

Ian has won a PICDEM Lab (valued at $124.99), plus a $50 Maker Shed gift certificate.

Grand Prize Winner: Jared Martin's "Mr. Bones and the Gourditos"

Jared has won a Microchip Starter Kit Bundle (valued at $600.00) which includes a PIC18 Starter Kit, a PIC24F Starter Kit, a dsPIC DSC Starter Kit, a PIC32 Starter Kit, a Memory Starter Kit, an F1 Evaluation Platform, and a PICKIT 3.

Congratulations to all our winners and, indeed, to everyone who entered! And thanks to our sponsor, Microchip Technology, for making the whole thing possible!

Happy Halloween!

Telescope camera mod

Craig Smith sent us these pics and note:

My telescope is low end in the scope-world, a 60mm refractor. But I discovered the eyepiece is the same size as my digital camera telephoto lens. My digital camera is low end in the camera world, too, a 3.2MP. But put them together with a custom PVC sleeve aligning lens-to-eyepiece, and I'm getting awesome moon shots. Here is the moon on 11/5/09. I added a camera support arm also, a quick adjustment of the tripod leg's wing nut, and I'm all aligned to photograph the skies.

The patented 18 button OpenOffice mouse?

Oomousep3
It's not April 1st, so I'm going to guess it's real. The patented 18 button OpenOffice mouse -

In partnership with the OpenOffice.org community, WarMouse announced the release of the OpenOfficeMouse, the first multi-button application mouse designed for the world's leading open-source office productivity suite. With a revolutionary and patented design featuring 18 buttons, an analog joystick, and support for as many as 52 key commands, the OpenOfficeMouse is intended to provide a faster and more efficient user interface for OpenOffice.org applications such as Writer and Calc than the conventional icons, pull-down menus, and hotkeys presently permit.
"You can do far more with this mouse than most people are likely to realize at first," said mouse designer Theodore Beale. "You can launch applications from the desktop, and in your browser you can fire up a specific Internet site with one button, then close it with a double-click on the same button. In Writer and Calc, you can have your most powerful and complicated macros on one row of buttons and simple functions like Bold, Undo, and Format Cell on another. It's very useful in games like World of Warcraft, because even without taking the joystick into account, you've got 16 commands within one click, 40 within two, and all 72 icons on the six action pages within just two double-clicks or less."

I'm hoping they consider the Chumby-style patent so others could improve on the hardware, perhaps adding more buttons.

Martian landscapes

Universal Site Graphics Blogs Bigpicture Mars 11 06 M04 43790925

Universal Site Graphics Blogs Bigpicture Mars 11 06 M11 02211420

Martian landscapes - The Big Picture @ Boston.com via Waxy.

Since 2006, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been orbiting Mars, currently circling approximately 300 km (187 mi) above the Martian surface. On board the MRO is HiRISE, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, which has been photographing the planet for several years now at resolutions as fine as mere inches per pixel. Collected here is a group of images from HiRISE over the past few years, in either false color or grayscale, showing intricate details of landscapes both familiar and alien, from the surface of our neighboring planet, Mars. I invite you to take your time looking through these, imagining the settings - very cold, dry and distant, yet real. (35 photos total)

November Make: Newsletter released

Yesterday we sent out our second issue of the new Make: Newsletter. It contains news of goings on at Maker Media, several original columns (including the second installment of my Maker's Dictionary column), and special Shed and magazine deals for newsletter subscribers only. Next month, we're even going to launch a mini-projects column.

You can subscribe (free) to the Make: Newsletter here.

Fake skylight uses solar panels to light LEDs

Wish you had a skylight, but don't have the ability to cut a hole in your roof? MAKE subscriber Chris did to, and wrote in to share his solution to the problem: a pv+led-based 'fake' skylight. The concept is pretty simple, but with a nice result. He had some unused capacity on his PV (photovoltatic) solar panel, and basically hooked up a bunch of high power LEDs directly to it. To achieve the 'skylight' look, he built a custom metal box with a glass diffuser screen, and mounted the diodes inside of it. He has a nice write-up on his site, along with a calculator to determine how the LEDs should be connected. Excellent work!

Eight-way toss-and-catch kinetic sculpture

This work by sculptor and musician Bradley N. Litwin, of Philadelphia, is called "The Octapult." In his words:

With 8 synchronized catapults, 160 plastic balls per minute are launched, caught, and recirculated. Made mostly of wood, the work is ~36 inches in diameter. On permanent display in the lobby of Lower Merion Elementary School, Merion Station, PA.

Reminder: Alex Rider book giveaway

As a special preview for our upcoming Alex Rider Dream Gadget Contest, we're giving away two copies of Eagle Strike by Anthony Horowitz, part of the Alex Rider series! Just leave a comment in this post and tell us why you or your kid(s) needs one of these books. That's all you need to do to enter! Please make sure you include your email address in the comment form field (it won't be published). All eligible comments will be closed by Noon PST on Sunday, November 8th. The winners will be announced next week on the site. Good luck!

More:

Claim virtual turf with real-life balls

Want to claim your city as your own? Competing with a rival gang for turf, and want to avoid messy knife fights? Well now you can, thanks to Urban Defender. Working over a short time period, a team of students from Zurich University of Arts built a system to claim buildings by throwing a specially equipped ball at them. Impacts are detected by an accelerometer connected to an Arduino, which is wirelessly connected to a Beagle board which uses a GPS to coordinate the hit to a specific address.

They apparently didn't have time to finish the multi-player version of the game, but I think the concept is too good to let die. Someone should definitely hook this up to the social networking game foursquare. As a bonus, you could use the sensor units to play the actual game four square when you get tired of fighting for turf.

Really narrow car

4RWF V8.jpg

Look, Ma, it's a motorcycle with four wheels. Not a bike but, um... a "quike," maybe? It's the 4RWF V8 from "Cosmos" Muscle Bikes. ("Cosmos?" Really?) Four wheels or no, they're at least going to have to hire a copy editor for their website before they'll persuade me to part with the nearly $100K it reportedly costs. [via Born Rich]

3D printed glasses LED clip

Conrad2468 on Thingiverse printed this LED clip for his glasses. Great for reading, soldering, and face tracking (use an IR LED for that one).

How-To: Make a Star Trek Bluetooth Communicator

Usually I write about ham radio. But looking at communication devices of the future from the past, I thought it would be fun to have a Star Trek: The Original Series Bluetooth communicator for a cellphone. I worked with Dave Clausen to hack one together from a toy Star Trek communicator, a Bluetooth module, and a microcontroller. Following are the directions and program to make your own. And of course a video to show how the Star Trek Bluetooth Communicator works.

And if you really want to geek it up, the Star Trek Bluetooth Communicator can also be used with the Yaesu VX-8R ham radio. It also makes an awesome gift. Read on for the full tutorial.

Read full story

Online servo database with user reviews

A reader just sent me a link to servodatabase.com, which lists RC servo specifications and provides user reviews, a comparison engine, and various forms of sorting. Looks like a very good resource. [Thanks, Phil!]