For the price of a cheap date you could pick up Via’s new APC all-in-one computer. It’s about the size of a smartphone and about as powerful. It comes with Android 2.3 pre-installed, so it could make a decent media streamer or Android development platform. It comes without a case, but conforms to the mini-ITX and MicroATX formats. They’re taking pre-orders and expect to ship in July. [via geek.com]
Posted by Adam Flaherty | Wednesday May 23rd, 2012 2:00 AM
Categories: Android, Technology, Uncategorized | No Comments
Make: Asks is a new weekly column where we ask you, our readers, for responses to maker-related questions. We hope the column will spark interesting conversation and that we’ll get to know more about each other.
When using an XBee for the first time, I found that if I tried to run the “Hello World” code, I could only get my flashing LED to work if I unplugged one of my indicator LEDs, and vice versa. After going through what I thought was every possible troubleshooting measure, it turned out the culprit was a weak solder joint where the power was coming through. It provided enough juice for just a couple of LEDs, but no more than that. It took a while to figure out but it was one of my most maddening problems to fix.
This week’s question: What was a bug or tricky problem on a project you’ve done, and what did you finally do to figure it out and get it working?
Post your responses in the comments section.
Posted by Michael Colombo | Tuesday May 22nd, 2012 12:00 PM
Categories: DIY Projects, Electronics, MAKE Asks | 9 Comments
Garrett Mace was rocking a pair of LED matrix glasses at Maker Faire:
The shades are a 20×6 matrix (with some pixels missing of course) driven by SPI from an integrated Arduino-compatible in the right temple. There is a Lithium-Polymer battery on the left temple. You can charge the glasses through USB, and download new code to it over the same connection. A button on the right temple allows switching between modes or auto cycling animated patterns.
[via HaD]
Posted by John Baichtal | Tuesday May 22nd, 2012 11:00 AM
Categories: Electronics, Wearables | 1 Comment
It was fun to see people expressing themselves at Maker Faire with colorful clothes and accessories. (See Part 1)
Posted by Mark Frauenfelder | Tuesday May 22nd, 2012 10:00 AM
Categories: Maker Faire, Uncategorized | 10 Comments
Found on Totalgeekdom.com: this awesome wall and ceiling build area, which consists of Lego plates stuck onto convenient surfaces.
I’m an avid Lego geek; I love sitting down for a build session whenever I can fit one in. This often means pulling out the bins of Lego bricks and clearing a spot on the floor or a table and having at it. With bricks flying and hands madly building it’s only a short time before robots, dinosaurs and all kinds of fun Lego creations are scurrying about. The downside to this fun is at the end of a build session you have to clean up and put away the bin of Lego bricks and even….gasp… disassemble your new creations! The horror.
The solution to this problem seemed simple enough; just build a dedicated area for Lego play and building. Only one small hitch, my house isn’t big enough to devote an area for just Lego play. So I started thinking, I needed an area that I could use as a Lego build area and never take it down, but I didn’t have any more space. This got me thinking further, what about my walls? Why couldn’t I just get some Lego plates and stick them to the wall and build on the wall, seems like that could be pretty cool way to do it. I toyed around with this idea in my head a little bit and eventually decided that if I was going to build a permanent Lego area on the wall I wanted it to be both functional and aesthetically pleasing.
Posted by John Baichtal | Tuesday May 22nd, 2012 8:30 AM
Master costume maker, Shawn Thorsson, wowed the crowds at Maker Faire Bay Area again this year with his impressive Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine costumes. It was amazing, especially being a 40K player, to see these giant armor-clad, genetically-modified super humans patrolling the aisles of Expo Hall. This is the first time these costumes have been seen in public. I can imagine that the folks at sci-fi and game cons will go nuts over them. During the packing up, I took these pics of the costume parts as they waited to be loaded out.
Posted by Gareth Branwyn | Monday May 21st, 2012 9:00 PM
Categories: Events, Maker Faire | 4 Comments
Check out this interview with Mark on L.A. I’m Yours in which he talks about Boing Boing, his interests, and how he got his start. [via The Fox is Black]
Posted by John Baichtal | Monday May 21st, 2012 7:30 PM
Categories: Interviews | No Comments
NEWS FROM THE FUTURE – ToDo.IT’s Kitchen Interfaces via Beyond the Beyond. Every thing with a touch screen.
Posted by Phillip Torrone | Monday May 21st, 2012 3:00 PM
Categories: News from the Future | 1 Comment
By Glen Whitney for the Museum of Mathematics
MoMath colleague Dave Masunaga and I were chewing on some of the tasty macadamia nuts, while chewing on some interesting problems that may show up in the Museum of Mathematics this December, when we realized that the pleasant and unusual geometry of the packaging of these nuts provided excellent fodder for some spur-of-the moment mathematical makery. A couple packs of binder clips and not too many minutes later led to the first of this week’s offerings, the Siernutski Tetrahedron:
If only Dave had been hungrier when shopping and bought another box, we could have extended this to order three. But the conveniently flexible nature of the packaging does lead to a number of other interesting, dynamic structures, such as this ring of Tumbling Nutrahedra, which rotates about itself in the manner of a smoke ring:
Posted by Gareth Branwyn | Monday May 21st, 2012 12:00 PM
And we’re back with our twenty-eighth installment of Your Comments. Here are our favorites from the past week, from Makezine, our Facebook page, and Twitter.
In response to My Week with the Chevy Volt, pkio3 says:
The EPA estimates that the Volt gets the equivalent of 93 miles per gal when in all electric mode. That’s taking the energy used to go a mile and a dividing by the estimated energy in a gallon of gas. I’ve been driving my Volt around Houston for 7 months now. Averaging 43 miles per charge. I’m using about 26KwH/100 miles. This is roughly the equivalent energy usage of driving a conventional gas burner that gets ~120Mpg. I drive mostly all electric and have gone 5400 miles on 5.2 gallons of gas. I’m still working on the original tank of gas that it came with. Luv my car.
In the piece on How to Carve a Stone Bowl, asciimation gives a gentle warning:
Nice project but be careful with the angle grinder! It should really have the guard fitted (in case the disc shatters or the tool kicks back) and you should wear gloves too. Also I’d be wary about putting too much sideways pressure on the disc when smoothing the bowl. If one of those discs shatters when spinning you do not want to be in the way of the shrapnel!
Angle grinder accidents can be really nasty. I still have a scar on the back of my wrist from years ago when I slipped with one and almost put a grinding disc through my hand!
In response to the Delorean Hovercraft piece, user ka1axy quips:
Roads?
Where we’re going, we don’t *need* roads!
In the piece on the Arduino Grande, zof says:
lol I love the made in burbank, so since the chip is already called a AT Mega, what do you call it now? AT Godzilla Mega?
On Twitter, Mark Frauenfelder heeds Arduino co-founder Massimo Banzi’s warning:
Arduino co-founder Massimo Banzi: if your Arduino smells really bad, it’s a Chinese knockoff. #MakeHIW
Like these comments? Be sure to sound off in the comments! You could be in next week’s column.
Posted by Michael Colombo | Monday May 21st, 2012 11:00 AM
Exclusively in the Maker Shed, this updated Redpark Breakout Pack for Arduino and iOS makes interfacing your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with the real world easy! This bundle includes the new RedPark TTL Cable for iOS so a TTL adapter (and soldering) is no longer required.
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