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February 9, 2010

Arduino prototyping lap desk

What a great idea, Riley Porter's lasercut organizer for an Arduino, a solderless breadboard, and small compartments for components.

Posted by John Baichtal | Feb 9, 2010 05:00 PM
Arduino | Permalink | Comments (0) | Suggest a Site

Projects: Failure and mounting a "scratch monkey"

When the concept of doing a Projects: Failure something came up years ago, originally as the idea for a Make: Books (in case you hadn't realized, "Projects: Failure" is a silly twist on our "Make: Projects" book series brand), we were talking about how it could be story-driven, people sharing spectacular failures and what they learned from them. I blurted out: "Oh, like mounting a scratch monkey!" Everyone looked at me like I'd forgotten to take my meds (again). But I've never stopped associating this idea with the scratch monkey. I've brought it up several times since we've launched this series online, and each time, people tilt their heads sideways like a dog hearing a high-pitched noise. So, here's the scratch monkey story.

The term "scratch monkey," or the adage "always mount a scratch monkey," comes from a tragic, allegedly actual, incident that took place 1979/1980, at the University of Toronto. It became a cautionary tale that floated through early netspace, especially USENET newsgroups, and a number of different versions emerged. It became part of the hacker lexicon, part of the venerable Jargon File, and then part of the resulting Hacker's Dictionary. Here's an excerpt of the entry from The New Hacker's Dictionary (3rd Edition):

As in "Before testing or reconfiguring, always mount a scratch monkey," a proverb used to advise caution when dealing with irreplaceable data or devices. Used to refer to any scratch volume hooked to a computer during any risky operation as a replacement for some precious resource or data that might otherwise get trashed.

This term preserves the memory of Mabel, the Swimming Wonder Monkey, star of a biological research program at the University of Toronto. Mabel was not (so the legend goes) your ordinary monkey; the university had spent years teaching her how to swim, breathing through a regulator, in order to study the effects of different gas mixtures on her physiology. Mabel suffered an untimely demise one day when a DEC field circus engineer troubleshooting a crash on the program's VAX inadvertently interfered with some custom hardware that was wired to Mabel.

There's definitely a key lesson in there about projects that fail and what one can learn from them: never commit resources to a project you can't afford to lose if something goes wrong and to test your project first in ways that won't destroy it (or key components) if something goes awry. How many times have you (have I) committed that last crucial part or piece of material, or whatever, to a build and then had it get ruined? So, when in doubt, if you can: always mount a scratch monkey!

BTW: The version told in the Jargon File/New Hacker's Dictionary claims it came directly from the sysadmin involved in the incident. But the AFU and Urban Legends site questions this. Here's part of their entry:

Current University of Toronto sysadmins have expressed skepticism. For one thing, in almost all versions of the story, including the ostensibly documented one in the Jargon File, the computer is a VAX; at the time a VAX would have been a very unusual platform for this kind of data acquisition (they used PDP-11s). The Toronto zoology department has never been licensed to work with primates; the only section of the university that could have done experiments of this nature was the School of Medicine. Investigation continues

Let's hope it isn't true, no monkeys were harmed in the making of this cautionary tale, and you can still benefit from the moral of the story either way.

Here's the rest of the Jargon File entry.

Here's the Wikipedia page with some links to some of the variations on the story.

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Battle Symets are GO!

The fine folks at Solarbotics have put up another Instructable on how to build a cool BEAMbot, this time, a cranked-up Symet that spins like a maniac and can go to the mat against other bots. It's robot sumo meets the BEAM Jurassic park.

Solar-powered Battle Symet

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Solar-powered miniball

Screw-in coffin patent issues

This is a choice selection of images from the application for U.S. patent 7,631,404, which has since issued to Donald Scruggs of Chino, CA. The title is "Easy inter burial container." [via Neatorama]

Beginner woodworking project for illusionists?

Erik Minnema made this really nice woodworking piece, called side by side. It's pretty easy to build, all you need are a few pieces of wood and an inter-dimensional table saw.

Can't get your hands on one of those? In that case you will have to resort to trickery. If it's not photoshopped, how do you think it would be built? [via neatorama]

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Brickarms molds

These are the molds custom Lego armorer Will Chapman of BrickArms uses to make his gats. BrickArms was recently mentioned in Chris Anderson's genre-defining Atoms Are The New Bits article in WIRED, cited as an example of an amateur turning his or her hobby into a profession. I wrote Will to find out more about his molds:

2.5" x 2.5" 6061 T6 aluminum
Cut using 1/16" roughing ball nose cutter, and finished with 1/32" ball nose cutter.
Cut using a Taig 2018 CR mill, with NEMA 23 steppers, driven by Gecko 201s via Mach 3 on XP.
Parts are injected with ABS resin - some of it is ground up Lego bricks.

LED people remake

Lim Chen Pin Kenneth made this cute remake of the blinking LED people I built a couple of years ago. There's not much info on how his works (I'm guessing those ICs are microcontrollers?), but they are pretty. It solves a slight problem that I had with mine...

<3 your maker: MAKE's Valentine's Day gift guide

We're all suckers for romance, even if most of us believe Valentine's Day is a holiday dreamed up by industry fatcats. Here are MAKE's staff picks for ways to celebrate with that special someone, maker style. Read on, it's a big list!

Build a bike

A personalized bike built for your sweetie can be really romantic, since all that hard work and custom choices relate specifically to the one you love. MAKE Advisory Board member Saul Griffith built a bike for his lady, Staff Editor Arwen O'Reilly Griffith. She writes:

When my husband and I were dating, we had a running argument about flowers. I love them, whether it's a rare orchid or a weed from the sidewalk, and it mystified me that he could never remember to surprise me with even a dandelion. But one Valentine's Day, he presented this bicycle to me with a grin from ear to ear. His addiction is bicycles, so I knew this was a true gesture of love. He bought the different components on Craigslist and from various bike stores to make a bike that fit me to a T, stenciled my name on the frame, and hand-build the wheels. The spokes were twisted, just like two beautiful flowers.

What are you doing to celebrate Valentine's Day with your maker love? Share with us in the comments!

Don't walk! Controlling a pedestrian sign with an Arduino

In this tutorial about controlling a pedestrian sign with an Arduino you can learn a few important things. #1 How to control relays with an Arduino, which is really useful for a ton of different projects. #2 How to use an IR remote to control your Arduino, another cool technique. #3 Never trust a crosswalk sign with an Arduino hanging out of it!

My latest project is controlling a pedestrian sign with an Arduino, so it will automatically step through the states of walk, flashing don't walk, and solid don't walk. In addition, I added infrared remote control support so I can use a remote control to turn the sign on and off, set it to a particular state, or start the cycle.

In the Maker Shed:

4305704184_65a99d4a42_b 2.jpg
The Maker Shed has everything you need to get started with Arduino

UC Berkeley has "Nobel Laureate Only" parking spaces

jonathan_fiamor_nobel_laureate_parking_at_UC_berkeley.jpg

Image courtesy Jonathan Fiamor Photography.

When I was at UT Austin, a school which is famously car-unfriendly, it was rumored that one of the elder patriarchs of the College of Natural Sciences--a man who had multiple doctoral degrees and had been given countless awards for his work both as a scientific researcher and an educational administrator--had once quipped that the honor that was most valuable to him, on a daily basis, was the "O" parking permit that let him leave his car literally in the shadow of UT's iconic tower.

Well, in terms of available parking, UC Berkeley makes UT Austin look like an airport remote lot in Iowa on a Wednesday in the dead of winter. And according to this official page there are presently seven living Nobel laureates on the faculty there, so I'm guessing there must be at least seven of the prestigious NL parking spaces. Supposedly, regular mortals have to shell out $50 for presumptuous malparkage among the elite.

LEGO PCB Agitator

Etching your own PCBs can be a time consuming chore to say the least. Anything that automates the process or cuts down on the time it takes is usually appreciated. Maker Rui Cabral of Oporto, Portugal pieced together this handy PCB agitator out of LEGO to help him speed things up a bit. The project initially took him only 20 minutes from start to finish.

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Volkemon in Space: Additional launch pics

Our favorite armchair astronaut, Rachel, is sleeping off all the adrenalin and exhaustion of covering the STS-130 shuttle launch for MAKE. (Great job, Rach!) So, we crowd-sourced a few more pictures from Make: Online member Volkemon, who was also on-hand for the big blast. Here are a couple of his pics (that's him and his mom in the top one, the causeway and the moon before launch, and the launch). There are a few more pics, and others from previous launches, in his Flickr sets. Thanks, Volkemon!

Volkemon's photostream

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"Batteries Out of Thin Air"

Electricflyer
Gray Matter: Batteries Out of Thin Air @ Popular Science...

A battery that runs on air? Why, that’s almost as good as a car that runs on water! Those cars are fantasy, but batteries that run on air are actually quite common, especially among older people. Tiny zinc-air batteries are widely used in hearing aids, where they have replaced toxic mercury-based batteries in providing a small but steady stream of power. They supply more energy for their size than any other battery, because they draw some of their power straight from the air.

From typewriter to teleprinter

Spotted in the MAKE Flickr pool:

Flickr user numist had a typerwriter that he wasn't using anymore, so he converted it into a teleprinter. What's that? It turns out that teleprinters are basically a printer and a keyboard put together in a single device, but not directly connected. Instead, both are connected to a remote computer using a serial connection. When you type on the keyboard, it gets interpreted by the computer, which then prints a response on the printer. They probably don't make much sense anymore, but before electronic displays were readily available, these were one of the main ways of programming mainframe computers.

To make his version, numist took an old electronic typewriter, and added some electronics between the keyboard and printer board. He used an Arduino microcontroller to read in each key press and relay it back over a serial port to his PC. When it receives characters back from the PC, the microcontroller emulates the keyboard to feed them into the original typewriter circuitry, causing the typewriter to print. Now, I'm not entirely sure what one could do with such a modernized typewriter, but I'll bet there are lots of potential projects there. Got any ideas?

Turning a motor into a sensor with the Peppermill

Peppermill

Tom Igoe got his hands on a Peppermill circuit board, and took it out for a spin:

Nicolas Villar sent me a sample of the PepperMill, a new sensor board he and Steve Hodges designed at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK. It's a nifty little board. You attach a DC motor and the board can an output voltage when the motor is turned, and analog signals telling you the direction and speed of the motor. It turns a DC motor into a rotary encoder, of sorts.

Wiring is very simple. The motor connects to the two spring connectors at the top of the board. Direction and Speed pins connect to two analog inputs on your microcontroller. Ground connects to your microcontroller's ground. The motor generates voltage when you spin it.

Check out Tom's article for circuit diagrams, source code, and information on obtaining a Peppermill board to experiment with. Using PepperMill to turn a motor into a sensor

(Tom is a member of the Arduino team and the author of Making Things Talk).

Making Things Talk
Our Price: $29.99
Programming microcontrollers used to require an expensive development environment costing thousands of dollars and requiring professional electrical engineering expertise. Open-source physical computing platforms with simple i/o boards and development environments have led to new options for hobbyists, hackers, and makers. This book contains a series of projects that teach you what you need to know to get your creations talking to each other, connecting to the web, and forming networks of smart devices.

Maker Business: Venturing out...

Kicking off our Maker Business series is this piece by Jeffrey McGrew, who along with his wife Jillian Northrup, and their trusty CNC machine named Frank, are a two-person (and a bot) design and fabrication juggernaut. From their design-build studio in Oakland, CA, they do custom interior design, furniture, and such artist wonders as the "Art Golf" course they've set up at Maker Faire. Here, Jeffrey shares some words of advice to those who may be thinking of going "Maker Pro." -- Gareth

Venturing out...

By Jeffrey McGrew of Because We Can

We get a lot of friends and folks asking us about how we got started. And we know a lot of folks through the Maker Faire that would love to turn "pro." So, I thought I'd jot down the six big things that I see as being key elements to getting started in such a business. I hope they help, and I'd love to hear more from other folks! [Chime in via comments. -Ed.]

1. Get as debt-free as possible, and try your best to stay that way.
We would have never been able to buy the robot (or CNC machine) and make the jump to working for ourselves had we not had our financial lives in order first. Having six months in savings to fall back on, no debt, other than a half-paid off car loan, and not taking on huge debts to get started, made it possible for us to make a lot of mistakes and learn things instead of going out with a quick bang. I've met a fair number of people who want to start their own business, but simply can't, due to this single issue alone. No amount of great business ideas, hard work, or luck can overcome the burden of an unstable foundation on which to the start. Also, honestly, once you get your business going, you'll find that your priorities, and what you think is important, will change greatly. If you're really happy (which running our own business certainly make us), then you'll need less stuff anyways. So, save your pennies, don't worry about getting the latest and greatest, and pay off all those loans and credit cards before you take that leap.

2. Plans are worthless, planning is essential.
That quote from Winston Churchill sums up nicely a lot of what you'll need to do when you start a business. You don't need a perfect plan, with every step already outlined, in giant Gantt charts. But you do need a plan. And you need to be smart enough to change that plan as circumstances change. Running a business is more like sailing a ship than launching a rocket. What I mean is that you need a plan, and to be prepared, but honestly, at some point you'll just point yourself at the horizon and go. And then everything will change, you'll need to change direction, plans, and ideas. You'll re-aim for that spot you wanted to get to constantly as the world around you changes in response to what you're doing. And heck, sometimes you'll find when you're halfway there, you actually want to go somewhere else. So don't fret too much and over-plan everything (and therefore never get started), or freak out when things don't go according to your plans. But at the same time, don't aim for that horizon without one!

Exploring the business of making

For the next few months, in concert with our "Your Desktop Factory" themed issue of MAKE (Volume 21), we're going to be exploring the world of "maker business," turning your passion for making things into a means of making money. We'll look at everything from casual commerce, selling small numbers of goods online, at places like Etsy and the upcoming Makers Market, to the running of a more serious and sustainable small business. We'll be talking to, and have guest articles by, maker businessfolk across this spectrum, from those just starting out, to those who are making a comfortable living as self-employed makers. We'll also be touching on everything from the most philosophical questions of why to the more pragmatic nuts and bolts of how.

Do you run a small "maker business?" If so, we'd love to hear from you. If creating such a business is something you've thought about, what questions/concerns do you have? What would you like to see us cover in this series? Let us know in the comments, or email me (gareth at makezine). We'd love for this series to be a useful service to you, especially if going into such a business is a fantasy, but you have nagging questions or reservations that hold you back, or just need a little encouragement from those who've made this sort of career change work for them.

From MAKE magazine:
make volume 21 little cover.jpg
MAKE Volume 21 is the Desktop Manufacturing issue, with how-to articles on making three-dimensional parts using inexpensive computer-controlled manufacturing equipment. Both additive (RepRap, CandyFab) and subtractive (Lumenlab Micro CNC) systems are covered. Also in this issue: instructions for making a cigar box guitar, building your own CNC for under $800, running a mini electric bike with a cordless drill, making a magic photo cube, and tons more. If you're a subscriber, you may have your issue in hand already, and can access the Digital Edition. Otherwise, you can pick up MAKE 21 in the Maker Shed or look for it on newsstands near you!

Glenn Seaborg's old mailing address

The occasion of Dmitri Mendeleev's birthday seemed like a good opportunity to recognize another great hero of the periodic table and to relate one of my favorite anecdotes about him: Glenn T. Seaborg (Wikipedia), who, among his various stellar achievements, won the 1951 Nobel Prize for "discoveries in the chemistry of the transuranium elements." By the time of his death in 1999, Seaborg had participated in the discovery and isolation of ten superheavy elements. Shortly after the official 1997 recognition of the name seaborgium for element 106, Jeffrey Winters, writing in the January 1998 issue of Discover Magazine, made the following observation:

Not only is Seaborg the first living scientist to have an element named after him, he's also the only person who could receive mail addressed only in elements: Seaborgium, Lawrencium (for the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory where he still works), Berkelium, Californium, Americium. But don't forget the zip code.

Naming an element after a living scientist generated significant controversy among the international chemistry community of the time. At a talk in 1995, Seaborg himself famously quipped: "There has been some reluctance on the part of the Commission for Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry to accept the name because I'm still alive and they can prove it, they say."

Parabola, a wooden ball launcher

I think I could watch this ball-launching sculpture for a long time. Called parabola, it was created by youtube user MechanicalSculptor. I wonder how long it took to design a system that can launch balls with such precision? [via Hacked Gadgets]

Math Monday: Skewer hyperboloid

Skewer hyperboloid

By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics

Thirty two shish kabob skewers and 176 small rubber bands are all it takes to make a beautiful hyperbolid of revolution. This is an example of what is called a "ruled surface," meaning even though it is curved, it is made of straight lines.