Jason Bradbury posted up more details on his DIY hoverboard. We like Jason, he’s a UK TV presenter / Maker who builds gizmos and gadgets – the world’s first Bluetooth phone glove, $1 electronic lie detector, an in-car HUD, wearable PC, DIY PVRs and this hoverboard – lots to check out and see on his site – Link to hoverboard & main site.
Andrew writes – “Bob Brown of Southern Polytechnic State University has a neat series of Web Lectures on electronic circuits that describe electronics from simple electric circuits, through combinational circuits. The circuits are emulated using Javascript functions, which make it feel like you are interacting with the circuitry itself.” – Link.
Chuck sent in his great how to on making a copper pipe potato gun – “Dave and I have an affinity for copper. We’re, I guess, slightly obsessed with the stuff. It’s shiny, soft but strong, and easy to work with. So we build stuff out of it more and more frequently. Some bloggable, some not. One of our recent bloggable uses for copper pipe is our copper potato gun.”Link.
Related: The Night Lighter by William Gurstelle. Launch potato projectiles 200+ yards with this stun-gun triggered, high-powered potato cannon with see-thru action. Info & article on page 108.
Clarke writes – “‘Kon-Tiki’ a huge scouting event in South Africa inspired by Thor Heyerdhal’s 1947 adventure aboard a reed raft demonstrating that ancient people could have sailed from South America to Polynesia. Troops build rafts that must stay afloat for 24 hours using their pioneering skills (ropes, poles and oil drums; no nails or screws) and take part in various competitions. The rafts must have waterproof accommodations for six, a cooking area for the preparation of at least one three course meal and proper toilet facilities. Teams are judged on a variety of standards and skill tests throughout the weekend. There are fringe events for raft support teams. This looks like great fun. The site featues building plans and pictures of some impressive rafts. – Link.
David writes – “Spamgraffiti is a series of online installations created from spam. Each environment is created by spooling through one email account and visually articulating the spam on a series of layers. Newer spam appears above and slowly filters out older spam below. As the rate of spam increases over time per account, the page itself appears less and less like the previous generation. Each screen showcases the 25 most recent spam in the account. Of note, this project has been going on for over a year and accumulated over 30,500 spam messages from ‘inactive’ email account.”Link.
Clever approach to fight tick-borne diseases – “A tick-exterminator designed by three engineering undergrads at the Virginia Military Institute scours yards for ticks and nabs them with its pesticide-laced denim skirt.” [via] Link.
Interesting, iRobot may want to consider chatting with these fellows – a ruggedized Roomba, with its AI, and this approach could work out well for areas with ticks.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is here – Wikipedia on your iPod, uses iPod linux – “Encyclopodia is a free software project that brings the Wikipedia, which is one of the largest encyclopedias on the world, on the Apple iPod MP3-Player. It has been successfully tested on a third-generation iPod and on an iPod mini, but it should also work on other iPod generations.”[via] Link.
Homebrew action is hitting hard today, PepsiMan has a DS browser, he writes – “I didn’t think we’d ever get a web browser running in DSLinux, but I was proved wrong when phestar compiled retawq for DSLinux. DSLinux has beaten Nintendo/Opera by releasing the first web browser for the DS.” [via] Link.
A wonderful collection of things that make music, Mike writes – “Here are most of the projects I’ve built/modified from 2000 to present. Click on each picture to see the details of the instrument. Some of the older projects will just have a sound sample when you click rather than link to another page with extra detail. Some won’t do anything.”Link.
Related: Circuit Bending – Modify a Casio keyboard (or other electronic audio stuff) and start playing some of the strangest sounds you’ve ever heard. Info & article, page 90 MAKE 05.
Robot-Dreams.com has some great videos and history of a reborn Armatron – “Every “roboteer” worth their salt remembers “Armatron”, the fantastic robot arm from Tomy, and marketed by Radio Shack in the US during the early 1980′s. Well, it turns out that a group of Japanese roboteers also must have some pretty fond memories of Armatron too, because not only have they built one, they’ve improved it, doubled it, and given it legs!”Link.
