DIY Applesauce
Why I love the interwebs, reason #58,375
DIY Applesauce – Link
Posted by Gareth Branwyn | Tuesday January 29th, 2008 10:00 PM
Categories: Art & Design | 11 Comments
HOW TO – PCB pre-order check
uCHobby has an article up about checking component placement on PCBs before ordering. If you’re planning on having your circuit design professionally fabricated, it’s vital to do a thorough pre-check to get a better idea of the final product. There’s not much worse than receiving a box full of expensive custom green coasters (unless of course you’re into designing coasters) when you expected a functional board.
Doing an easy PCB pre-order check – Link
Related:
HOW TO – Manufacture your own PCBs – Link
Posted by Collin Cunningham | Tuesday January 29th, 2008 9:00 PM
Categories: Electronics | No Comments
Remove shake and motion blur from photos
It’s a real drag when you think you’ve taken a great picture, only to load it up in photoshop and discover that your hands weren’t as steady as you thought they were. Depending on the magnitude of your error, chances are you can correct most small camera bumps or pans using a deconvolution filter. The particular technique used depends on which package you use, but they are all built around manipulating the image in the frequency domain to reduce the photo’s linear blurring.
Nathan Willis dissected three applications for removing the effects of camera movement from your photos. Two of them, Refocus and Iterative Refocus, are open source Gimp plugins. The third, Unshake, is a closed source Java application that is capable of producing high-quality results with little user effort (though your CPU will be hurting for a minute or two).
If you watch the movies, you have probably seen the impossibly accurate “computer enhancement” hand-waving that turns a blurry mess into a crystal clear mug shot or license plate for the hero to chase. Real-world image enhancement is not that good, but you may still be surprised at the level of quality a good Fast Fourier Transform and deconvolution can produce.
All three of these applications produce admirable results. Refocus is the fastest, and subjectively Unshake produces the cleanest results. It is unfortunate that among the three alternatives, one is not free software and the other two lack active maintainership. But since the math is well understood, maybe someone will pick up where the other programmers left off, and bring even better refocusing technology to the image editors of tomorrow.
The above photo is from the Unshake site. It seems to work well for predominately straight-line blurs over the range of 8 pixels or less. I haven’t tried the two Gimp plugins, but I have a feeling the Iterative Refocus package could produce the best results given enough tweaking of the setting.
It’s all Fast Fourier Transforms and way over my head, but it works (and frankly, if it was good enough for the Hubble, it’s good enough for me).
Unshaking and refocusing your photos – Link
Unshake – Link
Refocus – Link
Iterative Refocus – Link
Posted by jstriegel | Tuesday January 29th, 2008 8:51 PM
Categories: Electronics | 1 Comment
Rayguns from lamp shades
Personally, I find the Indy Mogul/Backyard FX videos a lot of smoke with little heat or fire, but YMMV. Here they make some retro rayguns from junkshop parts.
Posted by Gareth Branwyn | Tuesday January 29th, 2008 8:00 PM
Categories: Fun & Games | 3 Comments
Building the Perfect PC–updated system configurations
Building the Perfect PC authors Robert Bruce Thompson and Barbara Fritchman Thompson have updated their recommended system configurations for the new year. Pick up a copy of the book, check out their updated lists of components, and build the best PC… the one you build yourself:
- Gaming PC Configuration – Link
- Budget PC Configuration – Link
- Mainstream PC Configuration – Link
- Media Center PC Configuration – Link
- Small Form Factor PC Configuration – Link
- SOHO Server PC Configuration – Link
From The Maker Store:
Building The Perfect PC 2nd Edition by Robert Bruce Thompson and Barbara Fritchman Thompson
Price: $34.99
Buy: Maker store – Link.
This popular Build-It-Yourself (BIY) PC book covers everything you want to know about building your own system: Planning and picking out the right components, step-by-step instructions for assembling your perfect PC, and an insightful discussion of why you’d want to do it in the first place. Most big brand computers from HP, Dell and others use lower-quality components so they can meet their aggressive pricing targets. But component manufacturers also make high-quality parts that you can either purchase directly, or obtain through distributors and resellers. Consumers and corporations alike are opting to build rather than buy PCs to ensure high quality and compatibility. The new edition of Building the Perfect PC shows you how to construct a variety of top-flight systems with the latest technology, including AMD Socket AM-2 and Intel Core 2 processors, that are Vista- and Linux-ready.
Posted by Brian Jepson | Tuesday January 29th, 2008 7:00 PM
Categories: General | No Comments
Electronic component sculpture
MAKE Flickr Pool member Sephirot82 submitted this shot of this anthropomorphic circuit board sculpture. The title translates roughly to “United by Something More than Tin” – perfect valentine for that solder-lover in your life.
Electronics sculpture on Flickr – Link
Posted by Collin Cunningham | Tuesday January 29th, 2008 6:32 PM
Categories: Art & Design, Electronics | No Comments
Monomuino: an Arduino-based monome compatible
JMG writes:
I’ve now got my 4×4 button pad communicating with the native monome software, using the monome protocol. As far as I know, this is the first Arduino-based monome compatible, and perhaps the first third-party monome-compatible device of any kind.
Nice work! Hit the link for an in-depth explanation.
Monomuino on Upwardnotnorthward.com- Link
Related:
RGB button pad demo from JMG on Vimeo.
Full-colour RGB monome clone (Trinome?) – Link
Posted by Collin Cunningham | Tuesday January 29th, 2008 5:15 PM
Aerogel – 99.8% air, 100% cool
I have always wanted some Aerogel, and I am not sure why? Maybe just to hold something that is 99.8% air, or to try and figure out something to make with it. NASA seems to have found some uses for the amazing stuff. They have been successful in collecting cosmic dust samples, and insulating the Mars Pathfinder rover.
Aerogel can be very expensive and the prices vary greatly across Internet. Recently I found a relatively low cost supplier. You can get granular samples from United Nuclear for as little as $5. If you purchase a sample and make something cool, don’t forget to post it in the MAKE Flickr photo pool. – Link
More information about Aerogel:
Posted by Marc de Vinck | Tuesday January 29th, 2008 4:00 PM
Categories: Science | 7 Comments
O’Reilly book maker – Create a funny book cover
This is funny, someone made an O’Reilly book generator with the familiar animals from the books series (O’Reilly is the publisher of MAKE) – Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone | Tuesday January 29th, 2008 3:00 PM
Categories: Computers & Mobile | 5 Comments
Homegrown jukebox
From the MAKE Flickr Pool:
OverWired designed and built this PC-based jukebox using arcade button switches and a KeyWiz keyboard controller.
More KeyWiz info from RetroBlast:
The KeyWiz Max 1.5, by Groovy Game Gear, is a PS/2 keyboard encoder for MAME controller applications. It’s a compact 32-input encoder unit, with a “Shazaaam!” shift function to double the number of effective inputs.
overWired’s jukebox on Flickr – Link
KeyWiz on Retroblast – Link
Related
Homemade touch-screen jukebox – Link
“iTunes” jukebox – a physical playlist device – Link
Posted by Collin Cunningham | Tuesday January 29th, 2008 3:00 PM
Categories: Music | No Comments
Say hello to Marc, our newest MAKE contributor
Everyone please give a warm welcome to Marc! He will be contributing daily to the MAKE blog. Marc is a product designer, a sculptor and he started his own product design company creating everything from candy to CNC mills.
Keep an eye out for his current Arduino controlled sculptures in our Make Flickr pool, and if you have something interesting to share, you should post it there too! – Link
Posted by Phillip Torrone | Tuesday January 29th, 2008 2:00 PM
Categories: General | 3 Comments
Instructables LED contest
LED Throwies were published here on Instructables.com on Feb. 14, 2006 by Q-Branch of the GRL.
This simple, elegant project spawned a minor LED revolution: from Instructables like the LED Throwie Floatie, Talkie, Rat, and motion-sensor to the weird mash-up of art and advertising in the Boston Mooninite scare, it’s clear that anyone can make something fun with LEDs — including you.
So, in honor of the upcoming two-year anniversary of the throwie, we’re holding an LED-based speed contest we’re calling Get the LED Out!
You have three weeks to publish the coolest Instructable featuring LEDs of any kind. That’s right — any project using LEDs will be eligible, so be creative! We’ve got lots of LED Instructables to get you inspired, and even some help for beginners.
Need more incentive?
The fantastic ladyada of Adafruit Industries has donated some of her great TV-B-Gone Kits for the winners! Check out her store for more kits and inspiration.Since this is a short contest we’re letting the audience judge!
Find the entries here and rate your favorite projects so we know what you like. Vote for as few or as many as you like – it’s up to you. Only positive votes will count in this contest! We’re not including ballot stuffing or negative votes, so please exercise good sportsmanship.We’ll judge based on the standings at noon PST on Thursday, February 14, 2008 so everyone will have time to check out and vote on even the latest entries. Results will be posted shortly thereafter.
How to Enter the Get the LED Out! Speed Challenge – Link
Posted by Gareth Branwyn | Tuesday January 29th, 2008 1:00 PM
Categories: Electronics, General | No Comments
