Your Comments

By Matt Mets, 2010/10/31 @ 10:19 am

And we’re back with our nineteenth installment of Your Comments. Here are our favorites from the past week, from Make: Online, our Facebook page, and Twitter.

Inspired by the Whiteboards, blackboards, and brainstorming tools list, Jonathan-Peterson shared this excellent idea:

Marc Canter ended up using a picket fence in his backyard as a collaborative brainstorming space for digital id and similar things. Sitting in the backyard having cookouts and happy hour beers with colleagues with chalk, permanent markers and paint near at hand is pretty genius: http://blog.broadbandmechanics.com/2008/05/16/i-do-not-compromise/

Kenton doubted the authenticity of the handiwork featured in the How-To: Make a fake beard:

Those are FAKE beards???

Banana has a good use for the Homemade tiny BBQ:

would have loved to see that baby fired up to throw a couple shrimp on the barbi.

Simon had an interesting observation about the Burr puzzle cutlery:

It’s a cutlery Czech hedgehog!

John Boxall shares his plan for the ultimate anti-TV combo, using the IR Jammer kit:
:

John Park – using one of these and a TV-B-Gone is the ultimate in television denial. My favourite eatery has a few large TVs around the dining area, so I switch off the set closest to me, then buffer up the IR Jammer to get some peace and quite. Highly recommended. Wrote about it here: http://wp.me/pQmjR-PO

And circuitnewb had some kinds words for Collin, about his LED Color Organ video:

Hey Collin, I’m a long time Make Blog reader. I have got to say that this type of post adds so much to the community. I’m still learning electronics and the detailed videos of putting circuits together is exactly what I need to advance my skills. Thanks for the Circuit Skills series, hope you keep it going for us circuit newbs.

On Facebook, Misja van Laatum had a good analysis of the Grilled sausage scented iPhone soap:

It’s a bit like gasoline flavored My Little Pony cake. Delightfully random

Like these comments? Be sure to sound off in the comments! You could be in next week’s column.

Above photo by Flickr user funadium.

Posted by Matt Mets | Sunday October 31st, 2010 10:19 AM

Categories: Computers & Mobile | No Comments

Your Comments

By Matt Mets, 2010/10/31 @ 10:16 am

And we’re back with our twenty-second installment of Your Comments. Here are our favorites from the past week, from Make: Online, our Facebook page, and Twitter.

In response to the Laser-cut marquetry skateboard, TimLillis shared their awesome build:

Good for Griptape too!

Rad, definitely too nice to ride! I’ve used lasercutting for griptape for a ‘nuts and bolts’ themed skate deck in the past (photo)

Br.Squid is cooking up a project similar to the Laser projection microscope:

Hey! This sounds very similar to something I was trying just last week. I made a Van Leeuwenhoek style microscope when I was in grade school from a couple sheets of soda can tin, some laboratory glass rod, and an alcohol burner. (See http://www.mindspring.com/~alshinn/Leeuwenhoekplans.html for the method). I remember reading about it in a science based periodical, but haven’t been able to find the article (probably mid 70′s – I think I made mine in 1979). Lately, I’ve been trying to make an actual replica, from brass. I’m at the stage now where I want to make a lens, and have been testing various lenses to see which are better than others. I glued a lens onto a spare sheet of brass with a hole drilled through it, and experimented viewing the cells in a leaf. You have to hold the lens right up to your eye to see it, so I found that an easier way to use it was by projecting the image on a wall with a powerful flashlight. It’s essentially the same method as shown in the article above, but I used a flashlight through a hole, instead of a laser pointer, and glass instead of water. The resulting image was very faint, but visible. Unfortunately, it was too faint to record with any camera I had on hand. I’ll have to retry it with a laser pointer and see if I can get pictures.

matt.gromm.es shared a creative use for weathering paper for prop documents:

This reminds me of a project I had in elementary school. We had a project to write a diary for someone crossing the country in the pioneer days. I had of course waited until the last minute so I wrote half the diary in one night, then on the last page wrote about how Indians had been attacking our camp. Then I tore off the last half of the diary and burned up the edges using a technique my dad had shown me with his blowtorch to make it look like it survived the attack. After I was done I realized I had used pencil instead of the required pen so I also went back to the first page and put in a bit about how I was using a new-fangled pencil for my diary. Laziness makes for creativity.

gwagner had a great suggestion for the “Hello, world” blinky light project:

I think it would be a good idea to include a current limiting resistor in series with the LED. Something on the order of: (3.3V – 1.2V)/10 mA = 210 ohm 220 ohm is a standard value 3.3V is Vcc 1.2V is typical red LED forward voltage 10 mA is typical LED current

pmjett is inspired to monitor the bees:

Pretty elegant solution, and neatly executed. It never occurred to me to weigh a beehive, but thinking about it now, you could go nuts with this. Inexpensive load cells from eBay ($10-25) coupled with some flavor of open-source datalogging could yield a much finer time resolution (and probably a couple of gram weight resolution). Then you could monitor bee traffic per unit time and all the other neat parameters mentioned in the posting. Still not as cheap as the posted solution, but could yield some additional data.

And over on twitter, Brian Lalor spotted a MAKE magazine in a backpack advertisement:

Ha! Nice little product placement for @make in @timbuk2′s H.A.L. backpack: http://bit.ly/9LBm1X

Like these comments? Be sure to sound off in the comments! You could be in next week’s column.

Above photo by Flickr user funadium.

Posted by Matt Mets | Sunday October 31st, 2010 10:16 AM

Categories: Computers & Mobile | No Comments

Your Comments

By Matt Mets, 2010/10/31 @ 10:16 am

And we’re back with our twenty-first installment of Your Comments. Here are our favorites from the past week, from Make: Online, our Facebook page, and Twitter.

Inspired by the video explaining how artificial eyes are made, James B shared his technique:

I make something like this using borosilicate glass, only more as a creepy decoration. Using an oxy-propane bench burner, here are the steps I take:

• gather white glass on the end of a clear rod
• push the white ball into a colored frit
• pull a point on a piece of dark color
• jab the point into the iris
• flame cut the dark color
• heat the entire mass, flatten slightly
• encase the front in more clear glass
• heat the eyeball until it is molten and flame polished
• anneal

I scratch built the annealing oven that is used to cool the eyeball from 1200F to room temp, over about eight hours. I use a thermocouple with a decoder IC from SparkFun, connected to an analog input on an Arduino. My Arduino code reads the temp, drives a relay that drives a 220v contactor powering heating coils. The insulation is Kaowool ceramic insulation, with ITC100 and firebrick to hold the Kanthal wire.

Here is a link to some photos of the end result on Etsy.

headhunter212 pointed out a potential origin to the Trumer Beer Rube Goldberg machine:

Reminds me of Der Lauf Der Dinge (The way things go). A classic in the Rube Goldberg genre…and I believe this video alludes to that with the feet walk down the ramp. Brilliant stuff. Make more!

Maker Dino appreciated OK Go’s stop-motion on toast:

I’m hungry now… that was really cool. I admire all the work that must have gone into that!

The parasitic bike pump post generated a bit of controversy. Rhudson had a good suggestion for solving the morality issue:

You could always _ask_ before taking a little air.

and JohnnyPrimus had some insight into their history:

These devices used to be pretty popular with the bmx crowd, especially the street riders who deal with pinch flats fairly often. Bringing a spare tube (or patch kit for minor issues) was easy, finding air not so much.

These would normally be used to take air from busses which run higher pressure (and have more air [and often times more tires]) than cars. Certainly a shady means to an end, but you can’t deny the functionality.

drewski_brewski enjoyed the Dachshund wheelchair, but appears to have it confused with a wind cart:

Wonderful design, but does it allow the Daschund to travel downwind, faster than the wind?

Adam E has some suggestions for the RC flying shark:

Make the wheels retractable, add some teeth, and then you’ve got something even better!

And over on twitter, Jumile is catching the spirit:

Feel myself being drawn into the whole @make thing. Dammit… means I’ve gotta finish building my bench now.

Like these comments? Be sure to sound off in the comments! You could be in next week’s column.

Posted by Matt Mets | Sunday October 31st, 2010 10:16 AM

Categories: Computers & Mobile | No Comments

Your Comments

By Matt Mets, 2010/10/31 @ 10:16 am

And we’re back with our twentieth installment of Your Comments. Here are our favorites from the past week, from Make: Online, our Facebook page, and Twitter.

After reading the embossed metal box from beverage can how-to, nathan.f77 made this awesome box:

Heres my attempt at one.
I really enjoyed making it, thanks for the great instructions!

Kerowhack requested a moment of silence for the non-geek significant others who put up with projects like the game racing cockpit in an ottoman:

Maybe we should all take a few minutes to think about the Maker widows who put up with the long hours spent in the garage, the side trips to odd places like junkyards or electronic supply houses on vacation, the clutter of a work space in progress, the “only a little one” fires and other accidents, the sometimes trying experiments that interfere with daily life, the “5 more minutes” an hour agos, and the amount of money spent on what some would consider to be useless junk. Anyone who can put up with us, let alone support or even collaborate in our efforts, is a very special person indeed, and the sort of consideration shown here would be the perfect way to say “thank you” to our SOs.

Volkemon is excited (and so are we) about the prospect of a new commenting system:

WOW! Nice to hear it. I LOVE (LOVE) the comments, and will read many posts just because there are comments there. Even if the subject matter would not ordinarily attract me. I would be nicer having an (hold breath momentarily, then in a sotto voice:) Edit function……. *sigh* Thanks!

Dbcooper answered our question about the balancing boat:

“I wonder what it would look like if it actually sunk?” Wet.

KurtRoedeger is thrilled about the Lehigh Valley makers meeting:

This is like an awesome-burger topped with awesome-cheese and awesome-sauce! I do hope I can find some time for attending.

kongorilla was a bit discouraged by the shadow machine project:

I made something like this last year (but using a simple, cheap 10 LED chaser circuit, easily found online) and have been meaning to write it up for a possible Make article. I snooze, I lose. Again. My headline was “a film projector with no moving parts”. Just because my thunder has been stolen doesn’t mean I can’t still write it up, but…y’know. The novelty is gone.

however, we would like to point out that it would be totally awesome if they go through with their build:

No, no, write it up, document it, take photos, put it on Make Projects, and I’ll make one! They aren’t the first to come up with this idea, either…

The post about traveling downwind faster than the wind has generated a lot of debate and discussion. Jennifer Elaan presented a good explanation:

I have to admit that I was skeptical at first. Then I ran the vector analysis. Surprisingly simple math, and when I ran it, it clearly said that this should work. There are a few key things to remember. First, motion itself doesn’t require energy – an object in motion will remain in motion, neglecting friction. Acceleration requires energy, but if you can extract any energy, you can accelerate. The second, and in my opinion, most important is that this isn’t an aircraft. The relative difference in speed between the ground and the wind is the same no matter how fast the craft is traveling. And this difference – not the windspeed itself, but the speed relative to the ground – provides energy that can be extracted, no matter how fast the craft is moving. At t0, the propeller is stopped and acts as a sail, moving the vehicle forward. If the propeller was fixed in place (acting as a sail), the vehicle would reach the same velocity as the wind (neglecting losses). At this point, the wheels are rolling under the vehicle, and power can be extracted from them. Doing so will add drag to the craft, of course, making it travel somewhat slower than the wind speed, and causing wind to be slowed by the fixed propeller. Now when the propeller is spun by power extracted from the wheels, it provides thrust which further accelerates the craft. This thrust isn’t free, and it doesn’t contribute to the power being extracted from the wheels: the ground speed is increased, but the effective wind speed is also increased, which means that the difference in speed between the ground and the wind remains the same. And again, it is this difference – not the absolute wind speed, or the absolute ground speed – that the craft extracts energy from.

and Morten Nisker was understanding about the word from our Director of Technology:

Making is all about failing

Like these comments? Be sure to sound off in the comments! You could be in next week’s column.

Above photo by Flickr user xxxx.

Posted by Matt Mets | Sunday October 31st, 2010 10:16 AM

Categories: Computers & Mobile | No Comments