A little self-serving, but we love our Make: Electronics Deluxe Toolkit from Maker Shed. We think we did a pretty darn good job of sourcing decent tools for the price and assembled a complement of tools that’s perfect for the beginner-to-intermediate electronics hobbyist.
ShopBot Desktop, a smaller, less expensive answer to their bigger CNC machines. The Desktop has a cutting volume of 24″ x 18″ x 2″ and pricing starts at $5290.
And, the #1 most talked about, celebrated, debated, and future-glimpsing tool of 2010 is…
Somewhere at the junction of modern open-source hardware and early 80′s Russia lives a beautiful DIY kit from the Maker Shed called the Ice Tube Clock. The centerpiece of this old-meets-new clock is a Russian-made, 9-digit, vacuum florescent display (VFD). Included in the kit is everything you need to build a complete VFD clock.
Features:
Cool glowing blue tube with 8 digits, PM dot and alarm on/off indicator
Adjustable brightness
Alarm with volume adjust
Precision watch crystal keeps time with under 20ppm (0.002%) error (< 2 seconds a day)
Clear acrylic enclosure protects the clock from you, and you from the clock
Battery backup will let the clock keep the time for up to 2 weeks without power
Selectable 12h or 24h display
Displays day and date on button press
10 minute snooze
Integrated boost converter so it can run off of standard DC wall adapters, works in any country regardless of mains power
Great for desk or night table use, the clock measures 4.9″ x 2.9″ x 1.3″ (12.5cm x 7.4cm x 3.3cm)
Completely open source hardware and software, ready to be hacked and modded!
Absinthe & Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously. Need we say more? Written for reasonable risk takers and suburbanites [edit] who want to add more excitement to their lives. This daring combination of science, history, and DIY projects explains why danger is good for you and details the art of living dangerously.
The 4-Bit Microcomputer Kit from the Maker Shed features a 20-key keypad, a 7-segment LED, and 7 individual LEDs. It comes pre-programmed with 7 different applications, and you can even program your own via the keypad. It’s a fun retro kit, just begging to be hacked! Don’t forget to check out Gakken magazine 4-bit computer rollout party in Tokyo.
The Voice Shield from the Maker Shed is an analog audio shield for the Arduino. It allows you to easily add audio to your next project. The Voice Shield uses a unique and very user friendly way to access different sound bytes making it easy to build “talking” devices. It can work with words, complete sentences, or use it to add sound effects.
What time is it? If you live in the North East, it’s time to shovel! Then again, maybe it’s time to stay inside and make something? I built the Gakken Edo-Style clock kit from the Maker Shed last week, so now I’ll always know the time. The kit doesn’t include English instructions, but it does come with an easy to follow “Ikea-like” illustrated step-by-step guide. I took some pictures during my build, and uploaded them to Make: Projects. They aren’t meant to replace the included instructions, but I did include a few tips and tricks that I learned during my build.
Bagleemo shows us how to modify the Gakken Mechamo Inchworm to make it crawl upside down along a string with some wire coat hangers and rubber bands. He dropped a comment about it on our Inchworm build. Nice work!
Malmö, Sweden hackerspace Forskningsavdelningen (“The Research Department”) celebrated the holiday with a little gingerbread, laser etched with some excellent ASCII art… and their founding date in hex, oh yeah!
Michael Curry designed and printed these 4x sized Lego men for Christmas gifts this year. Before heading out on their separate, merry ways, he decided to take them on a tour of Kansas City. [via MakerBot]
It’s been another epic year for modding on bit-tech. Our regular Mod of the Month articles have been jam-packed with dozens of fantastic projects, all of which showed huge potential. Some have been completed, others haven’t, and we’ve also found other projects lurking in our forums which we’ve featured on bit-tech, and in Custom PC magazine too.
We’ve got Mod of the Year regulars such as last year’s winner, Attila (formerly known as oldnewby), not to mention thechoozen, slippery_skip and Sleepstreamer among others. However, we’ve got some new faces too – oliverw92, GinoTheCop and paultan have all made some spectacular projects this year, and are worthy nominees for the Mod of the Year too.
Earlier this month, GE officially endorsed ZigBee as the wireless standard of choice for smart appliances in a white paper, but the Wi-Fi guys aren’t having any of it. The Wi-Fi Alliance released a statement yesterday denouncing the white paper as “flawed” and “inaccurate.”
