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June 27, 2009

ARRL Field Day 2009

Today is Field Day, the annual event where thousands of hams across the nation publicly demonstrate their emergency communication abilities. You can find hams constructing emergency stations in parks, schools, backyards and shopping malls operating using only emergency power supplies. If you are interested in getting started with ham radio but don't have a license, today is a great day to do so. Field Day is one of the few opportunities when you can operate without a license at the GOTA (get on the air) stations (which are supervised by licensed hams).

You can find your local field day station on the ARRL Web station locator.

Posted by Diana Eng | Jun 27, 2009 01:30 AM
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Altoids tin tacklebox

If fishing is in your weekend plans, you can whip up this quickie Altoids tin tacklebox! It uses an old gift card and some popsicle sticks to make compartments and a stacking tray.

Artomatic 500

Looking to build and race your own kinetic sculpture in the DC area? Don't mIss the Artomatic 500 on Saturday, June 27:

Racers and crew are invited to create a cardboard "vehicle" which could be two dimensional, three dimensional -- even four dimensional if you can make it happen -- as long as it it entirely powered by a walking or running human and is decorated by the driver and his or her team. No engine or propulsion system of any sort is allowed. Wheels are optional. In fact, they are discouraged.

Word is that you should bring your own refrigerator box if you're so inclined.

The Artomatic site has lots of info, and check out their Flickr pool.

Make: Projects - Shrinky-dink gaming minis

Even as we approach the cultural apocalypse of ubiquitous, fully immersive, photo-real multiplayer video game environments, there are still those of us who like to play board or tabletop games. The communal wargaming experience, for instance, is very different from playing a networked MMORPG or turn-based strategy game. Whereas WarCraft or Xbox Live is kind of like hanging out with your buds watching TV, actually getting together and playing a board game is more like a real party. There's usually music and snacks and beverages and lots of gregarious BS-ing of a type that just isn't as practical over a network line. Manipulating the physical game pieces is also satisfying in a way that virtual objects have yet to achieve, and probably won't for some time to come.

A lot of folks who are into tabletop gaming eventually end up making their own pieces, for one reason or another. They may be making a custom army to compete in a wargame with established rules, or they may be making up their own game for which no commercial pieces are available. For these folks there's an array of techniques available. The simplest, as in wargaming days of yore, is to use illustrated paper or cardboard "chits" that lay flat on the gaming surface. A step up from that involves buying or making bases so your cardboard heroes can stand upright, which not only makes them look better but makes them much easier to manipulate. If the cardboard approach is too wimpy for you, you can always purchase commercial 3D miniature figures and paint and/or customize them to suit your taste.

Polyolefin shrink film presents an intermediate approach to original miniature design, midway between cheap paper or cardboard cutouts and fully dimensional figurines. Shrinky-dinks are much more durable than card stock, and unlike store-bought figurines, they are completely customizable. Best of all, you can make all your artistic mistakes at the software level, where they're easy to fix.

Materials:

Inkjet ink
Inkjet friendly shrink film
Small binder clips, one for each mini you intend to make

Tools:

Computer with color inkjet printer and appropriate software (if you're designing your own art)
Oven
Cookie sheet with cardboard insert to fit
Paint pen
Scissors/pen knife/paper cutter to cut out dinks

Step 1: Design your dinks

The best way to determine the expected shrinkage of your film is by experiment. Print a square of known dimension, cut it out, shrink it, and measure the new size. The ratio of the "after" dimensions to the "before" dimensions gives the expected shrink percentage. Every film I've ever seen also includes an approximate shrink ratio in the directions, and if you're not an accuracy freak it's probably safe to assume it's correct. The clear film I used shrinks by about 50%, meaning that the designs as printed need to be about twice as big, in each dimension, as the desired miniature size. Note that if you intend to use bases you need to be sure to leave an empty "tab" at the bottom of each image so the base can be attached without obscuring the art. If you're using binder-clip bases (see below), I recommend the small (3/4") size. These have a real "footprint" of 3/4" x 1/2", so scaling up for 50% shrink film gives a 1.5" x 1" pre-shrink area to allow for during the design of each piece.

If you don't want to design your own minis, or you just want to experiment with the technique, I've put together a set of markers for the deluxe edition of Steve Jackson's famously awesome future war-game, OGRE. You can download a .PDF of my OGRE marker designs here, ready to print onto five 8.5" x 11" sheets of 50% shrink film.

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Old school ceramics, new school robot art

I love this ceramic art, a mash-up of classic blue and white Chinese pottery and modern-day Japanese manga robotics, by Canadian artist Brendan Tang. Brendan tells MAKE: "All works are composted utilizing traditional ceramic processes, from the throwing of the vessels to the hand painting of the forms."

Brendan L.S. Tang

How to make a cheap tripod mount for the iPhone 3GS

Cheap iPod Mount

C.K. Sample III (author of PSP Hacks) just posted his technique for making an iPod tripod mount; he used the form-fitting packing material that came in the box as the basis of the holder. You could probably extend his technique to a lot of other gadgets, too:

I was thinking about this tonight, and remembered the nice little white holster of plastic that came in the box of my iPhone 3GS and cradled it so nicely. So, I took that, took a 3/16 drill bit and drilled a hole where the camera is and another where the recycle symbol was on the back of the plastic holster. I shaped each hole slightly wider using the drill. The recycle symbol hole was just the right size to be a bit tight for the mounting screw, so that the screw itself could tap its own path tightly in the plastic hold...

How to make a cheap tripod mount for the iPhone 3GS

Hack a Day's Bus Pirate

The folks over at Hack a Day have gone into the electronic components biz. Teaming up with Seeed Studio, they're producing the Bus Pirate. The Bus Pirate is a universal serial bus tool. Use it for understanding how components work before you build a full prototype. Their parts posts page shows many example uses. Here's more about the board:

The Bus Pirate is a universal bus interface that talks to most chips from a PC serial terminal, eliminating a ton of early prototyping effort when working with new or unknown chips. Many serial protocols are supported at 0.6-5.5volts, more can be added.

* 1-Wire
* I2C
* SPI
* JTAG
* Asynchronous serial
* MIDI
* PC keyboard
* 2- and 3-wire libraries with bitwise pin control

We added other stuff we need, like,

* 0-6volt measurement probe
* 1hz-40MHz frequency measurement
* 1kHz - 4MHz pulse-width modulator, frequency generator
* On-board multi-voltage pull-up resistors
* On-board 3.3volt and 5volt power supplies with software reset
* Macros for common operations
* Bus traffic sniffer (SPI)
* A bootloader for easy firmware updates

Since this has been such a useful tool for us, we cleaned up the code, documented the design, and released it here with specs, schematic, and source code.

The Bus is available for pre-orders and sells for $27.15.

Bus Pirate preorders open
How-to: The Bus Pirate V2 with USB
The Bus Pirate universal serial interface

Mini Maker Faires at Copperfield's starting this weekend

Starting this weekend, Copperfield's books in CA is hosting a series of mini Maker Faires, we hope you can join us for a fun afternoon this summer! Download this PDF for more information.

Mini Maker Faires at Copperfield's:

6/26 - Sebastopol (11am - 1pm)

7/11 - Petaluma (11am - 1pm)

7/18 - Montgomery Village (11am - 1pm)

7/25 - Healdsburg (11am - 1pm)

8/1 - Petaluma (11am - 1pm)

8/8 - Montgomery Village (11am - 1pm)

Next Dorkbot DC, Tuesday July 7, 2009

Dorkbot DC has been on a hiatus for the past few months, but we're back, baby! July will be the first of a series of some events co-presented with our pals at HacDC. If you're in town, we hope you can make it.

Schedule for next meeting (Co-presented with HacDC)

7 July, 2009
7 PM - 8 PM (ET)
ALWAYS FREE!

Location:
HacDC (Room TBA)
1525 Newton St NW
Washington DC 20010

Keith Sinzinger with the tubular bells he made.

Keith Sinzinger : Tubular Bells: Construction and Processing

Photo by Keith Sinzinger.

Fresh from having performed in the Baltimore Electronic Music Festival Keith will talk about how he conceived of, researched and constructed a set of tubular bells from scrap galvanized pipe. He'll also touch on some other ongoing musical construction projects. Following a Q&A session, he'll demonstrate the bells as he generally use them in performance, processed through a variety of electronic effects.

About Fast Forty
Keith calls this genre Intense Ambient: found sounds, altered electronics, scrap metal and other devices, blended to soothe and stimulate. His musical roots were developed in an industrial city (Cleveland), where he grew up in the virtual shadow of a Ford plant. He's also lived most of his years within a few blocks of railroads. His musical experiments tend to reflect these environmental influences.

DorkbotDC would like to thank HacDC, DC's hacker space, for arranging this talk and inviting us to co-present with them.

More info here.

Ultralight backpacking kitchen

Instructables user thatoneguydavid shows us how to make an ultra-mini boiling pot from a beer can for backpacking. He also put together a 1 oz. spice kit with which to cook.

High speed glass breakage

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Some nice shots of breakables caught in mid-shatter can be found in this photoset from Flickr member whosdadog (ytmnd!)

In the Maker Shed:

High-Speed Photography Kit Version 4

How-To: Make an audio cassette tape loop

Instructables author (and Community Manager) Randy Sarafan writes:

Theoretically it sounds really easy; you can make a tape loop by taping the ends of a short piece of magnetic ribbon together and sticking it back inside the cassette tape. However, if you ever actually tried to do this, you will soon realize that it is a tad bit trickier than one would think. I spent an afternoon working out and refining this science. After many tries and many, throw-my-hands-in-the-air-and-promise-to-give-up sorts of moments, I think I have it down reasonably enough to write instructions for someone else to do it. Now you too can tape the ends of magnetic ribbon together, and profit!

Audio Cassette Loop

Solar night light circuit art

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Flickr member planetwrite created these rather unique solar night light art pieces - check out his etching process in the project photoset.

Getting to know the diode mixer

Dave posted this vid along with a write-up, covering the ins-and-outs of the unbalanced diode mixer circuit -

This circuit uses the small non-linear response area of a single diode to create combinations of sum and difference frequencies of two input signals (or one input signal containing multiple overtones). Radio designers use this type of circuit to "downconvert" received RF signals to a lower intermediate frequency, which makes it a lot easier to design the radio's signal processing circuitry. We can use the same circuit for electronic music to generate non-harmonic overtones. (In the RF circuitry literature, there is a class of related circuits that all use diodes to do frequency mixing functions. What we call a "ring modulator" originated as a more sophisticated version of the circuit presented here.)

Much more info + schematic available on his blog entry.

More:

Make presents: The Diode

Weekend Project: Potato Gatling Gun

Here is a brand new version of the popular potato cannon built by the DeRose family
and shown at this years Maker Faire. Check out their website for more details.
To download The Potato Gatling Gun MP4 click here or subscribe in iTunes.

Brian May's homemade guitar

Seven Sexton sent us a link to this awesome 1992 video of Queen's Brian May talking about "The Fireplace," his famous electric guitar that he and his dad built from scrap bits such as a mantle from a 100-year old fireplace (hence the name), a chunk of a table, a spring from a motorcycle, a piece from his mother's knitting needle, etc. Amazingly, this is not some fragile relic he keeps in the closet, but a working guitar, one you've heard on many Queen songs. His family was poor and his dad built most of their home electronics, including their television and radio. Wonderful, inspiring little piece. I love the opening quote from him:

I'm still a kid. Basically, I LOVE the sound of the guitar. I love making it. I love standing there and making that noise.

Brian May guitar 1992

Broadcast live video from Android

Qik, the "phonecasting" folks, have released an early alpha of their software to the Android Marketplace. Unlike most streaming video services out there, Qik focuses on streaming live video from mobile phones. What makes this release unique is the diversity of the Android OS. It can be found on mobile phones, netbooks, picture screens, embedded systems, and set-top boxes. New possibilities arise when you add something like live video into the mix.

[via diTii.com]

Pulse-jet bike

That looks like one rascally rocket to ride, but hey, it's a PULSE JET! You can buy one of the jets from the maker, on eBay (link on the Instructables item below).

Buy this pulsejet so you can make your own jet bike

In the Maker Shed: MAKE: Warranty Voider - Leatherman

MKWVP4-2 copy.jpg
Small enough to fit on your key chain, the MAKE Warranty Voider is the perfect companion for mobile fixing, hacking and MacGyvering. This is a limited offering with custom "MAKE: Warranty Voider" laser lovingly etched with care using a 35w laser.

More about the MAKE: Warranty Voider - Leatherman "Squirt" P4 (plier version)

Thinking of building a solar still?

Build It Solar has a great collection of solar DIY projects, including stills, cookers, food driers, and water heaters. But the gem of their solar-distillation collection, for my money, is this paper, from 1985, by Horace McCracken and Joel Gordes. It's unformatted ASCII and black-and-white GIFs, but it provides a better review of the various designs of solar stills, and the theory that informs their design and operation, than anything else I've found in the tubes.

From the pages of MAKE: