Make: Online: April 2005 Archives

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Archives: April 2005

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April 30, 2005

Davis Vantage Pro 2 Wireless Weather Station

I'm trying out a Davis Instruments weather station for an upcoming review in MAKE, and we've installed it on the roof at the O'Reilly campus. It was pretty easy to assemble and we're getting some cool reports from it.

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Best Home Brew Gameboy Games on a Cartridge

GBADev has an annual competition to create home brewed GameBoy games. Instead of giving out cash and flash cartridges the aim is to manufacture a batch of 500 cartridges with the top entries (a "multi-cart") complete with cart sticker, manual and box. The cartridges will be manufactured by an "independent party" (not Nintendo). The cartridges are in, you can order them now. The games look great. Link.

More Power for your Digital Cameras

Here's an older but useful article about all sorts of batteries you can build to power your digital camera. This is a good introduction to the types of batteries and cell capacities- as well as soldering up something you'll be plugging in to your digital camera. Link.

DIY LED Lighting

Here's a DIY LED how-to for computer cases. I like step by steps like this, they're easy enough for anyone to do and build skills for more complicated mods. In this guide, you will learn how combine a spare molex connector and 2 LEDs to create a simple and effective lighting solution. Basic soldering skills are necessary, but apart from that, this mod requires very little experience (and very little money). Link.

Gonzo Gizmos

AOTS had one of my favorite Makers- Simon Field, author of Gonzo Gizmos: Projects & Devices to Channel Your Inner Geek. Simon makes all sorts of projects from stuff found around the house. Film can cannons, three penny radios, solar marshmallow roasters and more. His website SciToys also has a lot to explore as well as the parts/projects to purchase. Link.

Mac OS X Tiger follow up

On Friday's MAKE:Audio show we had a quick review of Mac OS X Tiger and now that's we've been banging on it for a few more hours, here are some cheers and jeers. Spotlight search is creepy fast, it's finding everything almost instantly. Dashboard and its Widgets are fun but take up a lot of memory, not sure if it matters though. The RSS screensaver is also fun, here's a video of what it looks like. Only Macs that are 1Ghz G4 and above can do join in multi-video chats, but multi-audio seems to be fine on some sub 1Ghz machines here. Even if you bought QuickTime Pro 6+ you need to repurchase QuickTime 7. Overall a great release, it's living up to all the stellar reviews. Some photos from the Seattle store (4th in line!).

April 29, 2005

Skype Payphone Video

Here's a quick video I shot late last night of the Skype payphone actually working. It rings and can be used as a Skype phone for any call, SkypeIn/SkypeOut and it's just really really cool to have a working VOIP Skype payphone in one's living room. Next up getting it to take quarters so you can make calls and using the keypad as username and password entry.Link (QuickTime 8MB).

New MAKE Audio show: Tiger review, DIY Ringtones, Car AI, Skype payphone

Here's the latest audio from MAKE Magazine! In this Make audio show- we review Mac OS X Tiger, talk about- weather cartels, DIY Ringtones, interview with a car's AI, Skype payphone test (it worked!) listener calls and more. Right click or Control + click to download this MP3 to you local system or add the MAKE Audio feed to your podcasting application and get the show automatically! Show notes after the jump...

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Playstation Portable Sar Charts, Comics and more...

Lots of things to put on your PSP. Here are official PSP versions of comics formatted for the PSP from Variance press (High and Lonesome, Last Orders and Semantics). Next up- Star Charts resized just for the PSP from the Mag-7 Star Atlas project, love this! And lastly, pimp out your PSP case- I hope someone makes a template and kit to do this. Link. Thanks Eric!

Bamboo Bicycle Frame

Is there anything bamboo can't do? Here's a how to on making a bike frame out of bamboo. "I saw many amazing constructions made of bamboo and I always wondered, why such light, strong, stiff and elastic material is not widespread used for building of bicycle frames. Since I finished my carbon frame, I was thinking about using bamboo for my second frame". Link via BoingBoing.

DIY Plasti-Prompter

Here's a DIY teleprompter for the folks out there who are using web cams to do videoblogging or recording themselves speaking. It's pretty simple, a couple CD cases and some HTML and you're good to go. I think as we start using video conferencing more it might be a neat project to put all sorts of things on there, like instant messages, widgets, slides or maybe a RSS ticker, maybe not. Link.

Making Widgets

Mac OS X Tiger is out today, so that means we're going to see a ton of really neat widgets, if you want to get started building here's an overview...Based on Web Kit technologies, Dashboard Widgets are created using a mix of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. This extends the ability to develop Widgets to a very wide audience. If you know how to create a web page, then you know how to create a capable Widget. Link. We'll have some examples once we make a few too.

April 28, 2005

Maker challenge: Wiring a House

Jim writes..."I am presently in the process of rebuilding my house. I have been seriously considering a bundled wire of 2 coax, 1 cat5, 1 cat6 and 2 fiber optic. Might as well bring it in to the 21st century while I'm at it. Yet, I am looking for some kind of module, or brain command center that will handle the distribution to all rooms. I was wondering if you know were going to write about a build your own type of distribution system rather than the old splitters. I wanted to bring in one feed and run direct home runs to all rooms. No jumping from room to room. No multiple splitters down the line, etc... Of course, I want to have wireless access, but we all know that there are still signal drops in that configuration". What are some suggestions for Jim? Post them in the comments!

Pabst Blue Ribbon Condenser Mic Microphone

This guy has built a pro-quality condenser mic from a beer can and some other bits and pieces. Omnidirectional small diaphragm capsule, ruler flat freq. response from 100 Hz to around 15kHz, attached to the power supply by approx. 7 ft. of cable, fits most mic clips, and runs on a 9v battery. He's built them out of Pabst Blue Ribbon and Schlitz, selling them from $15 to $51 on ebay. Thanks Tom! Link.

Hacking in Iraq, Interview with Jake Appelbaum

I hang out on IRC a lot, Jake Appelbaum (ioerror) popped in the other night and we talking about the satellites he was setting up in Iraq on his vacation along with all sorts of hackery. I was completely fascinated why he was over there and of course curious about what type of "Makers" there are and what they're building. Hacking the border, internet connections, handing out Knoppix CDs, video blogging, amazing stuff- Jake was kind enough to answer some questions via email. And here they are...

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DIY Dirkon Paper Camera

Here's a fascinating project and history of the Dirkon paper camera. The name Dirkon is a play on words based on the combination of the parts of two words: Dirk- is the beginning of the Czech word dirka - pinhole, and -kon is the end of the name of a well-known Japanese camera. The site has a gallery, instructions, tips and printable templates to make your own. Link.

BENT 2005 Festival

The BENT 2005 Circuit Bending Festival is a four day exploration of the art of circuit bending. The festival is in NYC from April 27th to the 30th. What is Circuit Bending? The term circuit bending refers to the act of modifying the circuitry of battery-powered children's toys to create strange, new, and unintended sounds for creative purposes. Link.

Geiger Countering on planes

Awhile back I did some testing of using a USB based Geiger counter on a plane ride from Seattle to San Fran to detect cosmic rays- Dean used a Aware Electronics RM-70 to do the same on more on a Southwest Airlines flight to LAX. On the site you can see graphs from the flight as well as the decay of radioactive daughter products of radon-222 being captured on a coffee filter that filtered 15 minutes of air through a vacuum cleaner in someone's basement in Ohio. Link.

MAKE Mobile site

We now have a mobile version of MAKE via Winksite. It took about 10 minutes to sign up, add our feed and publish the mobile version. Here's a picture of it on a Sidekick. Here's the direct link to the mobile version of the blog section of MAKE. We'll have a link somewhere on the site soon so you can always find it. Link.

April 27, 2005

Alarm Clock Hacking

New DIY trend, alarm clock mods. Hacking an alarm clock so that it will enter snooze mode when it experiences a shock. In this project, we will bypass the mechanical snooze switch on top, and instead turn the alarm clock off in a much more fun way: punching it! Hopefully along the way I will be able to teach you some techniques that are useful in reverse engineering, so you can apply them to future projects. Link.

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