Make: Online: April 2005 Archives

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Archives: April 2005

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April 27, 2005

Build Your Own Portable Retro Entertainment System

David Randolph from G4's ATOS built a portable retro gaming system from two Eittek Power Player game sets, a Clarion VMA5894 car head rest video screen and a project box. Link. If this looks a little familiar, it is, the GameGrrl uses a low cost LCD and Nintendo controller instead. Between these two resources you're likely to pull off this project and/or come up with new ideas.

LEGO Han Solo in Carbonite

It's that time of year again- Star Wars season. Expect to see a lot of cool DIY light sabers, life size Tie Fighers, DIY Ewok costumes and of course a 70" x 30" x 10" Han Solo in Carbonite made from LEGOs. It took about 10,000 bricks, almost all dark gray, and about three months of on and off building. Link.

The Scooter Stereo System

Neat scooter mod from Scoot Free or Die...How to install a great sounding stereo system on your scooter for less than $100. On my way to work one morning I thought to myself, wouldn't it be great to have a stereo? I missed being able to listen to music while whizzing down the road. Link.

DIY MultiMediaCard MP3 player

I think this might be my new MP3 player. This MP3 player uses cheap MMC for storage, powered by a single AAA battery running a 20 Mhz chip which can play files up to 256 kBps at 44.1 kHz. ID3 support, Nokia LCD screen, micro joystick, not bad at all. Full schematic & pcb, hex file available. I think encasing this in clear lucite would be rad. Link.

April 26, 2005

MAKE Extras: PC DVR and Magstripe Multi-Track

Two MAKE Extras published today-- these are projects and updates that MAKE publishes online, for all to see, no dead trees. One is a recipe for a PC-based Digital Video Recorder (DVR) / media server / multi-console game machine that does everything except charge you every month. Link. The other MAKE Extra is an update to MAKE 01's Magnetic Stripe Reader project, which shows you how to read the data off of stripes in any of the the three standard locations on a card. More power to you! Link.

Call in to MAKE! 206-888-MAKE

Our next audio show will be released this Friday- so if you have any questions about projects, hacks, technology, questions about anyhing-- please call our voicemail today or Thursday and leave a message 206-888-MAKE. It's not a local call, but you can also email me a sound file to pt at oreilly dot com. Listen to our previous show here to get an idea what we talk about or want us to talk about!

Calling All Makers!

We're looking for MAKE subscribers and/or MakeZine.com fans that build projects in the Denver and Miami area(s). There are a couple local newspapers that want to chat with you about what you're up to. Please drop us a line by emailing dan at oreilly dot com. Thanks!

Make a crowd

Here's an interesting photo set from someone who works for production company that needed to make a crowd of people out of inflatable humanoids..."A production company I work for supplies them to movies, commercials etc for use as extras. This is a typical day of blowing them up, helping them get dressed, and finding them a good seat in the stadium". Link.

8-bit: Opening Night photos

Here's an incredible series of photos from the "i am 8-bit" video game art show opening in LA. i am 8-bit gathers the talents of over 100 of the world's top artists, to put their memories to paper, canvas, wood, or somewhere in between, recalling those oh-so-fond gaming moments from the era when pixels reigned king. It looks like it's running until 5/20 so if you're in town check it out. Photos, gallery site, review of the show from IGN.

Tape Recorder Racing

Each year in Munich the recorder races are held- Walkman's and Boom Boxes are modified to become racing cars to see which one can make it down a 15m gym floor, all by using the tape guts as their means of propulsion. More about this year's throw down here and here are some photos from the 2004 races.

DIY Road-Cone amplifier

Music Thing has a post about a DIY Road-Cone amplifier. While the creator of the project admits it doesn't sound quite good, it is very loud. I think this might spark some ideas, perhaps a set of road cones that yell at drivers if they're going to fast or ones that help teach driver's ed students how to parallel park by telling you how far away you are and saying "ouch" if you hit them. Maybe not. Link.

April 25, 2005

New MAKE Audio show: DRM on Audio, Nikon RAW and Live Calls

Here's the latest audio from MAKE Magazine! In this Make audio show- we talk about Audible RSS, Audio book DRM in libraries, Nikon RAW images, Flickr photo frames, Skype payphones, telco politics, 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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Talking Fish Hack

You know those hilarious/ridiculous singing animatronic mounted fish? Marty Vona gives full instructions for how to make one utter any audio you want, based on a $9 chipcorder and a $7 microcontroller. Link.

The WoodCube

The "Woodcube" contains a Super NES, a Playstation and a Nintendo 64. The external housing is an actual wood cube, in all its unfinished and splintery glory with mitered out areas for the games and CDs. The wood antennae on the top are a nice touch. It's also for sale on eBay Sweden now. Link.

Monochrome Digital Picture Frame

Here's a pretty fun project that turns an old Macintosh PowerBook 100 into a monochrome digital photo frame. I really like the look of the photos on the screen mixed in with the regular photo frames. If you plan on doing this the project lists the software and power on solutions needed to get it working which may save you some hassle. Link.

The World's Simplest Radio Jammer

Probably not a good idea to try this out depending on where you live, etc.. etc.. here's the "world's simplest radio jammer". The project uses a 100 MHz crystal which I haven't seen, the page goes on to say that it was procured out of some old circuit board from the 90s. Link.

Game Boy Camera Parallel Port Interface

Fun Gameboy accessory project-- The Game Boy Camera uses a cheap CMOS image sensor with a resolution of 128*123 and an analogue monochrome output. This page shows how to connect it to a standard non-bidirectional, non-ECP, non-EPP PC parallel port, with 5 bits per pixel, compared to the Game Boy's 2 bits dithered. The circuit described here uses only the small PCB in the swivelling part of the camera, which contains the AR chip, lens assembly and pretty much nothing else. No Game Boy involved. Link.

April 24, 2005

Kitchen Flickr Photo Frame Project

Doing the dishes is really boring- but I think I have something to help pass the time. A Flickr photo frame to view photos from friends and family. It's not too hard to find cheap old or broken Tablet PCs on eBay for under $300, and some have a swivel around screen that can be tucked up and away. For now I'm working on the best way to mount it and using VNC to set the slideshows. Also on the list- a full screen RSS viewer to read headlines.

Latest on the PEZ MP3 Project

I check the PEZ MP3 blog about once a week to see where the project is at. It's a fascinating journal of a stay at home Dad who has a dream, the passion and persistence to bring a product to market he thought up. This week, Samsung bumps the inventor for someone bigger and some really big company seems to be courting the developer with a crazy amount of orders, but then it goes quiet. I hope Samsung comes around since their chip support OGG Vorbis.

UW College of Engineering Open House Photos

Here's my Flickr photo set from the April 23rd UW College of Engineering Open House. I think the most impressive project was the Self-Assembling Robots (Electrical Engineering Bldg. 359) -- they demonstrated how a number of simple robots assemble themselves into larger structures. These robots were floating on an air hockey table and behave like biological organisms with a rule based system.

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