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Archives: August 2006

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August 31, 2006

Tape case bike light

Matt Rasmussen made a simple LED bike light from an old tape case for less than 20 bucks! Matt says, "I've been riding with this thing for about a month now and loving it more and more." Link.

HOW TO - make folding speakers

Here's an Instructables HOW TO related to this post by Bre on Fold-Up Speakers that Rick Harris pointed us to. Now you can make your own with a cardboard box. Link.

ShowMeDo - featuring HOW TO videos

Waylan says, "This site is dedicated to showing demonstrative videos produced by our community. For many subjects seeing something done is the most effective way to learn, whether it's peering over an expert's shoulder while they explain how to program or watching while someone grinds beans and makes coffee. Please watch, learn and perhaps share your knowledge back." Shown here is David Rawlson's video covering the basics on how to maintain your car, including the tools you need. Link.

Ernie - First Bartending Robot

Something from the comments: Thanks to Shifzr for pointing us to this amazing drink serving robot from the 1980s. They actually sampled Hal, "completely operational and all my circuits are functioning perfectly." How else can you reply but to say, "Open the pod bay doors and give me a vodka tonic!"

Weird Drink Serving Robot Video

Robo

While going down the rabbit hole of exploring links, I found this very odd virtual video of a robot that serves drinks. Someone is getting ready to get their robo-drink on for Roboexotica, the worldwide gathering of drink serving robots. - Link to video page - Thanks Kate!

Twin-Engine Solarroller

Beambits

Gareth Branwyn, who authored the beambot article in Make issue 6, wrote up a cool article about Zach DeBord's twin-engine solarroller. This thing is a beambot hotrod!

Zach on building BEAM Roller circuits: "I usually build engines in a batch for later use. In the image below, you can see that there are sockets on top of the engine circuits (made from IC socket pins). These are used to easily plug in the solar cells. The two leads (red and black) coming out of the back of the engines go to the motors. In this picture you can see the two types of engines that I make: one "classic" configuration with storage capacitors (the two engines on the left) and another config using Polyacene disk batteries in place of the caps (which deliver roughly .6 Farads of stored power). These are represented by the three engines on the right." - Link

Engines

You can find Zach's flickr set here.

Analog + Nokia phone

Daisung says, "I've uploaded some photos of my analogue phone + old Nokia phone. I'm currently overseas so I've had to leave it behind, but every time I've used it, I got great reactions out of people who were extremely curious. The handset works just like a regular phone by the way!" Link.

Update 9/1: If the link above still is overloaded, check out another version complete with DIY instructions by Jake von Slatt. - Link.

Homebuilt Street Legal Luge with Brakes

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DIY street legal luge + awesome helmet = RAD

Back in the late seventies, I was a skateboarder. I would find the biggest hill I could and bomb down that thing as fast as I could. I didn't do tricks or flips. I was a gravity junky. 10 years and some common sense later, I wasn't skateboarding anymore but I saw this street luge on TV andthought it was awsome. The main drawback is that it was missing something that I cherished after a few scary accidents, mainly brakes. I put the idea aside for a possible future maybe project...

...until 3 years ago. I don't remember if it came to me while on the can or in the shower but I was thinking to myself that if I built a street luge, not only should it have brakes, but it should be street legal to avoid any hassles from the law. Street luges are considered as skateboards here and a skateboard is illegal on public roads. But not bikes,hmmmmmmmm. - Link

August 30, 2006

Flickr Geotagging

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Ok, simple DIY hacks have been around for a while, but Flickr is rolling out the red carpet on geotagging your photos.

If you just want to jump in and start geotagging, open the new 'map' tab in the organizr and go for it. It's all drag and drop and easy to figure out. Since location information has its own privacy setting -- so you can keep the location the photo was taken private, even when the photo is public -- you'll be asked to set a default privacy setting before beginning. [via] - Link

Forest Machine

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A few months ago, I wrote a post about some making a Rube Goldberg Contraption in the forest and we made a fun, but shaky, video. We resolved to do it again sometime. The Discovery Channel stepped in and motivated us to do just that and so with a TV crew on the way, Jesse, Brenda, and I reconvened and came up with some new sticks and stone elements for a new and improved forest machine.

The Discovery Channel guys were great and patient and helped reset the rock dominos and were awesome to work with. We had a total of 24 different events happen in this forest machine! Rube Goldberg contraptions never work on the first try, but we did finally get the whole thing to work after two solid days of work and 124 tries. We didn't want to have an effect on the environment so we used hundreds of feet of twine and rope. (We did use some nails, but we only put them into branches that we found dead and on the ground. We also used two rusty pulleys that we found - somehow rust justifies using metal in the forest in our minds.)

We've got some video of it which I'll put up soon, but in the meantime you can go check out the flickr set.

DIY party lights

Max says, "Today, I was thinking about how I can turn a household bulb into a party light by connecting an embedded computer for my next party in my garage. We will use a SSR (solid state relay) relays to enable common AC household light." Check out the great video tutorial. Link.

New Yahoo Group - mint tin collecting

Chuck let us know he started a Yahoo Group for Mint Tin Collecting. From Chuck,"As of July 27, 2006, I have about 250 different mint tins, including of course the original Altoid mint tins, but also many other company's tins. I also include in this collection tins that have gum or other candy, so "mint tin" is a bit misleading, but since the original Altoids were mints, I hereby honor them with the name." Join the group and post up your projects with Altoids or any other tin cans. Link.

DV camera lens from still camera hack

Joshua says, "Hacking a 35mm still camera lens onto a digital video camera. " Link.

X-ray plates as record duplication in 1950's USSR

CatmullRom says, "An interesting story about using old x-ray plates to copy records in the USSR back in the 1950s." Link.

Standup mobile desk and cat bunk bed on wheels

Stand Up Rolling Cat Desk.1

Merle says, "I like getting things done standing up and moving around. So, I repurposed the rolling cat house. When Fezzle saw me making changes, he jumped in to make sure I wouldn't remove his basket. He saw me eyeing that space. So, I can truely say that he helped design this desk. Now he can go to sleep knowing he'll be with me when he wakes - - where ever the desk may be." Link.

HOW TO - Make a Spinner

An Arkanoid spinner made with recycled parts . See here also for a detailed guide on how to build a startrek like pushbutton. Link.

C64 USB keyboard

Mikkel says, "The C64 USB keyboard connectos to a PC and is detected as a USB HID device. It uses Objective Development's AVR-USB firmware only driver on an Atmel ATmega8. The microcontroller takes care of scanning the keyboard matrix of an old Commodore 64 "breadbox" and debouncing and converting keypresses to USB HID reports. Should be easily modifiable for creating a USB keyboard in a different form factor. Full source code and hardware documentation available." Link.

Art Buggy Derby in Philly

The Art Buggy Derby will be held on Sunday, October 15th in Washington Square Park in Philly. It is both an intense race of speed and a fierce competition of ingenuity. It's about building the fastest buggy that will cruise across the finish line first. But it's also about building a buggy that creates art during the journey of the race. Art that will wow the judges after the smoke settles. This is the riddle of the Art Buggy Derby - a buggy can cross the finish line second and still win the race on account of the art it created during the race. Link.

Drum Trigger

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A cool Phil Collins style drum roll, coming to a mousepad near you!

This selfmade drum trigger pad I made in about 15 minutes for testing Alesis D4 drum module. It consist of synthetic leather (better use mousepad) glued on one side of tin sheet and piezo glued on the other. All this is glued on the spnge for absorving vibnration. For testing purposes it s easiest to solder cable with connector directly on the piezo. - Link

Computer Museum

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I visited the computer museum at RE/PC recently and took a walk down memory lane. Since I played "Wizardry" for about three years from the age of 10-12, old computers make me feel all soft, fuzzy, and nostalgic. What old computers do you have fond memories of? Photoset link.