Make: Online: January 2008 Archives

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January 31, 2008

The Slåttberg - Linux iPod'ed and cranked Norwegian music

Here's a preview of a custom built musical instrument by Espen Sommer Eide, artist and member of Alog and Phonophani. The Slåttberg will premiere at the Borealis Festival for contemporary music Bergen, Norway late february 2008 - Link.

Circular bikes

Images The Best Circular Bike(Sbcc Roof Guys)
Robert Wechsler made these circular bikes from nine salvaged bikes. They were reassembled into a carousel formation, the bikes are modular and can be dismantled and reassembled. It is normally left in public places where it can attract a variety of riders - [via] Link.

6 legged boat

Media Images 44389000 Jpg 44389438 Jackedup 416230
This is pretty neat, the boat has 6 legs and can "stand up" and can plant a windmill in place -

Most boats do not have legs. But a jack-up barge has six, protruding high into the air when the ship is in transit.

Extending to a length of 48m from the bottom of the ship, and penetrating up to 5m into the sea bed, the "legs" of these ships provide a stable "ground" in a place where there is only roiling water.

As the legs push down, the ship is lifted above the waves. Purpose-built at a Chinese shipyard, the £60m jack-up barge MPIO Resolution is an extraordinary piece of engineering in itself.

6 legged boat - Link.

Neural network sculpture looks like an electronics lab gone mad

Phil Stearns created "AANN" during only a 2 week residency at Amsterdam's STEIM. "AANN" stands for "Analog Artificial Neural Network" and is a neural network installation consisting of 50 identical handmade sculptures that react to their immediate surroundings. Two microphones pick up sounds in the space while photocells detect light changes eventually triggering a chain reaction of pulses through the layers of LEDs and speakers embedded in the sculpture. Two "ear-like" microphones pick up sounds and "eye-like" photocells also detect changes in light, which then trigger a chain reaction of pulses through the many layers of the piece. Pretty cool example of a feedback machine.

Phil Stearns AANN project report - Link

Make:NYC Meeting 3 - Thursday, January 31st, 6:00PM - TONIGHT!

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REMINDER, tonight is the night! - The next Make:NYC Meeting 3 is Thursday, January 31st, 6:00PM -

Back from holiday shenanigans and even feistier than before! Make:NYC is gonna turn up the heat this winter. The fourth Make:NYC Meeting includes:

Seminar: Mastering Pipe Mechanics and Assembly (6PM)
This seminar covers using home improvement store variety pipe and fittings to incorporate into your own DIY projects. Covering mostly PVC pipe construction and use, with dabbles in ABS, galvanized and copper pipe use. You'll see live demonstration of technique and instruction on selecting the right materials for the job. Learn how to utilize these versatile and easy to use parts to enhance your building repertoire. Free for all who attend.

Lab: Build A Potato Shooter (7PM)
Ten dollars buys you parts, tools and instruction for building your own mini potato shooter. Safe and fun!

You must RSVP to attend the lab. You can RSVP here.

Contest Judging: Holiday Recycling
We hope you've been hard at work! We'll be judging our Holiday Recycling contest and we're excited to see what New York City Makers have come up with! Bring your project and be prepared to show it off. Remember, top prize is $100 in CASH!

Show and Tell
Meet your fellow NYC Makers and show off your creations! Bring your gadgets, gizmos, sketches, ideas... anything you'd like to put in the spotlight. We encourage NYC Makers to collaborate on and discuss DIY projects. If you're planning to bring a project, drop us a note at meetings@makenyc.org.

If you'd like to attend we have plenty of space for everyone, but please RSVP!

Location:
Make Offices, 2nd Floor (Google Map)
325 Gold St. at Flatbush Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11201

Bikes can be parked in the building.
A/C/F to Jay St-Borough Hall
B/Q to Dekalb Avenue
M/R to Lawrence Street
2/3 to Hoyt Street

Meeting time is 6:00PM. Lab time is 7:00PM.

See you there!

Make:NYC Meeting 3 - Thursday, January 31st, 6:00PM - Link.

HOW TO - Remove shake and motion blur from photos

Jason @ HACKSZINE writes -

It's a real drag when you think you've taken a great picture, only to load it up in photoshop and discover that your hands weren't as steady as you thought they were. Depending on the magnitude of your error, chances are you can correct most small camera bumps or pans using a deconvolution filter. The particular technique used depends on which package you use, but they are all built around manipulating the image in the frequency domain to reduce the photo's linear blurring.

Nathan Willis dissected three applications for removing the effects of camera movement from your photos. Two of them, Refocus and Iterative Refocus, are open source Gimp plugins. The third, Unshake, is a closed source Java application that is capable of producing high-quality results with little user effort (though your CPU will be hurting for a minute or two).

The above photo is from the Unshake site. It seems to work well for predominately straight-line blurs over the range of 8 pixels or less. I haven't tried the two Gimp plugins, but I have a feeling the Iterative Refocus package could produce the best results given enough tweaking of the setting.

It's all Fast Fourier Transforms and way over my head, but it works (and frankly, if it was good enough for the Hubble, it's good enough for me).

HOW TO - Remove shake and motion blur from photos - Link.

Related:

Unshaking and refocusing your photos - Link
Unshake - Link
Refocus - Link
Iterative Refocus - Link

Electronic sewing kit

Aniomagic has a great electric sewing kit that lets you easily create your own conductive fabric switch that powers an LED sequin. The kit contains everything you need, even a battery, and is only $15. There are a bunch of great examples on the site too!

The Electronic Sewing Kit™ is a set of materials that let you stitch electrical circuits into fabric. Silver-coated threads and tin coated fabrics feel just like traditional thread and fabric, but conduct electricity! These novel materials let you build soft, squishable and washable circuits that can decorate personal artifacts like clothes, caps and bags.

Electronic sewing kit - Link

Full size Electric Plane

Electric cars, and conversion kits, can be found all over the Internet. But when was the last time you saw a full size electric plane? Yeah, me neither. This is not an RC toy, it's a full size, human carrying, electric plane powered by an 18 kW, 25hp, brushed "industrial" motor. It flew for 48 minutes and went 50 km, that's about 31 miles. I would love to know what kind of noise it made as it flew by.

On Sunday, December 23, 2007 at 11:50 took place, the first flight of F-WMDJ ELECTRA, equipped with an electric motor of 25 hp and Lithium-polymer batteries.

The website was originally published in French, but there is a translated version that has some interesting information and more pictures. - Link [Via]

Related:

An Amazing electric car - Link

Parallel port logic analyzer

Adrian posted a step-by-step tutorial on how to build an inexpensive logic analyzer for your PC. He even has the schematics and software to download. Having an oscilloscope or simple logic analyzer can save you a lot of time when troubleshooting your electronics project.

A logic analyzer is a like a recorder for digital signals. During a certain (small) period of time, the state of a few digital lines can be recorded to a file. An event can be specified to signal the start of the recording, i.e. line 1 toggling from 0 to 1.

This looks like a really easy way to view some logic signals, but I would be a little concerned that the test probes are not isolated. You've been warned! - Link [Via]

Related:

Turn your soundcard into an oscilloscope - Link
Using an Oscilloscope - Link

MovieBeam hardware and software hacking...

Space Showimage Rom All Epoxy
Here's a wiki dedicated to opening up the MovieBeam player, a Linux-based set-top-box recently obsoleted by the demise of the MovieBeam service -

The MovieBeam service was a unique system for delivery of movie rentals to the home. It was based on a set-top-box using a special over-the-air data receiver, a hard drive and secure playback software. The terrestrial broadcast data transmissions would continually "beam" new movies and promotional material to the box where they would be stored for subsequent playback. The system would keep somewhere between 80-100 titles on the hard drive available for instant rental. While some of the hardware is quite specialized, the underlying system runs a variant of the Linux operating system and theoretically the box can be used for other purposes than its original design.

Purchased by Movie Gallery in early 2007, operations for the MovieBeam service ceased on or about December 15, 2007 and their website went down shortly after that. Inquiries with what was left of customer support regarding what to do with the player were met with "you can do as you please with the player." This wiki is intended as a repository for information regarding hacks and exploits on the MovieBeam player in the hopes that a few of them can be saved from a landfill.

MovieBeam wiki, thanks Dexter! Link.

January 30, 2008

Homemade Halo armor

Kids are awesome. This cardboard Halo armor is cooler than any refrigerator-box-fort I ever made as a kid - [via] Link.

UV photography on the cheap

There's an easy way to make a UV pass filter for your camera. It just takes a $5 incandescent black light, a large bottle cap and some duct tape.

For years I've wanted to mess around with UV photography. Unfortunately, all the websites on DIY UV seem to assume an infinite amount of money and access to specialized equipment on my part. There are two things that I don't like, when someone tells me I HAVE to spend a lot of money (quartz lenses starting at $3000) or that i need specialized equipment (Wratten 18A filters, not cheap either).
So I set out to do it my way, and here's my $5 solution to UV wavelength photography.

It's not completely void of visual artifacts, especially at the edges of the photo, but that's what the crop tool is for. As long as you're creative, which you are, you can make it work for you and get really nice results. Save the 3000 bucks for that trip to Europe... you know, where you can exchange it for about 2000 Euro.

Photography in the Ultraviolet spectrum - Link

NewScientist vid: Robots inspired by animals

NewScientist has some nice short science videos on YouTube, including this one surveying various research projects in animal-inspired robot motility. Especially check out the last bot, M-Tran, a "self-configuring mobile robot."

Robots inspired by animals - Link
M-Tran - Link

Moldable mouse

Itching for a remake:

Moldable Mouse is made of non-toxic lightweight modelling clay, covered with nylon and polyurethane blend fabric. It can be kneaded into any shape the user prefers, and the shape is self-retaining. By allowing a wide variety of hand positions when holding the mouse, it reduces repeated motions of the same posture, thereby minimising the chance of common mouse-related injuries such as the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. The click buttons and touch-sensitive scroll pad of the mouse are stick-on parts with built-in RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Device), which can be repositioned for maximum comfort.

Moldable mouse - [via] Link.

The low-down on BALLS 17

BALLS 17, the premiere experimental rocketry launch contest, has been announced for Sept 26, 27, 28 in Black Rock, Nevada. The event website has details on BALLS 17 and the competition rules.

This is the extreme rocketry event where experimental rocketeers push the envelope of size, staging/clustering, altitude, home-made components and motors, and cutting-edge rocket tech. Not for the faint of heart and not for children. Bring your hard hat.

BALLS 17 - Link

Another Red Ring of Death (RRoD) fix

Here's a fix for the Xbox 360 RRoD problem that uses little more than some added screws and washers.

Fix the Red Ring of Death! (without towels!) - Link

Bike part coffee table

Here's an elegant table made from bike parts by MAKE Flickr pool member Delcruiser. It features a chain ring shelf handy for stowing magazines/books or maybe a kryptonite chain or two.

Bike part coffee table on Flickr - Link

Also - Check out these graceful seatings by Frida Ottemo Kallstrom - constructed from recycled bicycle parts:

Recycled Bicycle Furniture on Inhabitat - Link

Recycled Gears on Inhabitat - Link

Related:
Bike Furniture
Furniture made from bikes - Link

Pocket amp circuit

This serene little pocket amp circuit was submitted by MAKE Flickr pool member Abie Ringman.
The Mint-Tin/CMoy headphone amplifier costs around $20 to make and therefore is a very attractive alternative to similar commercial amps which can run upwards of $100. Get more info on this popular project in MAKE Volume 4.

Pocket amp circuit on Flickr - Link

From the pages of MAKE:

Mint-Tin Amp MAKE 04 - page 141. Subscribers--read this article now in your digital edition or get MAKE 04 @ the Maker store.

Related:
RC4560 based headphone amp
RC4560-based headphone amplifier - Link

Seeing red mushrooms

From the MAKE Flickr pool:
Member Schroeder71 uses a tip from MAKE Volume 12 to punch up this image of fungi and achieve a crisp contrasting definition.
Accentuating color channels is an excellent pretreatment when you want that Ansel Adams look from grayscale conversions. Check out the MAKE 12 pdf for all the details.

Red Mushrooms on Flickr - Link

From the pages of MAKE:
MAKE_Vol12_Seeing%20Red.jpg

MAKE Vol. 12: Seeing Red - Link

Dances of Vice: Steampunk festival

We invite all modern dandies, decadents, aesthetes, artists, thinkers, and dreamers to join us on February 8th and 9th for the 2008 Dances of Vice Festival in New York City! While our regular monthly events are grounded in the 1920-30s, the 2008 Dances of Vice Festival will have a distinctly Neo-Victorian flair.

In addition to our roster of sensational live entertainment, the Dances of Vice Festival will also feature a number of exciting vendors, an art exhibition, and an elaborate vintage Polaroid photo booth, with over $3000 worth of costume prizes and giveaways to be distributed throughout course of the event. For details regarding the festival proceedings, please download our official Program Booklet: dovprogdigi.pdf (3.62 MB)

You are warmly invited to join our mailing list, Myspace, or LiveJournal community to keep updated regarding festival announcements. and check back often for updates! Ticket pre-sale will go until February 7th, or until the event is sold out.

We look forward to welcoming you to Dances of Vice!