Make: Online: July 2008 Archives

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Archives: July 2008

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July 31, 2008

Robotic furniture: The RoboStool

Steve sent in his latest project, the RoboStool. It uses a Parallax Propeller chip, and motor mount kit, to navigate in 3 different ways. It can use a "beacon" mode to navigate or be controlled via a universal remote. It can even be put in "follow" mode, which uses thermal sensing to follow the user around the house. [Thanks Steve!]

In a continuing effort to create unique and unusual robots I just completed RoboStool - a robotic foot stool. Where would such an idea as a robot foot stool come from? I'm not really sure but one day while waiting for my wife to finish shopping in a Bed Bath and Beyond (and totally bored of course) I spied the ultimate in tacky furniture - a cubed shaped foot stool covered in the finest of brown vinyl. At that moment it occurred to me that this foot stool was just begging to be automated. And thus began the RoboStool project.

How to: Make a Skateboard Sail

Here is an environmentally friendly mode of transportation. Although I wouldn't use it to commute to work! This looks like a fun project to make with your kids. All you need is some PVC pipe, duct tape, and a large piece of plastic. Oh, and a bit of wind!

Read more about making your own Skateboard Sail

How to: Wireless network printer

This project gives you step-by-step instructions on how to integrate a wireless hub into your existing printer. They rewired the LED's and the rest button so they are on the front panel of the printer. Everything else is stuffed inside the case. They could have just left the router sitting on top of the printer and it would have worked fine, but that's no fun!

Read more about making your own Wireless network printer [CircuitProjects]

Illustrated guide to "every stupid cable you need"

Cablepus
This is handy, Gizmodo put together a super guide on all the AV cables and more you might need, have or will end up telling your parents they need when they want to hook up that thing to the other thing...

We put up with too many cables. There are at least four different kinds of USB plugs, two kinds of FireWire and like a million different ways to connect something to TV or monitor. Modern gadget life can be kind of retarded in this way. Why not one kind of cable, or just a couple? I don't know. But until everyone gets on the same appendage-to-hole scheme, in the meantime, you can use this: an illustrated guide to pretty much every kind of cable you will see in current gadgets and what it's used for (unless, you know, Sony springs a new one on us overnight, which is honestly possible).

July 30, 2008

Asterisk File Transfer Protocol

Cory Menscher writes:

As part of the NYU ITP "5in5" event this week, I created the Asterisk File Transfer Protocol. Using the CSound audio programming language, I wrote a PHP script that converts a binary file into an audio WAV file based on the "Kansas City standard", created in 1975, for transferring binary files via audio cassette. However, instead of a cassette, a user can dial my extension on an Asterisk VoIP PBX server and "retrieve" a file (an 8kb jpeg image) at 300 baud over POTS. You can access the file by dialing (212) 796-0729 ext. 160.

In reality, the audio quality of the GSM codec I was limited to by the server probably precludes one from ACTUALLY downloading the file, but it's still fun! If you want to hear a higher-fidelity version of the file you can access it at http://www.menscher.com/itp/blogmedia/aftp.mp3.

Corey posted the source he used to generate the encoded WAV from an image, so you can see the nuts and bolts of using CSound to generate audio data in PHP. It'd be neat to see the decoder half of this, but it's been left as an exercise for the reader.

I have fond memories of saving and loading files from a C64 datasette drive like this, so it's pretty cool to see this sort of thing done in PHP.

The Asterisk File Transfer Protocol

Milk crate chandelier and roundup

Milk crates are very versitile, and for many, a college staple. Often it doesn't take more than a few bungee cords or a length of rope to turn a few into whatever storage or furniture solution you need. Here's a chandelier made from several. The linked article also has several other milk crate furniture mods. Via Core77.

Here at MAKE, we believe in the perpetuation of milk crate ingenuity. Here are a few more:

Milk crate crab pots!

Milk crate jerky maker

Milk crate bicycle saddlebags

Crate people on CRAFT

Vacuum tube earring

Found in the MAKE Flickr Pool: user In dust we trust made this earring from a vintage subminiature vacuum tube. This would go great with a hard drive needle tiara for steampunk accessorizing.

UPDATE: turns out In dust we trust's girlfriend, Darla, made these. Beautiful jewelry!

More:

5 in 5: Day 2

Day 2 of 5 in 5 brought to life a periodic tote, tickets to a sunset, a year in pictures, balls of light. In an impromptu celebration of old-time computing we got earrings compatible with your PC, AsteriskFTP, and thank goodness there's finally BASIC for Twitter. Clink your glasses for a laser photo trigger, trip the family crest fantastic, snap a jacket, work some flash, and with today's guest star, compare the Olympic to the merely average.

The group is now 14 strong and with today's Guest Star Dennis Crowley, they did each project in a single day. Three more days to go! Check out the Etsy Video published yesterday by Guest Star Bre Pettis that includes FrankenFace.

Days: 1 2 3 4 5

Syuzi Pakhchyan on NHPR "Word of Mouth"

Syuzi Pakhchyan, author of our first Craft: Projects book, Fashioning Technology, was a guest on New Hampshire Public Radio's "Word of Mouth" program. You can hear the webcast of it here.

Fashioningtechnologycover

Buy Fashioning Technology by Syuzi Pakhchyan in the Maker Shed today!

This book demonstrates how to blend sewing and assembly techniques with traditional electronics to assemble simple circuits using conductive thread, solder joints for snaps, and switches for buttons. With the sewing machine as a viable substitute for the soldering iron, you can craft a new generation of objects that are interactive, quirky, and fashion-conscious.

Look for Fashioning Technology Kits soon this Summer in the Maker Shed! For now, check out the rest of our CRAFT Kits.

HOW TO - control a Gakken SX-150 via MIDI

Sx-150 Midi
Sx-150 Midi Schem

The SX-150 was just released today and there's already an excellent mod! Frankie writes -

Today Gakken released the kit of the SX-150 analog synth (a perfect match for the new Nintendo DS Korg DS10 analog synth card!).
RJ, a Japanese MAKE magazine reader, a couple fo weeks ago posted a guide to create a Midi interface for the Gakken SX-150 (so it has been hacked even before the release date!)!

- SX150 synth MIDI mod (scroll down for the SX-150)

- Gakken Analog Synthesizer SX-150 Mod. (RJ's original post in Japanese)

More:
Gakken analog synth kit

Gakken analog synth kit

Gakken Synth
Gakken Synth Unbox
(photos by CookieM)

Japanese kit-maker Gakken has just released a special special edition of the Otona No Kagaku publication focussing on music synthesizers. The issue includes an SX-150 stylus-input analog synth kit which appears to require relatively little effort in the way of assembly (a feature which may be a demerit in the eyes of some avid solderers). Have a look/listen of the device in action -

The external control source seems to hold a lot of potential - and from what can be discerned from the compressed audio, the unit seems to sound rather nice. (want want)

- SX-150 on Matrixsynth

- SX-150 on Flickr

More:
Gakken kits in the Maker Shed

Jack Nicholson - Green pioneer

Anticipating the Green Wave by almost 30 years, Jack gets rid of gas. (1978)

This is crazy, Jack Nicholson had a hygrogen car (created with solar) over 30 years ago.

The sea glass of summer

Packing up for the beach today (yay!), I saw this link on Dinosaurs and Robots to Kevin Kelly's blog, to a piece about sea glass (which we used to call "beach glass"). Kevin writes:

A name yields knowledge. When I got home looked up sea glass. Aha! There are books. There are collectors. There's a national association of collectors. And standards for colors. There's a annual convention of sea glass collectors and trade show (next one is in Delaware in October). There are enthusiasts, professionals, feuds. Anything of perceived value will have fakes and counterfeits, and sea glass has those too.

I had my own encounter with sea glass last weekend. A group of Dorkbot DC-ers were fortunate enough to be invited to sculptor Jim Sanborn and his wife artist Jae Ko's private island in the Chesapeake Bay (where we saw things too amazing to imagine that we're not at liberty to talk about yet). They have their own beach and it is littered with beautiful pieces of sea glass. I picked up and examined a bunch, not sure why I didn't bring any home. Here's some on the porch of their beach house, photographed by Dorkboter Katie Bechtold:

Chips of Broken Glass

Ignite NYC soldering competition (video)

Congrats to Brady, Bre and O'Reilly on an excellent night, Ignite NYC was a ton of fun - especially the soldering competition. Here's all the action in a bite sizing video minute. Go Glen!

Ignite NYC - Slides from our talk on open source hardware, citizen engineers and making money from online videos...

Make Pt0865
Here are our slides in PDF format from our talk at Ignite NYC...

Limor Fried (ladyada) & Phillip Torrone (Make) "Citizen Engineer" - Open source hardware, hacking SIM cards, modding a payphone for fun and for profit.

(Biz geek side note) At the end we have some quick estimates on the CPM that some could expect from doing online videos compared with doing online how-to videos that have a kit or "something" for sale. We think there are some good opportunities for people who makes things to share their skills and how they create and make a living doing that (and we've shared some initial numbers). Videos are becoming the new "text files" - if you grew up learning about some techy topics by text files shared around you likely recognize the analogy. Etsy sellers, makers and anyone who makes things might want to experiment with this model of sharing their skills with other online via video and having actually things to buy as part of the video, but not just an "advertisement" or "infomercial".

Model railroad morse code beacon

This garden railroad modeler built a morse code signaling beacon for his layout driven by a Picaxe 08M. He shows you how to design it to either flash or sound out your desired messages. The builder also updated he article a few years back with a more hardware-friendly Microchip 16F684 PIC processor.

Morse Code Beacon

Tom Lehrer - "The Element Song"

By popular request . . .

The Paella Man in a Throwdown

Our pal Gerard Nebesky, a.k.a. The Paella Man, will be on Throwdown with Bobby Flay on the Food Network tonight (July 30). Gerard provides the amazing paellas for Maker Days at the Bay Area Maker Faire. World-renowned Iron Chef, Bobby Flay, shows up in Gerard's back yard to challenge him to a paella throwdown. See whose Valencian cuisine reigns supreme when the smoke clears.

It's not an "explosive-like" item

Scot Peele
This is annoying, the TSA is proudly claiming a huge victory on their site - no they didn't catch someone trying to do something bad and unfortunately we're all not safer. They found a battery pack someone made for their DVD player in their carry on luggage via Schneier on security.

The checkpoint area was immediately closed as Bomb Appraisal Officer Timothy D. Smith inspected the item and spoke with the passenger. The item in question was determined to be an empty metal bottle and a home-made battery pack, consisting of 28 rechargeable batteries connected by multiple resistors and held together in two layers with a silicone-based adhesive.

Sounds like the commercial battery packs you can buy, but this one was made by an engineer. It likely took the bomb expert 2 seconds to determine it was not dangerous.

It's more likely that the "metal" cylinder was for water, you can't bring full water bottles so most smart people keep an empty bottle and fill it up once you get past the check point. The TSA took a staged photo so it looked like it was some type of fake movie-device that Bruce Willis needs to disarm at the last second.

The passenger was an engineer and said he built the battery to power his DVD player for the long flight to Hawaii. After recognizing that the item could be seen by other passengers as a threat, the man surrendered it to Supervisory TSO Raiford Patterson and was allowed to board the flight.

Other passengers aren't the TSA, a battery pack isn't a threat, we are not the experts. Once the TSA saw it wasn't a threat they should have just taken care of this and not put up a victory story. If there is some new rule about not being able to have batteries and wires they need to publish that and put signs up everywhere (I'm aware of the laptop battery rule and carry my extra one in a plastic bag).

"We must treat every suspicious item the same and utilize the tools we have available to make a final determination," said Federal Security Director David Wynn. "Procedures are in place for a reason and this is a clear indication our workforce is doing a great job."

It seems to me like the opposite is true, they're confiscating things that "look" like things in movies and then putting up stories about it. Real dangers do not look like extra batteries for a DVD player. I fly with homemade electronics and so far I've never had a problem, the TSA is usually very competent and know what they're doing. Real dangers should be found and documented, I realize this engineer didn't do a great job on their battery pack (sorry) but I don't think the TSA site is helpful if this is what they're doing to be doing with it.

The science of glass

29Glass02 600
NYTimes on the science of glass...

It is well known that panes of stained glass in old European churches are thicker at the bottom because glass is a slow-moving liquid that flows downward over centuries. COMPLEX Glass in sheet and molten forms. Glass transition differs from usual phase transition.

Well known, but wrong. Medieval stained glass makers were simply unable to make perfectly flat panes, and the windows were just as unevenly thick when new.

The tale contains a grain of truth about glass resembling a liquid, however. The arrangement of atoms and molecules in glass is indistinguishable from that of a liquid. But how can a liquid be as strikingly hard as glass?