Make: Online: May 2009 Archives

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May 29, 2009

The day before Maker Faire

Much gear is currently being set up, tested, and generally readied for tomorrow's incoming crowds. Already many awesome sites to be seen around the fairgrounds. I grabbed a few pics while surveying the state of affairs - check them out for yourself in the Flickr photoset.

Easy DIY wood steaming cabinet

Turns out you can bend lumber into some pretty amazing shapes if you first soften it by exposure to steam. Just how long it needs to "soak" in the steam varies with the species and thickness of the wood in question, but the necessary equipment is dirt cheap. This great tutorial over at the Dewalt website explains how to build a wood steaming cabinet from a few bucks worth of materials. Author, engineer, and carpenter Tony Maund says:

This entire project took about 4 hours to make and cost less than $20. This should last a number of years or more.

A piece of inexpensive, easy, homebrew equipment that will last for years and let me do amazing new things with wood? Where do I sign?

Drawdio developments, and inventor Jay Silver at Maker Faire

Adafruit has a new posting with a link to their latest Drawdio Instructable, a new Instructables Drawdio group, and an announcement of an exhibit being mounted at the Taiwan National Museum of Fine Arts. They're doing a Drawdio exhibit this summer, from July 25th to September 25th, as part of "Freeze! 2009 International MedTech Art Show." Just post your Drawdio project to the group, all submissions that have some original form factor (even superficial modifications count as original) will be included in the next Drawdio video and one entry will be chosen to be displayed in the Drawdio museum exhibit.

If you're at Maker Faire this weekend, stop by booth number 134 in Expo Hall and meet Drawdio inventor Jay Silver.

Post your Drawdio projects!

Instructables art of sound contest

Over at Instructables, they're gearing up for their Art of Sound Contest:

Music is absolutely essential for creativity - it inspires new ideas, helps us to create and build, and provides a soundtrack for life.

That's why we've teamed up with Zalytron, Create Digital Music, and Bleep Labs to bring you the Art of Sound Contest. Show us something amazing and music-related, and win an awesome set of hand-built custom speakers or a musical instrument kit!

This contest is open to any project that creates something beautiful with or around sound. Whether you're into homemade/modified instruments, circuit-bending, speakers, sound activation, or anything else, this contest is for you. Simply create, modify, actuate, craft, decorate, enhance, display, amplify, or visualize sound, and tell us how and why you did it. It can be your take on a classic project, or something entirely new and unique - it's up to you!

Now show us your original instrument, your tricked-out subwoofer, or your sound-responsive wall of LEDs! Be thorough, and document your project well so others can follow in your footsteps. Share your skills and experience to help inspire others, expand the possibilities of both sound and art, and win some fabulous prizes!

Enter for your chance to win one of the speaker sets above, plus more prizes!

Weekend Project: $14 Video Camera Stabilizer

Make this low-cost camera stabilizer for smooth, professional looking video.
Thanks go to Johnny Lee for the original article in MAKE, Volume 01.
To download The $14 Video Camera Stabilizer MP4 click here or subscribe in iTunes.
Check out the complete $14 Video Camera Stabilizer article in MAKE, Volume 01.
and you can see that in our Digital Edition.

XtraCycle bikes

[Photo from Connors934 on Flickr]

There are these great bikes at Maker Faire from XtraCycle. There is an extension that is bolted on in the place of the rear wheel. The chain is also extended so that it can reach the rear sprocket. Instead of a rack, there is a huge back deck, and along the sides are some nice panniers. Behind the seat is a set of handlebars for a second rider. The design is similar to the WorldBike.

Getting to MakerFaire

Things are going great guns at the fairgrounds and the excitement is palpable. It promises to be an off-the-hook weekend, maybe even several hooks! If you're coming to the Faire, to make sure your travels to and from are not *too* exciting, before you head out, make sure to check the travel info on the Faire site (car | rail, bus, bike) and follow us on our Twitter traffic channel @FaireTraffic. It will include info on both up-to-the-moment traffic conditions and parking info.

Also, check out Becky's Ask MAKE column from a few weeks ago for useful tips on prepping for the Faire in general. A little pre-Faire planning can really make a difference in having a more enjoyable experience.

Open Source Embroidery exhibition in Sweden

I'm proud to announce an upcoming exhibition, Open Source Embroidery:

Open Source Embroidery is a major exhibition of new work and commissions at BildMuseet in Sweden and Museum of Craft and Folk Art in San Francisco, USA.

The Open Source Embroidery exhibition presents contemporary artwork which uses embroidery and code as a tool to investigate participatory production and distribution methods. The project explores how the open source software development model has been incorporated into the language of cultural participation, involving interdisciplinary approaches to skill-share and collaboration. The exhibition includes material and digital works that make visible the physical characteristics of technology and social communications networks.

The Open Source Embroidery exhibition brings together individual and collectively made artworks by artists, crafts people, makers, computer programmers and html users which explore the relationship between craft and code, physical and digital space. The artworks experiment with interdisciplinary approaches to modifying patterns, the DIY culture of hacking and sampling in sound, GPS and mobile technologies.

The exhibition brings together several international artists, and I'm excited to be one of them!

Open Source Embroidery

BildMuseet, Umeå University, Sweden

June 6 to September 6, 2009

More:

Electronic Embroidery

How-To: Electrolytic rust removal

Here's a well-illustrated guide to electrolytic rust removal by Instructables user ToolNut, which could come in handy for restoring those flea market tool finds.

California DIY on KQED

Manhattan-based radio reporter and podcast producer Jon Kalish has a story about DIY'ers in northern California airing on The California Report, tomorrow on KQED. (It will also be broadcast on many public radio stations around the state). On KQED, the show can be heard at 4:30pm, 6:30pm, and 11:00pm. And, I assume it can also be heard via their website (though I'm not certain).

The California Report

Weekend Project: $14 Video Camera Stabilizer (PDF)

Make this low-cost camera stabilizer for smooth, professional looking video.
Thanks go to Johnny Lee for the original article in MAKE, Volume 01.
View the PDF of this project. and then subscribe to MAKE Magazine for other great projects
you can do over the weekend.

Paper architecture

Richard Kaufman won one of the Dover Paper Architect books we gave away in a contest back in February. I love that he's doing the projects and tweeting the results. Nice going, Richard!

Sneak peak at finished WiFi radio

If you've been following the mightyOhm's series on building a WiFi radio, you'll enjoy these pictures of the finished radio cabinet. He's going to showing off the finished project at Maker Faire, so if you get a chance, stop by Expo Hall Booth 166 and check it out.

Sneak peak at my finished Wifi Radio project!

May 28, 2009

How much did you pay for your last pair of glasses?

Probably way too much,* by the standards of Oxford physics professor Josh Silver, who has developed a wearer-adjustable set of eyeglasses that use water-filled plastic bags as lenses. They're so cheap that they can be distributed freely in underdeveloped and impoverished communities, which is exactly what Silver is doing, to the tune of 30,000 units so far. No visit to the optometrist and no custom lens grinding, just a standard pair of specs that you adjust once to your own visual comfort, using a small syringe, and then seal shut. A nice reminder that Making isn't just about ~~scaring away~~ impressing potential mates with your flatulence-tweeting office chair. link

*In all fairness to the noble discipline of optometry, if you are able to visit a proper eye-doctor you probably should. Silver's lenses can only correct for spherical, not cylindrical, defects in the eye, which is to say that if you have an astigmatism (as 1 in 3 adults does, per one study) you still need traditional lenses for full correction.

CandyFab 6000

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories just released a new version of their sugar 3D printer, the CandyFab 6000. It's smaller than previous models, enough so to fit on a tabletop, but still has an impressive 10 liter build volume. From the site:

Here's one of the first objects that we fabbed on the CandyFab 6000: a drilled sphere, about two inches in diameter and layer thickness of 1/15 inch. There's plenty of room for improvement, and finally we have a machine that can be improved.
The machine is designed so that it can be made from scratch-- i.e., without dumpster diving for old HP pen plotters. Three axes of quadrature-encoded DC servo motor control. Timing belts and acme lead screws. Food-safe sugar containment. The body is made from laser-cut plywood with acrylic highlights and stainless steel hardware. (Steampunk-compliant brass thumbscrews where appropriate, too.)

The siren song of Gnathonemus petersii

OK, so, it's not exactly a song. It's more like a clicky, morse-codey, geiger-countery sort of buzz. Nonetheless, it is generated by an electric fish, and you can hear it yourself just by wiring a piezoelectric earphone across the water in your fish tank. Provided, of course, that said water contains said electric fish. If that seems like too much work, then you can just download the sound from here. While you're at it, read all about the details of the so-called "Elephant Nose Fish" and its so-called "electric organ." I'm not making any of this up.

Tangible interface hacking at Internet Week

If you're in NYC for Internet Week (June 1 - 8), be sure to check out the "global hackday" for tangible interfaces, computer vision, and creative use of OSC/LusidOSC, featuring the open-source, free, multi-platform Trackmate project developed at the MIT Media Lab. The event will be on Saturday, June 6, 11:00am - 9:30pm Eastern time; hacking 11-7 for coders and makers, party 7-9:30 for everyone else.

Hands-On Tangible Interfaces: CDM + New Work City Hackday, June 6

SPARK Project #1, Post#1

Whenever I start a new project, I find it helpful to define several key items. These typically involve defining what the customer requirements are, and what tools are available to meet those requirements.

The customer for this project is a friend who recently converted a shuttered electronics supply warehouse into an 8000 square foot mixed-used building. The first floor office is designed to be net-zero office space, making it Rhode Island's first and only net-zero facility. Yes, I do live in a small state. Fortunately, that provides me access to a unique building and its owner for this project. More details about the building can be found here.

You'll notice that I said "designed to be net-zero." A claim is only as good as the data that backs it up, and obviously claiming net-zero is only possible if you can show that the office tenants use less energy than on-site renewable generation provides. This provides our primary customer requirement: I must continuously track and display energy generation and usage. I also want the ability to display this information in real-time, or to display historical trends based on stored data.

Electricity for this building is generated by a photovoltaic array, and solar thermal devices provide hot water for building heat and domestic hot water. There is a backup high-efficiency gas boiler in case of an unusually long and rainy winter (which occasionally happens in Rhode Island). These are the energy sources I want to measure. I also want to know what environmental forces were driving energy usage. This requires measuring temperature and humidity, both inside and outside the building, and possibly measuring wind as well. Since this building is grid-tied, it is possible for the office tenants to use more electricity than is generated. I would like to measure power at each outlet, but I'll settle for a single point of measurement.

For additional details on the plans for this project, see my complete posting on the SPARK Project blog.

More:
Sponsored projects series with Windows Embedded CE

This SPARK Your Imagination Make: Windows Embedded project series is sponsored by Microsoft Corporation.

BMOW (Big Mess of Wires) project at Maker Faire

Wired Gadget Lab has a piece, as a teaser about their attendance at Maker Faire, about Steve Chamberlin's home-wound 8-bit, chess-playing CPU made by wire-wrapping some 50 basic logic chips. Quoting Steve on the benefits of undertaking this project:

Computers can seem like complete black boxes. We understand what they do, but not how they do it, really," says Chamberlin. "When I was finally able to mentally connect the dots all the way from the physics of a transistor up to a functioning computer, it was an incredible thrill.

Steve will be showing off BMOW in Expo Hall. He's also created a beautiful coffee table book of photos documenting the build process, which he created through Shutterfly, that he'll be showing at the Faire.

Homebrewed CPU Is a Beautiful Mess of Wires

Big Mess o' Wires

Make: television at Maker Faire

In addition to the hundreds of talented makers at this weekend's Maker Faire, Make: television will be live, featuring...

The Make: television Stage
Meet the makers who appear on the first season, as well as presentations and discussions from MAKE authors and bloggers. All day, Saturday and Sunday, in Expo Hall.

Projects built during the first season
We'll have our Burrito Blaster with plenty of shootables, the VCR Cat Feeder topped off with cat food and a Cigar Box Guitar and Amp ready for rocking.

Bring your USB Drives
Jared Boone of ShareBrained Technology and designer James Provost have made an awesome Make: television Media Vending Machine. Bring a USB drive that's between 512mb and 12GB and load up with HD or media player-friendly versions. The back is completely open so you can how it's made, and Jared will be on hand. Here it is in the testing phase.

Connect with Geek Squad
We're proud to host Geek Squad at this year's Maker Faire. They'll have Geek Squad Agents on hand to answer any of your tech questions as well as a live Twitter stream rolling throughout the weekend.

Tell us what you make!
We're building the momentum for a second season and we want to hear from makers of all sorts. Last year, we found a huge amount of unique makers at Maker Faire and we're hoping to do the same thing this year. Don't be shy, we love show and tell!