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September 30, 2009

Math Midway

Last night PT and I got to check out the Math Midway (soon to become the Math Museum), including the square trike PT already posted. Check out their website and mine and PT's photos on Flickr. That other lovely lass in the pictures is Alicia Gibb from Bug Labs.

The Math Midway is in NYC until October 14th, at the Urban Academy, after which it will travel to the Da Vinci Science Center in Allentown, PA. This group of exhibits wants to turn into a full-scale museum, so if you're interested in getting involved, now's a good time!

akiba:F Blood Donation Room

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Steve writes -

Thanks to Danny and Akiyama-San from Good Smile Co. I was able to attend the opening event for akiba:F held today. The official start is tomorrow, but got to look around and see the amazing place today. And they didn't even poke me with needles! It's quite amazing and very futuristic. Looks very much like a medical bay from some scifi tv show. inside you get free wifi, lots of manga and magazines to read, and even an iPod touch powered entertainment center to use while you fluids are drained.

Free wifi, holograms... worth a little blood. This is on the "MAKE" places to visit, I want to live there (more photos).

Flashback: Playable Pac-Man Costume

October graces us tomorrow, so of course the supreme maker holiday Halloween is on the mind. Here's another flashback from our Make: Halloween Special Edition, which came out in August of 2007. Russell Luzinski came up with this sweet playable arcade Pac-Man costume, and there's no doubt he was the life of the party. Check out the full tutorial below. And for more Halloween DIY goodness, you can still pick up a back issue in the Maker Shed. Plus, don't forget about our 2009 Halloween Contest.

Playable Pac-Man Costume
Eat ghosts and power pellets with this wearable Pac-Man getup that really works.
By Russell Luzinski

For an 80s-themed Halloween party, I wanted a costume that was unique, incorporated technology, and would be fun for fellow partygoers. I'd been toying with the idea of making a mini arcade machine for my game room, so I decided to come up with one that I could also wear as my costume. What follows is a guide to making your own wearable Pac-Man that guarantees you'll be the life of the costume party. It's fun to build and to wear. And I've since converted it to a bar-top arcade machine, so this costume can play long after the Halloween parties are over.

MATERIALS

¾"×1½" furring strips
1" and 1½" drywall screws
1" plywood
Plastic bathroom corner trim that slides
onto the end of paneling
½" finishing nails
Spray paint
Plexiglass
Wood screws and washers
Laptop computer
USB gamepad controller
Arcade emulation software
Cabinet artwork
Plastic laminate
Saw
Carpenter's square

DIRECTIONS

Step 1: Frame the Pac-Man machine.
Start by measuring and cutting the plywood side panels, so you can use them as a template for the frame construction. I made mine 19" wide by 28" high, but cater yours to your physical size and preference.

Using the furring strips, make the 2 square frame pieces that form the top and the bottom of the frame. Assemble with drywall screws (pre-drill the holes or the wood will split). Use a square to ensure that everything will fit later in the assembly. Make sure the frame is wide enough to accommodate both the width of your chest and the width of your laptop (with your controller plugged in).

Using the plywood templates, measure and cut the 4 main vertical frame supports. I angled the 2 front supports to line up with the angle of the soon-to-be arcade screen. Attach all 4 supports to the 2 square pieces with drywall screws.

Frame up the control panel area in the same way, and then firmly secure the laptop to the cabinet frame. I first made a small ledge to support the laptop's weight, and then added a horizontal piece just above that and behind the laptop. This allowed me to lock the laptop into place by sliding it into the newly made slot. By this point, I was already running the necessary software to play Pac-Man. A simple internet search of the word "MAME" will point you in the right direction.

Finish framing the marquee and a pocket for the controller. I made the joystick removable, so people didn't need to be right in my face while playing. The directional pad on my Gravis Gamepad Pro joystick included a removable joystick ball, but I replaced that with a larger wooden ball from a craft store.

Step 2: Add paneling and trim.

Assemble the plywood panels and plastic corner trim onto the frame. The trim slides onto the edges of the paneling, which makes the whole process pretty forgiving. Use small finishing nails to secure the paneling and trim directly to the frame.

The picture above shows the pocket I made for the gamepad. It was small enough for the joystick to be wedged in pretty securely, yet still allowed for it to be removed.

Step 3: Paint and add finishing touches.
Time to paint! Make sure the room is well ventilated, and wear a mask. I gave the paneling a sand-down and then slapped on a layer of primer. Next up were 2½ cans of sunshine yellow enamel spray paint.

After 3 coats, install the plexiglass for the screen and marquee. I used a utility knife to cut the plexiglass pieces, then fastened them in place with screws and washers. Figure 3 shows the marquee and screen installed, along with the screen's bezel. I found all the cabinet artwork online, printed it on a laser jet printer, and covered it in clear plastic laminate.

I added the side art and a picture of a coin mechanism, and then mounted a small, battery-powered light to backlight the marquee. For shoulder straps, I used bungee cords wrapped in kitchen towels. With that, the build was complete.

Step 4: Wear it, then try some variations.
While I tried to make the cabinet as light as possible, the costume still weighed upward of 30lbs. Make your shoulder straps as comfortable as possible. You might experiment with lighter materials. Also note that the costume is playable only as long as your laptop battery holds out. You might want to bring the laptop charger to the party and use it to give your battery a charge and your shoulders a rest.

I used a picture of an arcade coin mechanism, but a real one can be purchased online at a reasonable price. Finally, while the removable controls worked well enough, I recommend fashioning some kind of locking mechanism to keep the controller from slipping out while being used. Or permanently secure the controller to the cabinet.

About the Author:
Russell Luzinski is a mechanical engineer and currently resides in Green Bay, Wisc.

This week in Maker Events

Looking to take a break from tinkering on your latest project this weekend? Here are some fine maker events to check out, from The Maker Events Calender. Wish your event was on the list? Add it to the calender!

Coming up this week:

DorkbotPDX @ On Gallery 1st Thursday!
Portland, OR
Thursday, Oct 1, 2009, 6pm - 10pm (then ongoing)

Arse Elektronika
San Francisco, CA
Thursday, Oct 1, to Sunday, Oct 4, 2009, all weekend

Noisebridge: Year 1 Open Hacker House
San Francisco, CA
Friday, Oct 2, 2009, 6pm - 11pm

Open Source Embroidery Exhibition
San Francisco, CA
Friday, Oct 2, 2009, 6pm - 8pm (then ongoing)

BALLS 18
Black Rock Desert, Gerlach, NV
Friday, Oct 2, to Sunday, Oct 4, 2009, all weekend

Southern Ontario Hackerspaces / Makers Mini-Conference
Hamilton, Ontario
Friday, Oct 2 to Saturday, Oct 3, all day

Introduction to Electronics
Brooklyn, NY
Saturday, Oct 3, 2009, 1pm - 4pm

i3 Detroit Open House and Party
Royal Oak, MI
Saturday, Oct 3, 2009, 12pm - 5pm, 7pm +

Circuit Bending Workshop, pt II
Milwaukee, WI
Wednesday, Oct 7, 2009, 6:30pm - 9pm

Start planning for:
Fire the Lazzzor! Learn to rapid prototype using the 35 Watt Epilog Laser.
Brooklyn, NY
Sunday, Oct 11, 2009, 2pm - 5pm

Video Editing in iMovie '09
Pittsburgh, PA
Saturday, Oct 24, 2009, 2pm - 4:30pm

Mobile Art && Code
Pittsburgh, PA
Friday, Nov 6 to Sunday, Nov 8, 2009, all weekend

Hinged transformation of triangle to square

The relatively straightforward swing-hinged dissection of an equilateral triangle to a square in this video is called "Dudeney's dissection" and has been known since 1902. For a gallery of hinged dissections, check out Tse-hsuan Yang's page at Taiwan's National Tsing Hua University.

MemAxe game made using tiny processor

MAKE subscriber Brian writes in to point out MemAxe, a Simon-like game made with an 8-pin PicAxe microcontroller. It's pretty simple, but i like how all the buttons are connected up using only one input pin. So how is this possible? Well, instead of reading the input pins using the digital input, they are instead connected up similar to a voltage divider, with resistor on each switch being twice that of the switch before it. Then, by measuring the voltage of the input pin and figuring out which combination of resistors corresponds to the value read, you can figure out which switches were pressed. Here is what the schematic looks like:

These are cool tricks, but before you go crazy optimizing your project, keep in mind that it might be cheaper/easier to just buy a processor with enough inputs, since they usually aren't much more expensive.

Free sample chips available from Microchip Technology

The sponsors of this year's Halloween contest are giving away microchips! To score some, go here, register, then choose the product line and device family you're interested in and click on the orange icons to order free samples. From their press release:

Hey Makers in the United States, UK, Germany, France and Italy... We have the exclusive on some great news from Microchip! Beginning Friday, October 2, you will be able to get free microcontroller, analog and memory samples from http://www.microchip.com/samples/. That's right, you don't even have to pay for shipping and handling! This is a great opportunity to get some parts for your embedded microcontroller project in the Make: Halloween Contest 2009.

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

Photographing your projects

In this week's Ask CRAFT column, I fielded a reader's question about photographing your projects. It's applicable for all kinds of makers, so go on and check it out!

Skateboard Tetris

True that San Francisco skaters have a reputation that precedes them with their home turf being some of the gnarliest steep urban streets in the country. Check out these 36 SF skaters on Freebords flexing mad skills with neon Tetris-like shapes mounted on their heads to awesome effect.

Melting Pot: distributed coffee aroma for teambuilding

The Melting Pot is an older 'visualizer' project, however it was way ahead of it's time. Developed back in 2001 by Itiro Siio and Noyuri Mima, it's purpose is to bridge the physical distance between a team that is scattered across an office building together by bringing the them together using sweet, sweet coffee. Rather than an audio or visual cue, however, they opted to appeal to the olfactory system, and developed a system to simultaneously broadcast the siren's call of fresh brew to the whole team. The idea is that everyone would subconsciously smell the fine flavors, decide to grab some coffee, and then meet up in the break room.

To accomplish this, they hacked a wireless transmitter into the office coffee machine, so that it would send out a signal when a fresh pot of coffee is ready. Next, they built a bunch of aroma generators that start releasing a coffee aroma when a ready signal is received. The aroma generators are pretty simple- just a fan that blows over a couple of bags of instant coffee.

I've worked in several environments where this would have been a great way to bring my team together. Anyone up for a remake? Have better ideas about what kinds of smells to use to subtly influence people?

"How Round Is Your Circle?"

Britons John Bryant and Chris Sangwin have written a book called How Round is Your Circle? that looks incredible. I haven't read it (yet), but the promotional website by itself has me sold already. Highlights include Reuleaux tetrahedra, square-hole drilling, and self-righting polyhedra.

Chaos Communication Congress accepting submissions

The 26th Chaos Communication Congress is accepting submissions for papers, lectures, and workshops:

26C3 is the annual four-day conference organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) in Berlin, Germany.First held in 1984, it since has established itself as "the European Hacker Conference" attracting a diverse audience of thousands of hackers, scientists, artists, and utopists from all around the world. We want you to join and be a part of this unique event which serves as a public platform for cross-culture inspiration and borderless networking. 26C3 is fun!

The 26C3 conference program is roughly divided into six general categories. These categories serve as guidelines for your submissions (and later as a means of orientation for your prospective audience). However, it is not mandatory for your talk to exactly match the descriptions below. Anything that is interesting and/or funny will be taken into consideration.

The categories are Society, Hacking, Making, Science, Culture, and Community. Further descriptions of these are outlined on the site. You might check out last year's event site and Flickr pool, too. (Thanks, Aram!)

26C3: Here Be Dragons
26th Chaos Communication Congress
December 27th to 30th, 2009
Berlin, Germany

CC-licensed photo above by Flickr user Angelo.

DIY Street View camera

As part of a course at the United States Military Academy at West Point, maker Roy D. Ragsdale developed a prototype Street View-like camera using a laptop, $300 in off-the-shelf components, and open source software. A Python script captures eight 1280x1024px JPEG files that are then stitched together and uploaded to Google Earth.

Construction was straightforward. On a flat octagonal heavy-cardboard base, I glued small posts for the cameras' clips to latch onto. I aligned each unit and then placed the USB hubs and the GPS receiver in the middle. I secured the cables with Velcro and sandwiched everything with another piece of cardboard. The whole thing's the size of a small pizza box, weighing less than 1 kilogram. Excluding the notebook (a 2-gigahertz machine with 512 megabytes of RAM running Ubuntu Linux), the hardware cost about $300.

[thanks, Erico]

How-To: Make a Proponomicon

There are two tutorials here describing the construction of a Raimi-style Necronomicon prop. The original, by Instructables user onespartan, is pictured uppermost, and a derivative work by Raolin, is pictured at bottom. Nice work, both of you!

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

Electronic Temperature-Controlled Relay

Here is an easy way to implement automatic temperature control for your next project. The web site includes the schematic, parts list, PCB artwork, and application examples.

The heart of the circuit is the LM35DZ temperature sensor which is factory-calibrated in the Celsius (or Centigrade) scale with a linear Degree->Volt conversion function. The output voltage (at pin 2) changes linearly with temperature from 0V (0oC) to 1000mV (100oC).

Arduino noise box synth

Tim sent us a link to his Arduino noise box synth that he built. It has 16 programmable sequences, 4 waveforms, a noise generator and a random feature. Check out the link for a lot more information, including the source code.

This project is an Arduino based step sequencer, synthesizer and sound effects box. It was constructed a year ago as a third birthday present, and has recently come back to me for some 'refurbishment' - fresh batteries and some glue to fix LEDs that have been pushed into the box.

In the Maker Shed:

Arduino Family
Make: Arduino

September 29, 2009

Designing a better world

Following closely on the heels of Maker Faire Rhode Island is more big excitement for the littlest state. A better world by design is a conference focused on applying technological solutions to the needs and challenges of society. This year promises to be very exciting, with an all star-speaker line-up including Jan Chipchase of Nokia, Maker Faire Africa organizer Emeka Okafor, Emily Pilloton of Project H Design, architect Teddy Cruz, and prosthetics engineer Stuart Harshbarger.

The conference also boasts a range of panels on various issues, hands-on creative workshops, and a design challenge hosted by Core77.

I dig the grassroots nature of this event. Students from Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design conceived of, organized, and run the conference. In their own words:

A Better World by Design brings a global community of innovators to Providence, Rhode Island, to reach across disciplines and unite under a common goal. Presenters share engaging stories, workshops teach creative skills, and discussions reframe perspectives. A Better World by Design is an immersive experience that deepens our understanding of the power of design, technology, and enterprise to reshape our communities and sustain our environment.

I am very much looking forward to the Maker Meetup during lunch on Friday, October 2, where I'll be sharing my experiences organizing Maker Faire Rhode Island with other Maker Faire organizers from California and Ghana. I'm also looking forward to moderating a panel on the Future of Transportation. It is going to be a fun, interesting, and educational weekend!

Square bike

Square bike... at the Math Midway (more photos)...

Amazing pancake sorting robot

Wow! This robot sorts over 400 pancakes per minute. Right around 1:15 it gets amazing, it seems like it's sped up, but they need to slow it down in the video to show it off! ... via jk.

Beautiful generative art made with Roombas

Ever wonder what path your Roomba takes as it clears the floor? Well, here's an easy way to find out, and create some fine artwork in the process. The above pictures were made by sticking an LED to the top of a Roomba vacuum, then photographing it using a long exposure setting. This results in a form of motion capture, and you can clearly see where your Roomba has been by where the light trails are. There are a bunch of other photos at the Flickr group.

Now, if I was going to do this, I would also put a big light on my cat, so I can show how quickly it makes a b-line for cover when the scary vacuum turns on.

Above photos by Flickr users reconscious and digitalosh.

[thanks Patti!]