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Bending with Casper Electronics

Pete Edwards does a bit of toy-megaphone turbo bending in this music video montage shot at the Casper Electronics lab. Dang - this makes me think I should start soldering to music myself!

Posted by Collin Cunningham | Feb 8, 2010 07:30 AM
Electronics, Makers, Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | Suggest a Site

25 chips that made history

IEEE Spectrum's 25 Microchips That Shook the World presents a list of most groundbreaking IC's, including familiar classics like the 555 timer, 741 operational amplifier, and a link roundup to relevant info resources - good stuff. [via jeriellsworth]

Posted by Collin Cunningham | Feb 5, 2010 02:30 PM
Electronics | Permalink | Comments (0) | Suggest a Site

Schematics just look cooler in ASCII ...

  +10-15V          ___0,047R
  X------o------o-|___|-o--o---------o----o-------o
         |      |       |  |         |    |       |
        ---     |       | .-.        |    |       |
  470uF ###     |       | | | 2k2    |    |       |
         | +    |       | | |        |    |       |
  X------o      '--.    | '-'       .-.   |       |
         |         |6   |7 |8    1k | |   |       |
        GND      .------------.     | |   |       |
                 |            |     '-'   |       |
                 |            |1     |  |/  BC    |
                 |            |------o--|   547   |
                 |            |      |  |>        |
                 |            |     .-.   |       |
                 |            | 220R| |   o----||-+  IRF9Z34
                 |            |     | |   |    ||->
                 |  MC34063   |     '-'   |    ||-+
                 |            |      |    |       |  BYV29     -12V6
                 |            |      '----'       o--|<-o----o--X OUT
                 |            |2                  |     |    |
                 |            |--|                C|    |    |
                 |            | GND          30uH C|    |   --- 470
                 |            |3      1nF         C|    |   ###  uF
                 |            |-------||--.       |     |    | +
                 '------------'           |      GND    |   GND
                      5|   4|             |             |
                       |    '-------------o-------------o
                       |                           ___  |
                       '-----------------------o--|___|-'
                                               |       1k0
                                              .-.
                                              | | 5k6 + 3k3
                                              | | in Serie
                                              '-'
                                               |
                                              GND 
by Wolfgang M.

Tired of exporting images from EAGLE/gEDA/etc just to share a circuit on forums or email? AACircuit (translation) offers some pretty solid functionality for creating ASCII text based schematics in Windows. Just be sure to share your results in a monospace font.

Sweet - think I'll go tweet me some RC filters.

Posted by Collin Cunningham | Feb 4, 2010 08:30 AM
Electronics | Permalink | Comments (2) | Suggest a Site

Lathing zen - making a vaccum hose adapter

I don't quite know why, but viewing detailed production process vids like this one, can induce a decidedly blissful, even zen-like state in my brain - and I've heard others report similar effects. Gfixler's above video, documents some quality time he spent with a Sherline 4400 CNC mini lathe - mistakes, mishaps, and all -

I needed a way to hook my shop vac hose to the square tube aluminum extrusion I recently made into a manifold for the Loc-Line tubing I'm using as a vacuum system for my mini mill. Here's how I did it.

Some might say it's a lot time to spend producing something as mundane as a hose adapter - but the satisfaction of using your own brand of hardware makes it very much worthwhile.

Posted by Collin Cunningham | Feb 3, 2010 05:00 AM
How it's made | Permalink | Comments (6) | Suggest a Site

All radio united under autotune

Tim O'Reilly points out this hypnotic demonstration by Lucky Dragons - "PEACE ON EARTH" brings all radio stations together via frequency modulation -

two radios with home-made autotune on every signal received. every station is in tune with every other station. even static is in tune. peace on earth.

If current trends are any indication, mainstream radio will soon sound similar to this without modification (zing!)

Related:
Lucky Dragons' homemade sound device

Posted by Collin Cunningham | Feb 2, 2010 05:00 AM
Arts, Music | Permalink | Comments (2) | Suggest a Site

MAKE, Volume 21: Desktop Manufacturing - plus a visit to MakerBot HQ!

MAKE, Volume 21 digs into desktop factories, covering a variety of ways you can get started with personal manufacturing - including:

CNC kits
DIY CNC milling machines
Steps for building your own 3D scanner
An in-depth look at the MakerBot Cupcake CNC & it's development

We also paid a visit to MakerBot HQ in Brooklyn, NY and sat down with company co-founder Bre Pettis. Be sure to check out the interview + tour of the Botcave in the above vid!

Oh and of course, MAKE 21 is chock-full of step-by-step instructions for building a variety of sweet projects including -

Reaction Timer
Padded Swords
Magic Photo Cube
ESP Tester
Gourd Lanterns
Geared Candleholder
Snow Gun
+ a whole bunch more!

The above video is a bit of a change of pace from the usual previews we post for new volumes - let us know what you think of the new format in the comments below!

Don't forget - subscribers can always read the digital edition here.

Subscribe to the MAKE podcast in iTunes, or download the m4v video.

Posted by Collin Cunningham | Feb 1, 2010 05:30 AM
Announcements, MAKE Podcast, MAKE Video | Permalink | Comments (7) | Suggest a Site

Atari punk guitar pedal

GetLoFi shares an interesting method for controlling the popular Atari Punk Console circuit via guitar -

The basic idea of this mod is that you are using the volume potentiometer to control the frequency of the APC. Obviously this is not the same as turning the notes played on the guitar fretboard into the APC oscillations, however it is a pretty good way to control your APC remotely. Note that this will not work with a guitar that has an active pre-amp, it has to be the analog un-powered version and obviously it has to be the first in the chain of pedals.

Check out GetLoFi for more details on implementing the Atari Punk Pedal Modification.

In the Maker Shed:

Atari Punk Console Kit

Posted by Collin Cunningham | Jan 28, 2010 11:30 AM
Electronics, Mods, Music | Permalink | Comments (1) | Suggest a Site

Ink injection plotter draws video @ 1 frame per day

Gebhard Sengmüller's Very Slow Scan Television uses injected ink and bubble wrap to recreates the scanning of CRT displays … very … slowly -

Very Slow Scan Television (VSSTV) is a new television format that we have developed building upon Slow Scan Television (SSTV), an image transmission system used by Ham Radio amateurs. VSSTV uses broadcasts from this historic public domain television system and regular bubble wrap to construct an analogous system: Just as a Cathode Ray Tube mixes the three primary colors to create various hues, VSSTV utilizes a plotter-like machine to fill the individual bubbles with one of the three primary CRT colors, turning them into pixels on the VSSTV “screen”. Large television images with a frame rate of one per day are the result, images that take the idea of slow scan to the extreme.

More images & info can be found on Gebhard's site. [Thanks, Zack!]

Posted by Collin Cunningham | Jan 27, 2010 10:17 AM
Arts, Imaging | Permalink | Comments (5) | Suggest a Site

MIDI-controlled circuit bending interface

Daniel Park describes his approach to controlling circuit bent Alesis QSR Quadrasynth through MIDI data, simplifying control for musicians -

With this design I wanted the entire bent interface under MIDI control. Any MIDI source: MIDI cc’s, program changes, tempo synch, MIDI machine commands, notation can be routed to any destination on the circuit bent interface via sysex programming.
[…]
The circuit bent interface features two patch bays on a bank of rotary switches. One patch bay is 10 points dedicated to the effects processor bends while the other patch bay is 24 points dedicated to the oscillator bends. With rotaries you can get creative and efficient. No more massive amounts of drilling for point to point patch bays.

A bit more explanation can be found over at GetLoFi.

Posted by Collin Cunningham | Jan 27, 2010 08:30 AM
Electronics, Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | Suggest a Site

Perfboard jeweling jig

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Rob Cruickshank shares this tip for easily creating an evenly spaced jeweling pattern on metal -

Inspired by the article in MAKE: #19, and needing to make an ugly piece of brass pretty in a hurry, I hit upon the idea of using perfboard as a jig for jewelling. (Also known as engine turning) The large piece of perf is stuck to the drill press bed with double-sided tape. (I use this )
Then the work is stuck to the smaller piece of perf, with more tape. The small piece of perf has header pins soldered in, then cut to size, so that they only protrude to the depth of the bottom perfboard, and don't come all the way through. Using the pins to index it, the top board can be stepped around the bottom board in 0.1" increments to produce the desired pattern. It's best to use fibreglass board for both boards, the phenolic is not nearly flat enough.

... perfboard - not just for soldering anymore!

From the pages of MAKE:

MAKE Volume 19, page 130 - Jeweled Finish