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Archives: Collin Cunningham

Mint tin electronics dev kit packs the essentials

Once you've caught the 'electronics bug', spending time away from the workbench/lab can seem an unpleasant prospect. Luckily, one can carry on learning and experimenting with a minimal amount of hardware. Nick shares his own recipe for ultra-compact electronics prototyping - the Altoids Tin Electronics Lab

This is a small electronics lab in an altoids tin. It contains nearly everything to work on small projects, such as a breadboard, components (including several ICs), and a adjustable power supply. The power supply is a simple LM317 circuit, with the 317's metal tab cut off to make it fit.

For details, check out Nick's essential part list. I'm guessing quite a few of us have mobile kits along these lines. Share pics of your setup via the MAKE Flickr pool - we'd love to see 'em!

Posted by Collin Cunningham | Nov 21, 2009 04:30 AM
Altoids and tin cases, Electronics | Permalink | Comments (0) | Suggest a Site

NEC announces universal translator … sorta, kinda

NEC announced what could be an early, real-life version of the universal translator -

NEC said the Tele Scouter was intended to be a business tool that could aid sales staff who would have information about a client's buying history beamed into their eye during a conversation.
But, it said, it could also be put to a more exotic use as a translation aid. In this scenario the microphone on the headset picks up the voices of both people in a conversation, pipes it through translation software and voice-to-text systems and then sends the translation back to the headset.
[…]
NEC said the Tele Scouter would be launched in Japan in November, 2010 but would initially lack the translation feature. A version that can provide subtitles would follow in 2011, it said.

Now we just have to see how good that translation software really is (please be good!). Read more over at BBC News.

Posted by Collin Cunningham | Nov 20, 2009 07:00 AM
Gadgets, News from the Future | Permalink | Comments (1) | Suggest a Site

Arcade button MIDI controller kit

DJTechTools' upcoming solder-free MIDI controller kit provides users with 16 arcade button triggers + LEDs and will apparently be released as an open source product at launch -

• Release Date: November 30th • Price: Aprox $125 for the Kit + Arcade Buttons ($2.50 each) optional wood case- $40 • Plug and Play-compatible device, compliant MIDI controller • USB powered • Must be assembled (no expertise required) • 16 programmable buttons • 16 programmable LEDs • Expandable to 20 programmable buttons and 4 analog controls • Limited-edition 200-piece run in this configuration (black PCB with blue LEDs)

Should the $165 asking price seem a bit much, do consider the full DIY options. [via Synthtopia]

Related:

Midibox rox your sox

Posted by Collin Cunningham | Nov 20, 2009 06:30 AM
Kits, Music | Permalink | Comments (1) | Suggest a Site

DIY Devo domes

Troy Davis created some very awesome recreations of Devo's signature Energy Domes. Beginning with a tiered stack of fiberboard for the mold, through to vacuum forming, paint job, and padding - a thorough explanation can be found in his project pictorial. sweet.

Posted by Collin Cunningham | Nov 20, 2009 05:31 AM
DIY Projects, Music, Wearables | Permalink | Comments (0) | Suggest a Site

Photographing Spiral Jetty

On a tight budget, documenting art that lives in a lake can be quite a challenge - especially when it's composed of "6,000 tons of rock and soil" -

After considering nearly every possible way to document "Spiral Jetty" from above -- Rent a weather satellite? An airplane? A helicopter? Use a kite? -- the institute, which often works in countries where conservation projects are carried out on shoestring budgets, came up with a remarkably simple solution: a $50 disposable latex weather balloon, easily bought online. Along with a little helium, some fishing line, a slightly hacked Canon PowerShot G9 point-and-shoot digital camera, an improvised plywood and metal cradle for the camera and some plastic zip ties (to keep the cradle attached and the neck of the balloon cinched), a floating land-art documentation machine was improvised, MacGyver-like.

Full Story over at NYTimes. [Thanks, Erica!]

Posted by Collin Cunningham | Nov 19, 2009 02:30 PM
Arts, Photography | Permalink | Comments (2) | Suggest a Site

MIDI kit test-drive

MAKE contributor Michael Una posted a review of Highly Liquid's MD24 kit which converts MIDI events over to an array of 24 +5V outputs -

The new MD24 falls into the latter category. It takes a MIDI input and gives you 24 discrete +5V outputs that can be used to drive relays, transistors, or servo motors. Functionally, the MD24 is similar to HighlyLiquid's MSA-T or MSA-R kits, except that you now have 24 outputs instead of just 8- a significant improvement.

More over at Create Digital Music.

From the pages of MAKE:

Make - Volume 15 - Drumbot Activate!

Posted by Collin Cunningham | Nov 19, 2009 05:00 AM
Kits, Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | Suggest a Site

Synth Frog tours DIY workshops

Synth DIY's amphibious mascot, better known as "Mr. Braska", has been visiting a series of home labs via postal transport. The photo galleries of his modeling efforts serve as a nice way to bring together otherwise unconnected, private workspaces - plus he's getting pretty good with an iron -

See a whole lot more from Mr. Braska's travels over at SynthFrog.

Posted by Collin Cunningham | Nov 19, 2009 04:30 AM
Electronics, Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | Suggest a Site

How-To: Build a Seismic Reflector

Living in the UK, Jim hadn't experienced an earthquake firsthand. After watching recent quakes unfold in Indonesia, he decided to create a device that would keep him aware of the Earth's seismic events. His Seismic Reflector uses a Processing-based software monitor which feeds data to very motorized Arduino -

The aim is to build a device which responds to earthquakes being reported in near-real time via the USGS RSS feeds. The device responds by illustrating the magnitude of the reported earthquake via two fairly chunky vibration motors of the kind used in video game controllers. The device is connected to a PC via a virtual com port over USB (thanks to an on board Arduino). On the PC, an application sits there checking the RSS feed periodically and when a new event it posted to the RSS feed, the desktop app parses the data out of it and presents the magnitude of the quake to the Arduino which interpreters this as rate at which to activate the vibration motors.
[…]
I'd just like to stress that this project is about empathising in some small way with victims of earthquakes. I'm not trying to make light of peoples anguish or suffering, and I'm not trying to play on peoples fears of an impending "big one". I do not experience many earthquakes where I live, but I know a lot of people around the world (specifically around the Med and the Pacific) do. This is my attempt to understand that feeling a bit better.

Check out the Seismic Reflector instructable for details.

In the Maker Shed:

MotorShield for Arduino Kit

Posted by Collin Cunningham | Nov 18, 2009 07:00 AM
Arduino | Permalink | Comments (5) | Suggest a Site

Machine pin headers make for easy chip sockets

Fresh out of 8-pin DIP sockets, I broke off a couple rows of female machine pin headers as a substitute - using the chip itself to align the pins for soldering. That was about a month ago, and I've continued using them ever since. Though it seemed a bit 'kludgey' at first, this process has proven a lot easier than trying to keep a variety of socket sizes at the ready. As always, your mileage may vary.

Posted by Collin Cunningham | Nov 18, 2009 05:00 AM
Electronics | Permalink | Comments (8) | Suggest a Site

Homebrew transistor experiments

Jim did some experimenting with homemade thin-film zinc oxide and zinc-tin oxide, developing his own homemade transistors devices -

I did manage to achieve (with a liquid dielectric) voltage and current gain, as well as construct a functional astable oscillator using two of the devices constructed on a single substrate. While the speed of the devices (due to the liquid dielectric) is such that they are only interesting as a technology experiment, they've been a lot of fun to experiment with.

Some very interesting work here. There's really no better way to understand technology than to build it yourself. I can say firsthand, building a simple capacitor or LED from scratch is a lot of fun - a DIY transistor must feel like a straight-up triumph! Download the documentation of Jim's experiments in PDF format on his site.

Related: