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Maker Shed kiosks at Fry's
We're ecstatic about the fact that we now have Maker Shed kiosks, with magazines, books, and electronics kits, in several California Fry's stores. We think this is big news, not only for Maker Media, but for all indie makers -- a major retail chain is now giving small kit-makers this level of exposure. And, we think it's particularly cool that we designed and built these kiosks in-house, and even personally delivered them to the stores! What other publisher could claim that?
Here, Assoc. Publisher and General Manager of Maker retail, Dan Woods explains more:
Maker Shed kiosks are now installed in four of Fry's largest superstores. Each kiosk merchandises current and back issues of MAKE, Make: Project books, and kits, with an emphasis on maker-made kits produced by indie makers like Limor Fried's MintyBoost, Mitch Altman's Brain Machine, Ken Murphy's Blinky Bugs, Dale Wheat's Tiny Cylon and Wee Blinky kits, and Amy Parness and Ariel Churi's DIY Design Electronics kits. This indie maker angle was a really important selling point to Fry's. The kiosk's themselves are all-MAKE in their design and construction. The challenge was to create a merchandising/branding kiosk that could show off maker-made kits, as well as our books and magazines, all in a 2' X 2' footprint. The design we came up with incorporates the Maker Faire workbench framing as the internal structure, refurbished fence boards from West Sonoma, and some nicely weathered corrugated shed aluminum that was locally salvaged. The result is a nice combination of weathered shed and repurposed industrial tubing. They're uniquely MAKE, and Fry's is ecstatic. In fact, they were even trucked down and setup by Heather (Harmon-Cochran) and Rob (Bullington) in one day.
These are the stores that currently have kiosks. (San Diego will be set up by Fry's staff next week)
San Diego, CA
9825 Stonecrest Boulevard
(858) 514-4500
San Jose, CA
550 E. Brokaw Road
(408) 487-1000
Fremont, CA
43800 Osgood Road
(510) 252-5300
Sunnyvale, CA
1077 East Arques Avenue
(408) 617-1300
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Nov 21, 2009 01:01 PM
Maker Shed Store, Makers |
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Vacuum tube prototyping board
Bruce Heran made this prototyping board for his tube projects. He writes:
This is a project that I made to take care of an ever increasing need to prototype vacuum tube (valve) circuits. As you can see from the photos, it really is a test "board." I do a lot of work with tubes and love to design and improve circuits. In the process I often use various CAD type programs to rough out the designs. I have frequently found that the models do not agree with the final build. Some are right on, but most are off enough to turn a good idea into a waste of time. Thus the need to quickly prototype designs. Now I could have created this board with many additional features - speakers, output transformers, LEDs... But what I needed was a simple way to test single stage tube circuits. So for simplicity I wired the tube pins together (pin 1 to pin 1 and so on). The leads from the pins are brought out to terminals on a "Euro" style terminal strip. I included several other "Euro" strips, a pair of RCA jacks, a 100 k-ohm variable resistor and solderless prototype breadboard. This solderless breadboard is available in various sizes from several sources. If you build one of these boards, feel free to use the idea to adapt it to your needs and use whatever parts you so desire.
[Thanks, Gio!]
DIY Vacuum Tube Prototyping Board
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Nov 20, 2009 03:00 PM
Electronics, Retro |
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Free LED Cookbook from TI
By way of Andrew Q Righter of HacDC comes word of this free PDF from Texas Instruments, a 41-page "cookbook" of circuit designs and application notes for TI's LED-related components. [Thanks, Andrew!]
LED Reference Design Cookbook [PDF]
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Nov 20, 2009 03:00 PM
Electronics, Toolbox |
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Popsci sees our gift guide...
Popsci's Mike Haney liked our Under $20 Gift Guide so much, he raised us another five, adding additional under $20 gifts from the Maker Shed. Thanks, Mike! We love you guys, too.
[And in the spirit of Phil's guide, where he included an item he couldn't resist over $20, Mike includes the MAKE Warranty Voider/Bomb Diffuser Leatherman, which is $39.95. Hey, count it as two gifts under $20.]
Great Gifts For Electronics Geeks For Less Than $20
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Nov 19, 2009 08:30 PM
Gift Guides |
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BEAM turns 20
Speaking of BEAM robotics, this "school" of robotic architecture celebrated its 20th anniversary on Nov 10th. Twenty years ago, on that date, BEAM creator Mark Tilden built his first BEAMbot, the Solarover 1.0, out of two dead calculators, two dead Phillips cassette mechanisms, and parts from Laser printer cartridges. Solarbotics has a little celebratory post, with some thoughts from Mark Tilden. Mark writes:
...I went on to build dozens of similar robots based on the primitive Solarengine neurons that year, which led to the BEAM International Robot games, international lectures, the 1992 Santa Fe Artificial Life conference (lecturing alongside Brooks), publications, books, TV, kits, Solarbotics, Los Alamos National Laboratory research, NASA, and a broad line of WowWee robots which have sold around 20 million units to date (not forgetting the thousands of hand-built robots by colleagues, enthusiasts, and steampunks internationally).
Oh, and Solarbotics is also having a sale of a bunch of BEAMbots and components through the end of the month.
More:
BEAM coverage on Make: Online
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Nov 19, 2009 06:30 PM
Robotics |
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Solar-powered miniball
It may look like some futuristic Christmas tree ornament, but the miniball is part of the BEAM robot family of "rollers." A miniball is a motorized hamster ball that, sadly, you don't see in the wild too often. Solarbotics used to sell a miniball kit. This Instructable, by MAKE contributor and Solarbotics intern, Jérôme Demers, shows you how to make your own.
Solar Powered Miniball Wannabe
More:
How-To Tuesday: Make a Beetlebot
BeetleBot Revisited
Mousey the BeetleBot?
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Nov 19, 2009 04:00 PM
Instructables, Robotics |
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Did he say "cheesemakers?"
MAKE editor and publisher Dale Dougherty has his five minutes of creativity fire-starting with this recent presentation of "Blessed are the Cheesemakers," at Ignite Sebastopol II. Take a whiff of "the feet of God."
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Nov 19, 2009 03:00 PM
Makers |
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Robot body by Lego, brains by Arduino
Hector of Make: en Español sent us this piece from the site:
What happens when you give an Arduino to a student whose resources barely provide for the most basic maker needs, but is nonetheless eager to create something awesome? You get tech-art in the making.
David Busto Torres, the newest member of the elite robotics club from ITESM SLP campus (Mexico), shares with us his creation. It is a robot made only with an Arduino, some Ethernet cable, a couple of IR LEDs, two salvaged DC motors, an improvised H-bridge, and of course, some Lego bricks.The total cost was less than US$10 (around $100 Mexican pesos) -- the Arduino was provided by the crew at Make: en Español.
David promised to share a video with us once he's finished creating an Arduino shield to replace all the cables and improve the robot's aesthetics, but for me, what could be more beautiful than the pictures above?
[Thanks, Hector!]
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Nov 18, 2009 10:30 PM
Arduino, Robotics |
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Line-following chassis from RepRap
Here's a set of chassis parts for a line-following robot, made on a RepRap machine, by a member of the IEEE Robotic Club at Rutgers. The mechanical and electronics parts were part of a kit everybody got. This builder created this RepRap body to go with his kit.
RepRapBot Mrk II
Chassis for Line Following Bot (on Thingiverse)
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Nov 18, 2009 09:00 PM
3D printing, Robotics |
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Tinkering 2.0
In a follow-up to the the WSJ piece, "Tinkering Makes Comeback Amid Crisis," NPR did an OnPoint segment on "Tinkering and American Innovation," with the article's author, Justin Lahart, Bre Pettis, and David Hounshell, Tech and Social Change professor at CMU.
Tinkering and American Innovation
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Nov 18, 2009 04:00 PM
Makers |
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