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Archive: DIY Projects
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January 8, 2008
Surface mount soldering guide
Here's an outstanding surface mount soldering guide from curious inventor -
Surface Mount components, as the name suggests, attach to the surface of boards, not through holes like older components. SMDs ("Surface Mount Devices") are lighter, cheaper, smaller and can be placed closer together. These factors, among others, mean that the days are numbered for through-hole components with widely spaced leads.Surface mount soldering guide - Link.This set of guides will demonstrate (relatively) inexpensive tools and methods for soldering and desoldering SMDs. The first page, Surface Mount Soldering 101, contains a 9 min. video overview. The pages that follow contain more pictures and go into more detail. They also cover some topics not in the video, like hand soldering a QFN chip and using solder paste with a toaster oven.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 8, 2008 07:00 AM
DIY Projects, Electronics |
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Creating a fiberglass snowmobile trailer (in the shape of a cat and mouse!)
Upnorthrick writes -
Here is a snowmobile cutter I built over the last winter. It is a cat chasing a mouse chasing a chunk of cheese. The cheese is the hitch and the cat is the actual trailer. It is sized to carry a banana box and a bit more. The cat's tail is a handle to open the storage area and is held closed with magnetic latches.Creating a fiberglass snowmobile trailer (in the shape of a cat and mouse!) - Link.As I haven't made anything with foam and fiberglass in some time I wanted a project with many compound curves.
People ask if it will carry passengers. I briefly considered a rumble seat but despite our well maintained roads it seems passengers deserve a suspension. Someone without a snowmobile might consider a smaller dog or person pulled version or toboggan.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 8, 2008 05:00 AM
DIY Projects, Instructables, Transportation |
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PET bottles shredder (filetador)
This device "shreds" plastic bottles to make them easier to carry and to make crafts with them -
Aiming to reduce the volume of PET bottles carried by "catadores" (people who collect bottles and other kinds of waste from streets), Takashi Utsumi developed a device with which one can rapidly shred PET bottles into ribbons suitable for use in crafts. There are two types of PET shredder:PET bottles shredder (filetador) - [via] Link.
More:
Miwa Koizumi: PET project - plastic water bottles - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 8, 2008 02:00 AM
Arts, Crafts, DIY Projects |
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January 7, 2008
HOW TO - Power a Chumby with a battery pack
Here a bit about powering a Chumby from an external battery pack, Bunnie writes -
Recently, someone on the chumby forum noted that the Energizer ER-PHOTO battery pack works with the chumby. The ER-PHOTO is a handy little device that essentially emulates a 12V DC wallwart with a pass-through mode, so you can continue to use whatever is plugged into the battery pack while it charges. There’s a lot of devices out there that run off of 12V and use that classic 5.5mm DC barrel jack, so they are certainly handy to have around. As you can see in the photo below, the pack consists of 3x 1800mAh Li-Ion cells, which gives a nominal capacity of 20 Wh; of course, the step-up regulator is probably only 90% efficient or so, and the circuitry in the pack is fairly simple, so maybe it lacks the electronics to safely milk the last drop out of the batteries, resulting in a reduced delivered capacity.HOW TO - Power a Chumby with a battery pack - Link.Scott Janousek has a nice little writeup about how you can install the battery pack inside a chumby, although I’d be more than a little bit wary about doing what he’s written up–he’s taken the raw Lithium Ion cells out of their protective plastic housing. The electrical tape wrapping won’t provide adequate protection against puncture or impact (which is possible if you’re carrying around a chumby and you drop it). This can lead to cells catching fire in a way that can’t be put out easily (only class D fire extinguishers work on these fires, and many homes and small offices have only type ABC extinguishers).
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 7, 2008 10:00 AM
DIY Projects, Electronics, Open source hardware |
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Programming DNA (video) - A 2-bit language for engineering biology
Here's a video from the AMAZING session "Programming DNA" @ the 24th Chaos Communication Congress -
A 2-bit language for engineering biology. Biological engineering does not have to be confined to the laboratories of high-end industry laboratories. Rather, it is desirable to foster a more open culture of biological technology. This talk is an effort to do so; it aims to equip you with basic practical knowledge of biological engineering.24C3 - Programming DNA - #2329 - [via] Link.Genetic engineering is now a thirty year old technology. For reference, over a similar period of time, modern computing machines went from exclusive objects used to design weapons of mass destruction, to the now ubiquitous panoply of personal computing devices that support mass communication and construction. Inspired by this and many other past examples of the overwhelmingly constructive uses of technology by individuals, we have been working over the past five years to develop new tools that will help to make biology easy to engineer. We have also been working to foster a constructive culture of future biological technologists, who can reliably and responsibly conceive, develop, and deliver biological technologies that solve local problems.
This talk will introduce current best practice in biological engineering, including an overview of how to order synthetic DNA and how to use and contribute standard biological parts to an open source collection of genetic functions. The talk will also discuss issues of human practice, including biological safety, biological security, ownership, sharing, and innovation in biotechnology, community organization, and perception across many different publics. My hope is that the conferees of 24C3 will help me to understand how to best enable an overwhelmingly constructive hacker culture for programming DNA.
Related:
Perkin Elmer PRISM 7700 Gene/DNA Sequence/Sequencer PCR (eBay) - Link.
More:
Additional talks from the CCC - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 7, 2008 09:00 AM
DIY Projects, News from the Future, Science |
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Chaos Radio Express International Interview
While in Berlin, Tim Pritlove, interviewed me for his radio show: Chaosradio Express International. It's the English-language branch of his German radio show. The 15 English podcasts will make you want to learn German to hear the rest of his German podcasts! We had a great conversation about hacking, education, and we chatted at length about hacker spaces and CCC. You can go listen to it on the page, or download the mp3.
Chaosradio (German) - Link
Chaosradio International (English) - Link
Posted by Bre Pettis |
Jan 7, 2008 07:47 AM
DIY Projects, MAKE Podcast |
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Test chamber from a re-wired toaster
Here's how to make a test chamber from a re-wired toaster -
Mark Thoren and Jim Williams needed to test the temperature compensation scheme of a circuit they were designing. The lab had several temperature chambers, but they were always in use. In frustration, Jim grabbed a brand new toaster and plopped it down on Mark's desk, saying, "This will do." Not quite. The hysteresis of the oven's thermostat was 10C — too crude to measure the circuit. Mark and Jim scrounged about and found an auto-tuning temperature controller, some solid-state relays and a shiny platinum RTD probe. After some minor rewiring they had a test chamber, more than adequate and better than most of the "real" chambers that were never available when needed.Test chamber from a re-wired toaster - Link.
Other toaster (and toast) projects:
Lab-on-a-Chip with Shrinky Dink and toaster oven - Link.
Toaster as Presser - Link.
Toaster lets you write on your breakfast - Link.
Toaster burns images - Link.
Advances in toaster music technology - Link.
Solder surface mount parts with a toaster oven... - Link.
Play with your food: Rework your toast - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 7, 2008 07:00 AM
DIY Projects, Electronics |
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Business card phones home
Tomward made these great business cards that can dial you! he writes -
I bet nobody has given you a business card before that actually dials you up by itself! Read on to find out how I did it ....Extreme Business Cards - Instructables - Link.Do you like making things? Do you do it for money, or would like to? If so, you need a business card. These can be your best advertising, but we all know business cards are boring and get thrown away. I have toyed with plastic or etched stainless cards before - these are really cool, but cost a lot, and are not really distinctively "you".
Do you make goods out of leather? Then make a leather business card. Do you make handmade greeting cards? Then make your business card look like one of these! Even better, make one that is actually useful for whoever you're giving it to, so it CAN'T be thrown away. I'm into making electronics, so what better way to advertise my skills than an electronic business card. Here are two experimental "extreme" business cards that are almost impossible for someone to throw away - one in the form of a key ring torch and one card that actually dials me up by itself! This one has a computer inside with more processing power than took the first astronauts to the moon (No, I'm not kidding!), yet the main part costs less than 50 cents. I'm also working on one that plugs into a USB port on a computer so that people can email me directly from a link, or look at a portfolio of my work.
Even if these ideas don't grab you, maybe they'll fire your imagination to think how you could make a truly unique card that uses your skills and tells people how creative you are.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 7, 2008 01:00 AM
DIY Projects, Electronics |
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| Comments (4)
January 6, 2008
HOW TO - VoIP on the iPod Touch
Jason writes -
The Touchmods team recently released a working version of their iPod Touch VoIP app, making it possible for Touch owners to place outgoing calls on the device.The Touch doesn't come with a built-in mic, so part of the hack involves either modifying a Walmart iVoice III mic, buying a Touchmods designed add-on, or building your own from their schematics. After that, you just need to add http://touchmods.net/rep.xml to the Installer's package source list, install the SIP-VoIP.app, configure it with a SIP account and hop on a WiFi connection.
Incoming calls are not supported yet, and as far as I can tell this isn't an open source project. Charlie Sorrel from Wired's Gadget Lab describes it as being fairly buggy at this stage, and was unable to get it to function, but we'll see how things progress after a few version updates. Anyone out there with an iTouch who wants to give this a shot and report back their findings?
Related:
VoIP For iPod Touch - [via] Link
DIY iPod Touch Mic - Link
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 6, 2008 03:00 AM
DIY Projects, Gadgets |
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January 5, 2008
HOW TO - Enter the ghetto Matrix (DIY bullet time)
Fi5e writes -
The following is a tutorial on how to build your own cheap, portable and hood-style bullet time camera rig on the cheap and the fly. This rig was designed by the Graffiti Research Lab and director Dan the Man to use in a hip-hop music video for underground rappers Styles P, AZ and the legendary Large Professor (spinning below). Just another chapter in the GRL's continuing mission to make open source the sixth element of hip-hop.HOW TO - Enter the ghetto Matrix (DIY bullet time) - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 5, 2008 12:00 AM
Arts, DIY Projects |
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January 4, 2008
Learn How To Do Laser Graffiti - Weekend Projects Podcast
This weekend, learn how to draw on buildings. Laser Tagging is a non-destructive way of using a laser, video camera, computer and projector to apply graffiti to buildings! It's a lot of fun!
You'll see the GRL Vienna guys Michael Zeltner and Florian Frühauf who rocked Berlin with 5500 lumens of laser graffiti awesomeness. They would like to extend a thanks to Theo Watson and Evan Roth and James Powderly of GRL who came up with the idea, first implemented it and put it out there in the public domain.
The GRL NYC peeps recently put out a tutorial on starting your own GRL. - Link
Lasers, like power tools, can be dangerous. You're responsible for your own safety!
Posted by Bre Pettis |
Jan 4, 2008 10:00 AM
DIY Projects, MAKE Podcast, Weekend Projects |
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HOWTO run Arduino on the XO laptop
Brian writes...
The XO Laptop comes with the drivers you need to talk to an Arduino board, but you need to do a few things before you can run the Arduino environment. Once you get it running, though, it works just fine. The first step is to install Java. To install Java on the XO Laptop, check out these instructions (the version of Java that you download will be different from what's listed on that page, so you'll need to modify the commands slightly to take that into account).
Once you've got Java up and running, you need to install the GNU C and C++ compilers as well as the LIBC for the AVR chip that the Arduino uses. To do this, open up the Terminal activity, su to root, and install avr-gcc, avr-libc, and avr-gcc-c++ using yum:
$ su
# yum install avr-gcc avr-libc avr-gcc-c++
While you're root, you may as well make one of the changes you need to make; add the olpc user to the lock and uucp groups. To do this, edit the /etc/group file with the /usr/sbin/vigr command and add the olpc user to the end of the lock group:
lock::54:olpc
and to the end of the uucp group:
uucp::14:uucp,olpc
After you exit vigr (which is just a script that starts vi to safely edit the group file), decline its offer to edit the gshadow file, and type exit to get back to a normal (non-root) shell):
# /usr/sbin/vigr
You are using shadow groups on this system.
Would you like to edit /etc/gshadow now [y/n]? n
# exit
exit
$
Next, make sure you're in your home directory, download Arduino (there may be a more recent version of it, so check the Arduino page to be sure. Extract Arduino in your home directory (you'll be running it out of your home directory as well):
$ cd
$ wget http://www.arduino.cc/files/arduino-0010-linux.tgz
$ tar xvfz arduino-0010-linux.tgz
Now, you're all Arduino-fied. To run it, cd to the arduino-0010 and run the arduino script:
$ cd ~/arduino-0010
$ ./arduino
There is one last trick: you'll likely find that the Arduino user interface misbehaves quite a bit. To get it to work right, press the screen rotate button four times to get a nice 360 degree rotation. Arduino will redraw and start behaving itself as shown in the screenshot.
Update: As Seth points out in the comments, the Update.1 build that is coming out this month will do away with the su command, so you should use
sudo -sinstead ofsu(or simply prefix each superuser command withsudo).
Update 2: If you use JRE 5 from the Java technology archive instead of JRE 6, you won't need to use the screen rotation trick.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 4, 2008 06:00 AM
Arduino, DIY Projects, Electronics |
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Datalogging Disney with a LEGO NXT controller brick
Mike writes -
This is a quick heads-up on a post on a Lego Mindstorms NXT blog by physicist Brian Davis who rigged up a third-party 3-axis accelerometer to his NXT controller brick to create a portable motion datalogger. He datalogged and graphed several Disney World rides complete with annotations. Some custom code on the NXT logs +/- 2.5 Gs of acceleration from the 3 axes at 1/10 sec. intervals. The data was plotted to LabView. Rad! And I can think of some other recreational activities that would be fun to datalog...Datalogging Disney - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 4, 2008 03:00 AM
DIY Projects |
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Hand-powered POV
Dimmie writes -
This week I’ve been working on a POV. It’s my first microcontroller project ever and it has been very interesting. The microcontroller I used is an Atmel ATMEGA16 programmed with an Atmel AVR Dragon. The next step is to make it turn arround on a motor and calibrate itself automaticly with help from a base-placed IR-diod. I have even talked with a local company that will hopefully provide me with a bluetooth module to make posible dynamic text change from mobile phone or any other bluetooth device.Hand-powered POV - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 4, 2008 12:00 AM
DIY Projects, Electronics |
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January 3, 2008
LED softie
Jen writes -
Cute little softie Avani, a friend of mine, made. It's an LED with +/- legs and a zapped looked on its face (not to mention the lightning bolt as a mouth).LED softie - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 3, 2008 03:00 AM
Crafts, DIY Projects |
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| Comments (4)
Aerocivic - green modded Honda Civic
Darin writes -
Photos & details of a 15 year old Honda Civic, radically aerodynamically modified for increased fuel economy. The owner reports coast-down testing indicates the co-efficient of drag has dropped from .34 to .17 - better than GM's ill-fated, and super-slippery EV1 electric car. With fuel economy instrumentation, the owner claims "Approximate mileage on a flat road at 85F ... 85mpg at 70mph".Aerocivic - modded Honda Civic - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 3, 2008 12:00 AM
DIY Projects, Green, Transportation |
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| Comments (18)
January 2, 2008
HOW TO - Make a homemade battery using fermented grass
Here's how to make a homemade battery using fermented grass cut from your lawn, thanks Franco - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 2, 2008 01:00 AM
DIY Projects, Green |
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| Comments (8)
Brainwaves become commands
Martijn writes -
NeuroSky has made a system which can turn brainwaves into commands. This is a revolutionary technique that will have a big impact on all kinds of markets. The gaming industry for instance: playing games without a game controller. But also the elderly can benefit from techniques like this: not physically having to move to control electronic devices/machines around the house. Watch the videos. Must see.Brainwaves become commands - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 2, 2008 12:00 AM
Arts, DIY Projects |
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| Comments (5)
January 1, 2008
HOW TO - Make your own LED camera light for only $2
Mike writes -
Ever since digital cameras took decent video I stopped carrying around my DV video camera and instead use my point and shoot digital camera to take a few minutes of MOV or MPG video here and there. The only problem is my digicam is not equipped with a light to brighten up the videos I take indoors. So a while ago I searched for an LED light to use with my digital camera and I found one company camerabright.com that makes one that you screw into the tripod mount standard on all cameras. It costs about $30 to $40 bucks, has 4 white LEDs and takes 6 CR2032 coin cell batteries. I thought the price was ok, but there were some things I didn’t like about it and other people have also commented on. So I decided to make my own and show you how.HOW TO - Make your own LED camera light for only $2 - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 1, 2008 03:00 AM
DIY Projects, Imaging |
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| Comments (1)
December 31, 2007
O Rly owl scarf
I finally finished my last unfinished knitting project, this scarf with two O Rly owls on it. It's for my friend Justin, who asked for it special. One end says "O Rly?" and other other, "Ya Rly." I made a pattern you can download, as well, if you want to make it. - Link.
Posted by Becky Stern |
Dec 31, 2007 05:00 PM
Crafts, DIY Projects |
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| Comments (0)
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