Check out this excellent instructable that shows you how to bend mains wire into a roller coaster track for a ball bearing.

More:

• How ball bearings are made
• HOW TO - Make a ball bearing trampoline game
• Right on Track - Rolling Ball Sculpture

I dig this Cadillac Dystopic Lamp by Instructables user PopEye42, which does something I've been meaning to try myself for a long time--using cut 1L Perrier bottles as lampshades. I also like that the dimmer switch has a hose valve handle on it.

What do you do when your toddler's having trouble reaching the buttons on the guitar for Beatles Rock Band? Why, modify it and make an Instructable, that's what!

Toddler's Guitar Hero controller

Instructables user zieak upcycled some discarded keyboard circuit sheets into this attractively geeky document folder for his wife.

Is there anything you can't build with an old blue barrel? Instructables user Kentucky-bum made this Frisbee golf target.

• Recycled barrel chair
• Weekend Project: Barrel Water Collector

I've had this long-standing concept for a theme restaurant where everything--tables, chairs, utensils, food, condiment dispensers--is like 30% bigger than normal. The idea is to make you feel like a kid again. We'd call it "Tiny's." (And yes, we're still seeking investors. Also waitstaff suffering from gigantism.) Look for one soon in a strip-mall near you. Believe me, you won't be able to miss it.

In the meantime, if you just can't wait for the experience, you could always start filling up your house with great big versions of the stuff you already have. Instructables has just posted a cool round-up of tutorials on how to do just that. Shown uppermost is user Tetranitrate's giant match. And yes, as the middle photo shows, it does (or did) actually work. At bottom, last but in no sense least, there's user indymogul's giant sandwich, which I think was part of a Halloween costume or something. But who cares? Giant sandwich!

Related:

• Claes Oldenburg is a famous Swedish sculptor, associated with the Pop Art movement, who made great big versions of stuff as sculpture.
• GreatBigStuff.com is an online store that only sells...well, you can guess, can't you?

I just got one of those indoor bike trainers. You know, the kind that props up the rear wheel against a heavy, resistance-providing wheel. The front of the bike rests on the floor, the rear axle is pinned, and there's no balancing required. I didn't think of it at first, but that's not really how you ride a bike in real life, and therefore must not be good enough for athletes training for more than just a good indoor cardio workout. Instructables user pennachi1 created this indoor cycling rig that lets you actually ride your bike the way you would outside. Looks a little scary to me, but I'm informed it "works fantastically!"

Instructables user gezortenplotz writes:

Wind across a microphone causes distortion and unwanted noise for videographers and nature recorders while taping outside. The purpose of the microphone 'blimp' is to attenuate the wind noise without interfering with the desired sound. Blimps are expensive. This project came in under $40. Mics are interchangeable in this blimp (if the mic's diameter will fit inside).

Instructables user marc.cryan made this remote controlled crane arm, useful for turning your house into one giant pluckable toy pit. Watch in the video how even a small child can operate it, for maximum adorability. Now you can get back all the satisfaction lost from years of unsuccessful arcade claw games.

Dhananjay Gadre is at it again, with a simple yet very useful Instructable for a LED illuminated eye loupe. I always want more light to see the objects I'm trying to magnify. I love how this niftly hack solves that problem!

This Eric Wilhelm's treadmill desk. He's the CEO of Instructables, and he walks while he works. I'd like to do something similar, but with a bike!

Randy Sarafan made this work table geared towards making DIY projects and documenting them:

I set out to make a simple work table for my home studio so that I could have a surface upon which to work and document projects. I tried to keep the design as simple as possible as I only have a limited arsenal of power tools, a small vehicle for transporting materials and little patience for woodworking.

This design proved to be successful in accounting for all of these requirements.

• Ian Ross's workbench and shed
• Make Podcast: Weekend Projects - Make a Workbench
• Toolbox: Portable workbench
• Cement Topped Workbench
• Closet workbench
• Arduino prototyping lap desk
• Dale Mathis' wicked-cool gear desk

There are scads of tutorials flushing through the tubes that will show you how to twirl old wire coat hangers into rings, cut them up, and link them together with pliers to make the ubiquitous "butted" chain mail, in which the individual rings are either unjoined, soldered, or glued together. But this recent Instructable from armourkris, for the truly dedicated, shows you how to make a much more serious--and to my amateur eye, authentic--mail, in which each ring is flattened, punched, linked, and then riveted closed.

More:

• Flashback: Battle Chic DIY Chainmail
• Chain maille how-to
• Chainmail chess set
• Chainmail armor entirely from beer can tabs!
• Soda tab lampshade
• Ceramic Chain Mail Art

Somebody lucky got this Cylon teddy bear for Valentine's Day! Learn how to make your own with dragonvpm's Instructable.

In the Maker Shed:

Larson Scanner Kit

Here's a neat Instructable for making a wood-and-rope-only camping chair, looks comfy! I can almost smell the campfire.

Using a shoebox, some convex lenses of varying focal length, and a bit of poster board maker manish15 has assembled an inexpensive DIY art enlarger on the cheap. Similar to an epidioscope, the device projects an image onto a drawing surface.

How to make a paper-based animation... not-bob writes -

Have you seen the cards where there appears to be a moving picture just by using a piece of plastic with lines on it and an image underneath? This instructable shows you how to make your own with just a computer, printer, paper and transparencies. I'm assuming that you have the Gimp image editor installed. Hopefully you can translate this as needed for other programs.

Instructables user wramey writes:

This cheap and easy addition to our dining room chairs prevents kids legs from dangling uncomfortably. It won't get all their wiggles out, but it will help them sit more comfortably... and now that our kids can sit more comfortably facing the table, they get less food in their laps and on the floor and we all enjoy meals more.

Insructables user murphtron writes:

My son started riding a 16" bike at 4 years old without training wheels. (He was first on a push bike without training wheels or pedals at about 3 1/2.) One day he decided to build a jump in the back yard. So he found a piece of 2 x 12 ramp (with random lumber laying around) and piled up some logs. He discovered it was a bit tricky to ride in the grass and hit his narrow ramp. So I said, 'hey, let's go in the street (dead end) and try this.' First one brick was used to provide vertical lift, and then a second brick. He loved it.

With two bricks, the ramp becomes a bit wobbly. Plus, a 2 x 12 is a bit narrow, and a few times he rode off the ramp's side. So I decided to build a jump with the following qualities:

• Wider ramp
• Adjustable height, so it will last for a few years as he grows
• Portable, so I could drag it to the dead end or local schoolyard playground.
• Safer (while still providing ample opportunity for skinned elbows and broken bones)

There are lots of ways to make homebrew pressure sensors, but this method from Instructables user hiskeyd is the easiest I've seen: Jam two stripped wires into a piece of static dissipative foam and bend the ends over to keep them from pulling out. Then coat the whole thing in Plasti-Dip. And you're done.

More:

• HOW TO - Flexible pressure sensor
• DIY capacitive pressure sensor tile
• HOW TO - Fabric Bend Sensor

This instructable will show you how to connect your Arduino to your Android G1 mobile over serial. The project assumes you've rooted your G1 and are comfortable using a terminal. [via hackaday]

This tutorial is intended to get you up and running to the point of being able to turn an LED on and off over wi-fi without needing an Arduino wi-fi or BlueTooth shield. The purpose of using the phone is to give your project wireless capabilities, a camera, mic, screen, speaker, and all of the other capabilities in your $400 cell phone. Connecting the G1 to an Arduino helps the phone connect with the outside world with locomotion and other inputs.


Together, the G1 and Arduino allow you to use inexpensive electronics such as simple servos and sensors, to build powerful devices such as robots, remote telepresence, or fun toys for kids.

I just started teaching a course in the Design & Technology department at Parsons the New School for Design. It's called Beyond DIY, and it's all about tutorial making and DIY projects. One of my students, Joe Saavedra, is quick out of the gate with his Instructable for using a laser cutter to prepare PCBs for etching. Did I mention they have a giant laser (Epilog 75W)? I'm really looking forward to the course. If you want to keep up with what they're working on, check out the Beyond DIY class blog.

I love this bird-feeder tutorial from Instructables user me13lake. It's not flashy (indeed, with a title like "Small simple horizontally mounted squirrel resistant/proof bird feeder that requires no specialist tools to make," I'm guessing it was written by a scientist or engineer) but it's well thought-out, easy and inexpensive to make, and it looks like it would work very well. The clear squirrel-guard rotates freely so they can't get a grip, and can be made from a 2-liter plastic bottle. Or you could try cutting one from a glass bottle.

Check out this adjustable smartphone car mount indtructable posted by niftycurly. For about $2 in parts and in about 10 minutes time you could cobble together one of these for use with your new turn-by-turn navigation enabled smartphone.

Instructables user mrigsby writes:

The Flock Clock uses male and female drinking birds to display time. Binary addition of the female birds (left to right) yields the hour. Binary addition of the male birds (multiplied by five) yields the minute--within five minutes. An Arduino processor provides the signals needed to drive Peltier cells which heat the fluid in the birds and causes the bobbing motion.

Noah at Instructables made this nifty office toy grappling hook with a few spare parts including a sewing machine bobbin full of fishing line.

Sarah James at Instructables has made this awesome light-up EL wire costume, and shares the process with us in her excellent tutorial.

Instructables user Plusea brings us this cool tutorial on how to make a soft sensor that closes a circuit when it is petted or stroked.

Wow, an incredible Instructable fromKyle McDonald:

The same technique used for Thom's face in the Radiohead "House of Cards" video. I'll walk you through setting up your projector and camera, and capturing images that can be decoded into a 3D point cloud using a Processing application. Most 3D scanning is based on triangulation (the exception being time-of-flight systems like Microsoft's "Natal "). Triangulation works on the basic trigonometric principle of taking three measurements of a triangle and using those to recover the remaining measurements

.

Instructables user brainparts built this acoustically-isolated microphone mounting ring for his kick drum using bungee cords and a short slice of 6" aluminum pipe, all for about $20. He says if he were to do it again, he'd just use PVC pipe for the ring.