Make: Online: Kits Archives

Kits Archive: Kits

July 2, 2009

LED Light Brick kits

Alden Hart, who wrote the LED Light Bricks project for MAKE, Volume 18, has put together a lovely little kit to make building the project much easier. And we're now offering them in the Maker Shed! The kit includes a printed circuit board, 20 bright LEDs, in red, green, blue, and yellow, a programmed PIC16F916 (which you can reprogram, if you like), a tilt switch, power supply, and everything else you need to complete the project (except the molding and casting components). The kit sells for $27.

Here's a link to the Digital Edition of the article in MAKE, Volume 18.
Here's a link to the Web Extras page with the full mold-making and casting article.
Here's a link to the Make: Online how-to on different ways you can construct molds.

In the Maker Shed:

LED Light Brick Electronics Kit
Our Price: $27.00
All the components you need to make the LED Light Brick circuit featured in MAKE, Volume 18. When assembled, the circuit board is ready to cast to make your finished glowing nightlight.

DIY HD home theater projector

Assemble your very own HD home theater projector using these DIY kits from G&P Optoelectronics. Combine the optics, housing, lighting, and electronics bundles and with luck you'll be watching your favorite episodes of Make: Television in glorious 1280x720 HD in no time.

DIY HD projector for under €499 [via slashgear]

July 1, 2009

Sparkfun open-sources hardware kits

Our friends over at Sparkfun have announced their decision to officially make some of their kits open source. Nathan and company have always been supporters of OSH, but now they're going to be putting links to the engineering files up to at least some of their kits. The first is the ClockIt kit, an alarm clock kit built around the ATMega168. The listing for the kit ends with links to the Eagle files (licensed under CC v3.0 Share-Alike), the schematic, the source code, and a link to an "Improve Source Code" forum posting. Nice. "One of the great things about open source is the ability to say 'Hey, I'm pretty sure this works, but it may not be the best way to do it. Can you help me out?,'" says Nathan Sheidle.

ClockIt

June 25, 2009

64 synchronizing fireflies

64 synchronizing fireflies. It sounds like a line from some overly-clever children's book or a Christmas carol. But it was instead a little week-long project for Alex at Tinkerlog. He writes:

Last week, I invested some time to solder 64 Firefly boards. Only 2.432 solder joints later, I was ready for some videos.

Every firefly acts completely autonomously, it has its own tiny controller, eye and luminary. They are all connected for power supply only.

And a partridge in a pear tree.

64 Synchronizing Fireflies

June 22, 2009

SX-150 in the studio

After adding MIDI control via Arduino + DAC, MrBook cased up the added circuitry, creating a much needed wooden back panel in the process. The upgraded kit can be seen above getting along nicely with Ableton Live - good to see the lil' Gakken synth get the pro-style treatment. Check out his blog entry for info.

In the Maker Shed:

Mkgk8-2
SX-150 Analog Synthesizer Kit

June 15, 2009

How-To: Mini-Theremin kit mods

Randy shares steps for adding two key upgrades to the Mini-Theremin kit -

True, there are already directions to do both of these things in the accompanying magazine, but what sets this how-to apart is that it is in English. If like me you can't read Japanese and unlike me, you couldn't figure out what to do from the pictures alone, this should help. Basically, what I am doing is adding an audio out jack and also a bigger, sturdier telescoping antenna. This is a great improvement on the original.

I've added an 1/8" jack to mine as well, definitely a great idea for those who also own the Gakken SX-150 synth. Once 'jacked' the mini can act as a handsfree controller for the SX by way of its control input. Hmmm ... think I'll be adding one of theses sturdier antennae as well. Read the full instructable for much mini modding infos.

More:

Gakken Mini-Theremin

June 7, 2009

Sound Lab Ultimate project from MFOS

Ray Wilson of MusicFromOuterSpace gives a very in-depth review of the new Sound Lab Ultimate's features (skip to the 7min mark for sound samples). The Ultimate is an expanded sequel to the popular Sound Lab analog synth project, which adds a bunch of new features and makes the project fully patchable -

Three Musically Accurate VCOs (sawtooth and variable width rectangular wave forms, pulse width modulation, hard-sync, log and linear CV inputs)

VCOs provide plenty of tracking range. Listen to the samples below.

White Noise Generator

Active Mixer (for VCOs, noise and external input)

Voltage Controlled LP Filter (12db/Oct doubles as a sine wave oscillator)

Voltage Controlled Amplifier (log response)

Attack Release Envelope Generator

Two Low Frequency Oscillators (square, ramp, tri and sawtooth waveforms)

Repeat Gate Generator (doubles as another square wave LFO)

Sample & Hold (with variable sample rate and glide)

Attenuator Bank (for an infinite variety of modulation patches)

Patch Panel Design (provides infinitely variable combinations of sounds)

Professionally machined panels and PC Boards available from MFOS

Sound Lab ULTIMATE "Expander" already on the drawing board.

Looks like an awesome project for advanced synth DIYers out there. PCB + panel kits are available from the MFOS site.

June 1, 2009

NunChucky I2C breakout board

One of the nifty little techno-trinkets Solarbotics was handing out to lucky folks at the Faire was their new NunChucky. This tiny PCB allows you to utilize the Wii Nunchunk as a project controller on a microcontroller module without having to cut the connector off the Nunchuck (so you can still use it with your console). The thoughtful design on the NunChucky board features two sets of interface pads, lock notches so it securely "clicks" into place when plugged into the controller, and tie-down holes for securing ribbon-cable extensions. The board comes with both 4-pin male and 4-pin female headers. It retails for US$3.

NunChucky Wii Nunchuck I2C Breakout

May 27, 2009

Here come wings for your Arduino

When not working on Make: television, writing for Make: Online, and working as a character mechanic for Disney, our bud John Edgar Park, along with fellow MAKE contributors Brian Jepson and Tod Kurt, have been burning the midnight solder on some new peripherals for the Arduino world that they've dubbed WingShields. The first kit in the "wing-format" is the ScrewShield, a header pins-to-screw terminal blocks board. The kit includes 1 Analog-side PCB, 1 Digital-side PCB, 2 sets of 6-pin stacky female header pins, 2 sets of 8-pin stacky female header pins, enough terminal blocks to fill 34 holes on the board (these come in 2- and 3-terminal units, which slot together). The pins on the headers are extra-long to allow for stacking over or under other shields.

The ScrewShield is "premiering" at Maker Faire this weekend and will be available in the Maker Shed at the Faire. After that, it'll be available for Maker Shed mail order (as well as at other online kit retailers).

Congrats on the new venture, guys!

WingShield Industries

May 25, 2009

Light-to-sound converter kit

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Eric's new LITE2SOUND kit sounds like a lot of fun. He reports on some early experimentation using the board's photodiode sensor -

pointing it at a computer CRT yields a strange humming tone that varies depending on what the screen is displaying. The LED in an optical computer mouse plays strange chirping whistles. Infrared remote controls make wild bursts of noisy data. You're hearing frequencies from lines of code executing in a microprocessor... stuff that was never intended to be heard. When you combine LITE2SOUND with a laser pointer, things get really interesting. There is bizarre audio from a vinyl record as it spins on the turntable, using a laser instead of the needle. Listening to reflected laser light as you move it over the surface texture of objects is often a surprise; it plays the texture like a phonograph needle. You can even pick up unusual sounds from a guitar string as the laser reflects off of it. There are still many things to try...

Further explanation, ordering info and a bunch of interesting sound samples can be found over on ericarcher.net.

Laser-cut drumkit

Flickr member Segwaymonkey got the new Spikenzielabs' SpikenzieLabs Drum Kit-Kit and was inspired to create a set of laser-cut pads for it. Sweet. I love the engineering of the vibration-dampening "springs."

The Drum Kit Kit Laser Cut Rig

May 15, 2009

Playing the theremin room

MAKE subscriber Gregg Horton used a Thingamakit along with a hacked karaoke machine to create a rather large area of theremin-esque sound control. Cool - at around 2m30s in it does start working quite nicely! Check out more of Greg's projects on the Groovy Pancakes blog.

In the Maker Shed:

Thing-a-ma KIT

May 8, 2009

Mutant Thingamakit grows extra tentacles

From the MAKE Flickr pool

JoeLMutantE lives up to his name with this monster sound & light machine born from two Thingamakit boards and a whole lotta wiring -

This is a little MutanT based on the Thingamakit noise-synth. It has trhee diferent led-acles (led tentacles) and a pair of sense-acles (photo-sensor tentacles) that react to the amount of light. It's a very unpredictable noise-synth, by the way you can control the rate of the LFO, the range, the shape...really very fun!!
I decided to make a little reproduction of me and my audio studio for the front panel, so here it is, plenty of lights that goes on and off, so much cables wiring all the ways buttons and knobs, that's my audio-studio.

Dig that unusual panel design! More photos of said specimen available in Joel's photoset.

In the Maker Shed:

Thing-a-ma KIT

May 6, 2009

Peggy 2 RGB!

The folks over at Evil Mad Scientist Labs outfitted a Peggy 2 with 2x2 super-pixels consisting of red, green, blue, and white 10mm LEDs. The result is a super low-res, but still extremely cool, programmable LED matrix. Windell also shows how you can put a diffusing plastic over the display to create a continuous-tone animated color display. Trippy, man.

Peggy 2 RGB

From the pages of MAKE:

MAKE, Volume 18, ReMake America
Peggy is our lovely spokeslight on the cover of MAKE, Volume 18, the ReMake America issue. The Table of Contents for Volume 18 is now available for perusing here.

Hello Kitty boost

I love this Hello Kitty bubblegum tin housing a Minty Boost. There's even extra space to carry two additional AA batteries, for even more boost. And notice the Maker's Notebook as the backdrop. The builder named it the Minou Boost, after her cat.

Minou boost

Piezo sound meter

Over at NerdKits, Humberto shows how to build a piezoelectric-based sound meter fed to an LED display, using their USB NerdKit. By using the piezoelectric buzzer that comes in the kit as a microphone, and adding a transistor and a few other components, you can create a sound meter and send its output to an LED array, an LCD screen, or other display. They used an LED display version at the recent MIT Battle of the Bands to graphically display the sound volume in the room.

Piezoelectric Sound Meter

May 4, 2009

VGA output on a Ybox2

In this video, Limor shows off her build of the Turbulence microcontroller-based demo. She accomplished this by going retro (hey, it's demoscene, man), adding VGA and stereo audio output to her Parallax Propeller-based Ybox2 kit (which has NTSC out). To add VGA/stereo out, she created a mini-shield plug-in for the YBox. Pretty nifty! And as she says, it's really impressive that the Propeller MCU can process decent VGA and stereo audio. It's funny to see her drag out her old VGA monitor, too. Hey, where can I get one of those Techno-Goth stickers!?

VGA out on a Ybox2 and Turbulence!

April 27, 2009

Breadboard Arduino from Oomlout

The always-inspiring folks at Oomlout are now showing off a forthcoming Arduino breadboard kit they're working on, a make-your-own 'Dunio built around the ATMega168 chip. The kit will come with the chip, a breadboard, a hook-up wire kit, and all of the support components you need to wire up a working Arduino. If you already have the parts, or would rather just make your own, they give you a parts list. They also have a paper layout sheet you can lay over the breadboard (or just use a reference) to see how everything hooks up onto the board. They hope to have the kt available soon.

Earthshine Design did their own breadboard-based Arduino (above). You can find info on their version here.

Breadboard Based Arduino Compatible (BBAC) Micro-Controller

April 24, 2009

Wake up your fish feeder

Cheap automatic aquarium feeder on the go. - More DIY How To Projects

Zach, one of my 9th grade students showed me this last week.

Hey, maybe you should really mess with your fish by modifying this idea to feed them every time you download files to your thumb drive. It really could be feast or famine, depending on what your file habits are. If you want something more involved, then check out John Park's excellent VCR cat feeder build.

April 22, 2009

In the Maker Shed: Spring cleaning sale 50-75% off select items

Okay, here's the deal. We've a huge amount of new inventory arriving at the backdoor to our warehouse in anticipation of Maker Faire. The problem is, we share a warehouse with the rest of O'Reilly and we need to clear out space to make room for the new stuff.

So...we've sharpened our pencils and for the next two weeks, we are rolling back the prices on over a hundred of our existing products. Most around 50% off, but some of them discounted as much as 75% off! Once they're gone they're gone. This is a limited time spring-cleaning sale from now through midnight April 30th (midnight on our San Francisco clocks).

Use code BLOWOUT at checkout for the FREE shipping on orders over $100. (Contiguous US)

Check out all the products that are on sale now!