Make: Online: Makers Archives

Makers Archive: Makers

July 9, 2009

EV dragsters!

Design News has an article and slide show piece on electric dragsters. The car pictured here is Mike Willmon's electric Pinto, the Crazyhorse. The infamous Pinto gas tank (and the back seat) has been replaced with 848 lbs of lead-acid battery. The car is powered by two nine-inch diameter brush DC motors, coupled back-to-back. The Crazyhorse uses the Cafe Electric Zilla motor controller, which allows you to slam huge amounts of current (up to 2,000 amps!) into the motors to blast the car off the line like any respectable fuel-based dragster. Last year, the Crazyhorse did a quarter-mile in 12.47 seconds.

Drag Racing Goes Electric

Frayed Wire, Seattle, Saturday, July 11th

Josh Kopel, of Dorkbot Seattle, wrote in to tell us about the latest db event, called Frayed Wire. The event is a collaboration with the Youngstown Cultural Center and 911 Media Arts Center, a one-day conference, unconference, and workshop series. Check out their amazing roster of speakers and workshop presenters. Looks like a lot of fun. The event is $50 for the day.

Frayed Wire

July 8, 2009

Citizen Engineer zine/comic/kit

It's a good thing that Limor and Phil of adafruit industries only use their powers for good. Otherwise, we'd all be in trouble. The dynamic hacking duo has just released a new comic book version of their awesome Citizen Engineer video, episode 1, on SIM card hacking. They're printing the books on-demand at adafruit, limited edition, 32-page, full-color. It also comes with an adafruit SIM Reader Kit v1.0. Can't wait to get mine. I haven't fed my zine/ homebrewed comics habit in a while. Great job, guys!

SIM reader & Comic book - Citizen Engineer Volume 01

Next Dorkbot SoCal, July 11th

This Saturday, July 11, 2009, is the next meeting of Dorkbot Southern California:

***** 1:00pm
***** Machine Project
***** 1200 D North Alvarado Street
***** Los Angeles, CA 90026

Here's the line-up of speakers:

Heather Knight Previously with the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab, Heather is a Social Roboticist who works at the Jet Propulsion Lab. She will present her work enabling robots to understand nonverbal human gestures and talk about the potentials for interactive technology incorporated into everyday objects, such as clothing.

Jody Zellen
Jody Zellen is an artist living in Los Angeles, California. She works in many media simultaneously making photographs, installations, net art, public art, as well as artists' books that explore the subject of the urban environment.

Xuan "Sean" Li
Sean will show a "Hertzian Explorer" that reveals the invisible electromagnetic waves of computation and communication in information society.

More info here.

July 7, 2009

CNC flies fron CDs

I love these flies, CNC'd from trash CDs and DVDs. Sent to us by Jacek Tomasiak from Poland. The flies were posted on the Polish CNC Forums by one of their members. The attachment on the post is the DXF files, if you care to cut your own.

Mucha

Remo Saraceni on Omni

Erica points out this early 80's profile of artist/engineer Remo Saraceni on Omni Television. You're likely familiar with at least one of Saraceni's playful inventions - he created the "Walking Piano" played by Tom Hanks in Big, plus a bunch of other fun pieces of tech.

July 6, 2009

Maker Faire on Brink tonight

Set your DVRs, VCR cat feeders, and Arduino-controlled doggie dish dispensers for 10:30pm tonight. The Discovery Science Channel will be running a segment about Maker Faire on their Brink program.

Brink: Science Channel

R/C blimp prison break attempt

Francesco Fondi, of the Italian site Hobby Media, sent us a link to a story about Giulio B, an Italian drug trafficker jailed in Spain, who attempted a prison break using this small dirigible. The site's in Italian, but I gather the R/C craft was supposed to fly into the prison, with the payload of tools seen in the last image.

Italian criminal tries to escape from Spanish jail using a Radio Controlled Dirigible!

July 4, 2009

13 Colonies Ham Radio Special Event

After a fourth of July BBQ, I was tuning around on the radio and made contact with Vince, K4AOC (operating as K2L) the 13 Colonies Special Event station in South Carolina. July 1- July 5th was the 13 Colonies 4th of July Special Event during which all thirteen original colonies were on the air with special event call signs: K2A-NY K2B-VA K2C-RI K2D-CT K2E-DE K2F-MD K2G-GA K2H-MA K2I-NJ K2J-NC K2K-NH K2L-SC K2M-PA. Make contact with all thirteen colonies to earn the Thirteen Colonies certificate.

July 3, 2009

Apply for an Awesome Grant!

That's not an adjective in the title, "Awesome Grant" is the actual name of the grant, from the Awesome Foundation, of Cambridge, MA. Each month, they give away $1,000 to someone who wants to do something... well awesome. Here's how they define what they're looking for:

Awesomeness is often overlooked by mainstream culture, which tends to rehash the same broadly appealing but mediocre creations. Thankfully, there is the web.

Awesomeness is more the product of a creator's passion than the prospect of audience or profit. Awesome creations are novel and non-obvious, evoking surprise and delight. Invariably, something about them perfectly reflects the essence of the medium, moment, or method of creation. Awesomeness challenges and inspires.

You enter the proposals on their site and they only need to be 500 words. If you get accepted, you even get access to workspace to realize your project (if you live in the Boston area).

If any of our readers submit a proposal that gets accepted, please let us know. We're sure there are plenty of awesome ideas bouncing around the noggins of Make: Online readers.

The Awesome Foundation

Japanese POW camp radio

On today's HacDC Blabber list, Trammell Hudson posted a link to this awesome account of British soldiers building a radio in a Japanese POW camp. Trammel writes:

Since they didn't have a local Digikey or Radioshack, everything had to be sourced from what was available. The caps were made from aluminum foil lining of tea-chests, the resistors were rusty barbed wire with burned tree bark, the rectifiers out of oxidised foil and salt water, they smuggled a tube ("valve") in the camps and bribed the local Chinese power station operator to slowly step the output voltage up to 130 from 110 volts.

Amazingly they were able to receive the BBC broadcasts! The initial RX design was pretty basic, so they then built a super-het regenerative transmitter, too, but never made use of it.

[FYI: The image I used above is not from this story, just a diagram of your basic DIY foxhole radio.]

Construction of Radio Equipment in a Japanese POW Camp

July 2, 2009

The Walnut Creek model railroad

Now this is a train layout, 1,800 sqaure feet of it. It's the pride and joy of the Walnut Creek Model Railroad Society, Walnut Creek, CA, who've been at it since 1975. I like how the piece on Wired.com opens:

Before SimCity -- even before Dungeons and Dragons -- back when "computer" was a job title, people still found ways to vaporize countless hours of free time designing and maintaining private universes. In the analog world, such parallel realities were built with tweezers, glue and a spouse's permission to cover the basement with papier-mâché massifs and plywood plains.

And this, on the system that runs the layout:

The society's control systems are a steampunk fantasy: a roomful of vintage 1930s magnetic relays once used to route phone calls, clacking like mechanical dominoes with every move the amateur engineers make. A full complement of 30 members can run 10 individual trains simultaneously on the layout, though only a dozen or so are required for basic operation.

Giant Model Railroad Is an Analog SimCity [via Boing Boing]

More:
Rod Stewart in Model Railroader Magazine

A PAC for geeks?

Introducing Syn/Ack Pac, a Political Action Committee for "SysAdmins, Tinkerers, CodeMonkeys, Makers, Technologists, Warranty Voiders, and Geeks of all types."

Why Do Geeks Need a PAC? Non-profit groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge and many others do a great job evangelizing, lobbying, and litigating on our behalf. But as non profits, they're unable to particpate in the political process. That political void is what SYN/ACK PAC seeks to fill, bolstering the efforts of our non profit friends with our participation in campaigns and elections, we'll make sure we elect members of Congress who will represent our beliefs.

June 30, 2009

Introducing the Fiat 500 Bulldozer

Ironsmith Kogoro Kurata took the body of a Fiat 500 and put it on an old set of Cat tracks. Tortoise-timed trips to the store, and hilarity, ensued.

Monkey Farm [via Pink Tentacle]

Book Review: Wayne Goddard's $50 Knife Shop

I've wanted to get into knifemaking since I was a teenager, but for years had been deterred by the belief that I first needed to buy a bunch of expensive equipment, like a 3-wheel belt grinder and an annealing oven. Then I found Wayne Goddard's $50 Knife Shop, which is a compilation of material originally prepared for Goddard's eponymous column in BLADE magazine. It kind of does for knifemaking what Dave Gingery's books did for foundrywork, going back to the historical fundamentals of the technology to get at what you really need to do good work. Goodies include homemade forges and anvils, homemade disc and belt grinders, scavenging steel for blades (including forging wire rope to make Damascus steel), finishing techniques, backyard heat treating, and a whole chapter on "tribal knifemaking," which is the modern art of making knives without using electricity. Fascinating stuff.

June 29, 2009

Datamancer's new blog

Our pal Datamancer has a new blog up. He's hoping to keep a regular digital diary of his projects. Given all of the cool stuff he's always working on, let's hope he keeps it up. Above are two picks from a hobby furnace he's building, built around the Lionel's Lab HobbyMelter kit.

(Jake von Slatt has also been working on a similar furnace, from scratch. You can see his progress so far here and here.)

Digital Diary Detailing Datamancer's Deeds

June 26, 2009

Next Dorkbot DC, Tuesday July 7, 2009

Dorkbot DC has been on a hiatus for the past few months, but we're back, baby! July will be the first of a series of some events co-presented with our pals at HacDC. If you're in town, we hope you can make it.

Schedule for next meeting (Co-presented with HacDC)

7 July, 2009
7 PM - 8 PM (ET)
ALWAYS FREE!

Location:
HacDC (Room TBA)
1525 Newton St NW
Washington DC 20010

Keith Sinzinger with the tubular bells he made.

Keith Sinzinger : Tubular Bells: Construction and Processing

Photo by Keith Sinzinger.

Fresh from having performed in the Baltimore Electronic Music Festival Keith will talk about how he conceived of, researched and constructed a set of tubular bells from scrap galvanized pipe. He'll also touch on some other ongoing musical construction projects. Following a Q&A session, he'll demonstrate the bells as he generally use them in performance, processed through a variety of electronic effects.

About Fast Forty
Keith calls this genre Intense Ambient: found sounds, altered electronics, scrap metal and other devices, blended to soothe and stimulate. His musical roots were developed in an industrial city (Cleveland), where he grew up in the virtual shadow of a Ford plant. He's also lived most of his years within a few blocks of railroads. His musical experiments tend to reflect these environmental influences.

DorkbotDC would like to thank HacDC, DC's hacker space, for arranging this talk and inviting us to co-present with them.

More info here.

Brian May's homemade guitar

Seven Sexton sent us a link to this awesome 1992 video of Queen's Brian May talking about "The Fireplace," his famous electric guitar that he and his dad built from scrap bits such as a mantle from a 100-year old fireplace (hence the name), a chunk of a table, a spring from a motorcycle, a piece from his mother's knitting needle, etc. Amazingly, this is not some fragile relic he keeps in the closet, but a working guitar, one you've heard on many Queen songs. His family was poor and his dad built most of their home electronics, including their television and radio. Wonderful, inspiring little piece. I love the opening quote from him:

I'm still a kid. Basically, I LOVE the sound of the guitar. I love making it. I love standing there and making that noise.

Brian May guitar 1992

June 25, 2009

MAKE Out Session event, July 5, 2009

If you're in Austin on July 5th, be sure to check out Art Seen Alliances' MAKE Out Sessions event at the USAA at Spider House.

Meet. Mix. Make.

Come share your crafty concepts with other makers while enjoying drinks, food, and music.

Free MAKE magazine swag! BYOS (bring your own supplies) For more information, visit Art Seen Alliance.

Dorkbot - Seattle art show

The Seattle chapter of Dorkbot, in collaboration with 911 Media Arts Center, is opening a
new juried art exhibit, "Strange Things," with an opening night party on June 27th, 2009.

Sayeth the Press Release:

New and exciting genres of art emerge as artists, scientists and technologists bring together their expertise to push the boundaries of what is possible. Dorkbot-Seattle's annual exhibition, People Doing Strange Things with Electricity, showcases innovative trends in contemporary art by bringing together established and emerging artists who work with electricity in a significant way either in their art or in its creation. This is the fourth installment of "Strange Things"; previous shows have attracted in excess of 1000 visitors. Here for pictures from last years' show.

This year, in addition to showcasing works that in some way involve the use of electricity, we are emphasizing emergent communication: pieces that communicate with each other (and potentially the viewers and environment) in novel ways, to create a larger system that's greater and more complex than its individual parts. The jury selected pieces from 18 regional artists. Our focus on interactive electronic projects encompasses a broad range of creative media: art that borders the line between physical and digital art, digital art and experimental media, kinetic sculpture, reactive sculpture, sound and light installations, web-based art, ubiquitous computing...to name a few.

The show will run until July 24th.

More info