MAKE » John Baichtal

Ten Dollar Stomp Rocket Launcher

John Baichtal — Thu, 23 May 2013 23:43:22 +0000

Chris Connors’ 10 Dollar Stomp Rocket Launcher looks pretty cool! Stomp rockets are a great way to introduce flight, pneumatics, and energy transfer through hands-on learning. Paper rockets are very easy to make, and use “virtually free” materials. This will help encourage multiple iterations and exploration of rocket design. You […]

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Use an Op Amp to Make a Self-Dimming Night Light

John Baichtal — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:02:39 +0000

On Make: Projects, Jason Poel Smith uses a pair of LM741 op amps to build an self-dimming night light that turns itself off after a period of time so you don’t waste electricity. The timer is made from a 741 op amp (operational amplifier) wired as a comparator. It compares […]

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Red Bull Creation 2013 Lineup

John Baichtal — Wed, 22 May 2013 23:25:11 +0000

Red Bull Creation, a cool DIY competition sponsored by Red Bull, is back with a new challenge for 2013: It’s been three years with three variations of the nation’s favorite 72-hour themed innovation competition and it keeps getting better. Red Bull Creation returns in 2013 with a new challenge, inspiring […]

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Diyode Codeshield Gets a Lesson Plan

John Baichtal — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:18:35 +0000

The Diyode Codeshield is a fascinating project out of the Diyode hackerspace in Guelph, ON. It’s an Arduino shield loaded with sensors, a buzzer, a motor, LEDs, a rotary encoder, and so on, with the idea that it would help people learn Arduino programming without having to learn about electronics […]

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Animatronic Beaker Puppet Lip-Syncs to Tunes

John Baichtal — Tue, 21 May 2013 23:33:46 +0000

Instructables user vigothecarpathian adapted a holiday decoration to create a fully functional Beaker puppet that can be used as a traditional puppet but also moves his mouth along with the music when a music player is plugged into him. Beaker-bot, for me is both an excellent puppet for someone like […]

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Controlling 5 Servos With a Raspberry Pi

John Baichtal — Tue, 21 May 2013 17:46:49 +0000

Pierre Villeneuve attached five hobby servos to a Lego model, controlled with a motor control board board and a RasPi. This is a nice way of controlling a Lego robot without needing to use Lego’s robotics components! I initially tried to control my servos directly from the Raspberry Pi through […]

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Sensing Color With a LED and Op Amp

John Baichtal — Mon, 20 May 2013 20:00:44 +0000

Robot Room’s David Cook shows how an LED and op amp, along with a resistor and cap, can be built into an amplified color sensor. Unfortunately, even under the best conditions, photodiodes (and reversed LEDs) don’t provide a lot of current flow. The output of the photodiode needs to be […]

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Lego Technic Artificial Arm

John Baichtal — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:00:00 +0000

Polish Lego builder piotrek839 built this sick robot arm that packs some pretty impressive functionality. It’s remote controlled and uses a whopping 12 Power Functions motors and linear actuators to do its thing. You can read about the project on LUGPol, though it’s in Polish. Filed under: Robotics

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Use Op-Amps to Make a LED Color Organ

John Baichtal — Thu, 16 May 2013 19:00:01 +0000

Collin Cunningham’s awesome videos are always great to watch. This time, Collin shows how to build a Color Organ, which is a light display that responds to sounds around it, allowing you to build cool visualizer effects to go with your tunes. Long before the dawn of digital music, folks […]

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Bletchley Park, In Lego

John Baichtal — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:30:08 +0000

Lego builder James Pegrum explores Britain’s elite codebreaking facility in brick form! 1944AD 1st June, Bletchley Park, England. The improved Colossus Mark 2 starts working in time for the Normandy Landings. The Colossus was the world’s first electronic digital computer that was at all programmable. It was designed by Tommy […]

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