MAKE Volume 31 Web Extras and Downloads

MAKE Volume 31 Web Extras and Downloads

MAKE_V31_high
The maker movement is making science exciting again. Forget the lame baking soda “volcanoes” and the zillion-dollar supercolliders — just as punk rock took music back from the supergroups and big studios, “punk scientists” are making inexpensive new tools to conduct real experiments in garages, schools, and hackerspaces. In MAKE Volume 31, you’ll learn how to make DIY laboratory equipment (even a scanning electron microscope!), create high-voltage sparks from falling water, control a cockroach electronically, get started in biotech, and see how individuals and schools are networking their data for real scientific discoveries. Plus: Get started with multicopters or servo controllers, and build an automatic dog ball launcher, great-sounding speakers with flashing LEDs, a classic folding-wing Rocket Glider (a new MAKE kit), an iPad music desk, a levitating solar Mendocino Motor, and much more.

 

Lord Kelvin’s Thunderstorm

By Matthew Gryczan

Video of the thunderstorm in action

YouTube player

 

Mendocino Motor

By Chris Connors

Project Code

 

Fetch-O-Matic

By Dean Segovis

Video overview of the Fetch-O-Matic

YouTube player

Project Templates

Download project templates and wiring schematic.

 

Rocket Glider

By Rick Schertle

Videos of the Rocket Glider in action

 

Project Code and Templates

 

Sound-O-Light Speakers

By William Gurstelle

Video demo of the speakers

YouTube player

 

Monkeysailor’s Photo Lab

By Andrew Lewis

Project Code, Schematics, and Templates

Download code, schematics, and templates.

Panel artwork by John Ranford

panel-artwork-john-ranford

 

iPad Music Desk

By Reed Ghazala

Schematics and cutting templates

M31_DIYM_iPdDck00_schmtc

 

M31_DIYM_iPdDck05_tptmplt

 

M31_DIYM_iPdDck06_bcktmplt

 

M31_DIYM_iPdDck12_cables

 

M31_DIYM_iPdDck16_plgchrt

 

Auditory Illusions

By Michael Mauser

Shepard Scale

Endless staircase of sound. (45 minutes)

When you play this sound in a loop, it sounds like it’s constantly rising in frequency, or falling, if you reverse it. But since it’s just looping, it actually goes nowhere. Its discoverer, Roger Shepard, first described it in 1964 as the audio equivalent of the endless staircase illusion, but Béla Julesz and Ira Hirsh argued later that a better analogy is a rotating barber pole.

Our version of a Shepard scale will be a sequence of 6 complex tones that follow an ascending scale, a whole-note scale (in our case: A, B, C#, D#, F, G) that divides the octave into 6 equal intervals. Each complex tone will consist of its single note playing at multiple octaves, but we’ll make the volumes highest in the frequency range where we hear best, and taper them off at the extremes.

When we loop the sound, our brain will hear the intervals rising from tone to tone in its midrange, but be less aware that at the extremes, new very low notes sometimes emerge at the bottom and very high ones drop off at the top.

To create this scale in Audacity, generate, overlay, and sequence a series of 6 complex tones, each composed of the frequencies listed down successive columns of the table in Figure P and with a duration of 0.5 seconds apiece. It’s a good idea to save your work along the way by saving out a separate track for each column, naming it after its musical note. Then, once you have the 6 tracks saved, open a new file in Audacity and copy each track into it. When pasting one track onto the end of another, don’t forget to move the cursor to the end of the first track using the Skip to End button.

After you’ve pasted all the tones in, Loop Play to hear the unending rise in pitch. Highlight the track and use the Effect → Reverse to hear it as an unending fall.

 

Track with the six complex tones pasted in.
Track with the six complex tones pasted in.

 

Electronics: Fun and Fundamental, The Ching Thing

The schematic in Figure C (page 159) should have no break in the line from the Output to the One-shot timer. Here’s the correct version:

 

Revised-Figure-C

 

We updated the schematic in Figure E (page 161) to reflect the added simple power switch and reset switch that discharges the large capacitor. Here it is:

 

Second-Revised-Figure-E

 

Toy Inventor’s Notebook: Breadboard Bots

By Bob Knetzger

For more info on Sugru, check out makershed.com or sugru.com.

More Photos

What if Alexander Calder's famous and witty bent wire sculpture "Circus" were to be re-magined as working electronics wiring: "Calder's Circuits!"
What if Alexander Calder’s famous and witty bent wire sculpture “Circus” were to be re-magined as working electronics wiring: “Calder’s Circuits!”

 

Here SolarCell SugruBot commands speaker-headed AudioDog SugruBot to go higher.
Here SolarCell SugruBot commands speaker-headed AudioDog SugruBot to go higher.

 

Here SolarCell SugruBot is asking AudioDog SugruBot to speak!
Here SolarCell SugruBot is asking AudioDog SugruBot to speak!

 

Here Solar Cell SugruBot is asking the BulbHead Sugrubot for a light.
Here Solar Cell SugruBot is asking the BulbHead Sugrubot for a light.

 

sugru bot sound circuit119

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