RSSArchives: August 2007
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August 14, 2007
Bot rock with the Robotmakers
It's called "Building a Robot," but it's not actually about building bots, it's a silly-cool video featuring a plastic wind-up robot toy, called The Personal Apprentice (one of which sits on my desk staring back at me while I type this), and lots of cool analog synths, some home-built. Lots of animated patch bay action.
Building a Robot - Link
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Aug 14, 2007 06:00 PM
Arts, Music, Retro, Robotics |
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QRPme - Tuna can kits
Jason writes -
This amateur radio club provides kits uniquely packaged in tuna tins. When you build the kit, the tuna tin also serves as a chassis for your new project, complete with a nice label for the tin. Although most of the kits are geared towards QRP (low power ham radio) operators, Make readers might enjoy the "AXEme Picaxe Construction Kit". This is a Picaxe development board built into one of the famous tuna tins. It's a very unique and eye-catching way to work with microcontrollers.QRPme - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Aug 14, 2007 05:00 PM
Altoids and tin cases, DIY Projects, Electronics, Kits |
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Home built solid state 300W power amp
I know nothing about homebrewing audio gear, but this DIY 300W power amp, built on six LM3886 chips, sure looks bad ass. Here's how the builder describes the project:
My design uses a PCB to hold 3 paralleled 3886s (i.e. PA150), and then I use the DRV134 to bridge 2 of the PA150 PCB boards. The function of DRV134 is to convert the un-balanced input signal to a balanced signal, so that the non-inverted signal is fed to one PA150, and the inverted signal is fed the another PA150. One of the PA150 is connected to the speaker's positive input, and the other PA150 is connected to the speaker's negative input. Because of this push-pull configuration, the total gain of the amplifier is doubled. Each PA150 has a gain of 20, so the gain of the BPA300 is 40.
DIY BPA300 GC - 300W 6x LM3886 bridged-paralleled power amplifier - [via] Link
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Aug 14, 2007 04:00 PM
DIY Projects, Electronics, Home Entertainment |
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Neil's rotating composter
A MAKE reader writes in -
In a similar vein to the keg lathe you mentioned on your blog earlier in the week. Here's a similar-looking contraption for making compost quickly- Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Aug 14, 2007 03:00 PM
DIY Projects, Green |
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Ben Heck goes inside the 360 Elite
Hardware hacker extraordinaire Ben Heckendorn (a.k.a. Ben Heck) is using the guts of an Xbox 360 Elite for his next project, a 360 laptop. In preparation for this, he cracked one open, did some creative deconstruction, and has documented the results in two articles.
Inside the Xbox 360 Elite - Link
More about the Xbox 360 Elite - Link
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Aug 14, 2007 02:00 PM
DIY Projects, Electronics, Gadgets, Gaming |
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| Comments (3)
HOW TO - Repairing faulty headphones
Chris writes -
About a year ago I picked up a pair of Shure E2C headphones. Well worth their somewhat expensive price, I use them all the time. They provide a ton of isolation, so they're great on the bus and when flying.HOW TO - Repairing faulty headphones - Link.But, in my experience, the actual headphone plug leaves a lot to be desired. Within about 8 months of regular use, I started getting the traditional crappy connection problems you get with cheaper headphones. After a few months of constantly trying to tweak the connector in order to get a good connection, I finally decided to replace the connector myself.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Aug 14, 2007 01:00 PM
DIY Projects, Music |
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Essential electronics for software folk
This looks like a GREAT book, it says it's coming out in August and in PDF form, so should be any moment now?
Essential Electronics for Software Folk: Thinking Inside the Box... Are you a programmer or computer enthusiast? Do you feel comfortable with methods, functions, and variables? Do you wish you knew more about how the computer made it all work? Now you can. From basic electronics to advanced computer hardware, you'll learn the magic behind the gear that makes it all run. If you're into tinkering, or ever thought about it, this book explains the basics of how it all works. A lot of people are into Making their own technology these days, from 3D printers to home-made robots, Digital Video Records (DVRs), Media Centers, and more. But it you're a computer programmer you might not know the ins and outs of the hardware side of these projects.Essential Electronics for Software Folk - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Aug 14, 2007 12:00 PM
Electronics |
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| Comments (2)
Duck and Cover! Fall out shelters
AJ writes -
Hello all at Make... really love the site and the mag. I just recently made a Flickr set of a scan of an old Fallout Shelter brochure and a feature about fallout shelters from Life Magazine, Sept. 1961. I thought some of you might enjoy it. Thanks!Duck and Cover! - [via] Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Aug 14, 2007 11:00 AM
Retro |
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HOW TO - Make a Blinkenlichts, a mood lamp
Here's how to make a spiffy mood lamp from an IKEA lamp, source and schematics are included... - Link & translated site.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Aug 14, 2007 10:00 AM
DIY Projects, Electronics |
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The Watercone
Interesting solar water desalinator, but not in production yet it seems... -
The Watercone is a solar powered water desalinator that takes salt or brackish water and generates freshwater. It is simple to use, lightweight and mobile. The technology is simple in design and use and is discribed by simple pictograms. With max. 1,6 liters a day the Watercone is an ideal device to cover a childs daily need of freshwater. UNICEF: "every day 5000 children die as a result of diarrhea coused by drinking unsafe water"Watercone, thanks Dave! - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Aug 14, 2007 09:00 AM
Green |
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Stellafane 2007 (photos)
Sean sent in some great pictures of the telescopes from the Stellafane 2007 competition... Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Aug 14, 2007 08:00 AM
Imaging, Science |
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Decomidi
Code, layout and PCB for a 32 output MIDI decoder - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Aug 14, 2007 07:00 AM
DIY Projects, Electronics, Music |
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| Comments (2)
Apple ][ Bluetooth
Vinchysky writes -
I have been an Apple ][ lover for over 20 years. I still remeber those great games on Apple ][. Unfortunately, I was very busy working on degree and my full time job until 3 years ago. I bought several old Apple ][s from EBAY, hoping that I could get those old-time memory back. Soon I found that this was not the case since the floppy drive and diskettes were too old to work. So I started thinking of alternatives, floppy is really not very reliable and, hey, we are in giga speed CPU era, there are lots of advancements in microelectronics after Apple ][ came out in late 1970. So I was thinking of using solid state storage to replace floppy. Like other Apple ][ fans, CFFA was discovered on the net. Although it is a great idea and very decent product, but that was not what I wanted. I want a real Disk ][ clone which can run those many disk images (.dsk, .nib) that you can find from the net. Being an electronic designers, I decided to build a solid-state drive/disk controller card myself!!Apple ][ Bluetooth - [via] Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Aug 14, 2007 06:00 AM
Computers, DIY Projects, Electronics |
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dorkbot-sf 8/15/07
If you're in the Bay Area here's your chance to see the CandyFab 400 in person @ TechShop - Dorkbot... Wednesday 8/15/07 7:30pm!
The CandyFab 4000 is a home-built computer-controlled 3D fabricator that can use granulated sugar as a printing medium. It is capable of producing arbitrarily shaped three-dimensional objects by selectively melting and fusing the printing medium with hot air. Commercial rapid prototyping machines typically produce small, high- resolution models. In contrast, the CandyFab is designed to produce large objects at lower resolution and a much lower cost-- of order $1k instead of $20-40k. That makes it the perfect starting point for bringing 3D printing to the DIY masses. The CandyFab project is also interesting because it ties together many disciplines.motion control, woodworking, microcontroller and computer programming, sewing, circuit hacking, high-power analog electronics, 3D modeling, and cooking.CandyFab is an open source project that is currently seeking participants, for more information please visit candyfab.org
Windell Oskay and Lenore Edman have a website called Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories (evilmadscientist.com), where they document and organize their various projects. Their experiments with sugar sculpture, edible origami, and edible models of electronic circuits have cemented their place as world experts in the field of playing with food. Some of their other interests include blinky lights, microcontrollers and LEDs; subversive art and education; interactive furniture; high technology crafts; and open source hardware and software.
dorkbot-sf - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Aug 14, 2007 05:00 AM
Events |
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MAKE: Volume 11 - Alt vehicles
Subscribers will be getting MAKE Volume 11 soon in their mailboxes, immediately (it's up now) if you also have the free digital edition and it hits newsstands August 28th! It includes a special "DIY Wheels" section, with plans for making a mobile drive-in movie theater, a cool chopper out of an old bicycle, and a pedal powered iPod charger. We'll also show you how to make a remote control bird feeder to take amazing photos of birds, a vintage-style remote control race car out of sheet-metal, and a vacuum-former that lets you create molded 3D parts out of plastic. These articles are just the tip of the iceberg in this project-packed volume of MAKE - Link & if you want to get this right away, subscribe (use code CMAKE, get $5 off USD for makezine.com readers!).
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Aug 14, 2007 04:00 AM
Announcements |
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HOW TO - Make an Infrared bazooka (aka recoiless remote)
Steve writes -
This project was inspired by a need to remotely control a rogue television which is far away. The Infrared Bazooka is basically an infrared repeater combined with an infrared amplifier.Infrared bazooka (aka recoiless remote) - Link.There are cool gadgets for remote control of random TVs, like the TVBGone or the Ninja Remote. The Infrared Bazooka allows you to amplify your remote (of any type) for greater range.
The heart of the Infrared Bazooka is an array of 24 infrared LEDs. This is what gives the bazooka amplification relative to a standard remote control.
For the IR LEDs, I'm using part number CAT# ILED-8 from All Electronics, plus some 20 Ohm resistors I picked up from Fry's.
Related:
Tv-B-Gone hat - Link.
Ultra TV-B-Gone - 20 IR LEDs + 9V = 90 ft range! - Link.
Make your own TV-B-Gone? - Link.
HOW TO - Double the range of your TV-B-Gone - Link.
HOW TO - Make a vintage remote TV-B-Gone case mod - Link.
Super 44 IR LED TV-B-Gone - Link.
TV-B-Gone in the MAKE store - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Aug 14, 2007 03:00 AM
DIY Projects, Electronics |
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Do it yourself era... open source hardware
Nice quotes about the DIY world and open source hardware from Wired's Chris Anderson in the EE Times about UAVs...
"Instead of a small number of products for millions, it's a case of millions of products for a small number" of people, he said. "The monolithic software model hasn't addressed this. That's what small companies and individuals are for: We're in the era of 'do-it-yourself'." Anderson also predicted that era of open-source hardware is fast approaching.'Long Tail' author claims theory could transform design - Link.
Related:
- DIY drones - Link.
- Open UAV - Link.
- Open source hardware archives @ MAKE - Link.
- What is open source hardware? - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Aug 14, 2007 02:00 AM
Open source hardware |
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| Comments (1)
Bacon tomb
What happens when you seal up bacon (and an egg) in lexan? Click to find out... - [via] Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Aug 14, 2007 01:00 AM
Arts, Science |
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Tarsier - weird animal
The Tarsier (O'Reilly, which MAKE is part of, has this creature as the mascot) is in a fun line up of weird creatures...
Tarsiers are primates with enormous eyes and long feet. Their feet have extremely elongated tarsus bones, which is how they were penned their name. Primarily insectivorous, they catch insects by jumping at them. They're also known to prey on birds and snakes. As they jump from tree to tree, tarsiers can catch even birds in motion.Worlds Weirdest Animals and Creatures - Link.All tarsier species are nocturnal in their habits, but like many nocturnal organisms some individuals may show some activity during the daytime.
Fossils of tarsiers are found in Asia, Europe, North America, with disputed fossils from Africa, but existing tarsiers are restricted to several Southeast Asian islands including the Philippines, Sulawesi, Borneo, and Sumatra.
Tarsiers have never formed successful breeding colonies in captivity, and when caged tarsiers have been known to injure and even kill themselves due to stress-
When I saw this it reminded me that we now have many of the familiar animals from the book series on other things now @ the QOOP store, check'em out...Link.
This little creature is also on my laptop...
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Aug 14, 2007 12:00 AM
Announcements |
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| Comments (3)
August 13, 2007
Finkbuilt opaque projector
Steve Lodefink has posted the results of his opaque projector build, using the giant lens he got from American Science & Surplus (see previous post below). The results are beautiful. Love the Plasticote wrinkle paint, the BelAir logo, and the Fender amp power jewel.
Opaque Projector - Link
Related:
- Huge lens: project or paperweight? - Link
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Aug 13, 2007 08:00 PM
DIY Projects, Gadgets |
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| Comments (3)
Page 14 of 23 << 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 >>
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Tel: 707-827-7311
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