Make: technology on your time

Spotted on the MAKE Flickr pool, this funky-fine Morse code straight key made with a Two Pence piece.

2p Straight Key

More:
Sew a cute Morse code key leg strap

bookofjoe: 8 Circles. 1,000 Efforts by Tony Orrico.

"Tony Orrico performs a graphite drawing of 8 circles. Each circle is drawn by four patterns consisting of 31.25 efforts each, 1,000 efforts total. The roll is measured by the torso and one arm. This event took place in 2009 at PlacMark, a residency and performance space in Hudson, New York."

I knew this was going to happen?

Steampunk Mr. Potato Head

Researchers at the NanoRobotics Laboratory of the École Polytechnique de Montréal, under Professor Sylvain Martel, produced this remarkable video showing a swarm of about 5,000 flagellated bacteria--of a type which are subject to manipulation by magnetic fields--being directed to assemble six 100 μM epoxy bricks into the shape of a tiny step pyramid. IEEE Spectrum explains:

The bacteria, of a type known as magnetotactic, contain structures called magnetosomes, which function as a compass. In the presence of a magnetic field, the magnetosomes induce a torque on the bacteria, making them swim according to the direction of the field. Place a magnetic field pointing right and the bacteria will move right. Switch the field to point left and the bacteria will follow suit.

The corresponding paper title is surely one of the best I've ever read: "A Robotic Micro-Assembly Process Inspired By the Construction of the Ancient Pyramids and Relying on Several Thousands of Flagellated Bacteria Acting as Workers." [Thanks, Glen!]

More:

• Harnessing bacteria to turn gears
• Biohacked bacteria possibly useful for landmine detection
• Bacterial typography
• Decomposing plastic with bacteria
• Beach drawn with fluorescent bacteria
• HOW TO - Grow bioluminescent bacteria

Udi Tirosh wrote in to share this camera flash hack:

Like using off-camera flash units for your photography, but tired of having to walk over to them to adjust the flash power? Well, you could certainly throw some money at the problem and get a set of fancy wireless remotes for them. If you are handy with a soldering iron, though, you might want to take a look at Domjan Svilkovic's instructions to control your flash settings with a TV remote control. He took a cheapo flash, and added a PICaxe microcontroller that waits for 'volume up' and 'volume down' signals, then activates a set of transistors on the remote to simulate button presses. Now, where did I put my flash units...

For hackers who missed out on the Chumby craze, Adafruit has a pile of Chumby PCBs for sale.

The Chumby Hacker Board is a cool single board Linux computer that has much of the same hardware as the famous Chumby One. It's great for people who are experienced with Linux and want to have the power of a microcomputer with audio and video output while at the same time getting all the peripherals of a microcontroller such as analog-to-digital conversion, PWM outputs, sensors, bit twiddling, and broken-out GPIOs!

Here's what you get for $89:

• Freescale iMX.233 processor running at 454 MHZ and 64 MB onboard RAM.
• Comes with 512MB uSD card with 100 MB Linux installation all ready to go.
• 3.3V I/O pins can talk to most sensors, motor drivers, etc. No struggling with 1.8V levels.
• Low power, fanless design draws only (200?) mA at 5V.
• Built-in Lithium Ion/Polymer battery charger and 5V boost converter for portable projects.
• Three USB ports!
• 1W mono speaker amplifier (0.1" JST onboard connector.)
• Microphone input (0.05" JST onboard connector.)
• LCD controller with 2mm output port.
• 3.5mm A/V output jack with stereo audio and NTSC/PAL composite video.
• Back of board has GPIO outputs on 0.1" header spacing, plug in an Arduino proto shield!
• 5-way joystick and 3-axis accelerometer on-board.
• 3.3V TTL serial port for easy shell access.

Looks pretty sweet!

What maker doesn't love zip ties?! They're useful for cable management MacGyvering things, and holding your robots together. We've posted these leafy ties by Lufdesign before, but now they're for sale and not just a concept. [via inspire me now]

MAKE subscriber Dug North writes in to share this video tutorial on how to make gears with unusual contours:

Wood clock designer Clayton Boyer has created an excellent short video showing how to make gears with *very* unconventional profiles. Very cool!

The instructions are a bit terse, so you will probably have to do some experimenting to get it to work correctly, however the effect is pretty amusing.

This veeeeery devious concealment, which opens with a detachable magnetic clasp, is one of eight produced by design student Yi-Ting Ching as part of her Master's thesis called Secret Stash 2010. There's also a Flickr set and a slickly-produced video.

More:

• Secret knock-detecting workshop door
• Grand Central's secret train station
• Secret playroom access through armoire
• Secret bar in office
• Secret passage consultants
• Secret ink smorgasboard

Last weekend at Culturefix in NYC, enterprising music makers gathered for another Handmade Music event. If you missed out on the phototheremin soldering workshop or any of the performances, check out Peter Kirn's full report over at Create Digital Music. Photosets from Peter Kirn and Joe Saavedra.

Propaganda flick from the National Association of Manufacturers, but it's fascinating stuff!

Delightfully clever marketing gimmick from designer Matt Braun, who's made a beer label printed with a scale showing the relationship between the level of liquid in the bottle and the note that it makes when you blow across the top. Apparently Matt actually brewed a small batch of "Tuned Pale Ale," and, thanks to the massively positive response his clever label is getting, has plans to brew some more. You can sign up at his website to be notified when it's available for purchase, or you could try tuning some bottles of your own. Once you've figured out the levels for the notes, why not etch the scale into the glass?

More:

• Reblown bottle glasses
• Cool glass bottle lamp
• Guitar slide from glass bottle
• How-To: Custom beer bottles
• How-To: Knap an arrowhead from a beer bottle

This audio sequencer from Damien Kee can be made with a standard LEGO NXT 2.0 kit and includes software and PDF instructions. [Thanks, Damien!]

Jeremy May's jewelry made from books -

Paper is many things: a carrier of text, illustration, history and emotion.

Jeremy May has captured the beauty of paper via a unique laminating process. Littlefly jewellery is made by laminating hundreds sheets of paper together, then carefully finishing to a high gloss. The paper is selected and carefully removed from a book, and the jewellery re-inserted in the excavated space.

Each piece is impossible to replicate, and is unique to the wearer. The beauty of the jewels extends within the piece: text and images pass all the way though the object, only exposed at the surfaces – giving a tantalising glimpse of the book within.

Homebuilt meat smoker texts your phone when the meat is ready! - Gadget Freak Case #170: Smoking Permitted, but Bring a Roast...

Peter Rauch used a proportional-integral-differential (PID) controller that modulates electrical power to a heating element to create a home-built electronic meat smoker. A touch-screen display let him manage the controller set point and control-loop parameters. A J-type thermocouple in the top of the smoker provides a voltage signal so the feedback loop can control the smoker's temperature. A second sensor, which reads meat temperature, is used only for monitoring and alarms. A user can enter a desired meat temperature, and receive an alert via a text message when the temperature reaches a preset value. Additionally, when the temperature reaches this setpoint, the controller can 'hold' the meat at a preset temperature to avoid overcooking it until you can remove it.

While in town for the Kansas City Mini Maker Faire, we had the chance to visit the HMS Beagle, which is a gem of a science store located in nearby Parkville. Started by John and Carol Kuhns, they stock an impressive range of geeky equipment, from telescopes to model rockets, rock tumblers, and Arduinos. In addition, they also host science club meetings, star gazing parties, fossil digs, and other fun-sounding activities. If that isn't enough, they are also the home of Make: KC, an enthusiast group for Makers that meets in their shop on Tuesdays.

If you're ever in town, I'd definitely recommend checking the place out, and perhaps even catching a workshop! John took the time to show us around and give us a tour, and here are some of the things I spotted on the shelves:

Chemicals galore, for doing serious science experiments, making fun explosions, and mixing custom fragrances,

lots of good looking glass for chemical experimentation,

fish fossils that the proprietors found and prepared by hand,

and even a friendly guard dog!

Citizen Scientists: Show us your Erlenmeyer flasks, your test tubes, your centrifuges, your stereomicroscopes, your mutant science experiments, yearning to be free. It's Citizen Science month here on MAKE, an opportunity for us to feature a lot of the science content from the magazine and here online, a chance for us to collaborate with people who are leading the charge on citizen science initiatives, and a chance for us to share some great science how-tos on Make: Projects.

If you're a maker doing citizen science ( or have a group doing science), have a science project, or have any desires for what you'd like to see us cover, please let us know. This is an exciting and growing area of making and we're looking forward to spending a month celebrating it.

With the exception of my couch, every piece of furniture in my home is something I built, or heavily modified, myself. This is both a source of personal pride and a bit of a pain, because if I want more furniture for whatever purpose, I'm sort of obliged, at this point, to build instead of buying. My mattress has been on the floor for years, but lately I've been thinking it's time to commit to building a bedframe. Which is why this solid, minimalist, simple-tools design by Instructables user wholman caught my attention. It's an entry in their ongoing Woodworking Contest.

More:

• CNC plywood furniture
• HOW TO - Furniture quality laptop stand
• Trees grown into furniture
• DIY: Pipe furniture
• DIY: Reupholster your old furniture

Mark Rehorst has an excellent set of instructions on how to build your own Van de Graaff generator. What's that, you say? Well, a Van de Graaff generator is a device capable of producing high voltages by collecting electrostatic charges on a large metal sphere. Basically, its a fun and relatively safe way of creating high voltages, which can then be used to do things like make peoples hair stand up, or power particle accelerators.

More:

• HOW TO - Make a 120,000 Volt Van De Graaff generator
• Van de Graaff generators and CD/DVD drives -videos!
• Magic wand levitates objects for fun, profit?

When NYC Resistor's Chris Fenton wanted a Cray, he wasn't talking about a casemodded PC. No, he really wanted his own Cray. His exhaustively-researched machine simulates the functionality of one of the old-school supercomputers, to the point where he's researching old Cray resources looking for programs to run -- apparently you can't exactly download Centipede for the Cray off the Internet, who knew?

No hackerspace is complete without it's own rockin' supercomputer - and when a Gibson isn't available, a Cray-1 will have to do. My 1/10-scale, binary-compatible Cray-1 is finally done! This project took a long time (almost as long as my infamous electromechanical computer, or *gasp* the MegaScroller), but it's done. And it's awesome. NYCR now has its own Cray-1A, complete with wrap-around pleather sitting area. Eat your hearts out fellow hackerspaces!

Brave hackers take note, Chris has made his working files available on his site. [Via NYC Resistor]

From the Shapeways blog:

Congratulations to Improbablecog whose Kickstarter project has already reached 101% funding with 7 days still left to go. This is a win win win win situation where:

• The backers get a little something from Improbablecog, depending on their level of investment from a sticker to a custom designed piece of jewelry.
• Noah gets an influx of cash, gets his name out there for an innovative approach to the business of design and is freed up to produce more cool designs.
• Three of his most popular designs are set free, for everyone to modify, mash up, resell, print by the one or by the dozen, or insert into their game, movie, or art.

Shapeways can now 3D print three of Improbablecog's designs for the cost of material only....

Adam Richard Cooper built this hand-cranked model of a classic mechanical governor--which, as MachinistBlog succinctly put it "regulates the speed of steam engines by acting as a negative feedback system"--and made the dimensional drawings and build notes freely available for download at his site. I like the idea of a hand-cranked governor model, particularly, because it provides tactile feedback of the device's purpose: You crank it faster, it gets harder to crank.

Opening at the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago on Friday:

STREET ANATOMY - a group exhibition focusing on representations of human anatomy in contemporary art and pop culture

On view will be works that incorporate anatomical imagery in a variety of mediums, including painted skateboards, street art, and cast dark chocolate, by artists from across the US and abroad, as well as a photo gallery of anatomical tattoos.

The exhibition will feature nine artists representative of the label-defying figures involved with this movement:

• David Foox
• Emilio Garcia
• Stephen J Shanabrook
• Jason Freeny
• Noah Scalin
• CAKE
• Robyn Roth
• Heather Tompkins
• Ryan Gerdes

STREET ANATOMY
September 3 – November 19
Opening Reception Friday, September 3, 5-9 pm
International Museum of Surgical Science
1524 North Lake Shore Drive Chicago, IL

• Visible anatomy toy
• Think Anatomy learning site
• Anatomical Merit Badges

Another day, another cool-sounding Kickstarter project. This one is titled E1: synthetic intelligence, open source.

E1 is an inexpensive open source hardware kit in the same theme as the Arduino--for bringing synthetic intelligence to electronics projects. We've made tremendous progress over the past year, but now we need your help to get it manufactured.

A while ago we realized even the most powerful microcontrollers are just too limited for complex machine learning tasks. At the same time, we weren't interested in all the overhead of a processor and OS. We wanted something right in the middle, made for the task, to coordinate between our sensors, locomotion, and the user. E1 is a custom core embedded within an FPGA. It requires no PC to use or train, is thoroughly flexible, and completely open.

Here's how it works. Attach inputs like cameras, microphones, and sensors--and output mechanics, like servos, actuators, or motors. E1 starts out in an untrained state, but can receive reward and punishment with a remote. It can also detect some set of behaviors, like facial expressions. Over time E1 not only learns what you teach it, but learns the conditions that lead to reward and punishment and so when it should reward or punish itself.

Surprisingly complex behaviors are possible with the combination of simple training and the sensory analytics done by the E1. And all of these details are handled out of your way, from signal decoding to feature detection. Tap the outputs via the header pins on the board itself, or let E1 talk to your outputs for you.

See more on the project website. (Note that the Kickstarter funding goal must be met by 9/6... good luck with that!)

If you'd like to get more control over you flash and a regular bounce card doesn't cut it, then try this handy DIY FlashBender by Bob Jordan. [Thanks, Udi!]

Dimitri Tsykalov's amazing fruit carvings... via NOTCOT.

Musician and musical robot maker Charlie Williams created this fun art piece with a combination of OpenCV (an open-source computer vision toolkit that provides, among many things, facial recognition) and Processing.

more info, including the opportunity to download the code and play with it yourself!

Like modeling your projects using Sketchup, but wish that you could go one step further and see if they work before spending time printing them? Well, you might want to have a look at Sketchyphysics. It's a physics simulator that you can use to put your creations to life, and presumably work out the bugs before committing to a physical version. We mentioned it back in 2007, however it's new to me. [via Lets Make Robots]

Lego custom armorer BrickArms caught the Tron bug with these beautiful glow in the dark Lego-compatible discs!

Inspired by TRON - my all time favorite movie of the 80's, I designed and injected this glowing disc in the style of the identitty discs from TRON Legacy.

It is injected with glow-in-the-dark ABS, and then overprinted it in black with my solvent inkjet.

It is only a PROTOTYPE. Please do not ask when it will be available for sale.

Alexander Augusteijn takes high-speed photography up a notch with these photos of bullets shooting through droplets of water. Apparently all that is involved is lots of careful timing. [via Laughing Squid]

More:

• Coilgun projectile photography
• Bullet impacts at 1,000,000 frames per second
• Exploding capacitors in high speed
• High speed glass breakage
• High-speed photo gallery
• Arduino photo lightning trigger
• Arduino flash trigger

I have a real weakness for modeling magazines. I rarely build models anymore, but I frequently pick up magazines about the hobby, especially military and figure modeling mags, to ogle all of the amazing kits and finished models. I love all of the stuff that's being done in the custom, small-production resin and vinyl models and scratch building.

I'm at the Maker Media offices this week and found a copy of Model Cars Magazine on one of the worktables. I've never been a "car guy," but it was really fun to go through the issue (from January 2010) and see what the car model kit industry and hobby are up to these days. As in other areas of modeling, specialty kits are big, vintage kit comebacks, impressive scratch building, and stunning levels of finishing and detailing of kits, are all in evidence.

In this issue, one of the articles I got the biggest kick out of was on the AMT Ford Levacar kit, a promo kit version of the late 1950s Ford concept car that was straight out of The Jetsons. The Levacar kit even levitated! It had plastic tubes that you blew into to raise the car. The model, packaging, everything is to die for. Here's the page about the Levacar kit from Fantastic Plastic:

Subscriptions to Model Car Magazine are $34.65 for nine issues.

Model Car Magazine

Well, OK, it's actually a prosthesis. And I stole the Terminator joke from Minnesotastan over at Neatorama. This object is one of literally thousands of remarkable items in the online Brought to Life exhibit at the UK's Science Museum, where it is labeled, apparently incorrectly, as a "right" arm. What is it with surgeons confusing left and right appendages?

More:

• Open Prosthetics on Thingiverse
• Bionic feet becoming reality
• Plastic soda bottle prosthesis

In response to the Arduino pong post from a few days ago, SynOptx shared their 2-player PONGuino game. Rather than using a television for a display, they opted to go with an LCD display mounted on an s65 shield. Looks like fun!

Super Awesome Sylvia (and her equally super-awesome parents, TechNinja and CraftNinja), quite frankly, gives me hope for humanity. We had the best time working with them on the special Mini Maker Show series they did for us, for our Kids month theme, and we can't stop smiling after looking at one of Sylvia's videos. Definitely a maker star on the rise.

In this, the third episode of their regular Sylvia's Super-Awesome Maker Show, Sylvia shows you how to do two basic Arduino projects. Can anybody still be intimidated by the idea of messing around with microcontrollers and basic electronics after seeing this video? C;mon... it's child's play! Great job, Sylvia!

Super Simple Arduino - Sylvia's Super-Awesome Maker Show: Episode 03

More:

• Sylvia's Super Awesome Mini Maker Show: Rockets
• Sylvia's Super Awesome Mini Maker Show: Crazy putty
• Sylvia's Super Awesome Mini Maker Show: Sidewalk Chalk

Just add laser and camera!

The MakerScanner is a completely open source 3D-scanner and the perfect complement to a MakerBot or other 3D printer. Every one of the scanner's plastic parts can be printed on a MakerBot or other 3D printer!

A band saw box makes a fun and satisfying beginner's woodworking project, and Instructables user Wood Chuck has a great tutorial to set you up for success.

A trowel is such an inexpensive tool, it's hard for me to imagine making my own for anything besides the experience of making and having made it myself. Still, I can see why someone might want to make this one described by Instructables "PVC whisperer" Thinkenstein: It starts from ubiquitous scrap material, looks good, and is made using an unusual process that involves softening PVC pipe under heat (a delicate trick, safety wise) and forming it by hand.

More:

• Bee hive in a bucket
• How-To: Human powered laundry
• How-To: PVC fruit picker

This recycled rubber sink, called RUBBiSH by its creators at Minarc, is made from melted car tires. As Core77 points out, the thin, flexible sheet makes for an exceedingly lightweight sink.

Darrel Anderson of Bon Accord, AB, created this geeky trivet as the first project with his new Mark 3 CNC.

This is a trivet, in other words a thing to put a hot pot on. The design is a hilbert curve, actually 4 hilbert curves connected to make the one continuous line. The wood is cherry. I really like cherry because of how well it sands to a glossy finish.

Spotted at Marcello Pizzaria & Ristorante in Vancouver by Adam Lindsley of This is Pizza. [via Neatorama]

More:

• How-To: Build a temporary wood-fired pizza oven
• Pizza cutters of the gods
• HOW TO - Pizza earth oven
• Make a pizza box solar oven
• Homemade pizza cutters
• DIY Brick Pizza Oven

My son got one of the Emotiv headsets as a college graduation present. It's pretty amazing tech, early-adopter gear, for sure, but with tons of potential. He's already coming up with ideas for game designs and art installations controlled by it (he has a degree in game design). In this video, Robert Oschler, of Robots Rule, uses his Emorate software to demonstrate the power of "affective computing," using computers to detect and react to human emotions. Here he uses various emotional responses to index, bookmark, and navigate a video using the Emotiv headset and Emorate.

Emorate

More:
Controlling a robot with the Emotiv EEG headset

My friend Johngineer took some great photos of Maker Faire Rhode Island this past weekend, enjoy!

But wait, there's more! Photos from Brian Jepson as well!

MAKE subscriber James Jamison writes in to share his DIY rudder pedals. Wanting to add a bit more realism to a flight simulator, but not willing to spend much on a set of pedals, he was able to whip up a workable solution using some hardware and an old joystick. Looks good to me!

Here's a delightful video of each of the presenters at the Kansas City Mini Maker Faire, by Roger Dodger Aviation. They write:

This was a first for Kansas City. Dozens of exhibitors displayed a wide variety of science, art, craft, DIY, and maker projects. We had stuff for kids like the paper rocket launch, mini-building blocks, soldering lessons, hacking happy meal toys, beginner robots and more. For big kids we had CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machines, an electricity-spitting Tesla coil, a replica working submarine, 3D printers, big rockets, big robots, a cable-climbing space elevator, 3D scanners, a thermal electricity generator and more. The event was held on August 22, 2010 and we're hoping for an even bigger event next year. Thanks to all the sponsors, exhibitors, businesses and volunteers that made the KC Mini-Maker Faire a success!

In addition to producing the above video, they also assembled a list of each of the presenters at the Faire. If you're interested in any of the above projects, you can check them out here:

Make Magazine
Make:KC
Cowtown Computer Congress
Main Street Parkville Association
HMS Beagle Science Store
Clayco Electric
Kauffman Foundation
Greater KC Chamber of Commerce
KC Space Pirates
Argonaut Jr.
Metro Homeschool Robotics
Hack Art Lab
Kansas City Robotics Society
Roger Dodger Aviation
I, Bioloid
Drink Bot
STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) Society
Wii Labyrinth
Robotic Golf Table
Habitat for Humanity ReStore KC
KC Association of Rocketry
Orange Grapes
Glow Doodle
Github
SCOPE
Versonova
SprayPaintArt
DIY Security Screwdrivers
Hallmark Christmas Ornaments
Remote Control Nerf Turret

More:

• Scenes from the Kansas City Mini Maker Faire
• Announcing: Kansas City Mini Maker Faire 2010
• Playable Mini Drumset rocks out in cars, on roofs

Fjr of Mobile, AL, wanted to build a trebuchet. He soon discovered that it was a huge hassle because the parts he could find weren't compatible with each other.

I was talking to my brother and as I talked I was frustrated at how hard it was to build things. The biggest problem in my opinion is, everytime I want to build something, it pretty much always involves some kind of shafts.

Shafts have several functions:
1. They hold components where they need to be. But they also need to be held in place on the shaft.
2. Shafts give various components a common rotational axis.
3. Shafts transmit motion from one component to another.

If you want to place a component on a shaft and have it perform reliably, it needs to be held in place on the shaft. If you want a component to spin smoothly, then you need a bearing placed on your shaft. The bearing needs to have the same inner diameter as the shaft's outer diameter, within a few thousandths, if not things will vibrate and wobble and all kinds of problems. Most shafts get stacked on with a different diameter for each component. Thats alot of custom machining.

I don't have the resources to machine custom shafts each time I have an idea, and I'm not alone in not having them.

What's needed is a standard, a system.

Fjr created a number of possible parts to his "Simplified Mechanical System," including the two above. What do you think, readers? Do we need a series of standard components for maker projects? Leave a comment.