Make: technology on your time

Twitter is a neat service that a lot of folks use to get updates from their friends and to just stay in touch, all in 140 characters, via email, phone or the web. MAKE has a Twitter feed too, you get updates from MAKE by visiting (or "following" make) at Twitter.

We are trying something new - If you're a MAKE print/digital edition subscriber you can direct message MAKE at anytime with questions, comments or suggestions. Anything about MAKE really... I think we're the only "magazine" that is offering support this way, if there are others let me know - I'd like see what's working and what's not. So far I've seen Comcast, JetBlue use the direct message and the @ replies feature. For fastest results with MAKE "d make yourmessagehere".

But wait, there's more! If you happen to be following MAKE on Twitter I will post a discount code each day for the rest of the week that will get you $10 off a MAKE subscription (USA) -- so if you're thinking of subscribing, follow us on Twitter and it could be your lucky day! I'll wait until the end of the day so you have time to add/follow make. This is likely a one time only promo to test the waters, when it's over it's over.

A little note for the current followers of MAKE on Twitter... Twitter was posting duplicate Tweets from our site, we didn't change anything on our end but we switched to another way of doing this once we saw the multiple message and that seemed to have solved everything, sorry if you received multiple messages.

Oh, last up - We also have CRAFT, HACKS and Maker Faire on Twitter. You can use these for CRAFT subscription support, comments and questions as well Maker Faire support (please direct message if you want immediate help or have questions). During Maker Faire Austin we'll be Tweeting the entire time with news, events and get togethers!

On Friday Oct 31 - Sunday Nov 2, 2008, Steam Powered - the California Steampunk Convention, will take place at the Domain Hotel in Sunnyvale, CA. Presenters and performers include Greg Broadmore, Senior Conceptual Designer at Weta Workshop, Jake von Slatt (Steampunk Workshop), Abney Park, the Brassworks Band, Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (Steampunk Anthology), Studio Foglio, and many others. I'm planning on being there as well. Friday night, Halloween, there will be a Victorian Ball and costume contest.

Steam Powered

IDEO has a new lab blog that catalogs some of their projects and experiments, here's a multi-touch display... They released the code for the FTIR server and the Flash API here if you want to check it out...

At IDEO we're all about building to think. Learning from books and websites and product demos is cool, but we think the really good stuff comes when you get in there and start messing around for real.

In the case of multi-touch interfaces, that meant building a system we could start prototyping on. What we wanted was:
-a multi-touch display large enough to facilitate use by several people at once
-an API for flash that would let us quickly prototype multi-touch interfaces and applications

It took us about 5 weeks to get everything together. Kyle, one of our all-around gearheads, had already been building a drafting-table-style FTIR system in his garage which helped kick-start us.

Nice skakeboard grip tape pattern made with subhead anti-slip stickers via BB. Usually used for slippery areas, designer Jesse Milden has a lot of nice patterns for keeping humans upright.

Seen on the Make: Flickr Pool, a pinhole camera housed inside of a top hat.

Abracadabra Pinhole Camera

Last weekend (Sept 28), Brian Jepson and I, along with the most awesome Esti Gerson, ran a mini Maker Square at DC's venerable Crafting 2.0 event Crafty Bastards! It was a surprisingly fun day, given the fact that Brian and I were coming off of a round-the-clock book push and the sky kept on leaking heavily at regular intervals. (I asked one friend, who stopped by the booth, how long he'd been there. He said: "About three cloud bursts.")

We ran LED Throwie and button ring workshops, and Teresa Levy did a paper bead workshop. We talked to a lot of enthusiastic MAKE and CRAFT readers, sold some merch, turned on some new folks to what we do, and talked up Maker Faire. A good time was had by all. If you're in DC next year when the crafty bastards pitch their tents again in Adams Morgan, it's definitely worth checking out. [Photos by Esti.]

Esti's Flickr Set for the Day

Our pals at Make: Philly held their latest meeting on Sept 14th. They had a speaker, world-renowned robotics Professor, Dr. Mark Yim, who's currently a professor at Penn and formerly Stanford. Dr. Yim's research focuses on modular reconfigurable robots and locomotion ("PolyBots"), MEMS, and batch fabrication techniques. After his talk, the Make: Philly challenge was for members to create an "art bot," a mechanized device that, when powered on, pushed, or propelled, will make some sort of mark. [Pics here are by Cyenobite and are under a Creative Commons license.]

MakePhilly 9_14_08

Robert keeps doing interesting things, when he's not making the coolest visualizer (now part of iTunes) he's making a giant Madonna out of dice... via BBG. He writes...

Those that know me know I am a sucker for multitudes. Many of anything intrigues me more than single things ever could. So it wouldn?t be much of a surprise to find out that I took 2925 dice and formed them into a bitmap image of the Madonna. Thats the Madonna, and not just plain ol? Madonna.

Maker Faire won a "American Magazine Vanguard Award"! The first annual American Magazine Vanguard Awards (AMVAs) were announced last night during a ceremony for Ad Age?s annual ?A-list.? The AMVAs recognize magazines ?that are innovating smartly beyond print.?

Make is for nerds and dorks -- nerds and dorks who are proudly nerdy and dorky. The editorial mission is to "celebrate your right to tweak, hack and bend any technology to your own will." Published quarterly since 2005 by O'Reilly Media, it's tapped into the powerful DIY movement that has millions of consumers rewiring their own realities by making their own media (with tools ranging from iMovie to YouTube to GarageBand to Blogger to Facebook) -- only Make's not afraid of throwing a soldering iron or a little duct tape into the mix. It's about tangible creations -- and good old-fashioned American ingenuity.

Make earns an AMVA because of its remarkable Maker Faire, a cult event that has been growing almost mainstream. The first fair, held in 2006 in San Mateo, drew 22,000 attendees -- people interested in everything from growing their own food to building hybrid vehicles. In 2007, 45,000 showed up; this spring, 65,000. A second edition of the event started up in Austin, Texas, drawing 20,000 attendees; the second two-day Maker Faire Austin kicks off this month on the 18th. (Watch for Make to expand its fair to other cities in 2009.) Considering that some of the greatest leaps forward in American technological history have been scrappy homebrews (Apple Computer was a literal garage start-up), it's really kind of exciting to think that, given its explosive growth, the Maker Faire might well help along an invention or two that's truly important.

Very cool looking homemade / modded hand grenade mouse from a Russia modding forums. Looks pretty easy to remake...

From now until the awesomeness that is Maker Faire Austin, I'll be highlighting projects that you can find at Travis County Fairgrounds on 10/18-19. Tickets here; see you there!

Blacksmithing isn't just a scene in medieval movies: check out the Austin Metal Authority area at Maker Faire for "a live demo of blacksmithing techniques, including sculptural and functional projects." Yet another reason to plan on being in Austin on 10/18 to 10/19:)

Something a little weird to start your week. Yes I know this is not too scary but it does make a great great prop for the Mad Scientist lab in your garage. Check out how to make a Pickle Glow here.

Usual warnings with something like, don't just attempt something you see on the internet without knowing what you are doing.

More

DIY Pickle Light.

Erik writes-

BALLS 17, the premiere experimental rocketry launch contest, was held Sept 26, 27, 28 in Black Rock, Nevada. The event website has details on BALLS 17 and the competition rules.

This is the extreme rocketry event where experimental rocketeers push the envelope of size, staging/clustering, altitude, home-made components and motors, and cutting-edge rocket tech. Not for the faint of heart and not for children. Bring your hard hat.

If you're looking for mask-making inspiration, look at these photos taken by Roadknight Labs of amazing masks made for Carnivale.

The "Phone Dial Web Browser" by artist / designer David Lu is a custom web browser that uses a vintage phone dial as a physical interface. Dial the IP address of the website that you want to reach and the browser will get you there. The project was built back in 2003 with a BX-24 microcontroller, basic electronics, and a Java interface to access the Internet.

phone dial web browser

Ted Hunter's skateboard flower via NOTCOT. Ted writes-

This piece, I built is called Reach for Light. It was last shown at the Wood Turning Center in Philadelphia but was originally built for an art exhibition in Hawaii . It?s a good example of free hand vacuum veneer bending. The flower petal designs are actually printed using photo?s of real tulip petals. The inside is printed griptape (sticky back sandpaper) and the outside is printed styrene. The internal core is Canadian maple veneer. The shape of the decks are our Roarockit classic pintail skateboard shape that is included in our longboard deck kits.

This is interesting, an interactive pole dance experiment that uses strain gauges to change the lighting and colors by Daito Manabe + Motoi Ishibashi. The best part about this video is you get to see a couple Japanese hacker/maker/engineers test it out. Well, at least that was my favorite part.

Somewhat related, here's a nice exchange about using a strain gauge from a scale to weigh a keg, clever!

This ZigBee radio module has a 32-Bit ARM Processor and its architecture reduces component amounts on the PCB which ultimately reduces power consumption and the overall cost of these efficient modules. This package needs an external crystal and there's room for an optional 50 Ohm antenna as well. The two onboard ADCs and 8 general purpose I\O pins make this an even more handy interface than the current ZigBees to get started with wireless projects.

FreeStar Pro 32-Bit ARM-Based Radio Modules via Electronics Lab

We've written about Jeremy Mayer's typewriter robots before here on Make, but here are a couple new ones he has built that make interesting use of the keys as teeth and the innards as legs on this spider-like bot. He's also bent the body to add more expressive features to the "face" of this bot. Check out the link to his portfolio site for a tour of the rest of the bots.

Jeremy Mayer's Portfolio via Technabob

You might remember Mau and his Flush-O-Matic that I wrote about a while back. He sent me his latest work called the ReleShield. It's a relay shield for the Arduino that allows you to control high voltage appliances. No word on kits yet.

This is a prototype for use Arduino protoshield and a few other components, the purpose is simple but very useful. Ever wanted to control the lights from your home computer? Or perhaps some other appliance in the house.

More about the ReleShield

More:

The Flush-O-Matic

In the Maker Shed:


Make: Arduino

This is a great instructable on making a breakable tombstone. The end result is a tombstone that explodes when you punch it. This is a great prop for your next zombie movie.

So Halloween is coming up and you need to put your neighbor to shame. Well I am going to show you how to make a tombstone that not only is a good yard decoration but can be made into a breakaway tombstone for your movies.

More about making a Breakable Tombstone

Robert sent in this review of the Rovio robot by WowWee. The new Rovio can be controlled via WiFi, and has a built in Web Cam. Somebody please hack this thing ASAP!

Check out the detailed Review of Rovio

More:

Matt hacked around with the Esquire cover e-ink screen (see our past posts) and did a cool Knight Rider type pulse... Source included. He writes-

Last month, Esquire magazine published a cover that contained an E-ink screen. I was really looking forward to it, actually... so much so that I marked it in my calendar to make sure I picked one up around the corner. There was quite a bit of hype about it, and a lot of people wrote about it on their blogs and websites, and Esquire even encouraged hackers (does that include me?) to play around with the screen. The local store had a couple of copies left over this past week, so I grabbed one, and decided to see what I could do in a couple hours of playing around.

Here are some of my favorite posts from the CRAFT blog this week:

• HOW TO - "Happy Flappy" Bats
• Halloween Costumes for Kids
• HOW TO - Little Paper Houses
• Laura Marsden's Knitted Street Signs
• HOW TO - Recover a Lampshade

There's still time to start making or just watch this week's Weekend Project: Ultimate LED Fan Sign. You can view the video here, grab the PDF here and subscribe in iTunes to get all our Weekend Projects and PDFs delivered each week.

From now until the awesomeness that is Maker Faire Austin, I'll be highlighting projects that you can find at Travis County Fairgrounds on 10/18-19. Tickets here; see you there!

You know you've got a geektastic event when even the fashion accessories start sporting LEDs. From Jared's project page at Inventgeek:

With the maker faire this month I decided to make some bling to bring. Having made 80 of these necklaces in august that I brought with me to burning man this year, the process is now super refined and easy. The cost to make one of these is very cheap, bordering on about 1.50 each. But the coolness factor is off the charts. At burning man I had a box of several colors of LED's as well as some color fading ones. The color fading ones were by far the most popular. Anyway here is the how to...

You can see Jared, and hundreds of other Makers, 10/18.

Brush knuckles designed by Ken Goldman - for the toughest cleanings via BoJ.

Wooden knuckles.

Cupcake Knuckles.

Brass knuckle cup & purse.

Nerdbots, ound object robot sculptures for your "inner nerd" via NOTCOT.

Oddly obsessed with all things robot, married couple Nicholas and Angela from Kansas City, Missouri, decided on a whim one day to do nothing other than to build one themselves.

After piecing together parts found at their favorite antique and thrift stores, they created their first robot friend. Since that first day, Nicholas and Angela have added many fabulously geeky robots to their beloved robotic collection.

Blob Mentality A home-improvement project by Greg Lynn evolves into the Blobwall, a modular wall system produced by Panelite... via Beyond the Beyond.

Its name may reek of science fiction, but Greg Lynn's Blobwall was conceived under pretty prosaic circumstances. Inspired by kids' outdoor toys and 1970s Italian interiors, Lynn had the idea to put a colorful plastic wall inside the home he is building for his family in Venice Beach, California. He designed a hollow plastic form--a blob, as it were--that could function as a whimsical alter­native to bricks, with heat-welding replacing mor­tar. The commercial applications quickly became appar­ent. "A very big percentage of small-scale construction is plastic," he says. "But it's some horrible beige plastic made to look like wood. I thought, Well, why not tackle this big chunk of the environment that, really, nobody designs?"

This gorgeous paper swan takes about 10 hours to make, at first I though that might be too much time to spend on a papercraft but the results look great!

Creating a swan out of hundreds of smaller origami pieces is currently popular among the younger generation in Asia. Your loved one will appreciate this gift because you put in a tremendous amount of effort, dedication and patience. This is definitely a sign of love's labor. Preparation: First you need to fold 500 individual triangular pieces, which are the backbones of creating the swan.

Make it or break it, "They retool everyday items to build a better gadget" by Meredith Goldstein @ The Boston Globe... A profile of the Willoughby & Baltic hacker spaces (and a nice MAKE mention in there!)...

SOMERVILLE - In the apartment space above the Subway sandwich shop on Elm Street, 15 hackers sat around a table Thursday night tinkering with their gadgets. They weren't the kind of hackers who illegally break into computer systems. The term "hacker," in their case, refers to someone who likes to play around with tools and make things.

Ian Katz brought his reconstructed computer mouse, which he made by wiring a regular mouse to a metal wheel that once held tape inside of a VCR. He says the wheel gives the spin of his mouse better momentum.

Nearby, Brett Beauregard used a laptop and the hot plate from an iron to design an apparatus that controls temperature more accurately than the average stove. He has also created a cup holder out of a coat hanger that's designed for seats at Fenway Park.

Across from Beauregard, Jimmie Rodgers connected a toy guitar to a toy megaphone to make weird feedback. He likes to play with noise.

Maker Faire Austin: Oct. 18th and 19th, 2008, Austin, TX

LEARN TO MAKE, CRAFT, DESIGN OR DEVELOP:
? Robots ? Rockets ? Bicycles ? Alternative Energy Devices ? Electronics ? Crafts
? Circuit Boards ? Sustainable Food ? Musical Instruments ? Wood Working
? Knitting ? Eco Modding Cars ? Kites ? Special Effects ? Sewing ? and more...

Maker Faire is a two-day, family-friendly event that celebrates the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset. It's for creative, resourceful people of all ages and backgrounds who like to tinker and love to make things. So much to see, you will need 2 days to see it all!

Get your tickets now!

Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts had a special Grossology exhibit a while back. They still have a great related site up, with Foul Facts, Eeww Experiments, and Disgusting Downloads. I love the instructions for Edible Poop Cookies: "Shape the dough into turds. You can make flattened cow pies or little kitty turds." Ew, gross!!

Amazon has several grossology books, including "Hands-On Grossology".

Liane sent in this fantastic site by Joshua Knuth, sculptor and taxidermist here's a recent post about paint a specific type of fish... The animated gif shows the process. When you're done checking it out, tour the portfolio - it's amazing.

This is my method of reproducing the colors and pattern of this species . There are many ways to do this and this is only one of them. Reference is KEY! Study your photos, study the live fish. Look close! when you think you have looked close enough, Look closer! I use many brands of paint and mainly apply the color with a brush. I am a firm believer that there is no magic bullet in painting, no brand that will cover all of the bases.

That said its time to horde paint, any time you see it! Cheap, expensive, flea markets, department stores, craft stores, art supply stores. You can never have enough.

in my experience the key to painting a crappie is in the layers. The subtle variation in the patterns of crappie come from the pigment on the skin under the clear scales and the thin flap of scale pocket on the top of the scale. this is VERY hard to reproduce, because we dont have the clear scales to refract the light, so we need to cheat. this is done by painting in washes and layers using a subtle peppery brush strokes, and pearlesent paints.

David J. Neff from The Haunted Report Blog will be joining us at MAKE as we celebrate what is perhaps the biggest DIY holiday all year, Halloween! The Haunted report is the haunted attraction/haunted house industries' top independent blog and they will be highlighting some great DIY Halloween ideas. We'll try and keep it modern and a little scary. No pepper's ghosts here....so let's start with the classics. Tons of people have shown us Fog Chillers online but this one has you make your own liquid cooled copper pipes. Enjoy!

Also, looks for our MASSIVE DIY Halloween contest in a couple days, it's the biggest and best on the web!

Lastly, our DIY Halloween issue is available. Last fall we released a special Halloween edition of Make. We sold thousands. Our warehouse gang tell us we still have some remaining stock. Here's your chance to get this classic!

DIY HALLOWEEN from the editors of MAKE and CRAFT brings you 40-plus DIY projects for the holiday that's made for makers. From the craftiest costumes to amazing animated props and the latest in computer-controlled haunted house effects.

• Headless Marie Antoinette costume
• Mechanical ghosts and ghouls
• LED and laser jack-o'-lanterns
• Creature makeup and blood-spurting wounds
• DIY coffins and tombstones
• T. Rex rooftopper
• Flaming LED skulls Kid-tested haunted house tricks
• A special "Ghoulbox" section with Halloween kits, tools, and gadgets.
• Plus demonic decorations, hideous party snacks, and profiles of extraordinary makers and their creepy crafts.

This pumpkin certainly is orange green. This is a great instructable that uses an old solar light to make a safe, environmentally friendly, light-up pumpkin. If you want to be really green, make sure to make a pumpkin pie from the 'guts' and compost the jack-o-lantern when you're done.

More about a DIY: Solar Powered Jack-o-Lantern

More:

Solar Powered Jack-O-Lantern

Brian writes-

Using the VonHippel module and a simple c program compiled for the ARM, BUG can talk to the Arduino (in the picture, the USB cable and USB to serial chip on the breadboard are probably superfluous as the VonHippel has serial on it).

From now until the awesomeness that is Maker Faire Austin, I'll be highlighting projects that you can find at Travis County Fairgrounds on 10/18-19. Tickets here; see you there!

Austin's high-schoolers will be bringing some world-quality robotics to Maker Faire Austin:

Here's a video of one of their creations in action:

I'll see you (and the robots) 10/18!

There's a new Bay Area hacker space, NoiseBridge, in the Mission District:

We want to provide infrastructure and collaboration opportunities for people interested in programming, hardware hacking, physics, chemistry, mathematics, photography, security, robotics, all kinds of art, and, of course, technology. Through talks, workshops, and projects we encourage knowledge exchange, learning, and mentoring.

As a space for artistic collaboration and experimentation, we are open to all types of art - with a special emphasis on the crossover of art and technology. From hardware labs to electronics, cooking, photography, and sound labs, anything that's creative is welcome.

We intend to have many interesting things happening at all times. Sharing is essential to making this work. A logical followup to this is to find a space to display our creative projects.

Read more about it on Jake Appelbaum's LiveJournal page.

The NoiseBridge Wiki [via LaughingSquid]

More:

• Other hacker space coverage on MAKE

Spotted on the Make: Flickr Pool, a walking seat built from a pair of bicycle handlebars and a bike seat. Paging Kevin Kelly.

Homemade stool at Rathayatra

From now until the awesomeness that is Maker Faire Austin, I'll be highlighting projects that you can find at Travis County Fairgrounds on 10/18-19. Tickets here; see you there!

We've got so many wonderful Maker Faire Austin projects this year that you can take a random word and find multiple projects on that topic. Take, for example, "mouse":

Be careful with the mousetrap catapult gun:

Check out Herbie the Mousebot at the Maker Shed:

And marvel at the Life-Sized Mousetrap:

Find these micey projects and many more 10/18!

Nice pedal powered tank on Pop Sci!

If you want to crash a local parade of human-powered vehicles and soak unsuspecting onlookers in water or vaporized hot dogs, a pink camouflage tank is a pretty good craft to do it in. At least that's what 30-year-old Philadelphia gearhead Vin Marshall thought when he persuaded nine of his friends to build the 2,000-pound replica, complete with a functioning pneumatic cannon.

The trick was moving the tank using muscle alone. Computer models showed that it could fit hardware for six pedalers and yield about 1.5 horsepower. That's not enough to move tank treads, so the team used wheels instead. Then they gave it bicycle-like gearing to get more power from less exertion. A salvaged rear differential (which allows wheels to spin independently) from an old truck axle made turning more efficient.

The Darwin at Home project uses idle computer to distributively compute an algorithm that evolves ways of walking. The video of some of the successful "organisms" is entrancing. Next step: robots that walk like these? Via BB.

Michael Cooper sent these amazing photos and data plots to SparkFun...he wrote his own firmware for the WiTilt, which gives 250 Hz of accelerometer data with 16x oversampling. The data is sent via Bluetooth to his Palm Tungsten which takes care of logging.

More RFID info & brainfood for you today, "The Internet of Things" by Rob van Kranenburg - A critique of ambient technology and the all-seeing network of RFID (free PDF) via Beyond the Beyond...

Rob van Kranenburg, The Internet of Things. A critique of ambient technology and the all-seeing network of RFID. Report prepared by Rob van Kranenburg for the Institute of Network Cultures with contributions by Sean Dodson.