Information Filled Under 'Online CAlling Cards' Category
Nokia-based Rubik’s Cube solver
Mindstorms Rubik’s Cube solvers are a dime a dozen, but David Gilday’s bot offers two cool twists (sorry) — first, it solves a 4×4 cube rather than the classic, ordinary 3×3 cube. Second, and cooler, rather than relying on the NXT Intelligent Brick to do the heavy lifting, it uses a Nokia N95 mobile phone that sits in a cradle above the cube, scanning it with its camera and solving the puzzle. More: Make a rubik’s cube out of dice – Make: Video Podcast Rubik’s Cube cake Rubik’s cube costume build Rubik’s Cube Mosaic Puzzle Bronze Rubik’s cube Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in LEGO | Digg this!
Enjoy programming microcontrollers, but frustrated about how difficult it can be to get them to do more than one thing at a time? Well, then you might be interested in Concurrency , an open source programming language and environment specifically designed with multithreading in mind. That means you can write programs that do multiple things at the same time, without interfering with each other
I should start considering more fiber enclosures for electronics, look how awesome this soft crawly earth robot is! However, creators Osamu Iwasaki and Hanakomet still call it RobotKnit, despite the fact that it is clearly crochet. After watching the video on repeat for the last fifteen minutes, I think I can forgive them.
So it turns out, happily, that the mercury beating heart demo I wrote about a couple days ago can also be done with molten gallium, which is vastly less toxic than mercury and requires only slightly higher temperatures. The chemists at the University of Nottingham who produce The Periodic Table of Videos made this very informative footage demonstrating the process, which is slightly different from the mercury beating heart demo in that there is no iron nail present.
The crazed DIY artisans and mischief makers at Philadelphia’s Tango Echo have a new video showing one of their members, Paul Carson’s, giant 12-sided die he welded together and then deployed in a vacant lot. More: 12-sided die as big as your head! Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!
Although the “look” of this dancing-girl automaton by English toymaker Ron Fuller is not personally to my taste, I could not resist the fact that it is powered by a stream of falling sand, which is a trick I’ve never seen before. Thanks to YouTuber greninmotion for the video
Thom wrote in to share his impressive open source operating system*, Pyxis OS . Based around the Arduino hardware platform, it adds some pretty impressive features, such as the ability to run programs from an SD card, read/write to a FAT filesystem, and easily display graphics and GUI elements on a color LCD.
YouTuber bluworm took on the task of making a great big octopus puppet for stop-motion animation in a film by his friend Daniel Lennéer . Along the way he produced this informative and entertaining video describing the casting, sculpting, and armature-work that went into it, as well as showing off some of the finished animation (starting around 5:00)
MacArthur fellow and MIT Media Lab alumnus Karl Sims brings us this great tutorial on how to build your own complex harmonograph ( Wikipedia ) for making cool…um…”geometric figures?” I’m looking for a 50-cent mathematician’s word (which may or may not exist) for these periodic spirally figures. Can anybody help me out?
MAKE, Volume 21: Desktop Manufacturing – plus a visit to MakerBot HQ!
MAKE, Volume 21 digs into desktop factories, covering a variety of ways you can get started with personal manufacturing – including: CNC kits DIY CNC milling machines Steps for building your own 3D scanner An in-depth look at the MakerBot Cupcake CNC & it’s development We also paid a visit to MakerBot HQ in Brooklyn, NY and sat down with company co-founder Bre Pettis. Be sure to check out the interview + tour of the Botcave in the above vid! Oh and of course, MAKE 21 is chock-full of step-by-step instructions for building a variety of sweet projects including – Reaction Timer Padded Swords Magic Photo Cube ESP Tester Gourd Lanterns Geared Candleholder Snow Gun + a whole bunch more! The above video is a bit of a change of pace from the usual previews we post for new volumes – let us know what you think of the new format in the comments below! Don’t forget – subscribers can always read the digital edition here . Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Announcements | Digg this!
This instructable will show you how to connect your Arduino to your Android G1 mobile over serial. The project assumes you’ve rooted your G1 and are comfortable using a terminal. [via hackaday ] This tutorial is intended to get you up and running to the point of being able to turn an LED on and off over wi-fi without needing an Arduino wi-fi or BlueTooth shield
In the Maker Shed: Detection of lead paint test kit
The Detection of lead paint test kit provides the equipment and reagents you need to perform reliable multi-step laboratory tests for detecting lead content in paints. The sulfide test, a sensitive preliminary screening test, quickly identifies paint samples that may contain lead (but may instead contain only traces of cobalt or other innocuous metals that yield a false positive with the sulfide test). Samples that test tentatively positive with sulfide reagent can subsequently be subjected to confirmatory tests with chromate and iodide reagents, each of which produces a characteristic precipitate in the presence of lead
I know it’s just a video of a 3D printer laying down plastic, but Festo sure does a great job of showing how sexy the hardware is! I love the spool holding the plastic, and the threaded rods spinning as the extruder rises and drops. [via the Technocratic Anarchist ] Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in 3D printing | Digg this!
Need a way to help the youth around you learn about flight? Try out paper airplanes! Most people know how to make a basic paper airplane , but there are other designs out there, some even claiming to be the ultimate paper airplane design . Inside the Dangerous Book for Boys is a two page section on paper airplanes with a few alternate designs you may have not tried.
It’s freezing outside! At least it is in our neck of the woods. Trust us, we know how much you want to go outside and terrorize play with neighbors and your robotic giraffe , but it’s just too cold outside! Did we mention it’s cold? Well, it seems like a lot of us are coming down with the dreaded “Cabin Fever”, so we figured it’s no time like the present to have a Cabin Fever sale in the Maker Shed
The Maritime Mega Event is now officially a go! Groundspeak has just posted the official event page and we are ecstatic! The event will be held in Dayspring, just an hour or so away from Nova Scotia’s capital city of Halifax on July 10th, 2010 and it is being held in celebration of the 10th Anniversary of Geocaching in Canada. On June 28, 2000 the first Geocache in Canada was placed in East River, Nova Scotia, just miles from the event site! GCBBA is still active and attracts many Geocachers every year who wish to visit this historic cache. Make this cache, and event, a part of your summer plans! For more information visit the official event page , the event website and follow us on Twitter
Cornucopia: Digital Gastronomy is a project by two grad students working in MIT’s Fluid Interfaces Group. The goal: a consumer-friendly machine that prints food. (Spork not included…) Cornucopia is a concept design for a personal food factory that brings the versatility of the digital world to the realm of cooking
Toolbox: Parts storage (excerpt from Make: Electronics)
In the Make: Online Toolbox, we focus mainly on tools that fly under the radar of more conventional tool coverage: in-depth tool-making projects, strange or specialty tools unique to a trade or craft that can be useful elsewhere, tools and techniques you may not know about, but once you do, and incorporate them into your workflow, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without them.
While small lathes are of relatively limited value in my opinion, I’ve gotta give it up to Thingiverse user cathalgarvey for designing and uploading the parts to print this motor-tool-powered, printable micro-lathe . Would love to see some video of it in operation! More from cathalgarvey: Dremelfuge is a 3D printable centrifuge Laboratory centrifuge attachment for your Dremel tool Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in 3D printing | Digg this!
Here’s the latest project from YesYesNo, this time in Auckland, NZ! It’s called Night Lights : In this installation YesYesNo teamed up with The Church, Inside Out Productions and Electric Canvas to turn the Auckland Ferry Building into an interactive playground. Our job was to create an installation that would go beyond merely projection on buildings and allow viewers to become performers, by taking their body movements and amplifying them 5 stories tall
Here’s an interesting, if possibly questionable idea. The folks over at Flowering Elbow converted a sewing machine into a scroll saw . If you’ve got an old sewing machine, it could be just what you need for cutting thin pieces of wood! More: Pedal-powered Scroll Saw Sewing machine jigsaw The Tico-tico Singer Pedal-powered hacksaw Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in hacks | Digg this!
I can think of a million things I’m going to log with this … Data Logger for iPhone enables you to store and graph any data of your choosing along with a timestamp and geolocation. You might use Data Logger to store electricity meter readings, to create maps of pollution or temperature sensor readings around your neighbourhood, or animal sightings around the city.
For those that haven’t heard, LeafLabs’ Maple board is an Arduino-compatible microcontroller platform based on an STM32 ARM Cortex-M3 chip. The full feature list includes – Microcontroller: STM32 F103RB Clock Speed: 72 MHz Operating Voltage: 3.3V Input Voltage (recommended): 3.0V-18V Digital I/O Pins: 39 Analog Input Pins: 16 Flash Memory: 128 KB SRAM: 20KB 64 Channel nested vector interrupt handler (including external interrupt on GPIO’s) Integrated SPI/I2C and 7 Channels of Direct Memory Access (DMA) Supplies up to 800mA @ 3.3v Support for low power and sleep modes (
Noah Shactman just brought Israeli defense contractor Urban Aeronautics’ AirMule VTOL UAV project to my attention. The photo released by Urban Aeronautics, shown above, purports to show the first successful hovering flight of an AirMule prototype, secured against wandering off by guy-wires. Video would’ve been more persuasive.
While at MIT last week, I met Jonathan Ward, who’s working in the Machines That Make (MTM) group on an open source, low-cost CNC mill made from 26 parts on a ShopBot, called the MTM A-Z .
Calling all leaders of science clubs, robotics teams, and rocket clubs! Make: Money is for all student groups, schools, clubs, and organizations that exemplify the maker culture and need a unique and easy way to fund their work. You sell MAKE subscriptions and earn 50% ($17.50) for every one. We hope to support your organization by offering you this great, relevant fundraising tool that brings the joy of making into the homes of your supporters.
Theo Watson writes: The long awaited update to the original Fat Tag – The Deluxe Edition co-created with NYC graffiti legend Katsu is now available in the App Store . Features include: Multiple default backgrounds Additional background selection from camera, photo library Scale, rotate, angle, opacity options for realistically overlaying tag onto camera image. Multiple pen/brush tips and colors Full accelerometer based drips Speed based thickness Upload gml and screenshot to FAT’s 000000book.com Save tags to photo library Read more at Theo’s post on fatlab
The MAKE Controller Kit v2.0 is an open source hardware platform for projects requiring high performance control and feedback, connectivity, and ease of use. It can be programmed and run autonomously, or it can be used as a peripheral for desktop applications. If you make a project based on the MAKE Controller, be sure to add it to the MAKE Flickr pool , or a link in the comments.
The project consists of a shield you can add to an Arduino equipped with another Altmega 168/328 chip and a whole ‘nother set of digital and analog I/O pins. Instructable user johndavid400 explains: The shield design can use the base Arduino’s power supply or it can supply power to the base Arduino via it’s onboard power-terminals and 5v regulator
The folks over at Project 240 built this Office M&M Dispenser Maze for, well, I think just for the joy of building it. After pressing the reset button to dispense a giant M&M ball, the user manipulates a joystick to navigate the candy through the maze. Anyone know where to get giant M&M balls like that