Uh-oh, better get Maaco. The Life-Size Mousetrap mice warm up on the family minivan. The head mouse tells us that the official show schedule for the weekend will be: Sat: 11:30, 1:30, 2:30, 5:30, 7:30 Sun: 11:30, 1:30, 3:30, 4:30 Bring the family to see this! BTW: If you’re coming to the Faire, or just wanna follow the action as it happens, don’t forget our Maker Faire Detroit Facebook page and our Maker Faire Twitter channel
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Crushin’ cars in the Motor City
Born on this date in 1923 in the Pittsburgh suburb of New Kensington, Stephanie Louise Kwolek ( Wikipedia ) graduated from what is now known as Carnegie Mellon University in 1946. She would go on, starting in 1964, to discover the remarkable properties of paraphenylene terephtalamide polymers, research which would culminate in 1971 with the advent of Kevlar ( Wikipedia ), an entirely new field of polymer chemistry, and the countless remarkable applications thereof we now enjoy. Today Dr
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Maker Birthdays: Stephanie Kwolek
Via Gadget Lab : Martin Magnusson of Linköping, Sweden, created this excellent wearable computer. It consists of the foliowing components: a pair of Myvu Crystal video glasses hacked into a monocular head-mounted display, the Beagleboard single-board computer running Angstrom Linux, a Plexgear mini USB hub driving a bluetooth adapter and powering the Beagleboard and the display, four 2700 mAh AA batteries powering the USB hub, a foldable Nokia SU-8W bluetooth keyboard for input, and Internet connectivity through bluetooth tethering to an iPhone in my pocket. Martin’s blog Becoming Cyborg describes every step of creating the glasses, check it out! Read the Full Story
Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid We’re happy to announce that Make: Online’s very own editor-in-chief, Gareth Branwyn, was recently interviewed by SyFy for their Eureka Idea Lab. Here’s a snippet: Pick one: personal jetpack, warp drive, or Lee Majors-level bionic implants
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SyFy interview with editor-in-chief Gareth Branwyn
Youtube user textualarmor created a wearable interval camera as a project for a class at Carnegie Mellon. There are so many moments in life that are not considered “photo-worthy,” but in looking back we find ourselves wishing we had pictures to commemorate them. Specifically, I think of the countless bike rides I’ve taken around New York City, commuting to work, or visiting friends, crossing bridges and zipping through traffic and riding along the West Side Highway bike path at sunset
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Keychain camera takes intermittent photographs
Patrick Parrish was vacationing in North Carolina when he spotted this long-abandoned yet fully stocked machine shop : It looked like one day possibly in the 1960s or 70s that they just up and closed without even clearing off their desks. The window were so filty, but it looked AMAZING inside.
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Sid Barnett’s Machine Shop
MAKE’s science and chemistry author, Robert Bruce Thompson, has a new installment of his video series The Home Scientist , on acquiring chemicals for your home lab. This video is a nice companion to Bob’s piece in the Make: Science Room on the same subject: Chemicals on the cheap . See Bob’s YouTube channel for all of the videos in the series.
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The Home Scientist video: Where to get lab chemicals
The folks at Willow Garage taught their p2r robot to play pool . Pretty impressive feat for only one week of work: With only a small team of developers and a week’s worth of development, the PR2 can now play pool! The “Poolshark” team started last Monday and began making shots on Friday
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Robot takes cue, learns to play pool
Don’t forget that the purveyors of fine toolboxes for your belt, The Leatherman Tool Group , is giving one lucky MAKE reader a new Super Tool 300 (19 tools in 1). To be eligible, all you have to do is go to the original post and submit a reminiscence about your dad and his relationship to tools. Eligible entries will end at noon tomorrow (6/20) and the winner will be announced a few minutes later.
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Father’s Day tool giveaway reminder
Instructables user indestructable created this guide on connecting AC fixtures (light bulbs, in this example) to your computer using a USBmicro U451 . If you have ever wanted to control electronic devices from your computer to control or regulate your environment, this instructable will guide you
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Control AC devices from your computer
Ron Newman’s fantastic page on DIY room-temperature anodizing of aluminum parts was last revised in 2007, and looks like it may be significantly older than that. Ron’s selling a how-to book, now, and a bunch of anodizing supplies, from the same page, but to me it looks like there’s more than enough free info there already for a savvy person to figure it out for him- or herself
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How-To: Anodize aluminum
This month’s theme is Physical Science and Mechanics , which makes it the ideal time to chat with the multi-talented members of Applied Kinetic Arts (A.K.A.), “a community of artists working within the medium loosely defined as ‘kinetic’.
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Applied Kinetic Arts: Jeremy Mayer interview
Instructables jamilks converted this old mini fridge into a food dehydrator , great for fruits, herbs, and other healthy snacks! A food dehydrator needs to be warm and breezy, and this how-to uses an old computer fan and hot plate to get the job done. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!
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Mini fridge food dehydrator
Evil Mad Science Laboratories is having a clock contest ! Windell writes: There are probably thousands of cool ways to build clocks based around an LED matrix, and we’ve seen some neat analog and digital clocks based on our Peggy 2 kit. But we’ve also come up with a few dozen other cool ways to show the time, and realized that we’ve only scratched the surface. So today, we’re announcing a Clock Concept Contest: Show us your coolest idea about how to build a Peggy clock, and you could win one! How to enter First, come up with a cool idea.
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Peggy 2 clock concept contest from EMSL
Via Hizook comes this QuadDrive Roomba robot from the University of Bonn’s Autonomous Intelligent Systems Lab (NimbRo@Home) . Check out the (German-language) video to see how the Roomabs move in unison via four servos connect to the base of the bot. And as Hizook points out, built on four Roombas, this is a bot that cleans as it goes! And the resulting humanoid doesn’t look anything like a creepy character from Clockwork Orange
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Humanoid with quad-Roomba drive
Add your image to the last shuttle missions – NASA Face in Space, via BoJ … NASA wants to put a picture of you on one of the two remaining space shuttle missions and launch it into orbit. To launch your face into space and become a part of history, just follow these steps: First…Select the Participate button at the bottom of this page and upload your image/name, which will be flown aboard the space shuttle.
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Add your image to the last shuttle missions – NASA Face in Space
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. And, in the spirit of the times, we pay close attention to tools that you can get on the cheap, make yourself, or refurbish.
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Toolbox: Show us your screwdrivers
This video shows a clever modification to the Thingamagoop: a lightproof cardboard enclosure with a cardboard strip to control the amount of light reaching the photocell. You control the synthesizer’s pitch by moving the cardboard strip. Maker Pete Ashton posits: In theory a pianola-style score could be written on a long strip.
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Thingamagoop pianola concept
These “Kozo” handmade iron-pipe lamps from Israeli group Demo Design Clinic first appeared on my radar back in early 2009 when Boing Boing blogged about their original model, the kozo1 , pictured top left. They were a runaway success, and Kozo has since added many more models. They’ve got a clever trick for building the switch into a faucet handle to match the spot-on DIY aesthetics of the lamp itself
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Beautiful plumbing pipe lamps
The goal of this project is to create a simple interupt driven library for generating composite video on a single AVR chip . Currently the output is NTSC or PAL at a resolution of 128×96 by default. The library currently works on ATmega168,328,1280,644p Interested
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TVout: Add TV to your next AVR project
Rachel @ CRAFT points us to this sand art lightbox project by Filth Wizardry. I’m thinking of making one of these instead of going to the beach this summer. What I’ll save on sunscreen will pay for the project materials! Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!
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How-To: Sand art lightbox
The robotics department of the Chiba Institute of Technology in Japan recently set up a Youtube Channel , to show off the fruits of their labor. They have some pretty impressive creations on display, such as the ridable Hyperion 4 legged robot, and the crazy looking jumping robot. Cool stuff! [via neatorama ] More: Maker Faire Moments, Bay Area 2010 Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Robotics | Digg this!
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Robot videos from Chiba Institute of Technology
Rachel sent me this link to an easy tutorial by Stephanie Lynn on building a large abacus suitable for wall-mounting. I’m pretty sure I’ll never need an abacus, but I gotta admit it looks like fun to build one. It would appear Stephanie is making the beads by cutting slices out of a closet rod and then drilling a hole in the center of each–I say save a step and use a hole-saw for both operations! [via Ohdeedoh ] Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!
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How-To: Build an oversized abacus
It’s time again for the annual Crest Hardware Art Show , where over 100 artists take over the coolest hardware store in Brooklyn. In addition to art in the show, as part of Crest Fest 2010, there will also be music and vendors, and proceeds will support the City Reliquary Museum
Link:
Crest Hardware Art Show this Saturday
Thingiverse user Ben of Camas, WA, designed and printed this sleek rocket , filled it with baking soda and vinegar, shook it, then placed it on the ground and watched it take off. True success! Today, powered by pure bicarb ($1.99) and 5% strength pickling vinegar ($0.99) it flew as high as the house – about 30 foot! Unfortunately, the wind blew it onto the roof and it’s now in the gutter.
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3D-printable baking soda & vinegar rocket
… well, either that or Charlie Visnic’s Doepfer modular had some serious electrical issues … then again, it may just be another eye-catching entry in his self-assigned mission to “Do something creative at least once a day and document it”. Yah, I suppose that seems a tad more likely – It was midnight when I drove home from work, thinking to myself “What am I going to do today for my creative thing?” I don’t like it when I let it slide that late to come up with something but sometimes it works out. I had this idea back on Day 079 for my light tracing post but it was too late to follow through with it
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Modular synth haunted by supernatural ghost patch!
One of the best ways to stay in touch with family and friends is by using prepaid calling cards. If you travel or if you live in another country or state calling cards offer an economical way to keep in touch by phone with your friends and family. When you use them you can save lots of money on long distance charges from your phone carrier.
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Calling Cards Come In Many Varieties and Flavors
The Raygun Gothic Rocketship has been successfully installed and is “standing by,” ready for the 2010 Makers Faire weekend. Our gantry tower has been erected and the explosive bolts on the escape hatch are armed! We are all systems go…! The RGR is more than just a shiny outer hull… and so we wanted to give you a brief glimpse of what you’ll find inside
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The Road to Maker Faire: How to launch a rocket…
One of the group installations coming to this year’s Maker Faire Bay Area , taking place on May 22nd and 23rd at the San Mateo Fairgrounds, is M.T. Pockets Traveling Midway of Curiosities and Delights. A nostalgic throw-back to carnivals of old, this exhibit is a self-contained window into yesteryear, when the carnival would roll into town and create a magical environment.
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Maker Faire: M.T. Pockets Traveling Midway of Curiosities and Delights
Each year since 2006, thousands of children across the United States submit artwork representing a plethora of endangered plants and wildlife living on the brink in our fair country. The submissions are amazing, the cause is attention-worthy, and the contest culminates in national Endangered Species Day, which this year happens to be today, May 21
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Kid Art: Endangered species contest