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June 7, 2009

Come to the charred side of The Force

Check out this mighty planet-killer of a kettle grill, sent to us by Bryan Tate. He's a sheet metal worker who's going to school, studying engineering, and is starting to put his projects online. May I suggest an R2-D2 barrel smoker as your next assignment?

Death Star Grill

June 6, 2009

Make your plans for SolarFest!

In the mail today arrived the 36 page schedule/flyer for this year's SolarFest. Based on the three I've been to in the past, this should be an excellent time as well. There are plenty of workshops, live music, and great vendors who have either made their own wares or are willing to share lots of information.

[Photo from Connors934 on Flickr]

Set in the hills of Vermont, many people bring camping gear and sleep out, but there are other options. The on-site campgrounds are mostly in the woods at the site. Food in the past has been excellent and prepared by vendors from the local area. If you would like to help with setup or breakdown, check out their volunteers page.

Ultraminimalist lab-stand lamp

I made this minimalist table lamp from three ready-made components: 1) a burner tripod lab stand from The Science Company, 2) a 5" globe incandescent light bulb, and 3) a socket extension cord from the hardware store. It works and looks great, and the total cost is about $20 US. The 5" globe light bulbs are also available as compact fluorescents (CFLs), rather than incandescents, which doubles the unit price but probably saves money in the long term due to the radically increased lifetime and efficiency of CFL bulbs.

Make your own games with PlayCrafter

Playcrafter is a site where you can create your own game. Accounts on the system are free, and allow you to make and save your own games. There is also a paid level of account that will let you make games with more than 10 levels and some other features.

Games made with Playcrafter can be embedded into web pages, and can also be run on devices that are Flash 9+ friendly.

If you try this out with your students or kids, let us know about it in the comments.

Wii nunchuck controlled beanbag chair

At Maker Faire, we saw loads of really cool projects. The BeanCat was a clever one, a skid steer chair controlled by a Wii Nunchuck held by the user in a bean bag chair.

The Beancat is an all-wheel drive, battery powered bean bag chair, controlled by a Wii nunchuk. Getting a drink from the fridge has never been so much fun. The low profile drive, frame and controlling hardware are completely concealed so at first glance it's just a simple bean bag.

Imagine a bean bag chair that you could drive around, in or outdoors. A commuting vehicle, entertainment device and relaxation enabler all in one.
Why, you ask? Because we wanted to.
The real challenge here was fitting everything into such an envelope that would not be obvious when looking at the bean bag. We didn't want a bean bag that was simply sitting on top of a big, ugly frame. There should be some degree of mystery as to what exactly is going on here- as a matter of fact, how is that person driving around on a bean bag chair?

Their documentation includes some nice screenshots of the design files for the build. This chair was going nonstop for a good while with a long line of patient aspiring beanbag riders. I was surprised in seeing such a small battery performing so effectively.

The bean bag support frame was built entirely out of scrap wood, hardware and $2 worth of foam from the "House of Foam" in Palo Alto, CA. As you can see, it changed a bit from the rough sketch above. This was the least planned part of the project, as it was simple enough to just do as a last step. The back of the frame is tensioned with a steel cable that runs from one corner up to the top center of the backrest and down the opposite corner. In this way, we were able to keep the backrest super strong, flexible and lightweight.
The bean bag was then stretched over this, refilled with beans, and we were driving!

Great build!

June 5, 2009

Monthly best of Make: en Español

Gatito Cam

P.R.M.M Sebastrón 1

Botes beliceños en Cholula

Un día antes de la Maker Faire

Adam Savage, at Maker Faire, talking on the importance of failure

Here's a video excerpt of Adam Savage's wonderful talk at Maker Faire. He's telling the story of a life-changing experience that's helped form his character and how massively screwing up can sometimes end up as a positive.

MythBuster Adam Savage's Colossal Failures
[You can see additional clips from Adam's talk and watch the entire hour-long presentation on the link above.]

More:

Make: Online's Mythbusters interview, Part 1
Mythbusters interview, Part 2

How-To: Prep and powder coat a bike frame

This guy's ladyfriend sure is lucky to have this bike frame customized with appliqued logos and powder coating. In this Instructable, user corwin shows you how to form and affix the logos after prepping the frame for the powder coater's.

Xtracycle Radish deal for Makers

At Maker Faire, the crew used these Xtracycle Radishes to get around. They carry extra cargo than a normal bike and can even be fitted to carry an extra passenger. Xtracycle is offering a deal to makers in celebration of the Faire, so check out their site for reduced Maker pricing until June 14th. Their site also shows you how to make some cool mods to the Xtracycle to carry a surfboard and more. Maker Faire even had a tallbike Xtracycle floating around the grounds! The above pictures are by Kim Dow.

Glowdoodle lets you paint with light

Eric started experimenting with processing and came up with GlowDoodle. A few weeks ago, he showed me the program and we messed around with some light. When we talked, he had the mac version running, and was still in development of the Windows version, which is also now ready for a free download. There are a bunch of neat samples on Flickr as well.

Solar-powered graduation cap

This silly fella (in a good way) turned his mortarboard into a diorama of renewable energy, with a solar panel, a windmill, and a sun that rises and sets (waves) via his cellphone.

Green Graduation Cap

Mini mint tin toolboxes

I love these tiny toolboxes (as Father's Day gifts), made from Altoids tins, that Natalie posted next door on CRAFT. If the mint tin seems a little... er... impractical for holding tools, there's also a project on the same page for having kids color artwork for lids on mint tins to hold nuts, bolts, screws, etc.

There is one application for a toolset that would fit in such a tin, the emergency field soldering kit project we featured in The Best of Instructables (which can also be found here). I made one of these. Haven't had a call to use it yet, but it'd sure look cuter to show up on the scene with the kit housed in one of these red boxes.

Surprise Dad with the Smallest Toolbox Ever!

How-To: Control a clock mechanism with Arduino

Just ran across this post on CiboMahto's blog detailing how to control an inexpensive analog clock mechanism with an Arduino.

The mechanical bit is quite simple. The clock functions in a similar fashion to a stepper motor, in the sense that you charge an electric coil to get the mechanical bit to move forward a precise amount. In this case, each firing moves the second hand one second position forward (and makes the familiar tick noise). To ‘fire’ the electric coil, you simply put a voltage across it. The only complicated bit is that you actually have to reverse this voltage to advance the clock to the next step.

Making a 'totally crazy' slow/fast/backwards clock could be a great way for newcomers to get their feet wet with microcontrollers. And for those feeling a bit less wacky, Info for accurate timely control is also provided on the project page.

Hanging gutter gardens

Rutland Copper Gutter Supply has an entry on their blog (and a link to a Martha Stewart how-to) on using copper box gutters to create a hanging garden. This is an interesting follow-up to our earlier post of installing gutters on the outside walls of your house as a gardening option.

Gutter Garden - Copper Gutter Garden

More:
Gutter gardens

Next-gen POV bike-wheel display tech

I was stunned to see the MonkeyLectric folks' new persistence of vision (POV) bike-wheel video display at Maker Faire, and to see how far they've... er... driven this tech since the last time I saw it. The video does a good job of showing off all that it can now do. Dan Goldwater adds:

I didn't say it in the video, but this is cutting-edge tech! The notorious 'pimpstar' car wheels only do static images, not video. They also appear to have much worse color depth - their video shows only 8 colors while we have 4096 - this was a significant technical hurdle in POV and i have not seen any other POV system anywhere with more than 8 colors (or with full video).

MonkeyLectric.com

SPARK Project #1, Post #2

In my previous post, I presented some background on the green building where the SPARK Project #1 is being installed, and I discussed the basic signals that need to be measured for the project. In order to create inputs into my smart home dashboard, I need to measure temperature and humidity, both indoors and out, photovoltaic array output, solar thermal usage, and grid-tied energy input. I described how temperature, humidity, and photovoltaic output were going to be measured.

The local utility has already installed devices that measure natural gas usage and grid-tied electricity consumption, but they don't provide the homeowner any way to read these measurements in real time. As with any dashboard, it's pretty important that the information displayed is as close to real time as possible. Imagine trying to optimize the efficiency of your car based on monthly reports. It can be done, but it's difficult to understand the impact of each change to the system. Electric and gas meters may be available with outputs suitable for monitoring, but I don't think most hobbyists have the option of retrofitting their homes. Fortunately, better and less intrusive options do exist.

Read further on the SPARK Project blog to see how the remaining signals will be measured.

More:
SPARK Project #1, Post #1
Sponsored projects series with Windows Embedded CE

This SPARK Your Imagination Make: Windows Embedded project series is sponsored by Microsoft Corporation.

Maker Faire Bay Area 2009 video montage featuring Shovelman

I'm really happy that I caught a performance by Isaac "Shovelman" Frankle at Maker Faire. It's amazing what you can do with a shovel, a few pedals, and a lot of talent. Check out Shovelman on MySpace. Hopefully he will have a CD soon! See you at the next Maker Faire!

Subscribe to the MAKE podcast | Download for iTunes

Wooden mini Jansen Walker robot parts

My friend and yours, Gareth Branwyn, heard I was testing the Epilog Zing laser cutter and asked if I could cut him the parts for a 4Volt Jansen Walker. Gar is a robot master and a steampunk to the core (check out his Lost Knowledge issue of MAKE magazine for more proof) so I figured clear acrylic wouldn't do it. He needed a wooden walker! I'm going to convince him to purchase brass nuts and bolts for the build, and maybe he can use small steam engines instead of servos and swap in a Babbage Machine for the Arduino...

I downloaded the parts files from Thingiverse, pulled them into Corel Draw, prepped them on a single 16" x 12" page, and fired it off. After about 20 minutes of cutting (OK, I was just sipping a cocktail watching it cut) the parts were all done. If you look closely there are some strange curves that became segmented or non-tangent. It turns out a single bolt in the laser optics assembly had wiggled loose. I paused the cutting, tightened the bolt, and the remaining cuts were perfect. I kind of hope these anomalies will enhance the organic nature of the design.

We'll have to bug Gar to pick up the story from here once I ship the parts to him!

Here's the original, inspiring, wonderful, otherworldly Jansen Walker that inspired Mr. 4Volt.

Singing solenoids prefer Bach

Woah, I never knew solenoids could be this good at impersonating audio oscillators! -- plus I had no idea copy machines had such advanced easter eggs. Dspdude explains -

This test fixture for a photocopier uses solenoids that are driven by a special song. Reminiscent of the Honda commercial for the early 80's. The easter egg is initiated through the Diagnostic interface, and the solenoids are driven over the CAN bus.

FYI - Originally designed for use in vehicles, the CAN (controller–area network) bus allows onboard microcontroler to chit-chat with each other within system hardware (thanks Wikipedia). And when there's no good gossip about toner levels and paper jams, I guess they have band practice?

How-To: Acoustic Vulcan lyre

Instructables user agent036 made this simple acoustic replica of a Vulcan lyre from Star Trek and broke down the steps to show you how, too.

June 2009 Home | Next >

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Maker Faire Bay Area 2009 video montage featuring Shovelman I'm really happy that I caught a performance by Isaac "Shovelman" Frankle at Maker Faire. It's amazing what you can do with a shovel, a few pedals, and a lot of talent. Check out Shovelman on MySpace. Hopefully he... More...

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Many thanks to everyone involved with Maker Faire in 2008! The attendees, makers, exhibitors, sponsors, volunteers, and crew...it was an AMAZING year! Over 1,000 Makers and 87,000+ attendees total! Be sure to check out the photos @ Flickr, and our Maker Faire posts for all the action! Tickets are now on sale for Maker Faire Bay Area, May 30th & 31st 2009!