Out pals at adafruit have just released Circuit Playground, an app for iPhone and iPad that combines a bunch of handy electronics references and calculators in one attractive interface. It’s $2.99 from the AppStore. An Android version is reportedly in the works, but I understand the adafruit folks are not in too much of a [...]

Posted by Sean Ragan | February 6th, 2012 9:00 AM

Categories: Education, Electronics, iPhone | 2 Comments

Looking for a great, standalone LED project? Check out the Blue Blinky Grid from the Maker Shed! This kit can be soldered together easily in under an hour and uses 56 bright blue LEDs to display text and animations.

Posted by Michael Castor | February 6th, 2012 8:00 AM

Categories: Electronics, Kits, Maker Shed Store | No Comments

Grant Gibson of Glasgow, the UK, converted a $5 alarm clock into a gmail notifier. Every time I get a new email the clock moves from side to side and does the classic Space Invaders sound, then lights one of the LEDs to give me an idea of how many unread messages there are. There’s [...]

Posted by John Baichtal | February 6th, 2012 7:00 AM

Categories: Electronics | No Comments

…and after several rounds of zinc whiskers, take to the stage for a rousing if slightly off-key rendition of The Animals’ 1964 version of The House of The Rising Sun. From Vimeo user PURETUNE, who writes: For this video i recorded each instrument separately with a decent stereo mic and i also used a mixer [...]

Posted by Sean Ragan | February 6th, 2012 6:00 AM

Categories: hacks, Music, Retro | 1 Comment

Redditor drewsaysgoveg made this cool DIY key rack from spare keys. He secured the keys in a vice and carefully curled them by tapping them with a hammer, only breaking two in the process.

Posted by Matt Richardson | February 6th, 2012 4:00 AM

Categories: Home and Garden | 2 Comments

OK Go's new video for the song Needing/Getting has the band playing a thousand instruments... with a car. Yep, they rigged up a Chevy Sonic hatchback with retractable pneumatic arms, then drove a course with specially tuned instruments at specific intervals while extending the arms to hit each in time with the song. This allowed them to capture both the video itself along with audio elements, which they mixed into the the final track. Elements of which were aired during the Superbowl as an ad.

Posted by Adam Flaherty | February 6th, 2012 2:00 AM

Categories: Toys and Games, Transportation, Video Making | 1 Comment

This week in the MAKE Flickr pool we saw… whole lotta steel from Hufnagel Cycles. ferrofluid close up from Matt Abinante. chuck key from jmillerid. army men bowl 01 from Whamodyne. LaserGlasses from Pete Prodoehl. Just resurrected Mousey the Junkbot! from nitdoggx. Switch from TomMadeO.

Posted by Sean Ragan | February 5th, 2012 12:30 PM

Categories: Makers, Online, Photography | 1 Comment

Inspired by Chris Gammell’s post about “trickle down techonomy,” Ben Krasnow posted this how-to video on making your own Astronaut Ice Cream. He used a vacuum pump, dry ice, and various hoses and fittings to freeze dry ice cream that can be easily enjoyed any time you’re out in space or even on terra firma. [...]

Posted by Matt Richardson | February 5th, 2012 6:00 AM

Categories: Food and Beverage, Science | 3 Comments

Using little more than a vibrating motor and the snipped-off head of a toothbrush, you can make these colorful and fun brushbots. Check out the Make: Project to learn how to do this quick and fun project. You can buy the kit in the Maker Shed, and learn how to put it together on Make: Projects!

Posted by Michael Colombo | February 4th, 2012 6:30 PM

Categories: DIY Projects, MAKE Projects, MAKE Video | No Comments

While developing the second phase of their Cretaceous Sea Exhibition, The Hastings Museum in Hastings, NE commissioned a life-size model of a Xiphactinus from Gary Staab, a paleo artist based in Kearney, MO. The Xiphactinus was a large predator fish that lived in the Western Interior Sea during the late Cretaceous Period and skeletal remains [...]

Posted by Matt Richardson | February 4th, 2012 6:00 AM

Categories: Biology, Science | 2 Comments