The Space Invaders are sensitive to the electromagnetic waves of mobile phones. When in close proximity to a mobile phone, the Space Invader is energized by an incoming call and its LED eyes begin to twinkle. Accessorized with a handmade Space Invaders Tote for an evening shindig, you will never miss a call again. Whether […]
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The BeatBearing is an exciting and intuitive way to make music. Move the balls on a grid, and you change the beat. Music sequencing couldn’t be simpler. Like countless other musicians, I use a computer to create beats and sequence them into mixes. Pointing and clicking with a mouse is fine for a studio, but […]
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It all started with a small LCD salvaged from an old printer. I recruited my code-savvy older brother, Adam, and we soon had the LCD displaying text from an Arduino microcontroller. This was neat, but it was inconvenient having to plug the Arduino into a computer for reprogramming whenever we wanted to change the text. […]
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We started Escama (Portuguese for “fish scales”) three years ago after seeing the way Brazilian women incorporated used pull-tabs into their crocheting. We worked with two craft co-ops to design and produce a range of purses. Experts warned us that we’d need to use machines to get consistent quality. Luckily experts are sometimes wrong. 15,000 […]
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While reading through Charles Platt’s excellent book Make: Electronics, I came across this nice little circuit for making a gentle pulsing LED. I was struck by the “humanness” of the pulse, but couldn’t figure out what to do with it. Later I found a heart-shaped tag on some pants I had bought, and well, this […]
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Back in the 1970s, my friend Wayne Gillis and I used to do light shows at science fiction conventions. We had the usual panoply of overhead, slide, and custom-made projectors, and a single, very expensive, helium-neon laser from Edmund Scientific. Calling ourselves Light Opera, and later, Illuminatus, we performed at ConFusion conventions in Ann Arbor, […]
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Godshot. That’s the elusive goal of espresso fanatics everywhere. Thick with micro-bubble crema and a velvety mouth-feel, and packing explosive flavor, the godshot is pulled too infrequently for my liking. A perfect shot of espresso is the product of many variables, so anything I can do to lock in one of those variables is a […]
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