Kkassing writes “After setting up two webcams and the new Skype beta to watch my dog while I’m out, I decided to give him some incentive to obey my commands over the internet. So I built an internet powered dog feeder with a Basic Stamp kit and two servos (one to drop the food, one to knock the funnel if it gets stuck). Full source included.” Link.
PaulIE has a great Instructable for bending tubing, he writes “Here I show how to bend aluminum tubing. This is basically documentation of how I built a new bow rail for my sailboat. I trace the curve that I want on some scrap lumber. This scrap will be used to build the bending jig. I’m just using a couple of old 2×4’s. You wood should be somewhat thicker than the diameter of the tub you wish to bend.” Link.
Aplumb writes in with some handy information regarding using a mouse as a scanner we posted earlier:“A lot of cheap off-the-shelf optical mice use this chip. See this photospy I did of a Logitech I did a while back. Note: This chip is designed by the division of Agilent that was spun out and renamed Avago Technologies. See their Optical Mouse Sensors page for more up-to-date info, like the newer ADNS-2610 references.” Link.
Dethe writes “When I was a kid, I had the foam swords called Boffers, that my step-father and I could take our aggressions out on one another without hurting each other. Now my kids are 5 and 9 and they want to play with my bamboo shinai (practice swords), but they could definitely get hurt with those. I was intending to look around to find a source to buy the old boffers and instead found this site with instructions for making boffer swords, daggers, axes, and more from PVC, pool noodles, and duct tape. Also rules for boffer fighting, maintenance, and more. We’re going to build a whole boffer arsenal and turn the neighborhood kids loose with it.” Link.
“Widgets are great–there is no denying it. Arranging these small, lightweight utilities on your Mac OS X Dashboard desktop puts lots of useful and fun possibilities at your fingertips and eyeballs. But when a widget you want doesn’t exist, there is only one thing to do: make it.” Here’s our how-to on making a RSS widget for Mac OS X (other PC/Mac widgets coming soon) and here’s a direct download on Apple! Link.
Mike Smyth makes these incredible compressed air engines. On his site, he has photos and information on the V-twin and radial air engines he designed and constructed. The videos give you a good idea of how they work. His homepage also has his walking robots project to check out. Thanks B45man! Link.
Turn your optical mouse in to a scanner! Erik writes: “A Maker posted his project on a very large Dutch forum, after he read some datasheets of the sensor in his optical mouse. He wrote a application in VB for reading the sensors outputs, so he can use the sensor like a hand scanner. The software is available on the site and works on mice which use an ADNS-2610 optical sensor, recognisable by the eight pins, the sun-like mark and the text ‘A2610’.” Link.
