A Foot-Powered Lathe
Youtube user QueticoChris uses an old cast-iron flywheel and vintage building techniques to design and make an efficient foot-powered wood lathe.
Month: April 2013
How-To: Credit Card Phone Stand
If you need a stand for your phone and all you’ve got is an old credit card, some scissors, and a few spare minutes, then this ingenious credit card phone stand tutorial by Instructables user martyd78 is for you.
The Six Bottle Test
Marco Robustini wanted to test the accuracy of the ArduCopter code and show the accuracy of the IMU, so he decided to suspend bottles from his multi-copter to find out how it would cope with huge variations in weight and trim
Simple Machines: The Lever
The lever is one of the six classic simple machines. A simple machine is a mechanical device that changes a force’s direction or magnitude. The other five simple machines are the wheel and axle, the pulley, the inclined plane, the wedge and the screw. Explaining simple machines to kids can be a fun learning experience, especially if you include some demonstrations in the lesson. Here’s how I built a lever for a demonstration of simple machines for my son’s 3rd grade clas
Designing the Electronics User Experience
In February I did an interview with Eric Jennings, co-founder of Pinoccio. Pinoccio is a new open source hardware business, building “a complete ecosystem for the Internet of Things.” The Pinoccio is a pocket-sized microcontroller board with wireless networking, rechargeable LiPo battery, sensors, and the ability to expand its capabilities through shields, much like an Arduino board. It features the new Atmel ATmega256RFR2, a single-chip AVR 8-bit processor with low power 2.4GHz transceiver for IEEE 802.15.4 communications.
Eric Jennings, along with his partner Sally Carson, co-founded Pinoccio. In my interview with Eric he said:
“Sally Carson, Pinoccio’s other co-founder, is an expert in the intersection between humans and technology. What I mean by that is that she thinks very deeply and carefully about the psychology of humans interacting with computers. Human-computer interaction, user experience, and usability all fall under her umbrella. I consider her contribution a secret weapon in what we’re trying to achieve with Pinoccio.”
A Secret Weapon?!… I had to find out more what Eric meant, and just what exactly is Pinoccio’s Secret Weapon. I contacted Sally Carson and asked her about the intersection of User Experience (UX) with electronics and the design of the Pinoccio. Along the way, I learned some good lessons on why design is important, even to just a set of electronics.
Interview with Artist and Roboticist Giles Walker
British scrap artist and roboticist Giles Walker has been making provocative art robots and kinetic sculptures for over 20 years. His unique vision and aesthetic often bear strong social commentary and refuse to go unnoticed. Giles has been a member of guerilla-art group the Mutoid Waste Company since the 80s and shows his work around […]
The Future of Wearable Technology
This is a great video that covers the wearable scene. Super cool MAKE alum (and Adafruit wearables engineer) Becky is one of the artists and engineers interviewed. As computing moves from our desktops to our phones, we look into the future to see how technology will become increasingly ingrained in our movements and our active […]
