Weekend Watch: Makjosher Shows You How it Works

Joshua Charles hasn’t been posting videos on his makjosher channel very long, but he’s already got a lot of fun and informative videos up.

I haven’t seen many makers on YouTube embrace explanations quite in the same way that Joshua does. While many are content to film their builds with no comment, in Joshua’s video’s the commentary seems to be the point. For example, the video above details his quest to find the most energy and cost efficient way to cool off his apartment. As he goes through each option — from the humble paper fan (cheapest but least efficient) to increasingly more complicated homebrew cooling devices — he takes the time to explain what’s happening (sometimes with some stop motion animation!) and why each build works the way it does. Still, these aren’t dry videos. You’ll learn, yes, but Joshua’s style of education is quite entertaining.

Another thing I like is that he shares the troubleshooting involved when making… For example, when building his self-draining bucket the initial design using just one float to turn the pump on and off didn’t work as well as intended. He takes the time to explain why it didn’t work, how you might go about using just one float to turn the pump on and off, and explains the solution he went with: Using two floaters to trigger on and off separately.

If what you’re really looking for is a project that you’d want to make for yourself (and let’s face it, not all of us need self-draining buckets or better cooling methods), he has a couple of videos showing some home decor builds. I like this bicycle wheel light, but he also has a pretty good build that shows how to make an attractive docking charger for a smart watch.

He also does energy research! The video above tries to answer the question how much energy does Pokemon Go use.