This Week in Making: iPhone 7 Headphone Hacks, 3D Printed Homes, and Lego Engineering

3D Print a New Home

How feasible would it be for mankind to 3D print future living spaces on celestial bodies like our moon or other planets like Mars using their respective materials? NASA wanted to find out, so they held a contest and asked groups to submit their proposals and designs.

The second phase of the contest just ended this past week. First place, and $250,000, went to Team Foster + Partners of Branch Technology of Chattanooga in Tennessee. The second place prize of $150,000 went to Pennsylvania State University of University Park. You can see the two teams below, smiling in their respective victories.

Pump it Up

Yoshihito Isogawa’s Lego creations are pretty cool. He recently built a functional centrifugal pump completely out of Legos. The pump could use some work (it leaks for one, but that’s nothing a little sealant couldn’t fix), but it’s a promising reminder that you can create almost anything from those colorful cubes.

Coding with Robots

Robots are no stranger to the classroom, assisting numerous teachers in conveying the basic nuances of engineering. However, the cost of most robots still does not make them viable teaching aids. Even if a teacher is able to afford to buy the parts for one robot, chances are they cannot justify a robot for each student. That’s where CodiBot comes in.

This robot is constructed with quality materials, but only costs $80. Although most young makers may be sad to see that the robot comes preassembled, CodiBot still provides numerous opportunities for coding different types of commands. Hopefully CodiBot helps some young makers discover a passion for coding robots without their parents or teachers needing to break their bank.

Give Your iPhone 7 a Headphone Jack

I wouldn’t know, as I use Android, but plenty of my friends who use iPhones have complained to me that the lack of a headphone jack on Apple’s newest phone is a design flaw. Scotty Allen seems to think the same way, as he has created a way to give the iPhone 7 a headphone jack.

The current design works like a charm, save for that the phone cannot play music through headphones and charge at the same time. However, Allen is already hard at work on a new design that should allow users to simultaneously do both. In the meantime, his current design is open source, so if you’ve been looking for a way to give your iPhone 7 a headphone jack, hack away.