Settle Down With a Good Book This Holiday

There’s nothing like curling up in front of an open fire with a blanket, a mug of hot chocolate—maybe with some floating marshmallows—and a good book. Especially at Christmas time, with the snow settling outside, and something appropriately festive playing in the background.

For me it’s especially good at Christmas because the stress of present-giving is at last over and done with, as I don’t find giving presents an easy task. It’s something I struggle with every year… and usually fail to do well.

I’m especially bad a stocking stuffers, those little gifts that—perhaps more so than the big things—tell your loved ones that you actually know them well. Stocking stuffers are tricky, they have to be small, compact and reasonably cheap.

This book on Instruments for Amateur Space explores what can you measure, and what are your limits when orbiting in space. Learn about what physical quantities you can measure and what types of sensors you can buy or build. It covers the 5 essential design limits as well: power, bandwidth, resolution, computing and legal limitations.

Want to build your own satellite and launch it into space? It’s easier than you may think. DIY Satellite Platforms—the first in a series of four books—shows you the essential steps needed to design a base picosatellite platform — complete with a solar-powered computer-controlled assembly — tough enough to withstand a rocket launch and survive in orbit for three months.

Makers around the globe are building low-cost devices to monitor the environment, and with this hands-on guide, so can you. Through succinct tutorials, illustrations, and clear step-by-step instructions, you’ll learn how to create gadgets for examining the quality of our atmosphere, using Arduino and several inexpensive sensors.

Build a robot that responds to electrical activity in your brain — it’s easy and fun. If you’re familiar with Arduino and have basic mechanical building skills, this book will show you how to construct a robot that plays sounds, blinks lights and reacts to signals from an affordable electroencephalography (EEG) headband. Concentrate and the robot will move. Focus more and it will go faster. Let your mind wander and the robot will slow down.

Environmental Monitoring with Arduino shows you how to use Arduino to create gadgets for measuring noise, weather, electromagnetic interference (EMI), water purity, and more. You’ll also learn how to collect and share your own data, and you can experiment by creating your own variations of the gadgets covered in the book. If you’re new to DIY electronics, the first chapter offers a primer on electronic circuits and Arduino programming.

Build and Arduino-compatible micro controller on a breadboard. This hands-on book on the MintDuino shows you how to build a complete MintDuino project from start to finish. Learn how to assemble the microcontroller on a breadboard (no soldering required), and immediately begin programming it.

We’re on the brink of a lighting revolution with light-emitting diodes — the tiny LEDs you’ve seen in electronic devices for years. With this practical guide, you’ll go behind the scenes to see how and why manufacturers are now designing LED devices to light everything from homes and offices to streets and warehouses.

Making Android Accessories with IOIO will help you create your own electronic devices with the popular IOIO (“yoyo”) board, and control them with your Android phone or tablet. With this concise guide, you’ll get started by building four example projects—after that, the possibilities for making your own fun and creative accessories with Android and IOIO are endless.

A book is an easy stocking stuffer, especially if you can get one that fits well with your loved one’s interests, and this year I’ll be using what I—to the amusement of some of the other MAKE staff—call the “blue series of books” as stocking stuffers. Officially called the “Project Book” series, these thin—around 60 to 80 page—books are cheap, fast reads, covering everything from how to build an Arduino-compatible micro-controller on a breadboard, to how to build and launch a satellite.

They’re also cheap enough that you can order one for yourself without too much guilt, and settle down afterwards in front of that open fire with your hot chocolate.

See all of our Shed picks here.