The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for bikes, rockets, R/C vehicles, toys and other diversions.
It used to be that having your own quadrotor drone was cutting edge. Now that the average joe can pick one up at their local mall for a couple hundred bucks means that you’ve got to step your game up if you don’t want to be seen as pedestrian. That’s why today’s aspiring UAV enthusiasts are working with swarms. Not just any swarms either, but swarms of nano-quadrotors. These days, budget conscious drone makers are going small to cut costs and shed ounces.
Worldwide Cycling Atlas produced this excellent video about Maya Pedal Asociación, a Guatemalan organization which has been repurposing bicycles into machines since 1997. Created because of the expense and scarcity of electricity in the municipality of San Andrés Itzapa, their Bicimáquinas are pedal-powered pumps, blenders, threshing machines, and washing machines. They’re doing great work and […]
Andrew and his brother built this great ping-pong ball launcher out of salvaged and repurposed parts. I especially like the 13-ball hopper made from two paper towel tubes taped together, and the clever K’Nex-controlled release mechanism. The launcher is controlled with an Arduino connected to a computer and activated via a remote desktop app from […]
Two young makers from Toronto, Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, both age 17, successfully sent a Lego minifig and four cameras to roughly 78,000 feet elevation on a homemade weather balloon. After a 97-minute flight, the balloon returned to Earth with great footage of the journey. Inspired by a similar project done by MIT students, […]
MAKE pal Dino Segovis brings us this handy tutorial on running a stepper motor in “reverse,” i.e. turning the shaft mechanically in order to generate electrical power, instead of the normal usage. He writes: Any electric motor will also output a voltage when it’s freely spinning. Stepper motors are much better at this because they […]
According to Guinness Book of World Records Gamer’s Edition 2012 the team of engineering students Benjamin Allen, Stephen van’t Hof, and Michel Verhulst from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands have created the Worlds Largest Game Controller. Weighing in at 265 pounds, measuring 12ft X 5ft 3 in X 1ft 8 in, costing […]
Our maker this week is Bob Knetzger, MAKE’s Toy Inventor’s Notebook columnist.
