The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for bikes, rockets, R/C vehicles, toys and other diversions.
MAKE subscriber Clinton Blackmore of Alberta wrote in to share a project he’s working on: NXT I2C Devices for Arduino, which aims to let you control Lego actuators and sensors using a Mindsensors motor multiplexer (NXTMMX) controlled by an Arduino — no NXT brick required. Oh man. I love the NXT, but I really like […]
DBC writes – The USB Bike Generator is a small bike mounted electricity producing device optimized to provide power for two USB ports. There are so many small electronics that can be powered or charged from a USB connection it only makes since that people might want to do this while riding a bike. The […]
Alex Eylar’s “Fall of the House of Escher” MOC adds a logical twist to the Escher classic. The best part? The astronauts are in old skool Classic Space suits. Excellent! [Via The Brothers Brick]
Mathematician and artist George Hart (who writes our Math Monday column), created a cool set of six building blocks by slicing up and combining bits of these rhombic dodecahedra. Theoretically, the same set of blocks can be used to build tetrahedra and octahedra of any size. Thingiverse user Lenbok printed a set on a MakerBot. George’s are printed in nylon using selective laser sintering, and, as he points out, look a lot like fancy sugar cubes. I suppose you could print them on a CandyFab and make them actual sugar cubes. Or sugar Voronoi cells, rather.
FurGots on Craftster made a plush Hobbes, from the comic Calvin & Hobbes. In only 3 hours! I like his serious face. She says: After a conversation with my friend, who dressed up as “Calvin” for Halloween, I got around to thinking…. it would be awfully neat to make a Hobbes stuffed animal. With all […]
>The steps outlined here will show you how to modify a standard Magic 8 Ball to replace the normal message icosahedron with a OLED screen, and how to add wireless microcontroller, and accelerometer. The screen is submersed in the normal Magic 8 Ball goo so that all the original aesthetics are preserved. The messages can be reprogrammed wirelessly without having to open the 8 Ball. The accelerometer detects when the 8 Ball is in use (e.g. tipped from resting to looking through the Magic Hole) and signals the microcontroller to turn on screen and fade in the messages.
Well, OK, “I” made it in the sense that I watched my mother make it and (I think) she let me poke some of the holes with a fork. But of course she gave me all the credit. A great memory, for both of us, that would have been lost if not for the magic of the internet. The Sith Lord’s original recipe appears in 1979’s Darth Vader Activity Book. [via Boing! Moreover, Boing!]
