Plastination
Here’s another beautiful photo essay by Marc Steinmetz – plastination by Gunther von Hagen. It’s fascinating and somewhat disturbing – don’t click through if you’re squeamish. Here’s a short explanation of the process.
Science
DIY science is the perfect way to use your creative skills and learn something new. With the right supplies, some determination, and a curious mind, you can create amazing experiments that open up a whole world of possibilities. At home-made laboratories or tech workshops, makers from all backgrounds can explore new ideas by finding ways to study their environment in novel ways – allowing them to make breathtaking discoveries!
Use a Wii Fit balance board to control a robot in the real world
This video shows a Wii Fit Balance Board controlling a “SkyBot” toy robot to move around a platform. Check out the link below to the downloadable Python source code for this hack and lots of good details on how it was built. Wii Board
Rotary Encoders & How to decode them
This is a nice article on how to identify and extract rotary encoders. It then explores how to decode your rotary encoder and has a little lesson on Quadrature Encoding. It does not go into extreme detail, but there is a lot of useful information. Some recent stereos do, especially ugly boom boxes and (non-ugly) […]
PVC Pipe & duct tape canoe
Ben writes- It’s amazing how a simple idea can take on a life of its own once you start. Have a desire to build a boat for fishing at your local lakes and a bunch of American Ingenuity? Build a boat out of things American, Duct Tape, PVC pipe, and plastic. I wanted a boat […]
“Ghost-imaging”
Huh, so here’s a good use for entangled photons.. ghost-imaging via Wired. Investigators funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research are conducting research under the name of “ghost-imaging,” where a visual image of an object is created by means of light that has never interacted with the object. The new technology may result […]
Quadcopters video
Via DIY Drones comes this video of the Stanford STARMAC (Stanford Testbed of Autonomous Rotorcraft for Multi-Agent) quadcopters: STARMAC, the Stanford Testbed of Autonomous Rotorcraft for Multi-Agent is a testbed of 6 quadrotor helicopter unmanned aerial vehicles that fly indoors and outdoors to experiment with autonomous agent algorithms. This video presents an overview of the […]
Dynohub multi-pole alternator
Gotwind is a Ben Jandrell’s (Shropshire, England) DIY site for renewable energy projects. The site has a number of cool projects and technical info and tutorials. Here’s an excerpt from his page on the Sturmey Archer GH6 Dynohub: The Sturmey Archer GH6 Dynohub was designed as a means of generating electrical lighting power for bicycles […]