The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for digital gadgetry, open code, smart hacks, and more. Processing power to the people!
The clever copy some bright marketeer wrote for SparkFun’s Heaterizer XL-3000 is turning into a pretty awesome viral advertisement for the product, and for SparkFun itself. [via Boing Boing]
Being made of glass, however, a proper Kipp generator is an expensive piece of apparatus, with new models costing upwards of $250US as of this writing. However, as the useful gas-generating reactions are usually aqueous, rather than organic, an all-plastic Kipp generator is almost as useful as a glass version. PVC pipe is inexpensive, durable, ubiquitous, and easily and securely joined using cement made for that purpose. Demountable PVC fittings are available in a wide variety of shapes and sizes and can be used to provide the necessary “dismantlability” for loading solid reagent into the device. Presented here is my design for such a low cost Kipp-type generator, with instructions for its construction.
Matt Richardson shows how you can use an old MP3 player to convert a cigar box into an electronic music box. This project makes a wonderful, customized gift for someone you love.
The Pixel Qi screen from the Maker Shed is a revolutionary plug-and-play LCD display technology for your netbook. This one-of-a-kind 10.1-inch display offers two modes, an easy-to-read multimedia color mode, or a crisp low power e-reader mode.
This week in the MAKE Flickr pool we saw:
The title of this image by Sisyu Inu is ARDUINO stitch by hand. I’m impressed, but slightly dubious.
The first good pull from Mike Pantrey’s new Formech 300X vacuum former.
The first good pull from Mike Pantrey’s new Formech 300X vacuum former.
Matthew Buckley’s lovely truncated icosahedran Soccer Ball tape sculpture.
Matthew Buckley’s lovely truncated icosahedran Soccer Ball tape sculpture.
Early pactuator prototype from Jonathan Guberman’s mechanical Pac Man.
Early pactuator prototype from Jonathan Guberman’s mechanical Pac Man.
Becky, Matt, and Limor prepping for Make: Live Episode 02.
Becky, Matt, and Limor prepping for Make: Live Episode 02.
We’re going to be dropping into maintenance mode for about 15-30 minutes, Saturday night at ~11:30pm PST. A new version of WordPress dropped a few days ago and we want to update, as well as take care of some legacy data that’s missing from our pre-2008 posts. We should be back up and running, and […]
Anybody else heard of this Google thing? Apparently it’s some kind of search engine, or something. Anyway, looks like they occasionally riff on their own logo to mark certain events, and today they’ve got a cool one for Thomas Edison’s birthday. Michael Cavna has written a little puff piece at The Washington Post, and I thought this line was worth repeating:
[N]ote to Google: What we really want to see on July 10 is a doodled birthday tribute to the mad and mighty Nikola Tesla, whose electrical developments arguably hold even greater common currency today.
I concur. Yay for Edison’s inventive spirit, worth ethic, and triumph over disability! Boo for his thunder-stealing, cruelty to animals, and Homer-Simpson-esque shameless self-promotion! And yay Tesla, for his genius, humility, and kindness to animals. And yay Google, whatever the heck it may be! [Thanks, Lish!]
