How-To: LED VU-Meter Necktie
Check out Becky’s latest wearables project over at adafruit. With special guest appearance by Collin Cunningham.
Technology
HeatSync Labs Hosts Arduino Hackathon
Phoenix’s HeatSync Labs will host HackPHX Arduino, an all-day and all-night Arduino hackathon tomorrow, March 2, from 10am-10:15pm. Here’s how it will go down: In a ode to Iron Chef, 50 participants will be split into 10 teams for 12 hours to create something awesome from an Arduino, a “secret ingredient,” and the hackerspace’s resources. The teams will compete for more than $4,000 in prizes and giveaways. Expect music, robots, interactive light, wearable electronics, and more. Tickets are sold out but the the event will be live streamed
Bartendro Make me a Drink
MAKE’s next issue is about to head to the printer and will hit newsstands April 23. In it, we’ll feature the “water-to-wine cooler” project, a device created by drink makers Robert Kaye and Pierre Michael of Party Robotics that seems to turn water into wine. Apparently fascinated by fluid dynamics and automatic alcoholic beverages, the duo has now launched a campaign for Bartendro on Kickstarter. Bartendro uses peristaltic pumps and CNC milled parts that they say precisely dispenses cocktail and after cocktail within one mililiter of accuracy
Jepson’s Stepson’s Cinder-Block Throwing Robot
Big Dog’s learned how to throw cinder blocks. While this could make for a fun game of catch, I think this would be pretty useful if you needed to move some supplies to the top of a hill or building quickly.
Challenge the Kids, Challenge Yourself
I had twenty-four kids to walk through a detailed robot kit build. I thought we’d get through the physical build in one or two classes, and have two classes to play with the circuit and make the robot do different things. Boy, did I mis-judge things. By the end of the first class, we had barely managed to finish the first two steps of the build. I went home and collapsed for a bit. I was exhausted and not a little bit panicked.
Ice Tube Clock Kit – Surplus Soviet Goodness
In Soviet Russia you don’t tell time. Time is told to you with a vacuum tube! Relive the Cold War (at least the neat tech part of it) with Adafuit’s Ice Tube Clock Kit. It’s this week’s Deal of the Week in the Maker Shed so don’t miss out!
Creating Impressive 3D Effects with the Lynx A
What happens when a few of the engineers at Lynx Laboratories decide to enter a statewide hackathan and make a real-time, interactive music visualizer with our device? Well, we pumped up the Daft Punk, invited some friends over, and ended up with a pretty trippy video.