I’ve been looking forward to Art Hack Day for many months now, and it’s finally here this weekend in Brooklyn! For the 50+ artist/hacker participants it’s actually a 3-day long “happening” of collective creativity and DIY expression that will culminate at 7pm on Saturday, January 28th, with a public exhibition of all of their fabrications. […]
Yesterday I mentioned MIT’s soon-to-be-released open-courseware materials detailing a DIY phrased radar array radar system built from pegboard and wi-fi antennae. The project, from MIT engineers Drs. Bradley Perry, Jonathan Paul Kitchens, Patrick Bell, Jeffrey Herd, and Greg Charvat produces ‘radar video’ at about three frames per second. Greg just e-mailed me a link to […]
I love it when people use humble PVC as a project enclosure. In this case, Alex Avtanski of San Jose, CA, built this DIY Magnetometer to detect and measure magnetic storms. The activity of the Sun varies on a cycle with a period of approximately 11 years. Periods of low solar activity are followed by […]
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 […]
In a basic Arduino sketch, if you want to take action based on the status of a digital input pin, you’d check the state of the pin repeatedly until a particular condition is met. However, as your sketches become increasingly complex, you’ll find that it’s not always the best way to do this. EngBlaze posted […]
If you produce music using a computer and off the shelf gear isn’t cutting it for you, check out FuzzyWobble‘s Framework For Making Affordable & Stylish Modular Controllers instructable and build yourself the controller you’ve always wanted. Under the hood he’s using a Teensyduino to act as native MIDI/USB/HID device, while the exterior is laser […]
As Advanced Materials Month enters its final week, we’re gathering together some of the coolest projects from the dusty archives of MAKE. Next up, projects using electro-luminescent wire! Above, check out this bicycle with pedal-powered EL wire!
