Technology

Best of MAKE: My Ten For 2011

Best of MAKE: My Ten For 2011

I took some free time over the break to review the stuff I covered last year and pick out about 50 personal faves. Then I went back through that list and produced this highly unscientific “Top 10” by bubble sort. Looking at it, now, I’ve learned some things about my own taste: 1) I like projects that do a lot with a little. 2) I like projects that…

Fab Lab Boombox

Fab Lab Boombox

MIT student Matthew Keeter designed and built this sweet little portable music player for his final project in Neil Gershenfeld’s famous How to Make (almost) Anything class. The case, a union of three octagonal prisms, is laser-cut from 5.2mm plywood, and features a five-“button” capacitive touch-sensing control panel. The music is stored on an SD card, loaded in the back of the player. The PCB is two-sided, and was cut with a robot PCB mill. All source files are provided.

MAKE Flickr Pool Holiday Roundup

MAKE Flickr Pool Holiday Roundup

It’s been two weeks since we last visited the MAKE Flickr pool, and the long break (together with a lot of free time for a lot of clever, creative people with a lot of great new toys) has left it fairly bursting with great shots—even moreso than usual, which is hard enough to do justice in just seven selections. As usual, I’m going to try to hit some of the best project photography in standalone posts during the week, so if you’re disappointed to see your fantastic Flickr submissions missing from those gathered below, please bear with me and stay tuned. And thanks, as always, for sending ’em along.

Luminch One Offers Lumens by the Inch

I really dig Luminch One, an excellent Make: Project by Francisco Castro:

Luminch One is an interactive lamp controlled by the movements of your hand. Wave your hand over it to turn it on or off, or move your hand up or down above it to change its brightness. Inside the lamp, an Arduino hooked to an infrared distance sensor tracks your hand and sets the state and the brightness of the LED lamp.