When I first heard about it (I work with its creator, Ryan Mitchell) I figured it was more gimmicky and wasn’t really something that I’d use for an extended amount of time. However, after just one day of having it on my 11″ MacBook Air, I’m finding it to be very useful, and I’m also getting a lot of people telling me how innovative it is.
Building robots is easy if you have the right parts. This Make: Project shows you how using readily available items from the Maker Shed. All you need is a 4WD platform, a motor shield, a PING))) sensor, and an Arduino Uno. Put everything together, load the code, and you’ll have a great robot platform to build from. Good job Nick!
A “beautiful failure” from Trammell Hudson, writing on the NYC Resistor blog. Also a beautiful phrase, that. I shall be adopting it henceforth.
Mycroft Milverton used an Arduino and a Wave Shield to create the Radio Arduino Classic Edition, a retrofitted vacuum tube radio that plays different classic radio tracks when it’s tuned. The device plays 60 tracks in normal mode, but also has an easter egg mode, which can play thousands of tracks. Be sure to check out Mycroft’s original Radio Arduino as well; it’s built in the shell of an Oscar Belle two band transistor radio from the 1960′s.
I’m beginning to suspect an October conspiracy: While last week’s Flickr pool submissions, on average, had a distinctly orange hue, this week they are distinctly black. And I’ll give dollars to donuts that next week, sure as clockwork, we’ll start to see actual jack-o-lanterns. Our featured image this week is cosplayer JiaJem,as “Jack,” from Mass Effect 2, sporting Shawn Thorsson’s sweet “Predator Heavy Pistol” replica prop.
When a battery operated device runs out of juice, most of us reach for a fresh pair of AA’s. But when his daughter’s electronic toy piano had drained its batteries, Dominik instead installed a hand-cranked dynamo to power the instrument ad infinitum. He hacked apart an Ikea flashlight to co-opt its cranked generator and installed it inside his daughter’s plaything. Now a little bit of elbow grease keeps the tunes coming while saving the environment and a little bit of money to boot.
Hobbyist electronics projects need robust, reliable power supplies for prototyping and testing. I learned how to build this circuit from the Basic Analog Circuits class at ITP taught by Eric Rosenthal, but took it several steps further in building a solid enclosure and integrating a voltage meter. Now it lives on my desk, ready to power most small projects I’m working on, ranging from 0 – 24 volts and up to two amps. You can learn all about how to make one yourself using this Make: Projects tutorial.
