Bunnie’s blog points out a rather sweet hack by xobs which swaps Chumby’s LCD display for TV output. It requires new firmware + minimal hardware modding – def seems worth it for those looking for bigger display options. Read more in the Chumby wiki. In the Maker Shed: Chumby Guts
When you connect an odd number of digital logic inverters in a ring, you’ll get a Ring Oscillator – one of the simplest types. This configuration has no stable state, so the 1s and 0s chase each other around the ring, creating oscillations. Normally this isn’t easy to visualize, but Make Flickr Pool contributor ellindsey000 […]
Thessia Machado‘s Interference – an interactive sculpture/instrument made with harvested electronic parts. You can modulate both the sounds and the images by shading the light on the photocells. The lcd screen (from a discarded pda) is excited directly by the voltage output from the oscillator. [via Califaudio]
Eventually somebody looses track of what glass their drinking out of at almost every dinner party I attend. That’s what those little wine charms are for. I really dig this LED wine charm instructable from billr. They’re geeky, festive, and yet another excuse to add an LED to something that would otherwise forgo illumination.
If you’ve got a jailbroken iPhone and want to use a bluetooth keyboard with it you can now download BTstack Keyboard in the Cydia Store.
Clever design from Thingiverse user vik, which lets you mount and simultaneously fire a devastating barrage of nine party poppers at unsuspecting revelers. “I should’ve marked it with FRONT TOWARD FRIENDS,” he comments.
Ordinary copy paper can be made highly conductive by treating it with a simple water-based dispersion of carbon nanotubes. Bing Hu and other graduate students under Stanford researcher Yi Cui published a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) describing the use of such conductive paper to create high-performing prototype supercapacitors, batteries, and fuel cells. He also studied the wear resistance of the nanotube ink and found that it bonds very tightly to the paper; his data show that soaking, rinsing, and wringing-out in water does not significantly affect the properties of the treated paper. The supplementary information for his PNAS paper is freely available for download and describes his experimental methods in detail, including the recipe for his ink and the trick of reloading a commercial highlighter with it. [via Science Daily]
