The first time I saw a Thing-a-ma Kit in person was at the Bent Festival in NYC. Ever since then I have wanted to build one for myself. That was about a year ago, and I finally have the opportunity to put one together. I was surprised at how many parts there are in the […]
I’m converting a Twitchie kit into a finger-controlled robot arm. I built a little servo breakout on some perfboard, and added pin headers to plug a flex sensor into it, making a voltage divider circuit for the Arduino. This means the angle of the servos changes (rapidly!) as you bend the sensor. I’ll be attaching […]
EMS Labs decided to give Jay Clegg’s excellent Peggy video hack a go and documented the results. The updated version of the project requires a Peggy 2 board (with all 625 LEDs installed), an Arduino (for Serial to I2C data conversion), and a computer running Processing with a video source. I’m thinking this is probably […]
Australian crafter Louise Elliott has adorable, cheery cloth animal and doll kits available on her site. Each Animal of the World is adorned with ethnic patterns from its country of origin. There’s Boris the Russian bear, Danilo Donkey from Portugal, Chandra Tiger from Bengal, and a whole zoo of others. Louise also offers begging-to-be-colored coloring […]
Oomlout sells a nifty $20 kit to mechanically control a light switch using an Arduino. No need to play with the wiring just bolts onto any standard light switch. Doesn’t interfere with normal operation. (there’s still room to flip the switch on and off manually) The project possibilties are endless. (automatic nightlight, motion sensing, controlling […]
Gakken’s Aurorarium is a fun and easy to build LED light kit available in the Maker Shed. It would be a great first-time project to make with your kids. You don’t even need any tools to build the Aurorarium. All you need are (4) AA batteries and a little time for assembly. Check out all […]
I finally put together my Newton’s Reflecting Telescope Kit by Gakken. It was a lot of fun to build and it works great. This kit would be a perfect gift for anyone getting into astronomy. By the time I was finished, I had a really good understanding of how these types of telescopes work. A […]
