Pretty interesting low cost way of accessing NASA Earth observing satellites. Sophisticated signal processing techniques and simple proof-of-principle antenna arrays built from PVC pipe, aluminum foil and copper wire could revolutionize the way NASA obtains data from its Earth observing satellites. Link.
Neat, you type in words (like MAKE) and it’ll play back the letters as morse code, musically- here’s an example (MP3). We covered SMS vs Morse code earlier this week, banner year for the dot dash! These patterns are very much like International Morse Code — a method of encoding each letter and number into short and long sounds called dots and dashes. In this activity, you can compose and play your own rhythmic patterns using International Morse Code. [via] Link.
The Das keyboard is a pretty cool geeked out keyboard without letters on the keys- oddly enough I used an unmarked keyboard in the past during a project, the CEO of the company kept wanting to change things on the server, and the IT staff used a keyboard like this so he couldn’t- any way here’s a DIY version if you don’t want to pay the $80. [via] Link.
Another homebrew MP3 project from awhile back…Procyon MP3 is a hardware MPEG 1 Layer 3 (MP3) audio player which supports user-controlled playback of MP3 files stored on a typical IDE hard disk connected to the device. With the emergence of MP3 as a popular standard for storing, playing, and exchanging music, droves of electronics and computer companies have introduced both portable and desktop MP3 player devices into the consumer market. The rise of MP3 has also produced dozens of personal engineering projects like this one. Link.
Tonepad is dedicated to providing ready-to-use layouts for effects and amplifier projects to the do-it-yourself music community. All layouts are provided free of charge and are subject to the limitations set forth on our legal page. Parts are available from Small Bear Electronics, and ready-made PCBs for many projects are now available directly through tonepad. Link.
MAKE was on the Canadian DIY show 94.9 CHRW- Audiozine wants to embody the spirit of DIY Culture – an attitude of independence and self-reliance. Often embraced by feminists, “doing-it-yourself” is also often politically motivated, although DIY-ers often just want to save money, or to be crafty. We talked about Summer fun. Link.
Tony writes “I managed to write a perl script to do the Garmin GPS Overlay on an arbitrary satellite image. You can get ridiculously high resolution, color satellite orthoimages from seamless.usgs.gov, and then overlay the tracks on the image with PerlMagick. My PerlMagick script to do this is here“. I use the same GPS Tony has, the Garmin Forunner- nice work! Link.
