Slashdot has a post about Michael Golembewski’s homemade digital camera projects. He writes – “For the past three years, I’ve been taking apart cheap secondhand flatbed scanners and turning them into homemade large format digital cameras. They are well over 100 mexapixel in resolution, and produce results that are both similar to and significantly different from traditional digital and conventional cameras.” [via] Link.
TTF’s Instructable on making a cool Japanese boken – “Here I describe the method for making a boken, which is a Japanese wooden sword. The skill level required using this method is relatively low. A more challenging option would be to do this only using hand-tools. I suggest that you borrow or buy a boken before you start, so you can get the feel and see the details of what you are making. It will also help you set up the curvature of the one you create. Hopefully you are already training with one at some level, so you have an understanding of the balance it should have. Ganbate kudasai (Japanese for good luck).” Link.
Here’s a Dance-Dance-Revolution style USB mat you can get from Kraft (the macaroni and cheese folks) for only $10. This is a pretty good deal and you could likely turn this into all sorts of controllers and as parts for projects. I bet it will even work with the open source version of DDR. So, grab one while you can and they’re available. [via via] Link.
Poulw has a good guitar stand how-to on Instructables – “A simple and cheap stand for one or more guitars. Takes maybe two hours to build. The Mod is based on imarunner2’s pvc bike rack. This is a 4 guitar version. I bought two 10 foot 3/4 inch pvc pipes and had them cut in half at the store. 11 3/4 “T” connectors 6 elbows 5 caps 2 sections of self adhesive insulating pipe foam. Total cost was less than 30 dollars. Similiarly manufactered items go for $50 to $100 in music shops.” Link.
Mostlyaudio’s article about building the AudioNote Kit1 PQ Signature Edition SET amplifier. “This kit will build a very high quality Single-Ended, Class A, directly heated triode amplifier. The amplifier will support a single line source (unless a pre-amp is used that will support more sources) as it incorporates a volume control. It has a class A output of 8watts per channel. Don’t be put off by this seemingly low wattage as it is every bit as loud, position for position, as my my old 40W Linn solid state amplifier was through the same speakers. It also has an input impedance of around 100K which is more than ample for a huge range of source components.” Link.
Lavere writes “Logitech is selling a great webcam with pan and tilt functions (called “Orbit”, about $120). However, they really dropped the ball with the software: you can’t pan and tilt the cam via the Internet. Enter LogiSphere. Third party developer Stefan Seiz out of Switzerland has written a great program that is a full-blown web server that will pan and tilt the Orbit through a web interface, deliver web-configurable video streams, write full log files, password-protect access and more. It’s a really slick, sweet app. Great for DIY security or your web-accessible robot (screenshots). I used this to keep an eye on my cats while I was on vacation. I could make sure their feeders were working and pan over to seem them sleeping. The cats would perk up when they heard the motors moving the camera and I could see them looking at the camera.” Link.
Big Blue Saw turns CAD files, DXF (12) PNG and now GIF files into real parts using state of the art robotic tools. If you design things and want to bring to your creations to the physical world these folks can turn it into steel, aluminum and acrylic. [