Speaking from experience, I’ve gone through the madness of sorting hundreds of resistors. Even if you have sharp vision and good color discrimination, it’s a challenging chore. Rich Olson of Nothing Labs coded an Iphone app that allows you to simply take a picture of the resistor, drag bar shaped indicators onto the resistor, and receive the ohm value and tolerance of the resistor.
Back in January App Inventor made the transition from Google to the MIT Center for Mobile Learning. For those of you that were interested in using the product going forward, take note that the project has launched the MIT App Inventor Open Beta Preview, which opens the service to anyone with a Google account.
Folks over at House4Hack in Johannesburg are developing an app, called Paint3D, that will allow you to sketch and print directly to a 3D printer from your Android device. Their app allows you to create an extruded polygon mesh that’s then converted to GCode, stored on an SD card, and fed to the printer. Their goal is to create an easy to use 3D tool that does everything from the Android device.
We’ve covered North Carolina maker Scott Freeland‘s work before. His retro-futuristic hand-cast urethane iRetrophone docs are streamlined and functional with a touch of old world craftsmanship and polish. If you don’t have the counter space for the traditional tabletop model, you might find the wall mount version a more convenient option. [via iPhone Savior]
The current iPhone takes a pretty decent macro shot to begin with. If you’re looking to go beyond what you get out-of-box, take a look at the 8x macro lens from Westchester, IL area Etsy user Chris Ferguson.
A good boombox is always handy to have around. If you’ve got access to a ShopBot and a laser cutter, you might want to give this minimalistic iPhone boombox from Instructables user MTriest a go.
What happens to all those mobile device accessories once the device they accessorized have become landfill? That’s what the folks at Berlin’s weltunit were thinking when they made these laser-cut cardboard device stands. They’re available for both iPad and iPhone form factors and made using recycled cardboard and carbon neutral energy.
