Pet owners who want to spend a day hiking, at the beach, shopping at the mall or even a weekend far from home can build an automatic pet feeder to dispense water and dry food at a preset time. Tom Thompson, Julie Redmond, Curtis Siebenaller and Nathan Woodworth at Colorado State University explain how to combine electronic and mechanical devices to do just that.
Another great entry in our Gadget Freak Design Contest! Stephen Melvin of Sure Electronics retrofit his DeWalt DC527 area work light with two high-brightness 10W LEDs instead of the 13W CFL it is designed to use. Guesstimating from the photos I’d say he’s getting about 100W worth of light, by incandescent standards, out of the mod.
My project is a portable greenhouse / seed starter that has high tech features and collapses for easy storage. Since a standard greenhouse can overheat if it is closed up or get too cold if it is opened up, mine includes an automatic vent that controls to a user selectable temperature. The user first selects a temperature between 60 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit, by 5 degree increments. Then the greenhouse’s built in sensors and microcontroller automatically adjust how much the vent is opened or closed to help maintain that temperature. And because of its ultra low power design the whole thing can run 24/7 for about a month on just four penlight (AA) batteries!
Subscribe to the MAKE Podcast in iTunes, download the m4v video directly, or watch it on YouTube and Vimeo. Competitors in this year’s Gowanus Studio Space Jell-O Mold Competition brought their best and really wowed the judges (including me!) on a hot night in Brooklyn last month. The grand prize winner was Shelly Sable for […]
>The steps outlined here will show you how to modify a standard Magic 8 Ball to replace the normal message icosahedron with a OLED screen, and how to add wireless microcontroller, and accelerometer. The screen is submersed in the normal Magic 8 Ball goo so that all the original aesthetics are preserved. The messages can be reprogrammed wirelessly without having to open the 8 Ball. The accelerometer detects when the 8 Ball is in use (e.g. tipped from resting to looking through the Magic Hole) and signals the microcontroller to turn on screen and fade in the messages.
Here is a competition with a unique twist. The inspiration and creativity of Wired Magazine’s Geek Dad merges with Ponoko’s making system and electronic gadgetry from SparkFun in this call for entries. A panel of judges from Ponoko and GeekDad will choose ten finalists, and then the overall winner will be decided in a public […]
The best stellar photography requires long exposure times to capture the dimmer stars. The problem with long exposures of the night sky, of course, is that it moves. Or rather, it appears to move. So if you don’t have some way of keeping your camera pointed at the same location over the course of the exposure, you get “trailing.” Eric Chesak built this impressive star-tracking camera mount bracket and won a Design News contest back in March with it.
