DIY Projects

Mark Rehorst’s projects page…

Mark Rehorst’s projects page…

Interior Of Finished Amp SmallMark writes “I have a lot of different interests and I love to figure out how to make things myself.” Here are his project, lots to check out! – DIY Electrostatic Loudspeaker Construction, Tree House, Loft Bed Made From PVC Water Pipe, Stroboscopic Microscope Illuminator, Stereo Amplifier Based On LM3886 Chips, Stretched Membrane Mirror – a work in progress, DIY Full Suspension Carbon Fiber Recumbent Bicycle, DIY Binaural Microphone, Insect Photos and an Allied Radio SX-190 Short Wave Radio Receiver Link.

Newton MP3 player…

Newton MP3 player…

91374328 5Eb0A1312B MMAKE Flickr photo pool member MH2 made an Apple Newton MP3 player, he writes “I download carefully prepared mp3 files to my outdated Newton MP 2100… I set up the 2100 to shut down after 10 minutes. Ten minutes each night, then I sleep. Of course the 2100 is no iPod. Music can’t be cut up as conveniently in two minute pieces as large audio book files, but above 900 KB (which is approx. 3,5 min @ 22050 Hz mono 32 kbps) transfer to the Newton gets complicated. Of course the internal speaker has only poor audio quality compared to an iPod. Or any other decent mp3 player, that is.” Link.

Food hacking with Marc Powell

Food hacking with Marc Powell

86328126 C17Cb2B9C6 TMarc Powell gave an AMAZING talk (and made hacked up dessert for over 100 people at his Food Hacker’s Guide to Molecular Gastronomy at Dorkbot SF. Mark has a hacker’s skill and tinkering mindset with organic chemistry and enthusiastically uses liquid nitrogen, low cost materials and centrifuges for his kitchen. He showed how to use “meat glue”, make powdered yogurt and reveled all the crazy things restaurants are doing. Marc is a hacker chef based out of San Francisco’s only hacker bed and breakfast, Unicorn Precinct XIII. He apprenticed in the research kitchen of Heston Blumenthal’s Michelin starred restaurant The Fat Duck. Dorkbot-SF. Link. Flickr photos from his site and from the talk. Update: More photos from Scott Beale.

Fixing a dying power supply…

Fixing a dying power supply…

SupplySid on the Hacks site writes up a good simple how to/tip – “My LCD display wouldn’t come on, it would just flicker. The LED on its external power supply was steady on when it wasn’t plugged into the monitor. When I did plug it in, the LED blinked at the rate of 2x per second. Measuring the power coming out of this supply using my multimeter, I saw that the power level wasn’t steady — it was pulsing slightly (about 2x per second). This was while unplugged from the monitor. Found a new power supply on eBay, and now everything’s fine.” Link. On a related note, the RSS feed on hacks site is awesome.

Phoning It In From ETel – Radio Handi Makes Its Debut

Phoning It In From ETel – Radio Handi Makes Its Debut

Letterbox2Brian McConnell on the Etel blog writes “Radio Handi enables people to create voice communities around any subject, place of interest or peer group, and to telecast live audio from MP3 feeds or conference phones. You can create a message board and party line for your club, for people who share an interest, or for your friends. With it, you can create an open party line that people can dial into from all over the world (30+ countries and 1 VoIP network to start with, much more to come). It’s also a great platform for ad hoc broadcasting. Just hook a microphone up to a Mac running Gizmo, and you can beam a live audio feed into a conference room that people can then dial into from all over the world (watch for a series of how-tos on ad hoc telecasting and other topics later this week).” [via] Link.

DIY Cellphone door opener

DIY Cellphone door opener

AutoitZerocool60544 in the AutoIT forums writes about a PC control project using a browser or cell phone “I use lego mindstorms’ motors, they don’t a lot of torque but I geared them down to be a little slower but stronger. The water bottles are the counter weights so their is always tension on the line. There are two motors on either side. (one near the closed position and one near the open position).” [via] Link.

HOW TO – Make a homemade solar water heater

Screenshot 02-1Weber decided to start construction of his house by building a homemade solar water heater… “It took a lot of time and sifting, but I was finally able to devise a simple and inexpensive water warmer that I knew “us regular folks” would be able to build. In fact, my design involves only three steps: First, build a glass-covered wood “hot box” to catch the sun’s heat. Second, install a manifold of copper water pipes–inside this collector box–so the gathered warmth will heat water. Third, hook the outlets from the manifold to a storage tank (this container should be set above the heat collector) so the thermosiphon principle will move water from the collector to the tank.” Thanks Star! Link.