DIY Projects

HOW TO – Inverted Indoor Gardening

HOW TO – Inverted Indoor Gardening

PlantsMatt writes – “Like many people I enjoy gardening and growing houseplants. While my wife and I have a large garden during the summer months I have often thought about how it would be nice to grow things such as tomatos and beans indoors during the winter months. Now I could have the floors lined with even more pots and planters than I do now but as much as my wife likes the movie I don’t think she would appreciate the house having that little shop of horrors decor.” Here’s an inverted hanging planter constructed from a 2 liter soda bottle. I plan on growing tomatoes indoors in addition to the beans which I already have growing in one.” Link.

HOW TO – Campfire Building

HOW TO – Campfire Building

Img 2290Clarke writes – “Building a campfire is, for many, an elusive skill. Books show us tidy pictures of tepees and log cabins, extol the merits of exotic fire starters and generally make the job unnecessarily complicated. This little film explains how to collect the three things needed to build a fire; tinder, kindling and fuel. Gathering the right kind of material in sufficient quantities assures quick, reliable campfire.” Link.

HOW TO – Undervolt a laptop

HOW TO – Undervolt a laptop

LaptopsFredrik writes – “There are lots of CPUs on the market that can be run at a lower voltage than what they are specified to. Especially the kind of low power consuming CPUs found in laptops. You’ll be surprised when you see the results of undervolting your CPU. In this article we will look further on how you can undervolt the CPU of a modern laptop without loosing performance or stability. Our test-system is an Acer Aspire 5021WLMi which appear to be a good computer to undervolt.” [via] Link.

Set up a portable XM Radio in your house…

Set up a portable XM Radio in your house…

Roady2 Pop 1Dissident75 shows how to set up a cheap xm radio in your house without buying the “home kit”. All done with cheaper/free parts. “This weekend I was bored and needed to do something. I had purchased a Roady2 XM Reciever for a exgirlfriend but broke up with her before giving it to her. Seemed like a shame to let it go to waste, and I had been curious about satellite radio for a while. Examining the package, it was a standard car install kit. Including the receiver, the antenna, 2 types of mounts (vent and pedestal), a tape adapter, dc power supply (cig lighter), and a few colored faceplate accents. Standard fare really. Useful for a car install but useless for a house install.” Link. In MAKE volume 01 we show how to make your own battery pack too (for XM radios).