Instructables

How-To: Set Up a Basement PCB Fab & Use It To Make a POV Business Card

This Instructable from Jared Foster doesn’t just show you how to make his cool persistence-of-vision business card. It takes you through the construction of a circulating etch tank, the modification of a laminating machine to make a stencil applicator, the assembly of a controller to turn a toaster into a reflow oven, and the cobbling-together of a vacuum pickup tool for SMT components. And then you get some practice using all that cool stuff making a POV business card. It even comes with obligatory American Psycho allusions.

Continue Reading March 22nd, 2011 Sean Michael Ragan2

Junkbot Dispenses Candy

Nascent Appleton, WI, hackerspace DHMN created this candy dispenser out of junk. It uses everything from CD jewel cases to a paper towel tube to a motor harvested from an iRobot Scooba. Apparently 90% of the build was done by kids ages 5-13.

Continue Reading March 21st, 2011 John Baichtal

Pocket Laser Engraver

Check out this tiny laser cutter from instructables user Groover. Using easily sourced and salvaged parts including and a couple optical drives and an Arduino, Groover was able to assemble a unit that, though low power, is able to mark wood and cut paper.

Continue Reading March 15th, 2011 Adam Flaherty36

How-To: Pop Rocks

If you have a little time and a lot of nostalgia for crackling candy, learn to make your own Pop Rocks with this Instructable from chickflix. Most of the ingredients are easy to find, and you’ll need a blunt object such as a hammer to break them up into pebbles. Enjoy your freshly-made candy while […]

Continue Reading March 12th, 2011 Matt Richardson

Hack an NES into A USB Drive Dock for Retro Data Storage

Instructible user fungus amungus turned his broken Nintendo Entertainment System into a flash drive dock and modded his game cartridges with 8GB flash drives. Now when he inserts the game carts into the NES, the drives appear on his desktop. As a nice touch, he added custom icons for each drive so that he knows […]

Continue Reading March 9th, 2011 Matt Richardson6

Bluetooth Handset Glove

Check out this fun Bluetooth Handset Glove from Rachel over at Instructables. Place and receive calls with internationally recognized hand gestures. Roaming fees may apply.

Continue Reading March 9th, 2011 Adam Flaherty

Bot Blows Really Big Bubbles

I held off on “giant,” because, well, there’s really big, and then there’s giant. And, as cool as your Arduino-brained bubble blowing robot is, Instructables user zvizvi, the bubbles it blows are not truly giant IMNSHO. Check out zvizvi’s and the other winning entries in Instructables’ recent Microcontroller Contest.

Continue Reading March 4th, 2011 Sean Michael Ragan2