Make a Duct Tape Electric Rose
A rose is a rose, unless it’s duct tape, electric LED rose.
kitmakers
EMSL Egg-Bot kit drops this month
I’m generally not much of a kit-buyer, but it seems like each one Windell and Lenore release is better than the last. They almost had me with the Bulbdial clock; I will probably not be able to resist the new Egg-Bot kit. They’re taking preorders now, and the first kits are supposed to ship at the end of this month. Looks like new orders are already backed up into October.
DIY server room monitoring
Jared Bouck is the driving force behind Sprout Board, an Arduino breakout board that lets you plug in a Duemilanove and a shield and provides a panel-mount set of screw terminals, all in a rack-mountable form factor. The prototype application for the SproutBoard is a DIY server room monitor that can be configured to provide remote temperature and humidity, motion, liquid water, smoke, room entry, and mains power monitoring. Local monitoring options include an LCD display and an audio alarm module. They’ll sell you the Sprout Board itself, in kit form, for $50, or a complete bare-bones server monitor with a fully assembled and tested Spout Board, an Arduino, an Ethernet Shield, a serial LCD display, a wall mount chassis, and a temperature/humidity sensor board for $250, which is about 1/5th the price of a comparable commercial system.
Kits & Kitmakers: Al Linke’s DIY Magic Mirror
Al Linke has just thrown down the gauntlet by entering his DIY Magic Mirror in our Gadget Freak Design contest! Al’s prototype won the Tech Grand Prize in our 2008 DIY Halloween Contest, and the kit he’s developed is for sale now in Makers Market. It features a Sleeping-Beauty style floating, talking face in a gilt-framed mirror with an amazingly wide variety of integrated and integrable functions–even a breathalyzer!
Things heat up for OpenPCR project
Just last week we mentioned the OpenPCR project and included a link to their Kickstarter page. Throughout the week support for the project poured in from all over the Internet and eventually the project surpassed their initial target. Then on Friday the project hit a snag. The heated lid that warms the top of the tubes kept burning out. That’s when Tito Jankowski decided to post a question soliciting feedback on O’Reilly Answers.
Kits & Kitmakers: Andrew Argyle’s Sputnik I Nixie Clock
Andrew Argyle’s original Sputnik I clock was featured way back in MAKE Volume 03. Since then Andrew, aka GlowingTech, has done very well selling fully assembled Nixie clocks, kits to make Nixie clocks, and individual and bundled components. The kit pictured here is based on an article published in the October 2006 issue of Nuts and Volts, and includes everything needed to make a 6-tube Nixie clock, less the case, for $100.
If you’re sitting on a clever idea for an electronics kit, why not enter it in our Gadget Freak Design Contest? Besides the publicity, you could win $1000 to help get your idea off the ground, as well as a free pass to sell your kit in Makers Market.
Kits & Kitmakers: Doug Jackson’s DIY Word Clock
Doug Jackson’s DIY Word Clock Kits, which we first blogged about back in April, have been a giant hit. Doug has done a lot of things right. In classic maker fashion, he’s taken a very expensive piece of designer electronics and shown us how to do it ourselves for a fraction of the price. He hasn’t kept any secrets, open-sourcing the design at every step of the way. And he’s offered a range of pricing options to suit his customers’ available funds, time, and skill level, providing his kits in various stages of completion from just the PCB all the way up to the completely assembled clock.
