Homebrew — My Arduino-Equipped Still
At Corsair Artisan Distillery in Nashville, where I work, we came across a 1920s copper still that escaped Prohibition, and we were dying to put it to good use.
MAKE 29
Toy Inventor’s Notebook — Root Beer Pong Bot
When making prototypes, I often “kit bash” broken toys to harvest useful components like motors, gear trains, or radio-control transmitters and receivers. No need to reinvent the wheel — literally!
North Paw and Heart Spark
Sensebridge is a maker of electronic kits geared toward personal hacking. It was started by a group of friends at the San Francisco hackerspace Noisebridge.
Gateways to the Soul — Eyeboard
One of my high school classmates is quadriplegic, and from meeting him and hearing about others with similar conditions, I learned that many people with disabilities can’t afford technologies that could enable them to communicate — especially in places like Honduras, where I live.
Gateways to the Soul — EyeWriter
In 2003, my friend Tony, aka graffiti artist Tempt1, was diagnosed with ALS, a progressive disease that left him almost completely paralyzed except for his eyes. In order to help him continue to make his art, I collaborated with a group of software developers and hardware hackers to create a low-cost, open source, eye-tracking system that would allow Tempt1 and other ALS patients to draw and control a computer using just their eyes.
Meet Carol Reiley
Have you ever made a robot that didn’t work right, at least at first? In hobby robotics this is no big deal, and it still isn’t the end of the world with industrial robots, but with surgical robotics, being one millimeter off can mean life or death — or at least complications. Welcome to Carol Reiley’s world.
Good Vibrations — Groovy Mechanical Sound Players
A look back at the all-mechanical marvels that made fun sounds for over 100 years.
