In the spirit of MAKE Volume 03’s MOD YOUR ROD- This car mod shows off a LINUX-based CarPC that is just plain awesome. He can listen to music, watch videos, view slideshows, sniff wireless networks and plot them with GPS, browse the web with Firefox, connect to his cell phone via Bluetooth, stream DirecTV, remote-start the car, and connect to it via WI-FI, EVDO…Lots of great pics. [via] Link.
MAKE Flickr group pool member Broken Toaster posted some photos of a USB-powered Fluorescent Light project. It looks like it is made from an old broken USB drive, wired up, then placed in some type of project enclosure. Link.
The principles of its operation are simple: The fan creates an air flow which is cooled by contact with the 4 bottles full of ice. In this way, the temperature of the air flow is reduced to a more tolerable level. The more bottles the better… You must closely watch it unless you want a swimming pool on your carpet or floors. [via] Link.
Fun with meltable metals….Field’s Metal melts at 144 degrees F. Perfect for easy toymaking or prototyping. Better yet, break off the end of a spoon, and use a drop of Fields Metal to solder it back together. When your friend uses the spoon to stir his coffee and sees the end fall off, perhaps he will decide to cut back on the caffeine. Thanks flyboy! Link.
These look really amazing. Free Spirit Spheres has commenced limited production of the 3.2 metre fibreglass sphere tree houses and now has sphere shells and kits available for the DIY market. Orders are now also being taken for the wooden shells and component kits and fully-finished made-to-order wooden Free Spirit Spheres. Shells can also be rented for the night (if you’re in Canada). Link.
Resource, links and kits for building your own thing to launch other things. Here is a collection of what plans we’ve been able to collect from around the web. These are compiled from several sources by many people. Some are suitable for physics projects, and some are for more serious hobbyists. You’ll have to figure out which ones are right for you. Link.
About a year ago I was at Radio Shack headquarters hanging out with my friend and Make pal Dave, while there I saw the now released Vex Robotic Kits in early development. The cool thing, amongst other cool things about these robotic kits is that they were specifically designed to be used in the FIRST national high-school science competition (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). We’ll try and do a review of these here right away. I’m so thrilled to see these. PC Magazine article here, along with photos here.
