Helping hands

Arc Reactor

Arc Reactor

Instructions for making your own Arc Reactor, similar to what Tony Stark wears in Iron Man. I’ll give you a general idea of how I built it, along with how it’s wired. Aside from the circuitry, this build is largely up to you, since I used a lot of scrap that I had lying around. […]

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Floating Glow Display

Floating Glow Display

Using this simple technique, you can etch a design into a thin pane of clear plastic sheeting, then enclose the edges of the plastic with reflective tape and embed a battery-powered LED. The resulting design appears backlit and hovering in mid-air, with a laser-like textured glow that photographs cannot do justice to. Check out more […]

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Micro FM Transmitter

Micro FM Transmitter

This circuit is commonly credited to Japanese multimedia artist Tetsuo Kogawa. It takes audio input through a 1/4″ phono jack and, constructed as shown, without the optional antenna connections, will broadcast an FM radio signal about 30 feet. This is the standard model of Mr. Kogawa’s simplest FM transmitter, which is slightly more complex than […]

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Pixelmusic 3000

Pixelmusic 3000

In 1976, Atari introduced Atari Video Music, a plugged-in music visualizer designed by Pong creator Bob Brown that bridged the yawning gap between consumers’ stereos and their TV sets. The quirky, psychedelic pixelation device never caught on, but watching it in action today (check it out on YouTube), one is taken back to another time, […]

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