Makers
How-To: Digital Pinhole Photography
Nearly 40 years ago, scientist and author Forrest M. Mims III wrote an article titled “The Pinhole: A ‘Lens’ that Just Won’t Quit” that was published in the April 1974 issue of Popular Photography. His enthusiasm for pinhole photography, taking photographs with a 35mm film camera equipped with a pinhole [...]
Make: Believe Visits Images In Motion
Kamela Portuges and Lee Armstrong have been making puppets and performing together for over 25 years. Armstrong, who’d gotten her big puppetry break on Jim Henson’s Fraggle Rock, met talented sculptor Portuges at a puppet festival; the two soon combined their talents to create their Sonoma, Calif., studio, Images In Motion. Since then, they’ve been steadily producing TV shows, commercials, and live performances, as well as lending their expertise to major studios and toy companies. Video and slideshow after the jump.
Sump pump alarm sends text message as water rises
We’ve got some friends who have two sump pumps. One is a backup and sounds an alarm when it is switched on. But this only works as long as they’re home to hear it. [Felix Rusu] came up with a solution what will text him if the sump pump fails. This way he can head home, or call someone to check in on the problem if he’s away.
We saw a pretty complicated monitoring system back in January. This one uses a single ultrasonic rangefinder which we think is much simpler. It’s accurate to about 1cm and is simple to use — it’s very popular with the hobby electronics crowd which helps with price and availability of sample code. We hem and haw about the use of a Raspberry Pi board with the project. On the one hand it’s a cheap way to get the sensor on the network and provides the infrastructure you need to send any number of alerts. On the other hand, it’s a lot of power for this particular application. But we figure it can be extended to monitor other utilities in [Felix's] home, like a sensor to alert him of a leaking water heater. And we think everyone can argue that a monitor like this is well worth the time and effort he spent to develop it.
Filed under: home hacks
MAKE Asks: Teachers that Inspire
MAKE Asks: is a weekly column where we ask you, our readers, for responses to maker-related questions. We hope the column sparks interesting conversation and is a way for us to get to know more about each other.
Got a Great Gadget? Show your Stuff to Veronica Belmont and Win
Veronica Belmont invites you to put to the test your most innovative and ingenious DIY versions of your favorite consumer tech items on stage at Maker Faire Bay Area.
Winners on the Road to Maker Faire Bay Area
We're pleased to announce the winners on the 2013 Road to Maker Faire Challenge! Makers competed for a $2,500 prize and a chance to travel to the Bay Area Maker Faire next month to exhibit their project.
On-the-go furniture for on-the-go People
Harking back to the era of steam trunks the Arara Nomade is nomadic furniture: a trunk that turns into a shelves, drawers and hanging space. Designed for easy assembly and disassembly, no screws, glue or tools are required to put in together, or to take it apart at the end of your trip.
New in the Maker Shed: Telegraph Decoder and Calculator Kits from Spikenzie Labs
Spikenzie Labs has a reputation for making innovative, wonderfully designed kits and their new Telegraph Decoder and Calculator Kits are no exception! Both are available now in the Maker Shed.
How-To: HAL-in-the-Box
Aaaaaaaaand we have a serious new contender for the title of Best Who's-in-the-Box Ever. Adafruit senior designer Phillip Burgess was inspired by customers' observations that their new-ish 10 cm "Massive Red Arcade Button" looks a lot like the iconic eye of Clarke and Kubrick's famously malevolent mainframe. For sheer comedic value, I think...
FirstLight: The Story of a Telescope
Oakland resident Douglas Smith is an architect by training, working as a BIM / CAD manager at the San Francisco offices of internationally-renowned skyscraper architects Skidmore Owings & Merrill. In 2006, co-worker and amateur astronomer David Frey persuaded him to take an amateur telescope-making class at The Randall Museum, taught by famous amateur astronomer John Dobson. It changed his life. 
Scratch-built 3D printer shows rock-solid performance
These days it’s super-easy (not super-cheap) to go out and buy a 3D printer. But if you’ve got the mad skills like [Mario Lukas] maybe you can build a 3D print using a bunch of scavenged parts (translated). He’s published six posts on the build, and put together an overview video which you can watch after the break.
A pile of salvaged parts were found in a scanner and four different printers. He’s also powering the thing with an old PC PSU. The hot bed and extruder are brand new, which is a wise investment. We’re not sure about the threaded rod and bearings but we’d bet those are new as well. When it came time to work on the electronics he chose an Arduino board as the go-between for the printer and computer. It uses four stepper motor driver boards to drive the axes. Connections can be a bit complicated and he actually ‘smoked’ one of the boards during the development phase.
One of the mechanical build posts shows a belt routed in a T-shape. We wonder if it’s function is similar to what this H-bot style printer uses?
Filed under: 3d Printer hacks
Inside 3D Printing: A Maker Reports
Swaying LED Lights at Tribeca
MAKE community member Justin Weiner of New York design firm Studio Kenji shared a neat video he made documenting the simple but stunning LED light display that BWArchitects made for the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival. Delicate pink and blue flowers were handmade using 1,600 LEDs wrapped in translucent paper shades [...]
How to Make a Custom Operation Game
Operation is a game that lets you test your hand-eye coordination by removing a variety of ailment tokens from a cartoon patient without touching the metal sides of each slot. Since its release in 1965, there have been a lot of special editions created. These feature popular characters such as Buzz Lightyear, R2D2 and Iron Man. The game's simple design makes it very versatile and easy to adapt.
Sega controller houses auto-launch emulator
[Joe's] wife grew up playing Sega games and he wanted to help her unwind by reliving the experience. Since the work computer she uses when travelling isn’t a good place to install emulators he built this plug-and-play emulator inside of a Sega controller.
We’ve seen this type of thing a few times before (even with XBMC in a SNES controller) but there is one thing we hadn’t thought of lately. Newer versions of Windows have auto-launch disabled for USB drives. But [Joe] knew that there were still some USB sticks that manage to auto-launch anyway so he researched how those work. It turns out that they have two partitions, one is formatted as a CDFS which looks like a CD-ROM to Windows and allows auto-launch. He used this method of partitioning a USB stick, storing the ROMs on the mass storage partition and the emulator and the CDFS partition. To finish the hack he cracked open the controller and found room for a USB hub and the PCB from the thumb drive.
If you still have cartridges lying around you can pull the ROMs off of them over USB.
Filed under: peripherals hacks
Compete in the Axeda Hackathon This Weekend in Boston
Come join me this Sunday in Boston, where I'm one of the judges for Axeda's M2M hackathon. Build something awesome with electronics and software, and compete to win a prize!
Wifi Pineapple project uses updated hardware for man-in-the-middle attacks
We’ve seen this small, cheap, and powerful WiFi router before. But this time it’s up to no good. [Andy] used a TP-Link WR703N to build an upgraded WiFi Pineapple hacking tool.
A WiFi Pineapple is a device spawned years ago by the Hak5 team (here’s a clip showing off the device). It uses a WiFi router that will answer to any SSID request. Basically if your computer or smart phone has an AP SSID saved and broadcasts a request to connect the pineapple will pretend to be that device and start the handshake. This provides the chance to sniff all the data passing through in a classic man-in-the-middle attack.
[Andy] is recreating the device but at a rock bottom price. He picked up this router for about $20 and added an $8 USB drive to it. The only other thing you would need is a power source and a way to hide the hardware. The code used in the Hak5 version is available for download and that’s what he worked on after flashing OpenWrt to the device.
[Thanks Midnite]
Filed under: security hacks, wireless hacks
DIY Tensegrity
In honor of a recent visit to Kenneth Snelson's workshop, and as a continued tribute to Math Craft, which has a nice gallery of tensegrity projects, here's a detailed, step-by-step illustration of how to make a tensegrity structure that you may not find in a lot of other places -- a frustum of a pentagonal pyramid.
Four-Drawer Resistor Storage
Chris Connors shows his technique for storing resistors. Executive summary: he sorts by the 3rd color band! Over the years, I’ve seen and inherited parts bins with every drawer labeled for a single value resistor. This can take up dozens of drawers in a rack. It also makes returning the [...]
Three Week Countdown to the Bay Area Maker Faire!
Three weeks until Maker Faire Bay Area! Who's feeling prepared? Now's a good time to start thinking about all the final details for bringing your awesome project to Maker Faire.
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