Makers
Dale Dougherty Introducing Make a Makerspace Conference
As this weekend's conference on How to Make a Makerspace is getting started, I had a chance to speak briefly with Dale Dougherty. He briefly summed up why we need makerspaces, and what we might look forward to from this emerging community.
This weekend, nearly 200 representatives of established and burgeoning makerspaces from twenty states and three countries, have assembled at Artisans Asylum in Somerville, MA. We will be reporting on the event, here on Make, and will have more complete coverage on the Make a Makerspace site.
Populate SMD boads using a toothpick and tweezers
Here’s a demonstration which proves you don’t really need special tools to populate a surface mount PCB. We’ve seen this board before, it’s the glass PCB server which [Cnlohr] developed and demonstrated by connecting the real world to Minecraft. It’s a tiny board and we were happy to have the chance to see his method for populating the parts before reflow soldering.
In the video after the break [Cnlohr] starts by dispensing a glob of solder pasted from its storage container. He mentions that as long as you store the stuff in the refrigerator it’s rather easy to work with. Because most of his projects are single boards it’s not worth it to have a solder stencil produced. Instead he picks up a bit of the solder glob on the end of a toothpick and applies it to each pad.
This isn’t really as bad as it sounds. The fine pitch TQFP footprints can just be dragged with a bit of the paste. After this application — which took around seven minutes — he grabs some tweezers (not the vacuum type) and begins placing each component. If he missed some paste he’ll discover it in this step and add where necessary. The last step is a trip through his toaster oven.
[via Reddit]
Filed under: misc hacks
Generation 3D: Printrbot’s Brook Drumm on Kids and 3D Printing
Printrbot founder Brook Drumm built the first 3D printer kit he purchased (the MakerBot Cupcake) with the help of his two daughters and his son, intentionally involving them in the process. His kids have grown up with 3D printers being common tools in their household. Here he shares with us [...]
Barometer tells you to take your bike or the train
Before beginning his day, [Richard] needs to decide whether he should ride his bike to work or take the London tube. All the information to make that decision is available on the Internet – the current weather report, and the status of the subway lines and stations he’d be taking. The problem, though, is all these pieces of information are spread out in multiple places. [Richard]‘s solution to this was to make a bicycle barometer that pulls data from these places and makes the decision to ride a bike or the tube for him.
[Richard]‘s barometer is built around a nanode and an old clock he found at a flea market. The nanode queries the UK’s weather bureau and the London underground’s line and station status. All the variables under consideration are weighted; if it’s snowing, the output is much more likely to decide on the tube than if there was a slight drizzle.
It’s a really cool build that certainly makes a great use of the publicly accessible APIs made available by the London underground. You can check out a video of the barometer after the break.
Filed under: arduino hacks
DIY Single-Use Antibiotic Ointment Packets
When backpacking, it's important that every little object you bring be functional and lightweight. Rather than bringing a whole bottle of anitbiotic ointment, you can make your own using a straw, needle-nose pliers, and a lighter. Always be prepared!
Insects Twisted Together from Electronic Components
Bringing new meaning to the phrase "Dead Bug," these photographs by Luca di Filippo use insects constructed from electronic components as their subjects.
Getting rid of telemarketers with a Banana Phone
The Federal Trade Commission really doesn’t like robocalls and other telephone solicitors selling you vinyl siding or home security upgrades. The FTC is even offering $50,000 to anyone who can do away with these robocalling telemarketers, and [Alex] looks like he might just claim the prize. He developed The Banana Phone, a device that eliminates those pesky telemarketers.
The basic idea of the Banana Phone is requiring callers to enter a four-digit pass code (played via text to speech over a relevant song to prevent a bot from getting through) before connecting them to the main line. Once a caller has been verified as human, their number is added to a white list so they won’t have to listen to [Raffi] every time they call.
The Banana Phone uses off-the-shelf parts including a Raspberry Pi and a phone/Ethernet adapter with the total build cost under $100. You can check out a demo of the Banana Phone in action after the break starting at about 2:25.
Filed under: phone hacks
Bunnie Teaches Outsourcing to China
Big Board List Compares Development Platforms
With the proliferation of single-board computers and the various flavors that they come in, it can be a bit daunting to a newcomer. Added to the vast array of programmable microcontrollers like the Arduino, it only makes platform decisions that much more complicated. In fact, we are frequently asked about [...]
Y Combinator and Upverter Host Hardware Hackathon
Startup accelerator Y Combinator and Upverter are joining forces to run a hardware hackathon. This event aims to encourage hardware hackers to get together and design new products in a twelve hour sprint. Startups including Pebble, Octopart, and Lockitron will also be participating.
It’s a free event, and the winning teams will get their design manufactured. Participants will retain the rights to their designs, get free professional Upverter accounts, and have the chance to chat with some of the Y Combinator partners. This makes it a great opportunity for people looking to create their own hardware startup.
The event takes place on February 23rd at the Y Combinator offices in Mountain View, CA. Registration is open until February 8th. If you’re in the Bay Area and do hardware, you should check this event out.
Filed under: contests
Using Lego Mindstorms Sensors With a Raspberry Pi
Dexter Industries has been playing around with the RPi lately, and hooked up a Mindstorms-compatible accelerometer/gyroscope to a RPi running Raspbian. They have a full tutorial showing how they did it.Filed under: Fun & Games, Raspberry Pi
Siri controlled Arduino using Ruby
This snippet of Hello World code lets [Nico Ritschel] turn the Pin 13 LED on his Arduino on and off using Siri, the voice-activated helper built into iPhones. The trick here is using the Ruby programming language to get Siri Proxy talking to Arduino via the USB connection. He calls the project siriproxy-arduino.
On one end of the hack resides SiriProxy, a package not approved by Apple which is capable of intercepting the Siri messages headed for Apple’s own servers. The messages are still relayed, but a copy of each is available for [Nico's] own uses. On the other side of things he’s building on the work of [Austinbv's] dino gem; a Ruby package that facilitates control of the Arduino. It includes a sketch that is uploaded to the Arduino board, opening up a Ruby API. The collection of code seen above defines the pin with the LED connected and then listens for a specific Siri commands to actuate it.
Take a look at [Nico's] explanation of the module in the video after the break.
Filed under: arduino hacks, iphone hacks
Reverse engineering salvaged part footprints
So you just pulled a fancy component off of a board from some broken electronics and you want to use it in your own project. What if the data sheet you found for it doesn’t include measurements for the footprint? Sure, you could pull out your digital calipers, but look at the measurements in the image above. How the heck are you supposed to accurately measure that? [Steve] found an easy answer for this problem. He uses microscope software to process an image of the board.
One common task when working with a microscope is measuring the items which are being viewed under magnification. [Steve] harnessed the power of a piece of free software called MiCam. One of its features is the ability to select an area of the photograph so serve as the measuring stick. To get the labels seen in the image above he selected the left and right edges of the board as the legend. He used his digital calipers to get a precise measurement of this area, then let the software automatically calculate the rest of the distances which he selected with his cursor.
MiCam is written for Windows machines. If you know of Linux or OSX alternatives please let us know in the comments.
Filed under: tool hacks
Tweeting beer dispenser requires co-worker approval
Having been faced with an empty beer fridge one too many times the team at Metalworks came up with an approval system for dispensing malted beverages. The trick was to remove the physical controls on a can dispenser. The only way you can get a cold one is to ask the machine via its twitter account. If there’s beer inside, it waits for one of your approved co-workers to give the go-ahead.
There are two versions of the machine. The first is a hacked refrigerator with a dispenser hole cut in the door. This resides in their Sydney office, apparently doesn’t work all that well, and is only shown in the video after the break.
The image above is version 2.0 which is located at their Singapore branch. It’s a much smaller device, but works very well since it started as a commercially available can dispenser. You can see the Arduino Leonardo and breadboard which make up the driver circuits.
There aren’t a ton of details on this, but it’s not hard to find about a million examples of an Arduino using Twitter. Here’s one that takes Morse code as an input and posts the message as a Tweet.
Filed under: beer hacks
Endgadget’s Guide to 3D Printing
This past summer when we were putting together our Ultimate Guide to 3D Printing we sought to test a representative sample of available consumer-class 3D printers. Given the dynamic nature of the market, we were sure many new printers would start popping up. And that's definitely what's happening. So it's cool to see Endgadget has come out with its own 3D printer buyer's guide: The Shape of Things to Come.
Infra is a television made of Infrared pixels
This television is perfect except for its low resolution and the fact that it can’t be seen by the naked eye. [Chris Shen's] art installation, Infra, uses 625 television remotes as pixels for a TV screen. There’s a little bit of insight to be gained from the details which [Chris] shared with EMSL.
The remote controls were all throw-aways. Even if there are problems with the buttons, battery connectors, or cases, chances are the IR led in each was still functional. So [Chris] patched into them using about 500 meters of speaker wire.
Why 625 pixel? Because that’s how many LEDs the Peggy board can handle. We’ve seen this open source LED board driving video in other projects. Here it’s been connected to each remote using Molex connectors. Each of the headers has the same pitch as a through-hole 5mm LED. The entire board was filled with them, and a mating crimp connector terminates the end of the wire coming out of each remote. This makes setup quite easy as the remotes don’t have to be installed in any particular order as long as the physical location matches Peggy’s grid.
You can get a glimpse of the piece playing video in the clip after the break.
[via Reddit]
Filed under: led hacks
How-To: $5 Mobile Phone Projector
Optical Tremolo: Extended Play
With this Optical Tremolo Box you are hearing are patterns of light, created by a spinning disk translated into rapid electrical fluctuations to produce a warbling audio effect. Audio enters the circuit via the input jack, passes through the variable resistor — the light-sensitive photocell — and outputs to the amplifier, creating the effect known as tremolo.
Maker Shed Microcontroller Quick Reference Chart
With all the microcontrollers and single board computers on the market, sometimes it's hard to see all your options. That's why we made up this quick reference sheet for the 8 most popular boards we sell in the Maker Shed.
Lovely Lego Ball Clock
Jason Allemann, who created these Lego mazes last year, built this beautiful and elegant Lego ball clock. The video shows how the rail system works with one ball being hauled up the chain every minute, then tipping the balance once enough balls have accumulated. [via Brothers Brick]Filed under: Fun & [...]
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