Make Magazine

Polish Lego builder piotrek839 built this sick robot arm that packs some pretty impressive functionality. It’s remote controlled and uses a whopping 12 Power Functions motors and linear actuators to do its thing. You can read about the project on LUGPol, though it’s in Polish. Filed under: Robotics

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Collin Cunningham’s awesome videos are always great to watch. This time, Collin shows how to build a Color Organ, which is a light display that responds to sounds around it, allowing you to build cool visualizer effects to go with your tunes. Long before the dawn of digital music, folks […]

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MAKE's 2nd annual Hardware Innovation Workshop concluded yesterday after two inspiring, thought-provoking days. Thanks to all our great sponsors, presenters, and attendees for making it a success. Here's a look back.

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Mechanical Engineer Jeff Landrum examines the future of 3D Printing and how the recent rapid developments in the industry could lead to a new "killer product". There's a countless number of game-changing developments that could arise and lead to a truly consumer-level product. When will we see "the Apple II of 3D Printers"?

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How do bits and bytes feel on your fingertips? Like your controller’s gravelly rumble when a video game football player gets tackled? Like bubbles of turbulence on an airline simulator control wheel? Like the rubbery resilience of 3D digital clay? Like the hairline cracks on a fragile archaeological find? Yes. Could they feel like varying and unique human tissues as a surgeon in London performs surgery on a patient in Johannesburg? You bet. What we’re talking about here is called “haptics,” a class of technology that most of us have experienced most commonly in the form of a vibrating cell phone. But increasingly, it's coming to the medical world.

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Hardware is hard as the quip goes, but there's never been a better time to be prototyping and launching hardware projects than right now. That seemed to be the consensus today as the second and final day of MAKE Hardware's Innovation Workshop wrapped up. The all-day schedule of speakers represented a deep pool of talent, creativity, and passion for the business of making.

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The Viper was one of the most popular projects at Maker Faire Bay Area last year, blowing minds, creating smiles, and eliciting screams of excitement. The Viper is a full-motion Battlestar Galactica-themed flight simulator built into the fuselage of a Piper PA-28 plane, complete with 360-degree rotation on both the pitch and roll axes, as well as a fully immersive flying environment inside. The most amazing part is that The Viper was made by a team of five high school students, guided by their mentors, as part of the Young Makers program. The Viper is coming back to Maker Faire Bay Area this weekend, and it promises to be even more impressive.

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Today's great line-up of speakers at the second and final day of the Hardware Innovation Workshop let fly a flurry of great tweets. Here is but a sampling of the buzz.

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Makers have mixed opinions on venture capitalists (VCs) fueled by stories of entrepreneurs who lost control of the companies they built when they traded autonomy for capital. While projects are getting off the ground with crowd sourcing from Kickstarter and Indiegogo, many start ups still turn to VCs to get the funds they need to get off the ground. MAKE invited some of them to participate at the Hardware Innovation Workshop this week, so innovative makers could get the straight dope.

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In each bi-monthly episode of DiResta (every other Wednesday at 2pm PT), artist and master builder Jimmy DiResta (Dirty Money, Hammered, Against the Grain, Trash for Cash) lets us into his workshop, to look over his shoulder while he builds whatever strikes his fancy. On this episode of DiResta, Jimmy shows us more of his band saw skills as he whips up a set of interlocking stacking stools designed to fit in small spaces.

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We're thrilled that Oakland art collective Five Ton Crane is joining us again at this year's Maker Faire Bay Area. This time around, they bring an interpretation of the nautilus submarine from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to life in the gorgeous form of the Nautilus Submarine Art Car.

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Screws and screwdrivers might not seem like the most exciting topic on its face, but you could write a book on their uses and intricacies. There are so many tricks on how to use this type of hardware and their respective tools, and I've chosen ten that I hope will help you with future projects

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One of Maker Faire's newest Blacksmith Sponsors is HAXLR8R, a hardware startup incubator based of both San Francisco and Shenzhen, China. Now in its second year, HAXLR8R takes promising startups to China to jumpstart their innovative hardware companies. HAXLR8R's latest batch of startups and the incubator itself (currently accepting applications for next year) will be at Maker Faire this week. Sponsors are key to making Maker Faire happen: most maker exhibits are provided free of charge to the folks showing off their projects, and it's the generous sponsors that make that possible. So be sure to swing by and see what they've got going on. I asked two of HAXLR8R's mentors, Zach Hoeken Smith and Cyril Ebersweiler, to answer some questions about the incubator and the companies that will be at the Faire.

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A major manufacturer of CNC routers today launched what it hopes will be "a whole new class of digital tool" called the Handibot. The announcement was made at the Hardware Innovation Workshop, currently going on in San Mateo, California.

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Lego builder James Pegrum explores Britain’s elite codebreaking facility in brick form! 1944AD 1st June, Bletchley Park, England. The improved Colossus Mark 2 starts working in time for the Normandy Landings. The Colossus was the world’s first electronic digital computer that was at all programmable. It was designed by Tommy […]

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Innovation is one of those concepts that's hard to describe, but when you see it (or hear it), you know you've found it. It's certainly in abundance with the speakers and participants at the first day of the Make Hardware Innovation Workshop today.

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Our friend Matt Mets, along with pals Max Henstell and Marty Mcguire, is developing a cool addressable LED light strip that packs a microprocessor on the strip for easy programming. Look cool? You can get in on the Kickstarter campaign and score some excellent tech. It looks awesome, Matt! Filed […]

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MAKE’s 2nd annual Hardware Innovation Workshop is happening live right now! You can tune in by streaming the video above, showcasing 25 hardware demos and 40 speakers from the workshop stage. Don’t miss a minute of MAKE’s hardware workshop—tune in now to the live stream of this exciting 1-1/2 day […]

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Nothing tests maker mettle quite like time and budget constraints. West Coast makers: Now is the time to step up and show off your modding skills. This weekend, May 18 and 19, at the 8th annual Maker Faire Bay Area, we are hosting the season opener of the Power Racing Series (PPPRS). Come race us!

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NYC Resistor’s phooky built a punchtape reader to read some old punchtapes. After an initial attempt, he built a new reader: This time I used proper phototransistors and IR LEDs I scrounged up around the space (thanks, Miria and Raphael!). Because they’re 5mm in diameter (and the spacing between channels […]

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