Make Magazine
DIY projects, how-tos, and inspiration from geeks, makers, and hackers
Updated: 1 hour 59 min ago
5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Things About Meara O’Reilly
Saying Meara O’Reilly is a sound artist is not just a fancy way of saying she’s a musician — Meara creates visual art from sound and builds her own instruments, as well as sings and writes music. She’s also an educator in residence at the Exploratorium, sharing her passion for [...]
Categories: Makers
Shredding the Mountain on a Fragile Italian Glass Snowboard
Ever wanted to shred down the mountain atop a sheet of super smooth glass? The folks at Network_A and Signal Snowboards teamed up to make a real glass snowboard and see how it rides. This video is fun to watch — you get to see the entire build process and the exhilarating field testing afterwards. It looks like they had a blast.
Categories: Makers
Multirotor Acrobatics
You may have seen this video go viral this week. It's exciting to watch and marvel at. So, why is this inverted pendulum thing so challenging? Go find a broom and balance it on your chin. Notice how often you have to move to keep the broom stable above you. arch institutions to accomplish incredible tasks.
The Institute for Dynamics Systems and Control at ETH Zurich has experience with multirotor interactions with inanimate objects. In the past, they've had quadrotors juggling a ball, assembling structures, and balancing an inverted pendulum. Now an ETH Zurich student has taken their work with pendulums and multirotors to the next level.
Categories: Makers
Power Tools Retrofitted for the Amish
There was an interesting piece on NPR this morning about power tools for the Amish. The Amish have traditionally been farmers, but land has become prohibitively expensive to purchase, so many are turning to woodworking to earn a living. Since their homes are not wired with electricity, their table saws, drills and sanders are retrofitted with gas engines and compressed air tanks.
Categories: Makers
Ping Fu Stands Her Ground
Last month I wrote about Bend Not Break, a memoir written by Ping Fu. Fu is the founder of Geomagic and now chief strategy officer at 3D Systems. In her book, Fu wrote about her life as a young girl in China and her experiences living under Mao's Cultural Revolution. She described being forcibly removed from her family by the Red Guard at 8 years old and spending the next ten years living with her younger sister in a government dormitory under brutal conditions before ultimately emigrating to the U.S. For me, it was a harrowing, but ultimately uplifting story about overcoming adversity.
But that's not how many people reacted to the book.
Categories: Makers
#ifihadglass, the Things I Would Do…
Google announced a new campaign to find “bold, creative individuals who want to join us and be a part of shaping the future of Glass.” Here at MAKE, we are pretty excited about the potential wearable from Google, and we decided to round-up our entries for the new platform. Nick [...]
Categories: Makers
Raspberry Leaf: A Simple Reference for Raspberry Pi Pins
When I first started prototyping electronics projects with the Raspberry Pi, I noticed that I was wasting a lot of time looking at the GPIO pin chart and counting pins on the board when I wanted to connect a jumper to a particular pin. It made me realize that I [...]
Categories: Makers
Making Music, Teaching English with Popsicle Sticks
Ian Thacker's blog is called DIY family. True to the blog's name, it includes great projects from his talented wife and son, too. One of the projects that caught my eye was a popsicle stick-encased stereo amplifier with speakers Ian built from used CD spool cases. One of his students wanted a cheap stereo to take to college so he designed it for easy construction, affordability, and cool design. It's all of that. The project is built around a $33 8-watt amp. He later had four students without prior electronics experience build their own and he said they did so with ease.
Categories: Makers
Black Makers Month: Emeka Okafor
Emeka is maker's maker! He is one of the main forces behind Maker Faire Africa. Emeka has the same name as a famous professional basketball player, but they are not to be confused! I met him at A Better World By Design, a student run conference in Providence, RI.
Categories: Makers
Takeout Container ROV Controller
I saw Chris Connors’ Laser Clicker in Maker Faire New York last September. It’s a great idea: an enclosure made from a plastic takeout container, some laser-cut acrylic parts, holding three self-made DPDT switches. Chris built the rig to control a SeaPerch ROV or some other 3-motor robot. More photos [...]
Categories: Makers
Producing Music with Produce – J.Views and the MaKey MaKey
One of the best parts about the MaKey MaKey is that anyone can pick it up and use it right out of the box. But what happens when you put in the hands of a musical professional?
Categories: Makers
5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Things About Edwin Wise
Special effects specialist Edwin Wise has contributed several projects to the pages of MAKE over the years, including the classic animatronic Flying Crank Ghost, the sound wave visualizing Chladni Plate, and the PVC air cannon Boom Stick, to name a few.
Categories: Makers
People Watching with Maker and “Social Observer” Natalia Buckley
Natalia Buckley is a hacker, designer, and creative technologist. She's originally from Poland and now live in Brighton on England's south coast, a city famed for its appetite for experimentation. "I'm just making speculative things, that don't necessarily fully exist in the real world, but help us learn something," she says. "I'm a social observer. The sole reason I make things is to learn something about other people. Because I find other people fascinating. My work in technology is basically about people. People constantly interact with technology and I can make technology to watch them do stuff!"
Categories: Makers
Shelby Arnold’s Pop-Up Concertina
NYC Resistor member Shelby Arnold has a cool new project: a concertina-folded illustrated notebook complete with popups! The Pop-Up Concertina is an accordion-folded booklet with pop-ups, covered on both sides with drawings I made using a bunch of .005 micron pens over the course of several months. (…) You can [...]
Categories: Makers
3D Printed Canon Flash Diffusers
I made a flash diffuser for the Canon Speedlight 580EX II after seeing our photo intern taping a piece of paper to his flash to act as a light bounce. His paper bounce didn't last more than a few days of project photography in the extreme conditions of our lab, so after seeing him repeatedly throw them into the recycling bin, I decided to make him a durable 3D printed diffuser.
Categories: Makers
Banana Chocolate Ice Cream
When I visited my aunt on Cape Cod last summer, she had this contraption that you made banana ice cream with. Throw frozen bananas and other things in, and out comes banana ice cream! The results were delicious, but my kitchen has no room for single-purpose appliances. Luckily, there's an everyday kitchen appliance that yields the same results: a blender! Little Eco Footprints has a recipe for making really yummy looking banana chocolate ice cream.
Categories: Makers
Ask MAKE: On Finishing Projects
Ask MAKE is a monthly column where we answer your questions. Send your vexing conundrums on any aspect of making to askmake@makezine.com. If we don't have the answer, we'll scare up somebody who does. Tracy Wood said: "My problem is I start projects and don't finish them!! ;("
Categories: Makers
Creating an Accurate Anatomical Model of an Octopus in 3D
If you look up “octopus anatomy” in Google Images, you will mainly find detailed illustrations of the internal organs. Unfortunately, they don’t do the anatomy of an octopus justice. I saw the octopus I'd dissected as a piece of art: a clean, tightly-packed bundle of clearly distinguishable parts with a great sense of symmetry. I photographed everything from different angles as reference for the 3d model I was planning to create. The goal was to start work on something I've dreamed of for a long time - a library of very detailed anatomical models. 
Categories: Makers
Solder:Time Watch Kit – The Flux Capacitor of Watches
Here in the Maker Shed there's a lot of love for Spikenzie Labs' Solder: Time Watch Kit. It's easy to build and the finished product looks as well as it functions. Now through Sunday at midnight, it's 30% off, making it even more attractive! 
Categories: Makers
Talking Sake With the Pros
In the current issue of MAKE, Alastair Bland writes about how the amateur sake fan can brew the beverage at home. Before the story came out, a group of MAKE staffers headed over to the excellent Hana restaurant in Rohnert Park, Calif. for some Japanese food and sake. It was a tough assignment. While there, I asked sake sommelier Stuart Morris and visiting sake brewer Daijiro Hosaka how sake was made. Morris, by the way, is the sixth non-Japanese "master of sake" in the world. Did the experts think sake can be made at home? Watch our interview to find out. Then pick up a copy of MAKE and see if you can brew your own.
Categories: Makers