Make Magazine
DIY projects, how-tos, and inspiration from geeks, makers, and hackers
Updated: 17 min 11 sec ago
Black Maker Month: Anthony Fudd
I was surprised when I met Anthony for the first time at the 2012 Barbot competition in San Francisco. This guy was part of the Lego Mindstorm team. How cool is that! Not only does he know how to make cool stuff with Legos, but he actually makes Legos. I appreciated the use of not one, but two Mindstorms for the TipsyBot that Anthony built. I’m not sure it made my drink taste any better, but it was pretty fun to see.
Categories: Makers
Hacking on the Frontier of Gestural Input
When the Microsoft Kinect game controller came onto the scene in 2010, the maker community immediately saw its potential as an input device for 3D scanning, gestural input, and spacial recognition. Initially, Microsoft didn’t like the idea of people hacking their product, but it didn’t stop the most eager among [...]
Categories: Makers
MAKE Flickr Pool Weekly Roundup
Categories: Makers
How-To: Levitation Photography
Photographer Dustin Thompson posted a neat video tutorial on getting levitation trick shots like the ones above and below. Basically, all you need is a camera on a sturdy tripod (preferably with a remote so you don’t move the camera at all), a stool or something to stand/lay/kneel on, and [...]
Categories: Makers
Warhammer 40K Nurgle Tanks from Hard Drives
Tai Hake works upstairs from MAKE, and I'm always happy when he comes down and shows me his latest Warhammer 40K creations. I thought I'd share his latest one, which is the most detailed one I've seen him create. What's unique about his tanks is that they're made of scavenged hard drive cases. This one in particular is a Plague Marines Chaos Rhino.
Categories: Makers
Wanna Race? Power Racing Series Team Sign-Ups Now Open!
Do you have what it takes to make the most badass Power Wheels mod? Are you ready to test your mettle against a bunch of other crazy makers who want to win? Then get your team together and sign up for the Power Racing Series (PPPRS), kicking off this May [...]
Categories: Makers
Topographical Map from Roll of Electrical Tape
There’s certainly a lot of things you can do with electrical tape, but have you ever considered making a topographical map with it? I didn’t until I saw the amazing work pictured above by Japanese artist Takahiro Iwasaki. [via Colossal] Filed under: Art & Design
Categories: Makers
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