The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for digital gadgetry, open code, smart hacks, and more. Processing power to the people!
The Pixel Qi screen from the Maker Shed is a revolutionary plug-and-play LCD display technology for your netbook. This one-of-a-kind 10.1-inch display offers two modes, an easy-to-read multimedia color mode, or a crisp low power e-reader mode.
Nineteen feet tall. Twelve feet in diameter. “The F-1 is still the most powerful single-chamber liquid-fueled rocket engine ever put into service. Manufactured by Rocketdyne, five F-1 engines were used in the first stage of each Saturn V rocket, each generating 1.5 million pounds-force of thrust—more than all three Space Shuttle main engines combined.”
If you’ve ever struggled to locate the center of a circular plate or a piece of round stock using a ruler or a square, you know it can be a tricky proposition. My usual ham-fisted method involves marking the midpoint of several diameters and kind of visually averaging all those sloppy centers to get roughly in the middle of the thing. If I need more accuracy, I try to sandwich the circle between two framing squares and then draw lines between opposing corners–lines which, at least in theory, should bisect each corner at 45 degrees and intersect in the middle of the circumscribed circle. In theory.
This interactive resume by Victor Petit encourages the reader to explore further by incorporating a QR code and iPhone 4 in a unique and interesting way.
What’s a Blendophone? It’s a “musical” instrument made from eight blenders controlled by an iPhone and an Arduino. My friend Usman Muzaffar is writing an iPhone app to control the beat sequencing and solo input, while I’m building the hardware and an Arduino sketch to switch the blenders on and off.
Highlights from the MAKE Flickr pool this week include a pinhole camera built from an eggshell, a collection of beautiful paper models of stellated polyhedra, a giant plush amoeba, a homemade spectroscope, and more!
Bruno Soares wanted to play a classic Super Nintendo game on his cell phone, but it’s touch screen was unresponsive and just wasn’t cutting it as a controller. Instead of just giving up, he devised a Rube Goldberg-esque system to connect an actual SNES controller to his phone.
