The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for digital gadgetry, open code, smart hacks, and more. Processing power to the people!
Two weeks ago I proclaimed a winner in the microcontroller dev board arena with “Why the Arduino Won, and Why It’s Here to Stay.” There’s still lots of great debate going on, and conversations that still haven’t ended. Is my prediction right? We’ll see what happens in the upcoming months and years. This week I’m […]
Effective, easy, inexpensive process from Briton James Williamson. Well-documented, too. James starts with laser-engraved panels, rubs them with black crayon, and removes the excess with a buffing process using paper soaked in mineral spirits. Nice work, James! [via Hacked Gadgets]
The newly released Motorola Atrix is the fastest Android smartphone to date. With its blazingly fast Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, generous memory, and innovative accessories, the Atrix is shaping up to be one heck of a mobile. Receiving a 9 out of 10 repairability score, the folks at iFixIt.com say, “This is also the most-repairable smartphone we’ve ever taken apart!” Let’s take a look, shall we?
Clever improvisation from LifeHacker alum Jason Fitzpatrick. No reason you couldn’t adapt the design for non-dishwasher purposes, or for systems with more than two states.
The multitude of cheap plastic cup holder smartphone mounts is staggering, yet the majority of them are either overly engineered, cheap flimsy plastic or proprietary. I’m surprised that we don’t see more commercial designs similar to the stand in this video by the Mechanical Mashup crew. Heck, there’s even room to coil up a loose power cable inside the cup.
These stick-on CD/DVD hubs are marketed to publishers who want to include an optical disc in a book, card, folder, or other printed matter. They cost pennies apiece and, with the aid of our handy print-and-cut template, are easily arranged in a hexagonal grid on any smooth surface you might want to use for disc storage. Discs stored this way are easy to browse at a glance, without flipping pages, and don’t take up space on a table or shelf.
While many think of Arduino as strictly for hobbyists, its ease of use makes it a great tool for prototyping products for the mass market. The designers of the Fitbit, a device for tracking your level of activity throughout the day, wrote to the Arduino team to tell them that they’ve been doing just that: […]
