The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for digital gadgetry, open code, smart hacks, and more. Processing power to the people!
The Deep Sea Anglerfish from the Maker Shed has a carefully designed Blue LED “lure” protruding from its head. The LED light produces a mesmerizing blueish glow, masterfully catching the preying eye, and the electric circuitry on the back adds all the more wonder to this rare species. If Anglerfish aren’t your cup of tea, […]
A “whiffletree” is a mechanical digital-to-analog converter. Brilliant science-and-technology documentarian Bill Hammack, professor of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at the University of Illinois, has produced this fascinating video anatomy of IBM’s classic Selectric typewriter, in which a 7-bit whiffletree is employed to convert keypresses (digital) to precisely coordinated tugs (analog) on the control cables that rotate and tilt the type ball. Doubly awesome is the fact that the video features an appendix (yes, a video appendix) which focuses exclusively on the whiffletree itself, closely illustrating its operation with a simple 2-bit case.
I see a knife, a fork, and a spoon. Plus some other implements about which I don’t really care to speculate. No flash drive, though. More deets over at The Fitzwilliam Museum. [via Neatorama]
Rachel @ CRAFT points us to Hine’s awesome Twitter Fail Whale hat, which is most certainly full of win.
Some of the folks over at Teague Labs have been noodling around with measuring water consumption. They’ve built a graphing water meter using a YellowJacket Arduino board with built-in WiFi and coolant flow meter from a PC cooling system to see how they used water around the office. Water conservation is major concern in many areas around the world. Tools that allow us to observe and correct our behaviors help us towards a path to sustainability. Schematics and source code are available if you want to try it out for yourself.
Flickr user YILDIRIM Ahmet put together this simple LCD RSS feed reader so that he could stay up to date with the latest MAKE Online posts, even when his computer monitor is off.
YouTuber SaskView is doing alright with this stunt: He’s coupled two Most Useless Machines together with a bar, at the switches, and turned them loose against one another. The result is highly amusing to watch (500K+ views so far), even without the whole “it’s a metaphor for the two-party system” bit. [via Boing Boing]
