The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for digital gadgetry, open code, smart hacks, and more. Processing power to the people!
Using a pair of capacitive touch styli inside a cylindrical mirror, a team from the Ochanomizu University have built a system for displaying and controlling interactive anamorphic images on the iPad. By taking advantage of the iPad’s capacitive touchscreen, the device allows a user to rotate and view images of objects that appear to float within the mirror.
This week’s MAKE Flickr pool roundup is full of great Halloween memories. Our featured image, recalling Wednesday’s Cardboard Clone Trooper, is an equally-impressive cardboard Master Chief costume from user jek in the box. For sheer comedy value, my personal fave is user Unconverted’s QR code costume, lowermost, followed in close second by hine’s costume squid hat. And, somehow, to me, Chris Connors’ untitled skull-scrubbing shot sums up the maker Halloween experience quite nicely.
It’s being widely reported as the first time an electric multi-copter has carried a human being aloft. Germans Thomas Senkel, Stephan Wolf, and Alexander Zosel are the brains behind e-volo, a 16-copter with four groups of four blades, each of which is driven by a separate motor. The first human-carrying flight is reported to have lasted one minute and thirty seconds.
Nice Halloween stunt from maker Matt Coates, aka mattjackets. Illuminated from within by the classic traveling arc, Matt’s Jack-o’-lantern this year is carved with a high-voltage hazard symbol instead of a face.
Here’s something every aspiring superhero need, a wrist-mounted crossbow with a laser sight. Built in ten days from scratch by maker and laser enthusiast Patrick Priebe, the compact armament thrusts hand-made carbon fiber bolts with pinpoint accuracy.
See what Microsoft had to offer in their tent at World Maker Faire New York 2011. Microsoft sponsors Maker Faire and we’re excited to see them embrace the maker movement. Since bringing their Gadgeteer prototyping platform to Maker Faire last year, they’ve seen makers start using their .NET-programmable modular devices, inspiring them to make the hardware more widely available. Microsoft also brought their Kinect robots built on the Robotics Developer Studio 4 platform. They’re running a competition for robot concepts ($10K prize) built on RDS4.
One of the projects featured at the Mini Maker Faire was Ytai Ben-Tsvi’s IOIO, an Android hardware accessory kit that predated the Open Accessory Development Kit (ADK), and is a bit simpler to use: there’s no need to do any programming on the microcontroller, you can load firmware updates from the Android phone, and the Android programming side is pretty darn easy, too. On top of that, the IOIO supports a lot more phones than the ADK does: while the ADK requires Android 2.3.4 or greater, the IOIO will talk to a phone as old as the G1!
