MAKE pal Jean interviewed Garnet Hertz (we covered his work in MAKE 02)“Aside from exhibiting a dead frog with a miniature web server embedded in it ( allowing web visitors to re-animate it’s limbs! ), this quest has more recently lead him to using a living roach atop a modified trackball to control a 3 wheeled robot, infra-red sensors providing navigation feedback to the cockroach, with the hope of creating a pseudo-intelligent system with the cockroach as CPU!” Link.
SpiderWrench has a Maker challenge! “Ok, I really need help with this. I have several prototypes without power, (or rather, I have been forced to use an AC power strip with 30 individual, ugly chargers and a mess of wire everywhere) here is the situation: I need to be able to charge 30 new cell phones on a single power supply. Through some risky experimenting on my part, I have been able to charge 3 cell phones off of a single wall transformer, and I know I need more power to get 30 up and charging. I have thought of using a modified laptop/PC power supply, and I think it will work, but I do not want to risk blowing up 30+ $300 cell phones which are not mine to blow up.” Post up ideas in the forum! Link.
This is crazy, I just recieved my Powerglove off eBay and another Gyration mouse for a VR glove project and Leadingzero built one! – “The time has come to bring new life into our old friend and to welcome him back as a productive member of society with the ‘Powerglove Mouse’. With this hack I can strap on the Powerglove and have total control over the mouse cursor on my computer. I can control the cursor’s position with a wave of my hand and activate the mouse clicks by simply bending my fingers – a beautiful integration of old and new.” [via] Link.
Chris Jang is building his own autonomous robot – “This robot is my first electronics and embedded systems project. I studied Electronic Circuits and Applications by Senturia and Wedlock for six months and then rebuilt and cross compiled my home computer systems with a Linux From Scratch book to prepare for it. This project is also the first time machining moving parts (as simple as the front suspension is, the parts do move). I’ve maintained what a friend referred to as an “mail blog” during the project. After some progress or discovery, I emailed a status report of sorts, usually with pictures and (rarely) movies attached. A coworker convinced me there is value in these emails as artifacts of the project history.” [via] Link.
AizeMashehu’s writes “I built two fan controllers into a happy-face baybus for two sets of fan arrays so I can hear the sound of silence while the eight large fans chug-a-lug-lug. One knob on the new fanbus controlls the two rear 80mm fans blowing into the water-cooling radiator (in addition to the existing 120mm fan with rear-mounted speed control knob sucking air out of the radiator from the other side) and the other knob controls the 2 front 80mm fans that blow air around 5 of the fastest hard drives in the machine. You can see a close up as well as an explaination of the switch here and the main machine that this is wired to in the other photos in this series.” Link.
Scott writes “For those who don’t already know, the Gimp is a powerful, open source image editing application. For more info on the Gimp visit gimp.org. GIMPshop is essentially the same program with some cosmetic changes. The Gimp’s menu structure and naming conventions had been a constant source of frustration for me because I was so used to Photoshop. So, I did what any hardcore graphics geek would have done. I hacked GIMPshop together.” New version! Link.
There are a lot of homemade versions of this lately, but here’s a really cool way to pilot your RC chopper – “HeliHobby’s True Vision is a state of the art device which includes a high quality sub-micro camera, sub-micro transmitter ( 2.4GHZ ), base receiver and coupled with EyeTops’s high resolution LCD Eyewear to give you the only True Vision when flying any size R/C Helicopter. True Vision is the only system which will allow you to fly your R/C Machine in first person view as well as third person virew simultaneously.” [via] Link.
