Flashback: LED Hula Hoop
LED hula hoops are so beautiful to watch, and creating a custom hoop is a satisfying challenge. Twenty-one LEDs are used in this hoop; 6 are flashing LEDs that cycle through the colors of the rainbow.
Technology
Four-Drawer Resistor Storage
Chris Connors shows his technique for storing resistors. Executive summary: he sorts by the 3rd color band! Over the years, I’ve seen and inherited parts bins with every drawer labeled for a single value resistor. This can take up dozens of drawers in a rack. It also makes returning the resistors a pain, because you […]
Designing a Window Manager for a Micro-Controller
Andrew Rossignol decided to implement a window manager to run on an ATmega1284p micro-controller using the uVGA-II VGA controller.
Making Glass Circuit Boards
Andrew Rossignol wanted to make a desk ornament, and inspired by Charles Lohr video on making a glass PCBs, he decided to do just that. But not having access to the tools he needed to etch his own PCBs at home, he took a different approach, one that would let him use parts he found at a local craft store.
Quadcopter Flying Over a Field of Yellow Mustard
There is a large field of mustard a couple miles from MAKE headquarters, and for a few weeks in spring, all the mustard blooms, and the field turns brilliant yellow. On the way home from work about a month ago, I stopped at the field, with a plan to to take some photos. As I got closer to the ideal photo spot, I came across a gentleman, documentary filmmaker Michael Heumann, flying a quadcopter. We got to chatting, and I ended up snapping some photos. Michael has a DJI Phantom Aerial UAV Drone Quadcopter with a GoPro camera mounted to it, and he showed me how he had installed some Moongel pads on the top and bottom of the camera, to absorb shock to reduce video shakiness.
Cloning the DARwin-OP
Kansas City programmer Michael Overstreet wanted his own high-performance humanoid robot to experiment with, but was deterred by the $12,000 pricetag of an off-the-shelf DARwin-OP. Though a significant fraction of the cost is tied up in the top-of-the-line servo actuators the design requires to perform at spec, Michael believed he could build his own “clone” of the fully open-source design, at substantial savings, by 3D printing as many pieces as he could in fused filament, on home equipment.
Choose Your Own Adventure (With a Receipt)
At Minne-Faire this year, I ran into Jerry Bjelojac who has created the Choosatron, an Arduino-powered, coin-operated choose-your-own adventure machine that prints your quest out on a thermal printer. As technology has advanced, so has the way we tell stories. The interactive fiction genre evolved so quickly from text adventures to modern gaming that creatively […]