Technology

Hand-cranked Toy Piano Hack Keeps the Tunes Coming Forevermore

Hand-cranked Toy Piano Hack Keeps the Tunes Coming Forevermore

When a battery operated device runs out of juice, most of us reach for a fresh pair of AA’s. But when his daughter’s electronic toy piano had drained its batteries, Dominik instead installed a hand-cranked dynamo to power the instrument ad infinitum. He hacked apart an Ikea flashlight to co-opt its cranked generator and installed it inside his daughter’s plaything. Now a little bit of elbow grease keeps the tunes coming while saving the environment and a little bit of money to boot.

Continue Reading Matt Richardson12
How-To: Variable DC Power Supply

How-To: Variable DC Power Supply

Hobbyist electronics projects need robust, reliable power supplies for prototyping and testing. I learned how to build this circuit from the Basic Analog Circuits class at ITP taught by Eric Rosenthal, but took it several steps further in building a solid enclosure and integrating a voltage meter. Now it lives on my desk, ready to power most small projects I’m working on, ranging from 0 – 24 volts and up to two amps. You can learn all about how to make one yourself using this Make: Projects tutorial.

Continue Reading Michael Colombo34
Arduino Shield Makes 8-Pin Chip Programming a Snap

Arduino Shield Makes 8-Pin Chip Programming a Snap

I was delighted to see the positive reaction to my latest video, Shrinkify Your Arduino Projects, which is based on a tutorial by MIT Media Lab’s High-Low Tech Group. Their tutorial walks you through the process of not only using the Arduino as a programmer for 8-pin ATtiny chips, but also how to use Arduino code and the Arduino IDE to program them. In order to make this process easier, Randy Sarafan created an Arduino shield for programming these diminutive chips. Head over to his Instructable to get the board and learn to build your own!

Continue Reading Matt Richardson6
Bamboo Exoskeletal Arm

Bamboo Exoskeletal Arm

Caspian Maclean of Perth, Australia, built his “limb embiggener” out of bamboo stakes and a bicycle brake. It still seems much easier then the original skeletonics system that inspired me, and more sturdy than my previous mechanical arm. Hopefully there’s enough information to give anyone a good start to making one. The Artifactory had all […]

Continue Reading John Baichtal4
iPhone 4S Teardown

iPhone 4S Teardown

Once again, it would appear that the folks over at iFixit have let all of the magic smoke out of the latest iPhone. This time around they were confronted with the eerily familiar iPhone 4S. On the outside it looks and feels like an iPhone 4. On the inside they were confronted with a different phone altogether. Dual-Core A5 processor, 8 MP rear camera with new optics, Bluetooth 4.0, Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE + Dual-band CDMA/EVDO radios.

Continue Reading Adam Flaherty