citizen science

Make: Projects – Water Bath Thermostat

Make: Projects – Water Bath Thermostat

This project was inspired by “Cooking for Geeks” author Jeff Potter’s quick DIY sous-vide hack. My plan, initially, was to just hack the controller into an enclosure with an A/C outlet, the idea being that you could just plug any heater you wanted into the outlet. Looking around for cheap temperature controllers, however, I happened across the STC-1000 on eBay for $25. It’s not PID, but it has proven to be plenty accurate enough for almost any practical purpose. And since the STC-1000 has both heating and cooling functions built-in, the logical next step seemed to be to split a single A/C outlet so that you could plug a heater or a cooler (or both) into it and use it for all kinds of stuff.

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan40
Detect Anything With a Personal Glucose Meter

Detect Anything With a Personal Glucose Meter

Here’s an extremely innovative idea from Yi Lu and Yu Xiang at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, just published in Nature Chemistry. Medical demand for home blood glucose monitoring equipment has led to the development of inexpensive, accurate, and widely available electronic instruments that can measure glucose levels in blood. Some modern personal glucose meters, or PGMs, cost as little as $10.

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan10

OpenPCR in the Wild!

It’s a delight to see OpenPCR already on so many desktops! Josh and I spent the past year staring at mostly-disassembled prototypes, with wires all over the place. It makes it all worthwhile to see everyone assembling their kits, posting pictures of them, and having a blast doing so.

Continue Reading titojankowski6
Behind the Brain Blinker

Behind the Brain Blinker

The Bio-Sensing Primer in MAKE Volume 26 opens up the world of human body hacking, pulling together new information and sensor recommendations for detecting brain activity, eye movements, facial expression, muscle activity, respiration, heart rate, blood oxygen level, and more. The article also gives full details on how to build a simple “Truth Meter” that […]

Continue Reading Paul Spinrad8