Music sequencing doesn’t get much simpler than Peter Bennett’s BeatBearing tangible rhythm sequencer from MAKE Volume 17. Move the ball bearings on the grid and you change the beat. So what is the BeatBearing? Simply put, it’s a computer interface that takes the pattern of ball bearings placed on a grid and translates it into […]
From James Bruton of XRobots.co.uk. James’s take on the familiar vacuum forming machine uses a three-layer MDF sandwich for the vacuum box and forming table, with a vacuum cleaner hose connected at the bottom. His heating system is novel, in my experience, using an off-the-shelf quartz room heater at the bottom of an MDF “chimney” lined with aluminum foil reflectors.
When 18-year-old maker Immanuel McKenty salvaged a small LCD from an old printer, he recruited his code-savvy older brother, Adam, and they soon had the LCD displaying text from an Arduino. To avoid having to plug the Arduino into a computer whenever they wanted to change the display text, Immanuel salvaged a PS/2 port from […]
The PING))) Ultrasonic Sensor, from the Maker Shed, is one of my favorite sensors. It has a range from .75 inches to 10 feet and is surprisingly accurate and easy to use with an Arduino. This versatile sensor can be used for motion sensing, distance measuring, and object detection making it perfect for robotics.
The Now-A-Saurus was created by Chris Merrick and is a time machine with dragonfly wings that transports its riders to the present while spitting fire from its top. At Maker Faire Bay Area 2011 this art car whose wheels and curves are pulled from sacred geometry. It roamed the ground of Maker Faire Bay Area and elicited positive reactions from onlookers.
Edward L. Platt describes himself as a “a web developer, maker, artist, recovering physicist, and neuroscience fanboy.” I met him at Maker Faire Detroit, where he had an exhibition of his geometric snowflake drawings, called “penflakes.” He told me he draws one by hand every day. He uses hex grid paper as a template, laying […]
The very word means capable of being shaped, molded. Plastic is a cheap, durable, plentiful, extremely adaptable, and variable material that can be put to seemingly endless uses, from furnishings, building materials, and machine parts, to tools, weapons, vehicles, to now just about anything that can be extruded from a 3D printing head. The downside of its cheapness and ubiquity (not to mention the polluting nature of its manufacture) is that it leads to a profusion of waste material.
