DIY Projects

Pulse Sensor Kit

Ask MAKE: Turning Heartbeats into Drum Beats

Using a pulse sensor (now available in the Maker Shed) to translate into a drum beat is certainly possible. The pulse sensor can be plugged into the Arduino and then translated as MIDI data through the Arduino’s serial port. Check out this Arduino Playground page to learn more details. You can also take a look at this tutorial to familiarize yourself with the process. Once you’ve done this, the serial data can be used as an input for lots of different audio programs that accept MIDI.

Continue Reading Michael Colombo2
DIY Tilt-Shift Lens

DIY Tilt-Shift Lens

If you’re looking for an interesting project for your DSLR camera, you might find the DIY Tilt-Shift lens from Flickr user Maciej Pietuszynski to be worthy of your weekend project time. Maciej’s version uses a shower head and rubber glove in addition to a 50mm/1.8 prime lens. If you’re comfortable cutting a pipe with a hacksaw and disassembling a perfectly good lens, you can pull off this build. The images a lens like this produces more than makes up for the time it takes to assemble.

Continue Reading Adam Flaherty16
Dimmable LED Light Panel

Dimmable LED Light Panel

If you’re looking for a cheap fill light for your video work, check out YouTube member DTapeProductions DIY light panel using stick-on 12V LED light strips. It’s not going to be daylight temperature or color corrected, but it’ll throw some accent light where you’ll need it for cheap. In the video they say you’ll have to solder the strips together, but if you’d like to save some time, you’ll find that there are plenty of solderless connectors available online.

Continue Reading Adam Flaherty12