Hacks

30 Days of inPulse Faces

NYC Resistor’s Trammell Hudson is designing an inPulse interface a day for 30 days. Inspired by Ranjit’s instrument-a-day, I’m writing a new wrist watch face every day for my programmable inPulse watch. The full sources are posted online for others to build on. Day 1 was a fixed point 3D rendering engine with a rotating […]

Thereglyph, an RF Synthesizer

Thereglyph, an RF Synthesizer

Reed Ghazala‘s Thereglyph looks oh-so sweet and sounds even better: Radio interference, traditionally a problem in audio, can be used to our advantage. By means of the Thereglyph instrument I would like to introduce to circuit-bending a concept I call radiopool. While Leon’s Theremin looks to onboard RF generation and sounds the same played anywhere, […]

Mechanical Twitter Feed

This is a super-rough hardware sketch of what a mechanical Twitter feed might look like. I’ve been playing with ideas around combining digital projection with mechanical motion and this is a prototype to test some of the ideas. It consists of a series of people I follow on Twitter represented as their user photo printed […]

Hackable Conference Badge Boasts a Nixie Tube

Hackable Conference Badge Boasts a Nixie Tube

Jeffrey Gough created 210 interactive, hackable badges for the TROOPERS IT security conference, featuring nixie tubes built in! Each conference attendee starts on zero. As they unlock achievements at the con – like sending postcards to their families, meeting the speakers, unlocking the secret in the badge, attending my SMT soldering workshop, etc, attendees level-up. […]

Make: Projects – CD / Suction Cup Status Dial

Make: Projects – CD / Suction Cup Status Dial

When I tried Jason’s trick for myself, however, I found that, while the hole in an optical disc does fit nicely over the hub of a hardware-store suction cup, all the cups I could find had this molded-in groove to accommodate a wire hook. This groove prevents the CD from fitting snugly around the hub, and allows it to spin too freely. If you only have two states you want to indicate (e.g. clean or dirty dishes), it’s really not a problem. But if you want better resolution, the fit needs to be snug so the dial can’t “drift.”

So I’ve added a bit of craft foam that fits down in the groove and secures the CD in place, and doubles as a pointer. This design adds just enough friction: The CD is easy enough to turn, but not so easy that it won’t stay where you put it.

I’ve included a printable version of the label I made for my own “returning at” sign, which can accurately indicate 96 separate states (any 15 minute interval in the 24 hours of a day), but the design could easily be adapted to other purposes.