Recently Dymo sent me one of the label makers to review. The LabelManager 260P is a handheld unit that tries its hardest to include as many options as it can. First, let’s talk about the unit’s core function of printing labels. You can choose between three font styles: Basic (sans serif), Serif, and Fun, which […]
Steve Roberts, the “high-tech nomad,” shows you how he built his mobile lab and makerspace.
This looks interesting – Stray Technologies is offering a USB-MIDI controllable kit based on the YM2149 sound generator IC, famed for its use in classic computer and game consoles – The chip is most well known for its use in the Apple II Mockingbird soundcards and Atari ST computers. The YM or the chip from […]
Have you ever seen any of the amazing custom Lego work proliferating on the internet these days and wondered, “Where did they get exactly the bricks they needed to build that thing?” Sourcing parts can be especially difficult if your model, like Flickr user Legohaulic’s Great White Nautilus, shown above, includes lots of unusual elements. As far as I know, there is, as yet, no site or service in the world that will let you upload a list of Lego elements, in exactly the colors and quantities you want, and then price, pack, and ship you an order containing exactly those elements. It seems like a great idea, but the logistical problems of making that happen are enormous. BrickLink, however, is the next-best thing. Thousands of private Lego resellers from around the world have shops there selling kits, manuals, and individual elements indexed by official Lego catalog number. If you’re sourcing parts for a particular model, you still have to do some manual legwork running down the particular combination of BrickLink sellers that optimize price, availability, seller location, seller minimum order values, and so forth for the items on your list, but it’s still an incredible resource.
Hannah, aka Plusea, is something of a legend in the soft-circuits community. We have covered her open-source work in soft circuits and sensors many, many times before. She has no fewer than 37 tutorials published on Instructables, 28 of them “featured,” almost al of which cover low-cost soft-circuit devices of her own design. Now she is selling kits for a few of her more popular soft sensor inventions, none of which will set you back more than $15. Shown above is her Neoprene Bend Sensor Kit.
Indie makers RLT Industries of New Braunfels, TX, sell this lovely wooden model kit of the classic “south-pointing chariot” mechanism: Set the chariot down with the vane pointing in an arbitrary direction–south, north, whatever–and a geared differential connected to the wheels will keep it pointing the same direction regardless of which way the chariot turns. […]
I have often opined that truly creative problem solving comes from limiting one’s options, rather than expanding them. Which is why prisoner’s inventions fascinate me so much. (If you’ve not had a chance to browse Angelo’s Prisoners’ Inventions book, BTW, I highly recommend it–it’s not about shivs or improvised weapons, but about how prisoners make game pieces, heat water, control the climate in their cells, etc., etc. using only the odds and ends they are permitted by, or can slip past the attention of, the state.) Compare an object like this prop handgun, which was reportedly used by John Dillinger in his escape from the Crown Point, Indiana Jail in 1934, to, say, a modern-day toothbrush handle, or a Nike sneaker, designed by a professional working with a CAD-CAM system, industrial machine tooling, and a smorgasboard of rainbow-colored polymers and elastomers, most of which add no functional value at all, and are employed just to make a product stand out from competitors on the shelf. Granted, an escaping prisoner and a product designer have wildly different goals, but if asked “which is doing more creative, original problem-solving,” I know how I’d answer.
