Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Florin made a giant TV-B-Gone… 48 IR LEDs and an ATmega8 that sends the signals to the LEDs. Source code and schematics included. He writes -

I arranged the LED’s in 4 rows of 12 pieces and the resistors fit quite nicely between the LED’s. I used four BD139 NPN transistors to drive the rows. It took me hours to drill and then solder this board(48 LED’s and 48 resistors mean 192 holes plus the other parts). The controller board contains an ATmega8 chosen because of it’s 8k memory needed to store all the codes, an 8 MHz crystal, an LED, a tact switch and some resistors and capacitors. I designed the board so that it can also be used for other projects.

More:

TV-B-Gone Kit (unassembled).
New 3rd Gen TV-B-Gone!
TV-B-Gone Pro.

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Original post by Phillip Torrone

David Jones really liked his old Casio CFX-400 scientific calculator watch. As a professional electronics design engineer, he appreciated the greater functionality it had over other calculator watches, which typically support only the four basic functions. He was saddened when his 20-year-old Casio finally bit the dust, so when he looked around and realized there was no one making scientific calculator watches anymore, he decided to make his own.

He calls it the μ Watch (”Micro Watch”). His goals were to make a scientific calculator watch that was good-looking and practical, and could be assembled from off-the-shelf parts.

“I could have designed a custom case for it, and used custom parts to get the size down and make it look like a store-bought watch, but there was no fun in that! Using off-the-shelf parts was a real challenge and in the end was the most satisfying aspect of the project,” Jones recalls.

A resident of Sydney, Jones has been publishing projects in Australian electronics magazines since he was 15. Besides his μ Watch, he’s designed and built his own solar air heater called the Solar Sponge, and written an interactive exercise program that runs on iPods and other MP3 players. He also likes to get involved with serious home renovation projects.

Jones has released his μ Watch source code under the GPL to encourage third-party development, and he sells kits for those interested in building one. He includes a complete schematic and detailed photos on his website.

And the μ Watch isn’t limited to being just a scientific calculator. Its programming port, universal I/O port, and optional infrared remote interface let you connect it to almost anything. “With the two-line LCD, full keypad, and 16-bit microprocessor, it’s really a powerful general-purpose computing and control platform,” Jones points out.

If you want a μ Watch that controls your TV, plays games, or commands other user-designed devices, just add some software. –Bruce Stewart, Made on Earth MAKE volume 15 page 20.

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Original post by Phillip Torrone

I desperately need a charging station for all my tech junk, but they are usually fairly ugly. This DIY version looks pretty cool, especially the spot to plug in a laptop.

So, I had a need. It is a common one. I had many (so many!) digital gadgets that needed to regularly suckle at the electric teat. This resulted in an octopus mess of chargers, digital devices crammed everywhere there was an outlet, and a constant search to find plug A suitable for fitting into slot B.

More about DIY: Wall-Mounted Recharging Station

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Original post by Marc de Vinck

MAKE is devoted to a growing community of resourceful people who believe that if you can imagine it, you can make it… With all the talk of tough economic times ahead, we’re doing a series of interviews with makers & friends around the world who either make a living from “making” or just earn extra money with the things they make. We’re calling this series “Make: A Living - DIY for fun and profit”. There are many different paths to making a living off what you love doing, we hope these stories and makers inspire you as much as they have inspired us.

Our first interview is with Mike Spreng (moses410) - a high school student who sells premade MintyBoosts (this open source hardware kit is available at the Maker Shed Store, it’s a DIY kit that charges iPods, iPhones and just about anything you’d charge via USB!).

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Original post by Phillip Torrone

A classic halloween prop/gag - the Living Severed Hand creates its simple yet freaky illusion using - an actual living human hand (non-severed)

Of course, it isn’t really severed, it’s just an illusion! What you are going to make is a special glove that will make it look like you are holding a living, moving, human arm. In actuality, what people are seeing is your hand, passing straight through a “dummy” glove with an attached fake stump of an arm.

While the project takes a few hours to make (or more, depending on your attention to detail), it is silly-cheap and has a great effect!

The old retail version I had didn’t even have seperate fingers on the glove - pssssh, DIY FTW! - The Living Severed Hand!

More:

Severed hand pincushion

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Original post by Collin Cunningham

If you’re familiar with the audio spotlight, then you now how very awesome narrow beam ultrasonic speaker devices can be. They can project a sound efficiently over long ditances without spreading like common speakers. One can essentially walk into the ultrasonic line-of-fire and begin to hear sound abruptly - certainly an interesting effect.

Though not much for documentation & details - this instructable shows off a transducer packed parametric speaker design. Hrmm, it seems the author is selling kits and sharing a good deal of info here. Apparently this setup will introduce a substantial amount of distortion to your signal - ultrasonic audiophiles be warned. - How to make parametric speaker

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Original post by Collin Cunningham

Nice DIY Air suspension system…

Gadget Freak James Kinney was looking for a way to take the pressure off the back end of a tow truck when it’s carrying a heavy load. If you can equalize the pressure of the truck bed so all the weight is not on the back end, there will be less stress to the truck’s suspension system. Kinney developed the air suspension system, called the Mechatronic Microcontroller, in his mechatronics’ class at Colorado State University. The gadget uses a resistive touchscreen from an electronic Sudoku game to select the ride height of the tow truck’s bed to make it level, thus spreading the stress of the towing weight evenly across the truck’s suspension.

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Original post by Phillip Torrone

Clever and hidden USB storage via a phone jack at Instructables via CrunchGear.

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Original post by Phillip Torrone

Some good stuff from SparkFun who will be at Maker Faire Austin in a couple week!

We’re going to Maker Faire Austin next week. If you’re anywhere near Texas, we would highly recommend this amazing event on October 18th and 19th. We will be there in full force with lots of toys (the LED Coffee Table is now playing Tron!) and soldering workshops.

More info to follow on the workshops, but we’ll be teaching a moderate level class where we teach you to solder the Simon Kit. Yes, you really can solder SMD. It’s easy and we’d love to show you how.

We’ll also be teaching a super-beginner level class with all through hole components. We’re very excited about this class because the kit has a presence sensor and some LEDs. It’s your basic ‘blinky’ kit that can be combined with other blinky kits to create an interactive wall. Stop by our booth and check it out!

We’ve updated our Eagle Library. You can find 75 new components and updated footprints here. Have no idea what we are talking about? Check out our Eagle tutorials. Eagle CAD is a PCB layout program. We share the parts library that the SparkFun engineers use so that you can create your own devices based on our available products. Have fun!

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Original post by Phillip Torrone

In each volume of MAKE we have “major projects” these project pages are meaty step-by-step articles with start-to-finish photos, precise instructions and how-to learning that can range from making a VCR cat feeder to ariel kite photography. In MAKE volume 03 the projects are:

Living Room Baja Buggies by John Mouton. With wireless cameras on board, these radio-controlled racers give you virtual reality telepresence. Page 96

Taffy Pulling Machine by William Gurstelle. Make a simple mechanism that stretches delicious candy while it stretches the limits of multidimensional math. Page 106

The Pixelmusic 3000 by Tarikh Korula. Re-create a mid-1970s video trip by plugging this box into any TV and audio source. Beneath the fake wood paneling, a Propeller microcontroller simulates Atari’s classic music visualizer. Page 114

Solar Power System Design by Parker Jardine. How to use solar panels to supplement your home or workshop electricity needs. Page 160

You can subscribe to MAKE to get in on this project action (use code CMAKE for $5 off) and you’ll also get access to the MAKE digital edition, it’s exactly like our print magazine, but online (no DRM), shareable, printable and can be accessed from just about any computer. Back issues of MAKE are also available in our Maker store.

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Original post by Phillip Torrone

This gorgeous paper swan takes about 10 hours to make, at first I though that might be too much time to spend on a papercraft but the results look great!

Creating a swan out of hundreds of smaller origami pieces is currently popular among the younger generation in Asia. Your loved one will appreciate this gift because you put in a tremendous amount of effort, dedication and patience. This is definitely a sign of love’s labor. Preparation: First you need to fold 500 individual triangular pieces, which are the backbones of creating the swan.

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Original post by Phillip Torrone

There’s a new Bay Area hacker sapce, NoiseBridge, in the Mission District:

We want to provide infrastructure and collaboration opportunities for people interested in programming, hardware hacking, physics, chemistry, mathematics, photography, security, robotics, all kinds of art, and, of course, technology. Through talks, workshops, and projects we encourage knowledge exchange, learning, and mentoring.

As a space for artistic collaboration and experimentation, we are open to all types of art - with a special emphasis on the crossover of art and technology. From hardware labs to electronics, cooking, photography, and sound labs, anything that’s creative is welcome.

We intend to have many interesting things happening at all times. Sharing is essential to making this work. A logical followup to this is to find a space to display our creative projects.

Read more about it on Jake Appelbaum’s LiveJournal page.

The NoiseBridge Wiki [via LaughingSquid]

More:

• Other hacker space coverage on MAKE

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Original post by Gareth Branwyn

Michael Cooper sent these amazing photos and data plots to SparkFun…he wrote his own firmware for the WiTilt, which gives 250 Hz of accelerometer data with 16x oversampling. The data is sent via Bluetooth to his Palm Tungsten which takes care of logging.

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Original post by Phillip Torrone

This is classic, a maker was so grossed out by a toilet brush he made a “better” version… Sean writes -

What the heck do you do with the toilet brush right after you use it? Hang it up? Lay it in the sink or bathtub to dry first? Or maybe you have one of those brushes with a built-in base that keeps the bristles corraled when not in use. All of these alternatives kinda skeenge me out, honestly, and whether it’s realistic or not I have a kind of horror of loose toilet brushes and the germs I imagine growing on them. So I often find myself standing over the commode with a freshly-used toilet brush wishing I had some more sanitary place to put it.

This is my Howard-Hughesian solution. A standard round plastic toilet brush is built into the lid of a barber’s disinfecting jar, so that the lid forms a sort of “guard” for the brush when it is withdrawn for use. When you’re done scrubbing, the dirty brush goes back down into the jar until the lid is back in place, submerging the bristles in disinfectant, where they are continuosly stored when not in use. I used generic barber’s disinfectant from the beauty store, which comes concentrated and is diluted many-fold for use. The disinfectant is cheap to begin with; add to that the fact that the closed-lid design reduces evaporative losses to essentially zero and the expense associated with the disinfectant becomes trivial. You can also add detergent to assist in cleaning the bowl.

Makers, post the things that freak you out and your DIY solutions - if someone posts a really good one I’ll send them out a Maker’s Notebook.

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Original post by Phillip Torrone

New RFID kit, “Tikitag”… Looks like the value here is the example applications and use of their web site?

The tikitag starter package, together with the tikitag service on http://www.tikitag.com can be used to create your Internet of Things. With tikitag, objects can be made smart and applications can become accessible via a simple touch.

Usage: From linking your toddler’s toys to Internet websites towards creating or customizing your own loyalty or renting service, the applications of the tikitag starter package are only limited by your imagination.

Contents: The tikitag starter package contains one USB RFID reader and 10 RFID tags (smart stickers).
System requirements: The USB reader works with PC Windows XP and Vista and with MacOSX 10.4 or later (Intel version only).
Technical: The USB reader works at 13.56MHz (High Frequency RFID) and has a readout distance of about 4 cm (1 inch) when used with the tikitag RFID tags.

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Original post by Phillip Torrone