Here’s an Instructable on building primitive batteries, interesting not so much for its (low-current, low-voltage) results but as a nice overview of a different way of making batteries. Also check out this Wikipedia entry on earth batteries, which I found via this Instructable.
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Original post by Luke Iseman
This is a really easy solution for replacing a missing knob on your classic amplifier. These knobs become brittle over time and can easily break when being moved around. The replacement knobs can be made in a few minutes from some scrap materials.
Few weekends ago I was trying to find on the net some knobs to put on a[n] old JVC amplifier [me] and my girlfriend found on the street…..The small ones (2.5cm) where reasonable cheap and easy to find but I couldn’t find any of 5cm…..So at last I decided to do them myself.
More about How to: Make wooden Amplifier Knob
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Original post by Marc de Vinck
There are many Instructables about changing your oil, but only one starts like this:
I learned to do oil changes in high school speech class. One of the boys worked in a garage. He gave a really great how-to demonstration/speech about changing oil. He gave another about rotating tires, but there isn’t anything complicated about that. After each speech the teacher had the other students critique the performance. I didn’t understand one of the speeches given by a boy who had polio or cerebral palsey. He thought I was unkind to his speech when I asked what it had been about, so he beat me up after class. My karate was not effective against polio-based techniques.
Check out the rest of Tim Anderson’s oil-changing Instructable here. In addition to catching the rest of what happened with the “fight,” pay attention to how Tim turns a mundane topic into an engaging Instructable!
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Original post by Luke Iseman
Instructables has put together a list of suggestions for make-it-yourself gifts. I bet there’s going to be a lot of handmade gifts this year. Great! A wonderful silver lining to leaner times.
I have a scarf that a friend knitted me for my last birthday. I was so touched that someone had taken that much time to make something just for me. It felt as though her affection for me was actually encoded in the scarf, in the many hours of knitting it. I think about this every time I grab it from the closet and put it on. I′m not sure any purchased item would communicate the friendly love and devotion, the true notion of “gift,” the way this scarf does.
I’m hoping to make most of my gifts this year. In fact, my son and I are planning on doing one of the projects from The Best of Instructables and giving one to all of our family members. (I’m not going to say which one ‘cause I don’t want to spoil the surprise.)
Here are a few of the ideas for gifts that the Instructables team put together:
Make a Custom Lift-the-Flap Book for a Toddler
I provide childcare in my home for three toddlers and I′ve noticed that they really love board books with flaps that open. So for Christmas I made three customized lift-the-flap books for them. This instructable will explain how to make your own and give some tips on how to make the process a little easier.
Munny SpeakersGive your speakers some extra personality by making them out of a vinyl doll. Kid Robot makes the easily hackable Munny doll and I’ve been meaning to cut one up. The combined need for some new speakers created a happy union of doll and speaker.
We included this speaker project in The Best of Instructables and Instructables had them at their booth at Maker Faire Austin. They looked pretty cool online, they look A LOT cooler in person! Really unique and beautiful. Of course, this isn’t a cheap project, but one the recipient will never forget.
Black and white is totally trendy right now, and what’s hotter than adding a little “bling″ to your life? So here’s a super quick (only six steps!) note card design that you can make as a gift for that really hip gal in your life - or keep for yourself and use them as thank you’s for all the not-so-hip gifts you’ll be getting for Christmas!
There are so many amazing things you can do with paper products and crafting supplies. A trip to a Micheal’s or places like PaperSource will give you all sorts of great ideas, for both presents and wrapping and packaging ideas. This Instructable shows just how easy and cheap it is make very swanky stationary with just a few special craft supplies and materials.
Photo cube - frameless, cheap and easy!
I made this as a birthday card for my sister, but it’s also a great cheap way to display photos without having to buy a frame. It would also make a lovely personalized bauble or gift box.
You could also use these as gift boxes.
Audio Visual Art….FOTC Style
This guy made a LED back-lit, singing painting for his wife, as an homage to the Flight of the Conchords. You could obviously take the idea somewhere else entirely.
From the Maker Shed:
These are just some of the great ideas for homemade gifts. Instructables is a giant treasure-trove of ideas. And so is The Best of Instructables.
Best Of Instructables
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Instructables.com has become one of the most popular magnets for makers and DIY enthusiasts of all stripes. Now, with more than 10,000 projects to choose from, the Instructables staff, editors of MAKE: Magazine, and the Instructables community itself have put together a collection of home, craft, food and technology how-to’s from the site. The Best of Instructables Volume 1 includes plenty of clear, full-color photographs, complete step-by-step instructions, and tips, tricks, and new build techniques you won’t find anywhere else.
Highlights from the book:
* 336 pages, 6-5/8 x 9-3/8, same dimensions as The Best of MAKE and MAKE magazine.
* Over 120 projects!
* Projects cover everything from food hacking and making home furnishings from junk to building robots and CNC milling machines. And in-between you’ll find projects on arts, crafts, costume-making, tool tips, themed photo galleries, and tons more.
* There are also the results of the Community Choice contest winners (the best of Instructables as voted by its members) and links to their projects.
* There are key user comments from the site throughout, called User Notes, and even a section in the back for you to keep your own User Notes as you build the projects.
We tried to involve the Instructables community as much as possible in the creation of the book (we were in direct communication with several hundred authors!). We hope the results do this maker community proud. It was a thrill ride to be sure.
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Original post by Gareth Branwyn
Eric J. Wilhelm, of Instructables, will be on NPR’s “Weekend Edition Saturday” and WCBS-AM 880 this coming Monday to talk about The Best of Instructables for a holiday gift-themed program.
The airtime for “Weekend Edition Saturday” will vary by market. The WCBS-AM program will air on 11/24 at 10:20 am, 11:40 am, 12:20pm, 1:40 pm, and 2:20 pm (all times ET). You can listen to it live at http://www.wcbs880.com/
Also, you can log onto NPR.org/gifts at 1:30pm ET tomorrow for a live chat featuring Eric talking about ECO-nomical holiday gifts!
Best Of Instructables Instructables.com has become one of the most popular magnets for makers and DIY enthusiasts of all stripes. Now, with more than 10,000 projects to choose from, the Instructables staff, the editors of MAKE magazine, and the Instructables community itself have put together a collection of some of the best craft and tech how-to’s from the site. The Best of Instructables Volume 1 includes plenty of clear, full-color photos, complete step-by-step instructions, and tips, tricks, and new build techniques you won’t find anywhere else. Over 300 pages and 120 projects!
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Original post by Gareth Branwyn
Hannah Perner-Wilson has a few new instructables up, my favorite of which is this one on making neoprene fabric buttons. She fuses conductive fabric on either side of a perforated membrane, making completely soft interface objects.
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Original post by Becky Stern
This looks like a good project for anyone who rides a bicycle at night. I really like the copper housing. Just remember to polyurethane the copper if you don’t want it turning green. Personally, I think the aged green/brown patina would look really cool.
For those of us traveling by non-motorized conveyance (bicycle e.g.), visibility is important in both forenoon and post-twilight conditions. The best way to ensure such visibility is through the use of excessively bright lights, of which the latest light emitting diodes (LEDs) are the acme. The following account will detail the process of building an LED based head-light capable of of more than 500 lumens of output using about 6W of electrical power. For comparison, this is the same output as a typical 45W halogen bulb.
More about making a DIY: High power LED bike light
In the Maker Shed:
The Best of Instructables Volume I
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Original post by Marc de Vinck
Here’s a simple project for making a flashlight that sits on top of a 9-volt battery. Less expensive than a flashlight, and quite small and convenient! One LED is best used on top of two AA batteries, but throw a few more LEDs in series and you’re in business.
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Original post by Becky Stern
Filed under: Wearables
For shame. We know good and well engineers can concoct energy-generating garb that actually looks good enough to wear, but evidently those fashion-minded gurus weren′t hired for this project. Granted, we have all ideas the image you′re quizzically staring at above is NTT’s first go at a pair of power-packing sandals, but there’s clearly a good ways to go before these things are cute / safe enough to wear on the streets. Might we suggest shoving all that hardware inside of something? The “all hanging out” look just isn’t working here.
[Via TokyoMango, image courtesy of AFP / Getty]
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Original post by Darren Murph
Filed under: Transportation
With an electric MINI Cooper just around the bend, a Twin Drive hybrid Volkswagen landing in 2010 and Chevrolet’s Volt rolling into showrooms in a matter of months, Audi’s ten-year plan is looking a little awkward. Though we’ve yet to hear that it’s actually speeding things up, Peter Schwarzenbauer, who sits on the management board at Ingolstadt, recently confirmed that the company would be offering “a pure electric car” sometime in the future. Additionally, rumors of it being based on the A1 were dashed, opening the door for speculation that it will instead be built around the VW Up! (Lupo) concept. Here’s hoping we find our prior to 2018.
[Via Autoblog]
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Original post by Darren Murph
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds
Every so often, Nokia will pop out a brick-like beast of a clamshell smartphone with a full QWERTY keyboard — a black sheep in Espoo’s lineup in every sense of the word. These so-called Communicators even had their own custom Symbian-based operating system, Series 80, until the E90 came around and brought ‘em in line with the rest of the ₨ crowd. Of course, S60 just took a big leap to the world of touch today, and that means the E90’s starting to fall a bit behind — so what’s next? Nokia dropped a little teaser during its webcast today in the form of a stylized touch-based concept bearing strong family ties to the E90 and its ancestors, suggesting S60 5th Edition won’t spell doom for the form factor. If it materializes, history suggests it won’t be a mainstream device — but if the real thing can look as good as this render, who knows?
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Original post by Chris Ziegler
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds
While it may not be Nokia’s first touchscreen phone (anyone out there remember the 7710?), the 5800 XpressMusic is certainly the first to come out of Finland with a mainstream appeal. What we’ve alternately known as the “Tube” throughout much of its development cycle is the first production device to run S60 5th Edition — the fourth major overhaul of Nokia’s ubiquitous smartphone platform since 2002 and the first to support fingers, styli, and high-res displays. Speaking of high-res displays, the 5800 comes equipped with an impressive 3.2-inch 640 x 360 resistive touchscreen to go along with its 3.2-megapixel autofocus cam, Carl Zeiss optics, dual LED flash, GPS, WiFi, 3.5mm jack, and a microSD slot with support for 16GB cards. It’ll be available in three versions — European HSDPA, North American HSDPA, and GSM only — and ships this quarter in black, red, and blue for €279 (about $392) unlocked with an 8GB card thrown in for good measure. Music fans with voracious appetites for new tunes might want to hold out, though, for the Comes With Music-equipped version that follows on “early next year” at a to-be-announced price.
Gallery: The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
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Original post by Chris Ziegler
Filed under: Cellphones
October 2nd: mark it down ‘cause Reuters says that’s the date that Nokia will launch its Nokia Tube — aka, 5800 XpressMusic. According to a pair of industry sources, Nokia will launch the much anticipated, long overdue, S60 touchscreen device at a media and analyst event in London — exactly as Pocket-lint’s source told us earlier. All that’s left now is for the invites to be distributed.
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Original post by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio, Portable Video
One day after Google goes touchscreen, along comes what looks to be an official press shot of Nokia’s 5800 XpressMusic — aka, the Tube. No new details here, though Nokia appears to have cleaned up the industrial design around the buttons of some of those earlier prototypes we’ve seen. October 2nd looks like the date that we’ll finally get our fill of the first S60 Touch handset. Though given the number of leaks and rabid competition Nokia faces in the touchscreen OS space — our appetite for this device might be quickly satiated.
[Via unwired view]
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Original post by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Laptops
AT&T has freely supported Panasonic’s WWAN-enabled Toughbook 19 / 30 on its mobile broadband network for nearly a year now, and for those worried that the two may break things off when Gobi entered the picture can finally breathe a sigh of relief. Qualcomm’s hybrid-3G technology (which goes from EV-DO to HSPA with the flip of a software switch), has just been certified for use on the carrier’s nationwide network, and sure enough, Panny has decided to offer it on “all″ new Toughbook machines. Gobified Toughbooks should be on store shelves this October, though we’re not sure just how costly the option will be.
Read - AT&T certifies Gobi technology
Read - Panasonic offers Gobi on Toughbooks
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Original post by Darren Murph
Developages - Development and Technology Blog