TV-TO-SYNTH INTERFACE
Triggering sound from video images. By Tom Zimmerman
WORLD'S LOUDEST IPOD
iBump crossover lets you crank it up without distortion. By Tom Anderson and Wendell Anderson
PROJECT REDSHARK
Turn your Xbox into a mobile media monstrosity. By John Riney
Tom Jennings | Make Vol. 10- 2007 | Pdf | 4 pgs | 2 mb
NO ONE TALKS OF FAILURE AS ANYTHING but shameful:
this is wrongheaded and foolish. Mistakes are synonymous with
learning. Failing is unavoidable. Making is a process, not an end.
It is true that deep experience helps avoid problems, but mainly
it gives you mental tools with which to solve inevitable problems
when they come up.
It all begins with a mental toolbox, filled with useful items you
can't buy. but can only obtain through the act of failing again and
again. Here are mine.
...
TIME-BASED DEVICES
Transplant a heartbeat from cheap alarm clocks. By Larry Cotton
METAL ETCHING
Chemically carve detailed text of line art onto brass or copper. By Tom Jennings
ELEGANT PLYWOOD COFFEE TABLE
Making furniture with no nails, screws, or glue. By Andy Lee
THE BYTELIGHT
Make a high-tech mood light from a fluorescent lamp and 54 obsolete SIMMS. By Ross Orr
PIN-O-RAMA
Lensless and low-tech, pinhole cameras have always been maker-friendly. But forget the Quaker Oats carton, and go wide with this roll-film, panorama design.
I bought a new scanner recently, and soon found myself spelunking through drawers of old photos from my many misspent years in photography. Some of the most interesting shots were the pinhole camera experiments I had done as a teenager. With ghostly outlines from multi-minute exposures, and shapes warped into boomerangs by curved film, these otherworldly images got me dreaming about pinhole cameras again.
Who said input devices have to be hard and mechanical? Here's one that's as soft, bendable, and easy to play with as a plush toy. In my MIDI primer (MAKE. Volume 07, page 158. "MIDI Control"), we saw how to use the MIDI data specification, originally designed for music, to interconnect both musical and non-musical hardware and software. Now, we'll use this approach to construct a sock monkey instrument you can use to control visuals and sound.
The monkey has flex sensors sewn into its limbs, and it wears a sensor interface board as a backpack. The sensors detect the monkey's movements, and the board converts the readings into MIDI data. This lets the monkey conduct audio-visual symphonies and perform other
MIDI magic.
RIDE YOUR OWN BRAIN WAVES
You don't have to be a Buddhist monk to meditate, or a Sleeping Beauty to sleep well. Achieve these altered states of consciousness, and others, with this simple microcontroller device.
What would happen if you could play a recording of brain waves into someone's brain? That question popped into my mind one day while I was meditating, and it turns out that there are devices that can do this. Sound and Light Machines (SLMs) produce sound and light pulses at brain wave frequencies, which help people sleep, wake up, meditate, or experience whatever state of consciousness the machine is programmed for. The first
time tried one was a trip! Not only did I follow the sequence into a deep meditation and then out again (feeling wonderful!), but along the way I had beautiful, outrageous hallucinations.
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HOW NOT TO MAKE A HOW-TO VIDEO
Ignore these handy rules and your instructional video will turn out great! By Travis J. l. Corcoran
VAN TV
Big sights and sounds hit the streets. By Ethan O'Toole
QUICK AND DIRTY LIGHT TABLE
A storage bin. a pane of glass. and fluorescent light saves hundreds of dollars. By Hiram Cook
The Crucible industrial arts school's community of practice
Winged origami missile with front-load tank deliver wet payload.
Salvaging components from unwanted appliances.Download...
DIGITAL CLOCK
Programming PIC microcontrollers, part 3. By Sparkle Labs
TV SET SALVAGE
Nothing good on TV? Well, there's plenty of good stuff in a TV. By Thomas Arey
It seems as though nearly everything high performance these days boasts some amount of carbon fiber in its construction. Originally used in aerospace, carbon fiber has moved into the mainstream and can be found in luxury automobiles, mountain bikes, and sports equipment.
Some laptops and cellphones even use printed decals to simulate this lightweight material's cutting-edge look. The good news is that you don't need a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility to work with carbon fiber composites. In fact, you can do it at home.
This article discusses some of the basics of carbon fiber construction and explains how to create a carbon fiber iPod case. All you need are some basic woodworking tools and skills, and the right materials. And because the same process also applies to fiberglass and Kevlar composites, these skills give you multiple ways of boosting your future projects to a new, level!
Andre LaMothe's creations have a neo-retro bent that's hard to resist. Combining the sensibilities of game systems from 20 years ago with the DIY appeal of a microcontroller board. LaMothe's XGameStation Micro - a compact video game hardware kit - gave hobbyists the opportunity to write games that are closer to the bare metal than most programmers have been in decades.
The XGameStation Pico Edition 2.0 (makezine.com/xgamestation) takes you even closer. Modern game programming environments use collections of code libraries and high-level design tools to hide the complexity of the hardware from programmers. The Pico lets you duplicate the experience of writing games for a retro system like the Atari 2600: hardware and software fuse into a single platform, and in pushing the limits of that platform, you challenge yourself to come up with creative hacks that you would never need on today's ultra-powerful systems. Want to draw something on the screen? You'll have to understand something about video signaling first.
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ACTION MOVIE EFFECTS
Shoot a fight scene with a blood -spurting knife wound and a head smashing through a window. By Zack Stern
TILT-SHIFT PHOTOGRAPHY
Flexible lens makes scenes look miniature. By Dennison Bertram
ONLINE VIDEO PRODUCTION
Tips and techniques for daily content. By Andrew Michael Baron
OUTDOOR WEBCAM ENCLOSURE
Capture winter scenes from hanging sewer pipes. By Alek Komarnitsky
In principle, moldmaking is a simple process, but with every object you want to replicate comes a
new series of pitfalls, innovations, and solutions.
This article explains how to make a two-part, under poured block mold, which is a versatile and beginner-friendly type that's great for small, detailed objects such as jewelry, game pieces, masks, picture frames, and figurines. I learned this technique by apprenticing under some of the great moldmaking masters in the special effects industry, and this article reveals their unpublished tricks. I hope they don't get mad.
We'll make our mold out of silicone rubber, an excellent casting material, but it costs about $100 per gallon. This process uses as little of it as necessary, and it's important to follow all of these instructions, because a mistake can be costly. Then we'll cast our duplicates in opaque urethane resin (clear resin requires a more difficult process).
This project will show you how to build an amazingly inexpensive and rad-looking one-string electric guitar out of pine wood and PVC pipe. A single string purposely keeps the design simple. (For a 3-string cigar box model, see MAKE, Volume 04.)
BIG SOUNDS FROM A SMALL PACKAGE
In MAKE, Volume 04,1 presented my version of the venerable cigar box guitar. The instructions for the project included adding an electric pickup so you could play the guitar through an amplifier.
People from around the world emaiIed me to tell me they'd built cigar box guitars based on my instructions. I struck up a conversation with one gentleman from Europe who goes by the moniker Blind Lightnin' Pete. He made a couple of beautiful cigar box guitars, including one he calls the Vintage Blues Texas Rattlesnake Special model. He then went one step further, and built a cracker box guitar amplifier. This outstanding little amp cost all of $5 to build (depending on where you get the parts). Pete kindly allowed me to modify his design and present it as a project for you to build. (See page 111 for a word from Pete about the origins of the cracker box amp.)
My amp differs a little from Pete's because I wanted to make a workable little practice amp with parts and tools that could be purchased "one-stop shop" at RadioShack and built in an hour.
WHIP IT GOOD
You don't have to be Chuck Yeager to break the sound barrier. You just need a good bullwhip, which converts arm movement into supersonic speed and triggers the sonic boom we call a whip crack.
HEAD-MOUNTED WATER CANNONDownload...
Use steel fire-extinguisher power to pummel plastic squirt toys. By John Young
WEATHERPROOF WI_FI ACCESS POINT
Outdoor router with minimal coaxial run maximizes network range. By Will O'Brien
GPS RUNNING LOG
Automatically download exercise routes from a Garmin watch and convert them to animated Google Maps on your website. By Dave Mabe
CONVERTIBLE JOCKEY BOX
Portable cooler taps and dispenses ice-cold beer from both kegs and mini-kegs. By Carlo Longino
FLIP, FLAP, FLY
For millennia, men and women have studied birds, bats, and beetles, observing and experimenting, attempting to determine what humans must do to fly by flapping.
But people can't fly by flapping: not with wings covering their arms: not with pedaled, chain-driven wings: and, so far, not with internal-combustion engines, either. Nonetheless, the concept of manned ornithopters continues to hover on the periphery of aeronautical engineering. This project shows you how to build a small, rubber band-powered ornithopter we call Orly.
There are many types of ornithopter designs. Orly is a simple monoplane, meaning there is a single wing mounted above the motor-stick, and its motion is similar to a bird in flight.
KILLING TIME
Hack a retro gaming light gun with some tilt switches to control a vintage digital clock radio. After the alarm wakes you up, you can grab then gun and kill i off. Ins't that what you've always dreamed of doing?
BEEPKILLER: PARENTAL REVENGE
Three ways to silence annoying toys. By Erica Sadun
IPOD VIDEO CONVERTER CABLE
An easier way to watch iPod video on your TV. By Erica Sadun
AUTOMATE YOUR VOICEMAIL GREETING
Program Asterisk to daily update your outgoing message in your own voice. By Dave Mabe
Here's an easy-to-build MIDI data detector packages in a small Japanese action figureDownload...
REDLINING AT 20 RPMDownload...
The Stirling engine has long captivated inventors and dreamers. Here are complete plans for building and operating atwo-cylinder model that runs on almost any high-temperature heat source.
THE NIRVANA MACHINEDownload...
Lots of folks think that quaffing a cup of coffee from boutique beans comes close to nirvana, but roasting your own beans will bring you even closer. That's why I call this roaster the Nirvana Machine.
I didn't drink coffee for most of my life, and I even survived without it in the Navy. But when my son introduced me to a cup of legendary West Coast java (OK, Peet's), I began to understand what all the fuss was about. Soon, I too became fussy about excellent coffee.
Can a machine have a soul? Can it think? Can it laugh and cry, bug you for a snack, tease you, or curl up on your couch and dream robotic dreams? Can you build such a machine? And can you sell it for $250?Download...
SCRIBBLER BOTDownload...
Homemade two-axis plotter finds work as a caricature artist. By Douglas McDonald
HOT TO DRINK BEER ON C-SPAN
Put yourself into somebody else's video. By Bill Barminski
EYES ON THE RISEDownload...
Hack a $30, single-use camcorder to make it reusable, then launch it up in a model rocket and capture thrilling astronaut's-view footage of high-speed neighborhood escape and re-entry.
EL CHEAPO CANTENNADownload...
"Mountain Grown" coffee can makes homegrown wi-fi range extender. By Will O'Brien
BACKUP POWER TO GO
9V battery USB-compatible charger juices up portables in a pinch. By Erica Sadun
PALM PILOT NOTEBOOK
Modified hardback book contains extra-powered PDA and travel keyboard. By Allen Wong
USB-POWERED FAN
12 easy steps to a cooler you. By Erica Sadun
THUMB LIFE
USB keydrive lets you listen to, read, and play what you want on any machine. By Russ Ethington
INSTALLING BLUETOOTH INSIDE A IBOOK
Tuck a USB wireless adapter inside the case. By Timothy B. Hewitt
CULTURAL REVOLUTION
Use an off-the-shelf home air purifier to make a laminar flow hood for your own
miniature mycology lab. Then use it to culture and grow mushrooms, and to
perform other experiments that require a clean-room environment.
Announcing a just-maybe-revolutionary microcontroller for all things DIY
Build this kit to read radio frequency ID tags.
