Category: DIY

MAKE Vol. 8, the Toys and Games issue, will be on newsstands any day now. I have three feature pieces in this one: a piece on making the papercraft toys from Chris Ware’s amazing ACME Novelty Library, a piece on sci-fi tabletop wargame terrain, and a piece on building “Pummers,” a kind of stationary plant-like BEAM lifeform.

The latter article is available for free as a MAKE sample PDF. You can download it here. The Pummers pictured in the piece were done by Zach Debord, the same builder whom I covered in Street Tech’s Twin-Engine Solarroller piece.

A few weeks ago, we brought you an item about clothing and other fabric constructions made out of cassette tape. Here’s another way of recycling those “ironic” trucker tapes you bought in the 99-cent bin at Midway Truckstop in a fit of giggles (“The Braillettes” and “Music for Big Dame Hunters” seemed like such a good idea at the time).

Anyhoo… this project, from Girl on the Rocks, shows you how to weave a “cozy” for an iPod (or other mobile device) out of ye ol’ magnetic medium of yesteryear.

[Via CRAFT]

Here’s a relatively easy project that can save you some money, energy, and in this builder’s case, unnecessary trips to the basement. It’s a power outlet controlled by the serial port of a PC. The builder made it so that, whenever he printed anything out, the printer would turn on and stay on for 30 minutes, shutting down if no new jobs came through. This serial-controlled switch was especially useful in that the printer in question is in his basement not near his desk and prior to the switch, he’d have to go down there and turn the printer on before printing a job. This fix nicely automates the process.

He created a Perl background daemon to run on his Linux server which houses the serial port he used. He used a solid state and a mechanical relay to do the power switching.

[Via hackAday]

You may have seen the earlier Ionic Cooling Project that Jared Bouck featured on his site. Readers of the project raised concerns about a system that ported ionized air over the PC’s components, possibly generating too much ozone and damaging parts. So Jason did a second version which is external and ports the air out of the case.

[Via hackAday]

This is an amazingly cool project that’s relatively easy to build with a high geek cred payoff: a “Time Fountain,” a fountain that appears to suspend the drops falling from it. Basically, it’s a little desktop pump-powered fountain with Fluorescein liquid (a fluorescent dye) in the water and UV LEDs controlled by a PIC16F628. By timing the strobe of the LEDs to the dye flow, you can appear to suspend the drops, make them go backwards, even manipulate them. Very cool.

You definitely want to watch the video. The project posting is followed by a nice long thread about the Time Fountain, where to find the parts, programming the PIC, and more.

Here’s a set of simple instructions for building a portable device recharger using the awesome PowerFlim, flexible solar panels. You can build the project for around US$30 and it involves little more than the panel (@ 6v. 100mA), a 5V voltage regulator, and a USB connector. He calls it an iPod charger, but it could obviously be used with other similar devices. I like how he lists “Exceptionally Good Coffee” as one of the Bill of Materials. Personally, I’ve found that electronics work and coffee don’t mix very well (i.e. jittery hands wielding a soldering iron), but YMMV.

[Via hackAday]

How awesome is this, a relatively easy to build shake-to-charge flashlight that’s housed in a Tic-Tac box. Looks cool through the clear plastic case, too. Take that Altoids project box! Looks like you’re not the only breath mint packaging a geek could love!

I’ve seen a couple of these projects online before on how to roll your own benchtop power supply. They usually involve eviscerating an existing PC power supply to wire in binding posts, fuses, switches, etc. These always look like the kinds of projects that make me want to reach for my wallet to buy one instead and use the free time to… oh, I don’t know, date girls or something. This simple one leaves the PC power supply intact and instead focuses on creating a benchtop interface that plugs into the supply, which is a lot easier. This way, you just plug the ATX motherboard connector (that you’ve either scavenged or bought) into the supply and you’re good to go. I love the way he’s spaced the banana jacks so you can use a standard two-prong banana plug to select ground and your desired voltage.

This weekend, I was at MicroCenter, with Street Tech cyber-saint Alberto Gaitán, and we were snatchin’ up the bin/bargain gimmes. They had, among other things, 1GB JumpDrives (ThumbDrives, Keychain Drives, Geek Sticks, whatever we’re calling ’em these days) and 1GB SD Cards for US$16! They even had freakin’ 802.11g wireless routers for $7.99. Crazy. I could have redirected some serious creds to that place. Thanks to Alberto for talking me down or I might have walked out of there with that 42″ plasma display. Now *that* would be a computer monitor.

On the way home, we got to talking about portable apps and how, at 1GB, you could put portable versions of most of your crucial apps (wordpro, mail, web, chat, ftp, calendar, etc.) on a Flash drive and carry it around with you, rather than a laptop. Of course, you’re then dependent on there being a computer available wherever you go, but that’s becoming less problematic all the time.

So, today, I see this item on Lifehacker, a link to the OS X Portable Applications page. They have ports of nearly everything you’d want in your pocket, all the way up to Web authoring, RSS, and media editing tools. Each app averages about 30MB; with suites like OpenOffice, running as high as 430MB, you’d have to pick and choose what you think you might need on the road.

Of course, for most people, it’d make more sense to download and set-up a similar portable suite of PC apps as you’re far more likely to run into PCs in the wild. Just for fun though, I think I might set up my new $16 drive with a Mac suite to play around with. Has anybody else here had experience setting up and traveling with one of these Geek Stick PCs?

Update: I forgot to mention that one of the cool things about the portable Mac apps is that people are loading them onto their iPods, turning their PMP into a full-blown computer (sorta). Man, combine this with a Wikipod, and you’ve turned your iPod into a pretty powerful knowledge and comms tool.

This French hardware hacker built a really cool nixie tube clock from a serious-looking Russian VFD (Vacuum Fluorescent Display). In the comments, he points to a Euro eBayer who’s selling a bunch of Russian/Soviet-era VFDs and other tubes, and other Soviet surplus. There’s also the obligatory video of the finished clock on YouTube. Cool loungey French soundtrack.

[Via hackAday]