Category: DIY

Just an FYI: I got email today from Overstock.com saying that they have “2527” Mattel Juice Box Media Players in stock now. They’ve raised the price. It’s now US$26 for the pack of 6.

Here’s our earlier item on these.

Tim Slagle of DC Dorkbot writes:

Overstock.com has a *six pack* of Mattel Juice Box Personal Media Players for US $21.99 with $1 shipping. There are 12% off coupons around that make the shipped price $20.35. Search Google for “overstock coupon.”

The Juice Box apparently runs uC Linux internally and there is lots of hacking info available here:

eLinux Wiki Juice Box Page
Make LCD Frame Flickr Pool
Juice Box item on LinuxDevices with resource links
Juice Box post and discussion on /.

The Juice Box comes with the SD card adaptor. If anyone needs a bunch of small LCD screens for a project, this may be the way to go. Can’t afford not to buy them at this price!

Now THAT’s one ugly-ass camera. It may look like a monstrosity, but it produces some pretty interesting images. This Flickr set shows how the builder made this panoramic camera that “shoots onto two frames of 35mm film out of a Nimslo 3D stereo camera and an old Delmonta twin lens reflex. Like a lot of these lo-fi camera hacks, it’s probably more conceptually interesting than a long-term art (or commerce) tool, but YMMV.

In June, I reported on the first DC Dorkbot meeting. The second gathering of the group happened on Tuesday night, at Teasism in Penn Quarter. Unfortunately, I was on the road and couldn’t make it. Thomas Edwards has some pics of the event and sent the following report to the elist:

“In case you missed last night, Rebecca Adams gave a presentation about her electroacoustic sculptures, I gave a presentation on sensors, Scott Hutchison showed a DVD of his painted animations, Tim Slagle showed off
great pictures and video of the Survival Research Labs show he went to last weekend, and Bryan Leister showed off his cool Theremin which doubles as a proximity sensor MIDI control device.”

You can see more pics here.
Thomas also gave a PowerPoint presentation on “Sensors You Should Know About.” It’s a pretty handy thumbnail guide to various sensor systems, what they sense, what they cost, and where you can get ’em. Here’s a link to the PPT doc.

We’ve been anxiously awaiting the premiere of Craft (Make’s sister pub) and its website, mainly so there won’t be all of those damn knitting projects on the Make blog anymore. We kid, we KID the needlepoint enthusiasts!

We actually are interested to see what O’Reilly does with the mag and what a slightly techophilic and geeky take on a crafts magazine might look like. I’ve also been writing for the mag, so I’m anxious for personal reasons.

While we wait for the appearance of the first issue of the mag, the blog has finally gotten under way (giving those needlpoint projects a *proper* home). There are also some projects up on the site and a sneak peek at the first issue of the magazine.

For those of us who mourn the loss of Junkyard Wars, there’s now a traveling hands-on series of workshops called Scrapheap Challenge. The Challenge was created by a research fellow at MIT Media Lab Europe and an artist working with wearable computing and emergent communications infrastructures.

Each Scrapheap Challenge has a different theme (MIDI music devices, wearable electronics, DIY Urban, Street Hacking). There have been Challenges in Europe, the US, and Australia. There are a number of US events coming up later this year in California and Florida, so check the Events page on their site.

One of the things we love about this project, Make and the Maker Faires, Instructables, and a bunch of the other current DIY projects is the openess to people of different skill levels and ages and the willingness to teach those who have the interest but not the chops. A welcome change from the whole l33t h4x0r mentality.

[Thanks, Carl!]

Here’s a nifty way of creating a wide-angle adapter for a camcorder using little more than a wide-angle security lens (a.k.a. a front door peep hole). This camcorder version was inspired by an Instructables project on building a similar rig for a still camera.

[Via Make]

There are some delightfully absurd wireless Internet antenna solutions out there, from the ubiquitous Pringles and other “cantenna” to the soup-box antenna to the somewhat unsettling Bluetooth sniper rifle.

Which brings us to tonight’s creative antenna feature: Wok-Fi, wi-fi antennas made from woks and wok accessories (such as the large mesh “cooking scoop”). This site from New Zealand has a bunch of these “Poor Man’s” antenna hacks.

The caption for the above image here reads:

“Athough offering impressive gain (~24dB?) solid dishes of this size (600mm) are VERY prone to wind. This setup (on a sturdy weighted tripod) detected Access Points in the Hutt Valley — >10km away, across the Wellington Harbour — but a wind gust almost tossed it & the notebook PC away…”

[Thanks, Craniac!]

Ben, a UK music blogger, did a series of thoughtful experiments to try and determine what household products could be used to repair scratched CDs. His consclusion, after trying a number of things, was: hair gel.

For those of us who don’t count hair gel as a “household item,” a number of people offer additional scratch-removing products in the discussion that follows, such as… hair spray. Okay, people, *some* of us are bald. Enough with the hair care, already!

Amazingly cool animations done with little more than a light pen, long exposures, and a digital camera.

[Via Make]