Category: DIY

This week’s “Hack Attack” column on Lifehacker is a how-to on building your own Digital Video Recorder using any (suitable) PC you want to turn into a media box, a TV capture card, and DVR software. While the piece discusses the range of hardware and software options available, it focuses on the Hauppauge PVR-150 card and the SageTV software.

Severals years ago, a friend gave me a super-bright LED keychain flashlight. It’s was a very useful thing to always have at hand. Bright enough to function as a real flashlight on a darkened path, perfect for finding the right key and the lock when the porch light was burned out. It broke into pieces in my pocket a couple of nights ago and I vowed to replace it immediately. Today, I saw this DIY one on Make, made out of a TicTac box (got plenty of those lying around). Geek folk art/fashion statement AND handy pocket tool. What more could you ask for? Maybe a Blue Balls table lamp?

Hot on the heels of the new Stylus rotary tool, Dremel has announced a new Dremel Wokstation, a very versatile mount that can turn a Dremel rotary into a drill press, a sander, and other tool configurations where you want your Dremel firmly fixed for hands-free work. It can also be used as a stand for the flexi-shaft attachment. At U$45, this thing looks to be a great deal, if it’s as sturdy and useful as it appears.

[Via Toolspotting]

Here are some Flickr photos of a casemod for an iPod Shuffle made from an old Nintendo controller. The right/left buttons now control volume up/down and right/left has become Forward and Back. The Select switch controls Continuous Play, Shuffle, and Off. The Start button is the Hold switch, button A is Play/Pause, and button B is empty.

[Via Make]

I LOVE my glue gun. It’s one of those tools I always appreciate when I’m using it, but don’t use it nearly as much as I have uses for it. Why? It’s kind of a hassle to round it up, plug it in to heat it, and then to deal with the inevitable drooling that it does. It’s messier to work with than it should be.

Cold Heat to the rescue. These are the same folks who gave us the instant-on soldering iron, and they’ve applied the same heating technology to glue guns, creating the Freestyle (US$30), a cordless gun that heats up in under a minute and doesn’t drip like traditional guns. I’m definitely buying one of these babies as soon as I have some mad money to blow.

[Via Kevin Kelly Cool Tools]

Think you know how electricity flows through a circuit? Think you know how transistors work? Well, in the immortal words of Firesign Theater: Everything you know is wrong. Or at least slightly off; less than accurate. This article, on an amateur science website, will help clear things up. Here are a few choice tidbits:

…you must abandon the idea that CURRENT travels in transistors or flows inside of wires… Current does not flow. Electric current never flows, since an electric current is not a stuff. Electric current is a flow of something else. (Ask yourself: what’s the stuff that flows in a river, is it “current” or is it called “water?”)

“So what flows inside of wires? The stuff that moves within wires is… is called Electric Charge. It’s the charge that flows, never the current….

[Later]

…Have you discovered the big ‘secret’ of visualizing electric circuits?

ALL CONDUCTORS ARE ALREADY FULL OF CHARGE

Wires and silicon …both behave like pre-filled water pipes and water tanks. This simple fact is usually obscured by the phrase “power supplies create current” or “current flows in wires.” Once we get rid of that word “current,” we can discover fairly stunning insights into simple circuits.

If the two-part piece gets too gnarly for you, there’s a shorter summary article.

We don’t know about you, but we’re pretty psyched here at Street Tech Labs about getting our hands on the new Dremel Stylus tool (US$70). The latest in the Dremel line, this cordless multipurpose rotary tool has a handle for better grip and fmore control when doing precision work. It’s smaller than the last Dremel release (the rather beefy 10.8V cordless), which can be a little unwieldy on some jobs. The Stylus offers a nice happy medium, with a respectable 7.2V Li-on battery and up to 25,000 RPM. The handle grip allows you to hold the Stylus like a pencil, for greater control in situations where you need it, but you can also flip the tool around and hold it like a typical Dremel (for using things like a cut-off wheel where you’d want the wheel to be perpendicular to your cut).

We’ll try to get ahold of an evaluation unit for an in-depth review. Stay tuned…

I know wireheads who can tell the value of most resistors just by looking at their color bands. I am NOT that kind of geek. I’m the lazy kind. I’m the kind that thinks it’s not too much to ask for the values of components to be printed on them. I mean, Jeez, they can laser-etch logos and UPCs onto individual pieces of fruit now! Anyway, I use my trusty ol’ RadioCrap Resistor/Cap Color Code wheel to figure out what components I got stuck with in my Taiwanese parts grab bag.

This nifty OS X Widget works the same way. You enter in a resistor color sequence and it gives you the value, or you enter in the value you desire and it shows you the color code you need to look for on the resistor itself.

Tip: When you get a new pack of resistors, sit down with your color code wheel or widget, look up the values, and mark them down on the reel tape that holds the resistor sets together. Then, use wire snips to cut resistors off as you use them, leaving the reel tape in place. This way, the resistors are marked until you snip the last one from the tape.

[Via Make]

Back in the early ’90s, when I was doing a zine called “Going Gaga,” I did an issue on drug experiences called “The Poison is in the Dosage.” It was an audiozine that came inside of a hollowed out paperback book inside of a ziplock bag. It seemed like a cool idea at the time, but we ended up having to hollow out over 100 paperbacks. It was a freakin’ nightmare. I did nothing but hack n’ slash yellowing pulp fiction for days on end. I cajoled my housemates into slicing up books, anyone who came over was pressed into service. The sight of X-Acto knives in my hand made everyone remember they suddenly had something really pressing to do.

This “Secret Hollow Book” project on How To Do Stuff brings back memories, horrible, bleeding-papercut memories. Probably not so bad if you just do ONE book. And the gluing of the pages together first is a good idea. I guess I learned that the poison IS in the dosage and I WAY over-imbibed.

[Via LifeHacker]

In the early ’90s, I had a column in Mondo 2000 magazine (called “Street Tech,” BTW) covering DIY high-tech. I profiled a guy — I forget his name — who was doing “electronic graffiti” in NYC. He was building simple LED flasher circuits into little RadioCrap project boxes, and attaching them to lamp posts, street signs, the sides of buildings, etc. He would even set up timed events between a string of these boxes (e.g. a series of boxes on Stop signs would flash in sequence down the road). I thought it was tres street tech/cyberpunk for its time.

Over a decade later, and the idea lives again, this time, under the auspices of The Grafitti Research Lab. They’ve published instructions online for making “LED Throwies,” simple LEDs bundled with a battery and a rare earth magnet so the Throwie will stick to street signs, mail boxes, and any other “ferromagnetic” surface. These are nifty. I’m definitely going to make some.

On the Instructables project page, a reader has a great tip. If you use conductive epoxy or solder to attach the LEDs (instead of tape) you’ll get more power from the magnet, and if you use flashing LEDs, you’ll get MUCH longer battery life.