Hardware Beyond the Hype
This enterprising wirehead added a mechanical counter to his website. Hey, with Digg distributing physical badge counters, why not? The webpage counter has a low, cheap parts count. The daemon he wrote is for Linux, but you could fairly easily do your own for another OS.
Our pal Jake Von Slatt did a cool steampunk keyboard recently that we blogged about. A fan of his work tried to commission him to make another one, but as Jake put it, that sounded like work. So he asked his bud Doc, a.k.a. Datamancer, to take the job instead. The result, dubbed the Von Slatt Keyboard, is here. Very similar to Jake’s version, but in brushed aluminum instead of brass. Love the blue “jewel-style” instrument lights.
As if Tim Kaiser’s stash of absurdly cool music machines wasn’t enough, Brian and Leon Dewan’s Dewanatrons are here is give him a run for his money. Similar approach of marrying old tech and tech cases with hacked together electronic sound generators, with plenty of knobs to twiddle and switches to throw. Pictured here is the Dual Primate Console, Brian and Leon undoubtedly the primates in question. Dig the rotary phone dial.
[Via Make]
Instrucatbles has a new contest. We’ve blogged several of the wallet-building Instructables, made from keyboard membranes and FedEx tyvek. Now they’ve issued the Wallet DIY Challenge. Post a wallet Instructable in the next five days and possibly win an Instructables T-shirt or Eye-fi Eye-Film that wirelessly uploads images from your camera directly to the Web.
But that’s peanuts compared to the Laser Cutter contest. Post an Instructable, on anything, and add it to the contest’s Group. Five semifinalists will be chosen. You then need to submit a proposal for what you’d do with a US$6,000 BrightStar Laser Cutter. Winner bags the machine.
Our favorite geek watch emporium, TokyoFlash, has redesigned their website and added some new watches, including this wrist-band-based one, which seems particularly challenging to decipher, but maybe not as much as the JLr7, which you have to see to believe.
BTW: Did folks here see the reference to Tokyo Flash on 30 Rock? A geek in the building had something called (I think): The Japanese Pie Slice Watch (or something to that effect). Tiny Fey asks him what time it is and he has to mull it over for a while and then says, hesitantly, “I… think it’s…” [whatever time he said]. Made me laugh ’cause everybody with a TokyoFlash has a lot of figurin’ to do, when asked for the time.
BTW 2.0: I have a short piece on TokyoFlash in the latest MAKE, Vol. 9, called “Tokyo Time Hackers.”
This Saturday, April 28th, Robot Fest 2007 will take place at the Historical Electronics Museum in Linthicum, Maryland (near BWI airport). Looks like all sorts of good, dirty, robot fun, with a number of local FIRST robotics teams, members of the Girls Robot Club, LEGO Mindstorms clubs, a bomb bot, engineers working on medical robotics, art robotics, and a lot more. Check out the Robot Fest site for full details and photos of last year’s event. The event is free, BTW.
This month’s Dorkbot DC will be held tomorrow night, Tuesday, at Artomatic, the massive DC art orgy holed up on several floors of an office building in Crystal City (hit the Dorkbot DC link for details and directions.
This month’s speakers include Tim Tate. No, not Street Tech’s Tim Tate, DC’s Tim Tate, an amazing glass artist who incorporates tiny vid screens, LEDs, found objects, and other cool stuff into his blown glass creations. Really gorgeous work, and one of the best things at this year’s event (so don’t worry OUR Tim Tate, he’s cool enough to dopplegang the name). Peter Blasser will also be presenting. We’ve covered Peter’s work before. He’s the crazy bugger responsible for the Fyrall Computer and other mad circuit-bends. Jack Whitsitt will also be talking about art in Second Life. AfterDork will meet up in the Artomatic Bar afterwards. Should be a wonderful program.
Here’s a brilliant set of steampunk goggles on Flickr with step-by-step shots of the building process. Really nice work. Check out some of the other project sets on Mikest’s pages.
I’ve written here, and in several of my books, about trying to save gadgets that have gotten wet. My gist: DON’T TURN IT ON! and let it dry, THOROUGHLY. In today’s MAKE Tools N Tips Newsletter, Joel Young offers an additional bit of advice:
“I’ve revived a couple of soaked laptops and iPods, and if the machine isn’t turning on, you pretty much have to “disassemble it as fully as possible. You can find guides all over the internet. Cole’s Hardware has little screwdriver kits that work well.
“Once it’s apart, you’ll most likely see that the circuits have white sediment on them. I’m not sure what actually causes that to happen, but it causes (temporary) short circuits. If you get some denatured solvent alcohol from a hardware store and wipe the sediment away with cotton swabs and a toothbrush (don’t breathe too deeply–it’s not poisonous, but it is irritating), you should be able to get most, if not all, of the components working again.
“Be careful not to let the display get soaked by anything, including the alcohol, because it won’t function again after that. That’s the part that’s most likely to need replacement, and unfortunately, displays are not cheap. My fiancée’s iPod nano got soaked recently, and I was able to get everything but the display to work–and it costs $50 to get a replacement from a third party. Meh.”
We covered Chris Myers’s work here before, his wonderful Plexi-clad Palm robot. Now he’s got some Roombas he’s been hacking up to similarly impressive effect. He made one, a US$30 Craigslist special, into a sort of development platform, using an Arduino microcontroller and the Bluesmurf Bluetooth module. Thus outfitted, Roomba became a wine sommelier. Ah, Roomba, so sophisticated… But soon, Roomba answered the call to serve and traded in his towel and corkscrew for a gun and a bandelerro. Chris outtfitted his Red Roomba with an Airsoft gun and a homebuilt ammo hopper. Hell hath no fury like a Roomba scorned! (Be sure to check out the video of the militant vacuum in action).
