Creative

The gods of Random.org have crowned Rebecca Karger, a student at Horace Greeley High School, winner of our Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 set. This is what Rebecca had to say about what she'd do with the set:

If I had this kit, I'd take it with me to college next year, and build a robot that could go down the hall of my dorm to deliver a note to a friend. And probably 500 different other things. I was on an FLL team in middle school that went to the international competition, but it was the year BEFORE the NXT kits came out! I remember seeing a demo and being highly impressed, but my parents say the kits are too expensive.

Rebecca: so yeah, your FB settings are kinda restrictive. You're going to have to get in touch with me if you want the prize. I'm at facebook.com/nerd1.

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If you have to ask why... Well, just don't ask why. [Spotted on the MAKE Flickr pool]

(BTW: This is a cracker box amp, a la the project in MAKE Volume 09)

Schlitz Amp

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Looking to take a break from tinkering on your latest project this weekend? Here are some fine maker events to check out, from The Maker Events Calendar. Wish your event was on the list? Add it to the calendar!

Coming up this week:

Craft Night @HackPittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA
Friday, Mar 12, 2010, 7pm - 9pm

Maker Faire Newcastle
Newcastle, UK
Saturday, Mar 13, 2010 - Sunday, Mar 14, 2010

Arduino / Project Night @The Transistor
Provo, UT
Saturday, Mar 13, 2010, 5pm - 8pm

Breadboard Arduino Classes at All-Con 2010
Addison, TX
Saturday, Mar 13, 2010, 2pm - 4pm

Introduction to Electronics @Metrix Create Space
Seattle, WA
Sunday, Mar 14, 2010, 2pm - 4:30pm

AVR Programming Class @HacDC
Washington, DC
Sunday, Mar 14, 2010, 6pm - 7:30pm, then repeats

Project Lab with Expert Included
Berkeley, CA
Tuesday, Mar 16, 2010, 3pm - 6pm

Drop-in Arduino and Electronics classes
Berkeley, CA
Tuesday, Mar 16, 2010, 7pm - 9pm

Take Apart Tuesdays @Crash Space
Culver City CA
Tuesday, Mar 16, 2010, 8:30pm - 9:30pm

Start planning for:

Dorkbot SoCal 39
Los Angeles, CA
Saturday, Mar 20, 2010, 1pm - 3pm

Arduino NYC Meetup
New York, NY
Saturday, Mar 20, 2010, 12pm - 6pm

Bob Ross Paint-Along 2 @i3Detroit
Royal Oak, MI
Saturday, Mar 20, 2010, 2pm - 4pm, 4pm - 6pm, 6pm - 8pm

Using Transistors @Metrix Create Space
Seattle, WA
Sunday, Mar 21, 2010, 2:30pm - 4:30pm

Handmade Music: Minneapolis
Minneapolis, MN
Thursday, Mar 25, 2010, 7pm - 12pm

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I've never seen a trailer like this - perhaps it wasn't road safe or something, but it would be wonderful to (re)make - via LoL.

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The Lost Knowledge column explores the possible technology of the future in the forgotten ideas of the past (and those just slightly off to the side). Every other Wednesday, we look at retro-tech, "lost" technology, and the make-do, improvised "street tech" of village artisans and tradespeople from around the globe. "Lost Knowledge" was also the theme of MAKE Volume 17

Ever since we humans started making shadow puppets in the firelight of our caves, we've been fascinated by the power of the projected image. It seems only fitting that, for DIY Movie Making Month, we'd take a look at magic lanterns, some of our first technological baby steps that have delivered us to the age of Avatar.

What is a magic lantern? It's basically a 17th century pre-cursor to the slide, and then movie, projector. The Magic Lantern Society defines a magic lantern as:

...an appliance by means of which transparencies are projected by artificial light upon a screen with the projected image having a diameter generally from thirty to eighty times greater than that of the transparency or slide, whilst the area of the image may be from one thousand to six thousand times as great.

Magic lanterns grew on the developments of magic shadow shows (i.e. shadow puppets), camera obscura, magic mirrors, and other earlier optics and projection techniques. The period of the magic lantern spanned from the mid-17th century to the late 19th. While there is no clear inventor of the device, Dutch astronomer, mathematician, and physicist, Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695), with his lenses designed for use in telescopes, is probably the closest thing to a father of the technology.

Parts of a common type of Magic Lantern. [From The Magic Lantern Society's website]

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For portable radio operation, I like End-Fed Half-Wavelength Antennas (EFHWA, pronounced "EF-WAH"). This type of antenna is similar to the common half-wavelength dipole, but with one significant advantage. A dipole has its feedpoint (where it connects to the radio) in the middle of the antenna, but an EFHWA's feedpoint is at one end. This makes it very convenient to throw the antenna up in a tree and connect the bottom of it to your radio. Here are instructions for making a multiband end-fed half-wavelength antenna that works on 17, 20, 30, and 40-meter bands.

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From user Meph over at the always-entertaining There, I Fixed It.

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Here's a neat idea for a tablecloth, by Kristine Bjaadal. Normally, one would avoid spilling things on their linens, however the Underfull Tablecloth has a hidden pattern built in that only shows up once it becomes stained. Now you can look at that lovely butterfly pattern and remember that one time you had a bit too much wine, without feeling bad about having ruined the tablecloth! [via neatorama]

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Makers Market seller Kevin of kaitrees has a bunch of great videos on his market blog. They range from details of the pieces themselves, to "slap tests", and works in progress. It's a neat look at the process that goes into making these pieces.

My sculptures are an effort to distill what real trees inspire in people into something one can have inside their living or working space.

This tree in the video above will require about 500 hours to complete, stand over 7 feet tall, and will use about 1000 strands of aluminum wire. It's his largest piece to date, and looks Amazing! I wonder how much it will weigh?

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In this series, "Letters from the Fab Academy," Shawn Wallace, member of AS220, the Providence, RI community arts space, shares his experiences with the Fab Academy, a distributed learning collaborative, built on the infrastructure of the Fab Lab network. -- Gareth

3D Scanning By Shawn Wallace

Victor Freundt prints a project using the ZCorp printer at the Barcelona Fab Lab.

When working with 3D scanning and printing equipment, it quickly becomes apparent that objects are nowhere near as fungible as MP3s. We'll have to wait a while for the day when every teenager is capable of casually copying real-world objects. However, it is surprisingly easy to hack together a crude 3D scanner from commodity cameras, projectors, and hardware you probably have in a couple of junk drawers in your shop.

A good place to start is with the Modela mini mill, which has a piezo-based needle sensor attachment that can be used for scanning small objects. The machine records the plunge depth at the point it contacts the object and the software that comes with the Modela (Dr. Picza) converts these points into a 3D mesh. Here's an example of using Dr. Picza to scan a small shell from Benito Juarez from the Barcelona Fab Academy site:

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Kügli is an Arduino-controlled musical instrument by Stefanie Hess and Johannes Schmidt. The project consists of a bowl with a false bottom, packing an Arduino, XBee wireless module, and some speakers. The ball contains a Lilypad and another XBee.

The spacing and dynamic of a ball in a bowl influences sound. While holding the bowl in its hands the player can walk around and rock the bowl forth and back either smoothly or with fast movements. Two factors are relevant for the sound: the position of the Kügli in the ball and the rotation-speed of the Kügli. Both data streams are sent to Max/Msp via the serial port. The XBee component, accelerator and piezo-microphones are sensoring and passing the the movements.

In the Maker Shed:


Deluxe Make: Electronics Toolkit
Our Price: $124.99
Do you want to learn the fundamentals of electronics in a fun and experiential way? Not sure where to start, or what tools you might need? We've taken care of all the questions with our deluxe tool kit from the Maker Shed, featuring our best-selling book, Make: Electronics.

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An anonymous MAKE subscriber writes in to let us know about this very cool wireless robotics platform based on the Arduino and an XBee. The purpose of the project was to teach their 9-year old son about programming in Processing. What a great way to introduce programming to kids!

I built a wireless robotics platform from a cheap R/C car, an Arduino with XBee shield, small microswitch sensors, and a Processing program running on a remote computer to control the vehicle. The vehicle is completely controlled by the code running on the remote computer which allows very rapid prototyping of the code to tell the vehicle what to do and how to react to the sensor events received from the vehicle. I'm hoping this is a good way to teach my 9-year old son about programming.

In the Maker Shed:


The Maker Shed has everything you need to get started with Arduino

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Enjoy playing rock, paper, scissors, but having trouble finding worthy opponents to play it with? Need to improve your game for that upcoming world tournament? Well, then, you will certainly appreciate Steve Hoefer's rock paper scissors playing glove. Thanks to the built-in accelerometer and bend sensors, all you have to do to play is play the game, and the computer will tell you what it's move was, and keep track of who won. It's a funny project, and it includes some cool features, such as using edge-lit plastic for the display. Well done!

More:

• DIY Rock paper scissors electronic game
• HOW TO - Beat anyone at Rock Paper Scissors
• Rock, Paper, Scissors - interview with a professional player

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Every other week, MAKE's awesome interns tell about the projects they're building in the Make: Labs, the trouble they've gotten into, and what they'll make next.

Part 1. Setting up a background for your project.

By Ed Troxell, photo intern

As a DIYer, you share your projects to show off your expertise and to help others find theirs. But building a project and writing the steps is only half the battle. The other half is capturing images of your work that clearly show what you're talking about and what you've done in your steps.

As the photo intern for MAKE, I shoot lots of projects for the magazine and website. Here are my steps for setting up a background for photographing your project clearly to show it off in its entirety.

1. Set up your project and mini studio.
Find a well-lit area that's clear of visual distractions and provides you with enough room for shooting. If you're shooting on a workbench, clear off all the clutter and if necessary, drop a bedsheet or paper backdrop to hide everything that's not your project. The camera doesn't want to see your mess, it just wants to see your masterpiece. Extraneous items on the bench or in the background will only confuse the viewer and make a good project look bad. Clean up before you shoot.

Clean bench good (but what's that junk in the corner?):

Cluttered bench bad:


2. Know your "light temperature."
Light temperature means the color of your light, and it affects your "white balance." Most cameras react best to daylight, which is a bluish light, and I strongly recommend shooting in daylight. Shooting your project near a big window (with no direct sunbeams coming through) is a good place to start. Shooting outside in smooth shade is good option too (but not in speckled tree shadows).

Your flash is daylight balanced, so you can use your flash as a "fill" or secondary light to fill shadows. (Your flash should never be the main source of light, unless you're using a real strobe system.) Also, most of those compact fluorescent light bulbs are close to daylight balanced. They can be a nice fill too.

Just be careful not to mix the color of your lights. The white balance on your camera will get confused if warmer light is in the room (like a normal household tungsten filament light bulb), conflicting with the daylight or CF lights. Choose the light temperature you're shooting with, and stick to it.

3. Choose a clean background.
Use a plain, simple background, nothing too distracting. You want clean backgrounds that show off your work. Pick colors that go with your project or make it stand out. We tend to use bright colors. We recommend not using red, as red is a very difficult color for digital cameras. Do not use black. White is fine.

Instead of a distracting background pattern like this:

Use a clean background color like these:

4. Place your project on a level and straight surface.
Here's the photo booth we use here in the Make: Labs for shooting indoor shots, when we're not shooting on the workbench:

5. Test your settings.
Take a few shots, then check the images on your computer (ideally in Photoshop) just to check focus, brightness, file size, grain (ISO), and other details. Sometimes a setting can be off. It's best to know now, rather than find out when you're done shooting.

For example, if you're submitting projects for MAKE magazine or Make: Online, you'll need to take high-resolution photos at an aspect ratio of 4:3. High resolution means they can be printed on paper at 300dpi. (Yes, even web photos -- because we might want to print them later.)

In my next post: Shooting your project in high resolution.

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Lego's licensing of the Disney/Pixar Toy Story franchise has produced something surprisingly awesome in this mashup of two classic toys. $11 from the Lego shop. [via Geekologie]

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Biking directions added to Google Maps... here's my route from Adafruit to NYC Resistor!

Whenever I meet someone who finds out that I work on the directions team for Google Maps, the first question I'm asked is often "So when's Google Maps going to add biking directions?" We're big biking fans too, so we've been itching to give you a concrete answer. I don't want to keep the good news a secret any longer, so the answer is: right now!

Excellent way to get around, now even easier.

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Andy Johnson writes in:

I'm a guy that sews. No, I'm not afraid to say it, I think it is one of the best skills my Mother taught me, besides cooking. I sewed this magazine protector to keep my latest copy of MAKE looking newsstand fresh. I carry MAKE in my backpack, and I carry my backpack everywhere. With all the junk I carry banging around in there, it can get my stuff pretty hammered. I took my favorite T-Shirt, that unfortunately has worn out, and cut out a rectangle 1/2 inch larger than my copy of MAKE on both sides, and doubling the length so it can be folded over. I created a flap on the top and sewed velcro to both the flap and the reverse of the protector. Surging the seams would be the best, but I only have access to a regular sewing machine. If you have extra t-shirt, you can use it to make ipod sleeves, calculator protectors, whatever you like.

It's upcycling month at CRAFT, so head on over for some more great recycling projects with our UpCraft! series.

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Figuring which way is 'up' for any one of the various IC packages may be second nature to circuit veterens, but getting acquainted with all possible indicators is definitely an important step for newcomers - and it can be a tad tricky at times. Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories posted a detailed photo guide on the subject, even going over orientation tips for seven-segment and LED matrix displays - good stuff!

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Mythretirer Adam Savage has a post up this morning on that one Boingy blog about the latest in his lifelong series of personal replicas of Deckard's handgun from Blade Runner. There's more shots of the build as well as pictures of the original prop and two of Adam's earlier replicas. The very first one uses the famous contoured handgrip from Italian toymaker Edison Giocattoli's TG-105 'Super Thur' ray gun, which also appeared in a prop from Joss Whedon's Firefly.

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LEGO MINDSTORMS hacker Akihiro Uehara built an interface between an AlphaRex and a Wii Balance Board.

User can control the robot's leg motors speed and direction by changing the vector connecting user's center of balance and center of the board. I have designed this application for elementary school kids in a science museum exhibition.

Don't forget to leave a comment on our Facebook fan page to participate in our Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 giveaway. [Thanks, Akihiro!]

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