SYDNEY (Reuters) - Fossils of three new species of dinosaurs have been discovered in Australia, including a meat-eater larger than Velociraptor from the Jurassic Park movies, suggesting Australia may have a more complex prehistoric past.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 800 animal and plant species have gone extinct in the past five centuries with nearly 17,000 now threatened with extinction, the International Union for Conservation of Nature reported on Thursday.
MIAMI (Reuters) - The world's seagrass meadows, a critical habitat for marine life and profit-maker for the fishing industry, are in decline due to coastal development and the losses are accelerating, according to a new study.
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Catholic Church should not fear scientific progress and possibly repeat the mistake it made when it condemned astronomer Galileo in the 17th century, a Vatican official said on Thursday in a rare self-criticism.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mexican salamanders who can re-grow amputated legs are not pulling off quite as big a biological trick as scientists had first thought, which may help doctors trying to regenerate human limbs.
LONDON (Reuters) - As many as 30,000 different gene variations may underlie schizophrenia and bipolar disease, meaning any kind of quick test to predict either disease is a long way off, scientists said on Wednesday.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers have identified the early master cells that make up the human heart and said on Wednesday they could someday be used to make patches to fix damaged hearts.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The interplanetary space probe Ulysses officially ceased operations on Tuesday after an 18-year voyage of roughly 5.5 billion miles (8.85 billion km) and nearly three complete orbits around the sun, NASA said.
LONDON (Reuters) - Having sex every day improves the quality of men's sperm and is recommended for couples trying to conceive, according to new research.
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian scientists have developed a "trojan horse" therapy to combat cancer, using a bacterially-derived nano cell to penetrate and disarm the cancer cell before a second nano cell kills it with chemotherapy drugs.
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Scientists say X-ray data collected by the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton spacecraft show evidence of a new type of black hole in a galaxy about 290 million light years from Earth. Astronomer Sean Farrell explains what the discovery might tell us about galaxy evolution.
Out in the wilds of New Mexico, they're marketing a new kind of commercial space — as in, outer space. On Friday, New Mexico broke ground on what's billed as the world's first commercial spaceport.
This season's astronomical highlights are about what won't be visible in the night sky. Astronomer Paul Rao discusses what he describes as "the eclipse of the century," Jupiter's mysterious missing moons, the vanishing rings of Saturn and the forthcoming Perseid meteor shower.
A rocket is scheduled to blast off for the moon Thursday afternoon carrying two probes that will gather data to prepare for possible future manned missions. One probe will map the moon, and the other will search for water ice.
NASA will launch Thursday two missions to the moon. One spacecraft will orbit the moon and create an unprecedented high-resolution map of the lunar surface. The other mission will send a spent rocket part on a collision course with a permanently shadowed lunar crater.
NASA scientist James Garvin discusses the upcoming launch of two lunar satellites. One will map the moon's surface for future human exploration. The other will crash into a crater near the south pole, kicking up a plume of debris in which scientists hope to find water ice.
Writing in the journal Nature this week, scientists present scenarios in which Mercury, Venus or Mars could collide with the Earth during the next 5 billion years. Astrophysicist Greg Laughlin discusses these possibilities and why there's no need to panic yet.
NASA scientists Paul Goldsmith and Charles Lawrence discuss the space telescopes Herschel and Planck, which the European Space Agency launched last month. Herschel will investigate star and galaxy formation, and Planck will observe the residual glow of the newborn universe.
Twice a year, the sunset lines up with New York City's street grid — making for spectacular views. Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, identified the cosmic event over a decade ago and coined the name Manhattanhenge.
What if tongue depressors were made of candy? What if you made a skateboard that rolled on balls instead of wheels? And if there really is life on other planets, how on earth could we communicate? More than 700 elementary school students came up with questions and ideas like these for the Kids Science Challenge.
In 1959, the United States finally succeeded in sending monkeys into space and bringing them home alive. Two years before any humans, Able and Baker were launched about 360 miles up and experienced about nine minutes of weightlessness.
If confirmed by the Senate, Charles Bolden would become the first African-American to be NASA's administrator and only the second former astronaut. The announcement from the White House came as bad weather forced NASA to postpone its attempt to bring home the space shuttle Atlantis.
Ten years ago, Dan Werthimer of the University of California at Berkeley helped launch a project that would let people donate processing time on their personal computers to help scientists hunt for signals from outer space. Werthimer speaks with Ira Flatow about the project.
Steve Squyres, principal investigator on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission, reports in Science that Opportunity's road trip to Victoria Crater revealed that the crater was shaped by water long ago. Meanwhile, the twin rover Spirit appears to be stuck.
That's not an adjective in the title, "Awesome Grant" is the actual name of the grant, from the Awesome Foundation, of Cambridge, MA. Each month, they give away $1,000 to someone who wants to do something... well awesome. Here's how they define what they're looking for:
Awesomeness is often overlooked by mainstream culture, which tends to rehash the same broadly appealing but mediocre creations. Thankfully, there is the web.
Awesomeness is more the product of a creator's passion than the prospect of audience or profit. Awesome creations are novel and non-obvious, evoking surprise and delight. Invariably, something about them perfectly reflects the essence of the medium, moment, or method of creation. Awesomeness challenges and inspires.
You enter the proposals on their site and they only need to be 500 words. If you get accepted, you even get access to workspace to realize your project (if you live in the Boston area).
If any of our readers submit a proposal that gets accepted, please let us know. We're sure there are plenty of awesome ideas bouncing around the noggins of Make: Online readers.
On today's HacDC Blabber list, Trammell Hudson posted a link to this awesome account of British soldiers building a radio in a Japanese POW camp. Trammel writes:
Since they didn't have a local Digikey or Radioshack, everything had to be sourced from what was available. The caps were made from aluminum foil lining of tea-chests, the resistors were rusty barbed wire with burned tree bark, the rectifiers out of oxidised foil and salt water, they smuggled a tube ("valve") in the camps and bribed the local Chinese power station operator to slowly step the output voltage up to 130 from 110 volts.
Amazingly they were able to receive the BBC broadcasts! The initial RX design was pretty basic, so they then built a super-het regenerative transmitter, too, but never made use of it.
[FYI: The image I used above is not from this story, just a diagram of your basic DIY foxhole radio.]
Let's Make Robots is a popular site for robot hobbyists. They've been running two build contests on the site which are now in their finals. Rik, a community member writes:
The LMR Dagu Mr. Basic Challenge invited makers to create any robot from a basic four wheel platform (provided by community sponsor Dagu Electronics). Entries vary from spectacular light shows (using Nixie tubes) to fire fighter to mouse droid (as seen on Star Wars). Three money prizes are at stake. All community members are invited to judge the entries.
The Oddbot LMR Video Challenge is sponsoring creative videos of home made robots. The criteria for "robot" are stretched far enough as to give any one a shot at the lavish prizes. The resulting videos are very funny and creative. The prizes consist of robots and components that Oddbot built and collected over the years. He must now part with them as he moves from Australia to China to become a pro.
I love the sense of humor, and fun, expressed in a lot of the entry bot designs and videos.
The tradition of improvising a chess set from whatever's on hand is probably as venerable as chess itself. Chess culture is chock-full of sets put together from odds and ends of every description, but here I'm only focusing on sets built from mechanical and electrical bits--mostly nuts, bolts, and washers of various flavors. If you've got a good one I missed, please do link it in the comments.
If you're interested in making your own and want some guidance, Mother Earth News has a nice tutorial.
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Most cell phones are provided with a very basic wall-wart charger, and you usually have to pay extra for a proper charging dock. The bundled charger is often unsightly in use, being just a transformer with a cord strung out to an end table or something where the cell phone rests. If you have a cat who likes to chew through cords, as I do, this can be more than just inelegant--it can be totally impractical. It's also a good project if you just hate, for aesthetic reasons, loose power cords strung out across the furniture.
A similar product is for sale at ThinkGeek, and that's where I got the idea. The nice thing about my version is that it requires no tools to mount or demount, being suspended by the plug on the charger itself. So you can quickly move it around to whatever outlet you want or take it with you when you travel. Plus it costs all of nothing to build.
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Jörn Loviscach shares strategies for thermographic imaging using an infrared thermometer and custom software. Impressive results considering IR thermometers can be had for less than a hundred bucks while the cameras cost several thousand. [via Hack a Day]
J Miller shares video of the maiden voyage of his rocket built from the plans in MAKE Volume 15. The reaction to the lack-of-rocket-return here is genuinely priceless! And in case you're curious, yes, it was sucessfully recovered. Definitely a good idea to use a very wide open space for testing :)
Compressed Air Rocket
Volume 15, Page 102
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Ever wondered what it'd be like to set off 204 bottle rocks at the same time? I know I have. Turns out, it's a good time (so long as you're not in the line of fire).
Timothy J Silverman used the burrs from a peppermill to convert his drill into a handy coffee grinder. Use this along with the drill scrambler and you've got yourself a real workshop power breakfast!
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Some mobile carriers have started selling subsidized netbooks with integrated 3G radios. If you've already got a netbook and enjoy the form factor, but would rather not have to plug in a dongle, here's a quick run-through for integrating a Novatel EU850D 3G radio into a Dell Mini 9 that should give you an idea of what such a project entails.
Scottish sound designer, the Amazing Rolo, traveled to Maker Faire this year especially to see what sorts of cool musical technologies people were cooking up. He made a series of videos of makers demoing their wares. Of the three videos above, he writes:
First up is Elly Jessop, a Masters Student at the uber-cool MIT Media Lab, and her Vocal Augmentation and Manipulation Prosthesis (VAMP). Next is Barry Threw, from Keith McMillan Instruments, showing off the K-Bow (and accompanying software) for extending stringed instrument performance into the digital realm. And finally, the amazing Moldover and his totally bonkers Syncomasher.
The Fire Piston Kit is a neat physics experiment based on the heat created when air is rapidly compressed. Bill Gurstelle, author of Backyard Ballistics and Barrage Garage, created this kit for us. If you were at Maker Faire you might have seen him demonstrating his kit in the Maker Shed. [Thanks Bill!]
Limor has posted another installment of her exceedingly excellent sensor tutorials, this one on that most marvelous of switches, the tilt sensor. When you just have to know which end is up, you need to strap on one of these puppies. Here's how.
Ask MAKE is a weekly column where we answer reader questions, like yours. Write them in to becky@makezine.com or drop us a line on Twitter. We can't wait to tackle your conundrums!
Bill writes in:
Last year I built a Kid Wash and my kids have loved playing in it. We brought it out again yesterday with the great weather we had over the weekend and my son (age 12) came up with the idea of earning money over the summer by building and selling them locally. It's an easy enough project that I figure he can handle it and it is popular enough with the neighborhood children that he could also have some success in selling it.
However, the new CPSIA regulations have me worried that such a project (however small) will never get off the ground or we'll just be setting ourselves up for legal problems down the road. How do makers who build and sell toys deal with such regulations? Obviously if he was trying to make and sell something hazardous I wouldn't allow it, but how do we encourage such entrepreneurship without exposing ourselves to liabilities.
There was a huge outcry over the CPSIA regulations when they were announced because of their lack of consideration of the costs they would impose on small manufacturers, especially handmakers of one-of-a-kind toys and clothes. The CPSC voted to impose a stay of one year for testing and certification requirements, which expires February 10, 2010. These folks clearly realized there needs to be more thought put into the wide-sweeping rules that would devastate many small businesses. So you still aren't allowed to sell toys with lead paint, small choking-sized parts, etc., but you don't have to have your KidWash tested by a third party for lead and phthalates before selling them to your neighbors. Not until next year, at least.
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Alden Hart, who wrote the LED Light Bricks project for MAKE, Volume 18, has put together a lovely little kit to make building the project much easier. And we're now offering them in the Maker Shed! The kit includes a printed circuit board, 20 bright LEDs, in red, green, blue, and yellow, a programmed PIC16F916 (which you can reprogram, if you like), a tilt switch, power supply, and everything else you need to complete the project (except the molding and casting components). The kit sells for $27.
Here's a link to the Digital Edition of the article in MAKE, Volume 18.
Here's a link to the Web Extras page with the full mold-making and casting article.
Here's a link to the Make: Online how-to on different ways you can construct molds.
In the Maker Shed:
LED Light Brick Electronics Kit Our Price: $27.00
All the components you need to make the LED Light Brick circuit featured in MAKE, Volume 18. When assembled, the circuit board is ready to cast to make your finished glowing nightlight.
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This is a moment that would have made 15 year old me very proud of present-day me: I've just received a DIY fireworks kit in the mail! I love the "Don't Send This Via Airplane" sticker.
My friend Heathervescent hipped me to this introductory Turbo Pyro kit from Skylighter. The kit supplies what you'll need to make your own fireworks, including a 206 page eBook that guides you through making ten different fireworks: from tube sparklers to bottle rockets to aerial shells to something called a "Flying Fish Fuse Mine". I've skimmed through the eBook and it looks thorough and professionally done. It has a number of embedded videos in it, which should be pretty helpful.
I've only had moments to scan the contents of the boxes, but they include a lot of paper tubes, charcoal, potassium chlorate, clay, potassium nitrate, sulfer, and other compounds (this endeavor involves making your own gunpowder), a few different kinds of ignition fuses, a bunch of mysterious custom tools for packing the fireworks, a digital scale, mortar casings, a large mortar tube, and more. You have to supply some sieeves, trays, measuring spoons, an electric coffee mill, tape, glue, safety gear, and a few hand tools.
I'm going to try the simplest projects first, hopefully in time for the 4th of July. Then, if all goes well (and I have the same number of fingers as I'm typing with right now), I'll put together some of the big flying stuff and head out to the desert to fire them off.
You can sign up here to be notified when the next batch of kits is available:TurboPyro
Their blog is pretty cool too, I had no idea people had taken things to this level!
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Now this is a train layout, 1,800 sqaure feet of it. It's the pride and joy of the Walnut Creek Model Railroad Society, Walnut Creek, CA, who've been at it since 1975. I like how the piece on Wired.com opens:
Before SimCity -- even before Dungeons and Dragons -- back when "computer" was a job title, people still found ways to vaporize countless hours of free time designing and maintaining private universes. In the analog world, such parallel realities were built with tweezers, glue and a spouse's permission to cover the basement with papier-mâché massifs and plywood plains.
And this, on the system that runs the layout:
The society's control systems are a steampunk fantasy: a roomful of vintage 1930s magnetic relays once used to route phone calls, clacking like mechanical dominoes with every move the amateur engineers make. A full complement of 30 members can run 10 individual trains simultaneously on the layout, though only a dozen or so are required for basic operation.
Introducing Syn/Ack Pac, a Political Action Committee for "SysAdmins, Tinkerers, CodeMonkeys, Makers, Technologists, Warranty Voiders, and Geeks of all types."
Why Do Geeks Need a PAC?
Non-profit groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge and many others do a great job evangelizing, lobbying, and litigating on our behalf. But as non profits, they're unable to particpate in the political process. That political void is what SYN/ACK PAC seeks to fill, bolstering the efforts of our non profit friends with our participation in campaigns and elections, we'll make sure we elect members of Congress who will represent our beliefs.
Here are instructions for building a drum machine with a tangible visual interface. A camera above the paper drum board reads the positions of physical objects and translates them into sounds, as indicated on the labels on the objects. It looks fairly easy to make, with most of the components from paper and card.
An alloy of 1.3% copper, 0.3% magnesium, and 0.3% manganese in aluminum, etched with potassium permanganate and lye.
So I woke up this morning all pumped up to blog about metallography. If you don't already know, metallography is a type of scientific microimaging that involves mirror-polishing metal surfaces and then etching them with various reagents to reveal their microstructures, which are often of breathtaking beauty.
"Griffith Cannon Flash," by Dr. Frederick E. Schmidt, from the iron of a cannon used at Gettysburg.
Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of these images online. ASM International, the big metallurgical professional society, has a large online database of metallographs, but it's locked away behind a members-only paywall. Except for a couple of skimpy .PDFs (2007, 2008), even the winners of their annual International Metallographic Contest seem to go largely unpublicized.
Which is a shame, not only because the images themselves are so beautiful, but because they could inspire a whole culture of amateur and artistic metallographers that does not, as far as I can tell, presently exist. Which fact also surprises me, by the way, because the equipment and techniques of metallography are very accessible to amateurs, especially relative to other modern methods of materials analysis.
"Grain structure in CC cast 3304 aluminum alloy," by Elana Naez.
If you know of anyone who's making metallographs as a hobby or as a means of personal artistic expression, please drop me a link in the comments.
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My dad recently took a minor tumble on his motorcycle. He's fine, but the bike was banged up a bit, including a bent brake rotor. Consensus among his buddies in the Magna Owners of Texas was that the rotor would have to be replaced, but of course they're pricey, and since the rotor was "shot" anyway, Dad figured he might as well try to straighten it and see what happened.
Here's what he did, in his own words:
Since I had mounted the tire/wheel on the axle in my vice to polish the wheel, it was a simple matter to rig up the "feeler" shown in the first picture to check out the rotor flatness. Just a piece of copper wire about AWG 7 to 9 or thereabouts -- I had in my electrical junk box. With a light behind the setup, one can use the reflection of the end of the wire from the rotor surface to obtain a very sensitive indication of warp when one spins the tire/wheel. Brought it back to planar using a soft face (brass) hammer. Go slow, it takes some time. "Sneak up on it" by whacking gently, measure, whack a little harder, measure, etc. until it yields just a bit.
Then, concerned that the rotor needed to be flatter than he could detect with the naked eye, he rigged up a second jig to test it:
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According to a piece on BotJunkie (translating a piece on Japan's Robot Watch), a small army of vacuum tube robots from the 50s and 60s, built by Aizawa Zirou, have been unearthed in a warehouse, many of them apparently brand new. I love the Google translation:
"Were sleeping in a warehouse until it's released by the packaging. We look at the state and restore the dynamics at the time."
Assemble your very own HD home theater projector using these DIY kits from G&P Optoelectronics. Combine the optics, housing, lighting, and electronics bundles and with luck you'll be watching your favorite episodes of Make: Television in glorious 1280x720 HD in no time.
Scoochmaroo shares this recipe for basic sunscreen free of the umpteen additives used in commercial varieties.
Sunscreen is intended to shield your skin from harmful UVA and UVB rays. These can cause premature aging, and more tragically, skin cancer. But commercial suncreens often involve more nasty chemicals than necessary.
By making your own sunscreen, you control exactly what goes in!In addition to some natural oils and emulsifying wax, the ingredients list calls for either zinc oxide or titanium dioxide as a sun-blocking agent (both can be found from online suppliers). Read on for the how-to over @ Instructables
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CDM points out this very sweet beat manipulator interface by Luca De Rosso. The project, better known as OTTO, makes use of an Arduino board, MAX/MSP software, and an array of LEDs + switches to create a very intuitive and approachable experience for musicians. -
OTTO is a new musical instrument for beat-slicing, the technique that allows to create complex and variegated rhythm sections by using just one rhythmic audio sample, cutting it into little pieces and rearranging them in time. OTTO provides a hardware solution with a strong visual feedback, to allow the musician to control the audio sample as if it was in his hands.
Circular sequencer devices really seem like a step in the right direction for audio hardware - much more intuitive for loops. More demo vids and source documentation/downloads available on the OTTO site
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In this clip from FMCG, Ken responds to Jeri's capacitor deconstruction with his own very visual (and very mechanical) demonstration of how voltage is generated and how you can build a simple capacitor, with aluminum foil and plastic, to generate charge mechanically and dump it into the cap (analogous to how a Wimshurst machine works).
I love how this was inspired by Jeri's demo and how the two of them are having a Net-carried, seemingly casual conversation, marveling over the miracles of science. I don't know about you, but this sort of thing makes me strangely happy.
BTW: Jeri's capacitor demo is cool too, but unfortunately, the sound craps out at the end.
This supremely cool analog synth with a gorgeous etched-brass faceplace showed up on Steampunk Workshop, via the German synth site Synthesizer Database. The builder is Moritz Wolpert. Apparently, from the Google translation, all the knobs and handles were turned by hand on a lathe and the faceplace was hand-lettered, decorated and etched. The project took him two years.
This Desktop Onager is constructed out of only wood and twine. That's right, no metal parts here! These types of war machines were the predecessors to cannons and modern artillery. This desktop model uses the torsion skein for all of its power. Using this ancient power mechanism, it can launch the wooden projectiles up to twenty feet.
Our friends over at Sparkfun have announced their decision to officially make some of their kits open source. Nathan and company have always been supporters of OSH, but now they're going to be putting links to the engineering files up to at least some of their kits. The first is the ClockIt kit, an alarm clock kit built around the ATMega168. The listing for the kit ends with links to the Eagle files (licensed under CC v3.0 Share-Alike), the schematic, the source code, and a link to an "Improve Source Code" forum posting. Nice. "One of the great things about open source is the ability to say 'Hey, I'm pretty sure this works, but it may not be the best way to do it. Can you help me out?,'" says Nathan Sheidle.
The New Ecology of Things Lab at Art Center's graduate Media Design Program has released a new version of their NETLab Toolkit. This is a system for more easily connecting microcontrollers to computers, especially targeted at those who may be new to hardware and programming. In this video, Professor Philip van Allen of the Media Design Program shows how you can use NETLab to easily connect a a sensor to an Arduino and to Flash on a desktop machine.
Here's the basic product description:
The NETLab Toolkit is a free set of software tools that enable designers to easily "sketch in hardware". With no programming at all and working in the familiar environment of Flash (or Processing or MAX/MSP), designers can hook up a physical sensor (e.g. a knob) and immediately get that knob to control a motor or a video projection. The toolkit works with a wide range of sensors, wireless sensors, input from the Wii Remote, controls motors and LEDs, communicates with MIDI devices, controls sound, graphics, and video in Flash, and communicates with DMX computer controlled lighting equipment, all with a simple drag-and-drop interface (of course, programming hooks are provided as well).
By way of fellow papercraft enthusiast Cory Doctorow comes images of this incredible castle, posted on Tokyobling. Tokyobling explains:
I had the immense opportunity to see this wonderful paper craft art installation by a genius of the name of Wataru Itou, a young student of a major art university here in Tokyo. The installation is hand made over four years of hard work, complete with electrical lights and a moving train, all made of paper! Clearly, this man must have created one of the most stunning examples of Paper Craft in the world? At the exhibition you will also have the chance to see a video showing Mr. Itou at work in his studio, cutting and folding piece by piece. The exhibition is called Umi no Ue no Oshiro (A Castle On the Ocean ), 海の上のお城. It is exhibited at Uminohotaru, a place which in itself is a major attraction: a service area in the middle of the ocean, right between Tokyo City and Chiba Prefecture.
The twice-monthly 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
This week, we look at the largely-lost Medieval art of timbrel vaulting structures and the related, more modern (late 19th century) system of interlocking terracotta tiles which create what are known as Guastavino domes, after their inventor, Rafael Guastavino.
The method of timbrel vaulting was developed in the 14th century around the Mediterranean, although its precise origins are unknown. The timbrel vault is also known as a "masonry vault", "Catalan vault", "tiled vault", "laminated vault", "flat vault" and "layered vault" (derived from Spanish, French, Italian and Catalonian descriptions).
A roof of tiles
Timbrel vaulting differs substantially from the Roman method of arch building, which relies on gravity. A Roman vault consists of a single layer of thick, wedge-shaped stones (see below).
The timbrel vault does not rely on gravity but on the adhesion of several layers of overlapping tiles which are woven together with fast-setting mortar. If just one layer of thin tiles was used, the structure would collapse, but adding two or three layers makes the resulting laminated shell almost as strong as reinforced concrete.
The result defies common sense, because a timbrel vault is very thin compared to a Roman vault, while at the same time it is capable of bearing much higher loads. This of course enables wider spans and gentler curves.
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I've seen this thing referred to as an "Ocean Mat," a "Prolong Knot," a "Ladder Mat," and a "Sailor's True Love Mat." Whatever you want to call it, it's a noble expression of the manly art of knot-tying, and this tutorial at the UK's Scullion Enterprises will show you how it's done.
The "LED Light Brick" project in MAKE, Volume 18 has generated lots of good feedback for us, so we went back and asked Alden to explore a few variations on the theme of the brick casting itself, how you might be creative with it. This article is the result. Be sure to check out the original piece in MAKE, Volume 18, and also the on-line supplement containing specific casting instructions. --SMR
From the pages of MAKE
Some Experiments in Mold Making
A lot of the fun of the Light Brick is trying out different molds. Some very different effects can be achieved depending on the mold you make. This post explores some mold making options and experiments.
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The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronics Junk (Tig-Ihm-Boh-Edge) project is gettting a bit of a facelift. From Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, this "pay-it-forward style hardware sharing program for electronics" system has had its successes and pitfalls this year, and some adjustments to the system come now after learning what works and what doesn't. New standardized documents to be included in the boxes means everyone who gets one will know what to do with it, and recipients are encouraged to track their boxes even after they send them off to the next lucky hackers. EMSL is also launching new boxes this week, so check out the new and improved project wiki if you're interested in participating.
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The Arkansasridgerunner pioneers the world of shipping chic with this sensible wine rack built from FedEx tubes. I do believe this would go quite nicely with my packing-peanut chaise lounge!
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James' sweetie fabbed a nice piece of edible circuitry for him -
My girlfriend Sarah made this candy circuit board birthday cake topper. Originally she wanted to make a gingerbread MakerBot, but didn't have the time or space.
Instead she was inspired by the iPhone motherboard and went from there. The base is dark chocolate covered with green frosting. The resistors are Tic Tacs! That rainbow (sour straw?) ribbon cable is a nice touch as well :)
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One of the big projects that we launched in 2008 is The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronics Junk, a pay-it-forward style hardware sharing program for electronics.
Since our original article, TGIMBOEJ (pronounced Tig-Ihm-Boh-Edge) has somewhat taken on a life of its own. In that article, we set up simple guidelines for how to pass the box along, and in the interim we have taken a "laissez-faire" approach, watching and learning from the successes and troubles with that model.
Our mostly-hands-off approach to supervising TGIMBOEJ has worked remarkably well in some respects. There are upwards of 40 circulating boxes now, which have passed through hundreds of hands. And, hundreds of other people have signed up on our wiki site tgimboej.org as potential recipients.
On the down side, the mean free path of many of the boxes has been far too short-- some have made it just one hop before stopping.
In talking to folks about the boxes that got stuck, we identified three main stories (all of which point us towards fairly obvious solutions):
1: "I sent it to some guy, but I haven't heard anything since then." 2: "Oh yeah-- I've been meaning to ship it for some time." 3: "I got this box and I don't know what to do with it."
So now, it's time to get serious. First, we've been contacting the last known recipients of the stalled boxes, and trying to get more of the existing boxes back into circulation. Second, we're relaunching the tgimboej.org wiki site with a wholly new set of participation instructions and procedures.
To keep boxes in circulation longer, we're now encouraging that boxes should be sent to people who have specifically requested to participate-- i.e., people who are familiar with how the project works. We've also introduced language in the revised instructions that will guide participants to keep an eye on their box, even after it leaves their hands.
To further alleviate the potential problem of people ending up with boxes but not knowing what to do with them, we're standardizing the printed materials that go into each new box.
Gone are the cute but scrawled little notebooks, replaced by two neat PDF forms-- one to log the progress of the box, and the other with detailed instructions on how to participate.
Finally, we're launching (at least) three new TGIMBOEJ boxes this week, which -- along with the others that are coming back into circulation -- will help to increase the number and rate of box exchanges.
So now it's your turn. If you would enjoy trading electronics with like-minded individuals, this is becoming a great time to participate in The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronics Junk.
To get started, please read about how it works on the TGIMBOEJ wiki, and if you're game, add your name to the list of Box Requests.
Sichuan peppercorns, oh yeah! Raven of Made with Molecules after eating them wrote, "There's a war in my mouth." They create a riot of numbing and tingling sensations, particularly if you can get relatively fresh ones (i.e. not stale from sitting around in a Whole Foods bulk bin). Raven links to an abstract about the particular anesthetic-sensitive potassium channels inhibited by hydroxy-alpha-sanshool, one of the components of sichuan peppercorns that make them so exciting.
Science aside, we recently found some in a local asian grocery store, and were particularly struck by the packaging. American packaging often has annoying disclaimers about how contents are packed by weight and may have settled. These peppercorns were not only weighed, but the precision of the scale is indicated! If only all packaging was so straightforward. I was going to complain that the package doesn't say what kind of peppercorns were inside (sichuan peppercorns are not related to other peppercorns) but then realized that the Chinese characters are specific to these "flower peppers" even if the English words are more general. In any case, the reddish husks are recognizable through the bag.
We've turned Meggy Jr RGB into a multicolor scrolling LED twitter reader. It's a handy external ambient data device that displays things recently written by your friends on twitter.
This project was inspired in part by the excellent Twitter LED Scroller by David Nichols. The big idea is that we use a host computer to run a Processing application, which periodically checks Twitter for updates, and then sends "scrolling" data, one column at time, to the external LED display.
In this video (embedded above), we start out scrolling slowly and then advance to a faster rate by pressing buttons on the arrow keys on the laptop's keyboard-- interesting that you can still read it when it's much faster, but it does take a moment to adjust to the faster speed. (We've posted a second video as well, that's a little more "ambient.")
As we have it configured here, the Meggy Jr scrolls through the 5 most recent tweets of folks that we follow, and then repeats. Between repeat cycles, if enough time has elapsed, it also checks to see if there are new updates. The history length (number of tweets to repeat) and time delay are adjustable, subject to Twitter query rate limits.
The physical setup is pretty straightforward-- we hook up the Meggy Jr RGB to the computer with a USB-TTL cable. That's the normal configuration for serial programming and serial communication. If you plan to run for an extended period of time, it would be a good idea to hook up the Meggy Jr to external DC power.
The software for this project is released under the GPL. You can download it here (31 kB .ZIP file)The ZIP file consists of two parts, an Arduino sketch (that should be installed on the Meggy Jr RGB) and a Processing sketch (that runs on the host computer).
To try it out, download the code, install the Arduino sketch on the Meggy Jr RGB. Then configure and run the Processing sketch-- several variables (user name, serial port, etc) need to be set before it can work.
There's obviously a lot of potential for this sort of thing-- the Meggy Jr can be mounted to the front of the computer and used to display almost anything, and the same thing could be done wirelessly through various means. Also interesting would be to use the Meggy Jr for other types of Twitter applications-- displaying real-time search results, or monitoring a particular account for a particular event. Given the number of twittering devices out there, one could imagine a Meggy Jr RGB following the household plants, power usage, or cats and giving audible and visual alarms when certain conditions were met. It's a simple matter of continuing to close the loop of social networking for embedded devices.
Acknowledgements & code sources
Big API's, lots of code. As we said, this project was inspired by the Twitter LED Scroller by David Nichols, and part of the code design comes from that project. It uses the Twitter4j libraryand SimpleML library, as well as code from the Processing and Arduino serial communication examples by Tom Igoe. This discussion on the Processing forums was very helpful in showing how to put these parts together. The pixel font that we used is Liquid Mean.
The code that runs on the Meggy Jr itself was not modified much for this project; it's a combination of the text scrolling and serial-receiving example programs, documented as part of our Meggy Jr RGB library for Arduino.
George W. Hart is a professor at Stony Brook and is one of our favorite artists, making a wide variety of stunning geometric sculptures. On his of his many works that has particularly captivated us for some time is a sculpture called Frabjous.
When we realized that George had posted a template for this sculpture we dropped everything, grabbed the cardboard and hot glue, and raced to build our own.
You'll need papercraft type building materials: Paper, cardstock, or cardboard, and tape or glue. Also good scissors and/or a hobby knife with sharp blades. You can also build this with wood, plastic, or other materials, of course, but cardstock and cardboard are inexpensive and effective. Hot glue also proved to be excellent, providing sufficient strength and flexibility, and good working time.
You can download the PDF template for Frabjous on its web page.
The sculpture is made out of 30 identical pieces, with this S-curve shape. (We'll look at the reason for the shape a little later.) The design is scaleable: print out the template at the size that you would like to make it. Larger means more time cutting but it might be easier to assemble.
Cut out your template at your scale of choice. You can directly make 30 of those as a paper model or trace and cut out the model, like we did in cardboard.
You need 30 pieces so this can *ahem* take a while. The good news is that the sculpture will still work even if your pieces are banged up, have lost some stiffness, or have occasional mistakes.
Big hint for cardboard: replace your blade often. (Here is where we get ours.)
Once you have all the pieces, then comes the challenging part, putting it all together.
The first hint about construction is to look at the corners. Every intersection between the pieces is attached the same way: the flat ends are glued together, in a symmetrical arrangement. Unfortunately, this only gets you so far, and constructing the rest from that principle is a true puzzle indeed. To understand which pieces should go where, it's helpful to look at the design from a geometric standpoint.
The parent shape donating its symmetry is a simple dodecahedron.
Within that shape we inscribe a line segment between two vertices: this is where our "puzzle pieces" will go-- each will go where a line segment is and connect two vertices of the dodecahedron.
Each vertex of the dodecahedron is also a vertex of three bordering pentagons. To draw a line segment, pick one of those three pentagons, and connect the vertex to the corresponding opposite vertex of the neighboring pentagon as shown. This is probably the single most important thing for understanding how the sculpture goes together-- that each piece fits in that relation to the overall shape.
Now, we've only drawn segment coming out from that top vertex, but obviously there are three such possible segments because there are three pentagons that touch there. This intersection of three "puzzle pieces" at the corners is exactly what we saw in the completed sculpture, where three pieces get glued together at each intersection.
Now what happens when we start drawing the segments coming out of more than one vertex?
Here we've drawn one segment originating at each vertex of the top face. Unfortunately, this shows that our model-- connecting vertex pairs as we have, with simple segments-- leads to a problem. All five of these puzzle pieces would intersect.
The solution is to "bend" the segments to avoid the intersection:
Here's a corrected curvy "segment" that will hopefully avoid bumping into others as we start to add more to our sculpture.
Yes-- looks like we're now avoiding intersection.
Taking a look at the model from the top, we can also now begin to see the "vortex" shapes from the original sculpture start to appear.
Adding the rest of the curves, between every relevant vertex pair, the sculpture emerges. In particular, note that we can now see the three pieces that come together at each vertex of the dodecahedron.
Without the framing dodecahedron, the shape looks more mysterious once again.
We have the geometry now, but we still need to replace our curves with flat shapes to begin to approximate the appearance of Frabjous.
It's a slightly crude drawing, but it might be helpful in seeing how the real-world version fits together.
You can see more pictures and renderings of this sculpture in this flickr photo set.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of beginner-friendly microcontroller platforms-- Arduino, PICAXE, and a few dozen others-- is that they neatly wrap up and hide the nuts-and-bolts details of interfacing with the hardware.
Like everything else, it's a blessing and a curse. The benefits are clear: A new user who has just acquired an Arduino can plug it in, blink an LED, and have a working demonstration of two-way serial communication in just a few minutes.
The drawbacks are a little harder to see. When you just use one line of initialization that calls a "library," it's easy to overlook exactly what's involved: how many lines of code have invisibly been added to your program? What memory structures have been allocated? What interrupts are now going to disrupt program flow and timing? There's also a portability issue. We often hear from people who got started with Arduino but now want to explore other AVR microcontroller systems, and don't know how or where to start the migration process.
In what follows we discuss a minimal setup for serial communication with AVR microcontrollers, and give two example implementations, on an ATmega168 and on an ATtiny2313. While this fundamental "AVR 101" stuff, we're approaching the problem (this time) from the migration standpoint. Suppose that you had an Arduino based project, where you relied on serial communication-- using the library functions--between that hardware and your computer. From there, how would you migrate to a stand-alone AVR microcontroller with similar functionality, or even to a different microcontroller?
The answers, of course, are (1) that you have to hook things up correctly and (2) it's nice to have some simple and lightweight set of routines as a good starting point.
To begin with, we need a good working cross-platform example of two-way communication between the host computer and the Arduino. We chose as the starting point the Processing sketch (example program) "Serial Call-Response" by Tom Igoe. This is actually a two-part program, where one half runs on your computer and the other half on the microcontroller. What we're doing is to create a functional clone of the microcontroller program, that can still talk to the host-side program (which is still running in Processing on your computer).
Let's look at the chips:
We've drawn the ATmega168 and ATtiny2313 here, with the pinouts for power supply and the serial port transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX) pins highlighted. These are some but (probably) not all of the pins that you'll need. For example, if you want to program the AVR in circuit, it's often best to do that with an ISP programmer, and our article aboutminimal target boards explains how to hook one up.
Back to the serial ports. If you look in the datasheets for these chips, you'll find each serial port labeled as a "USART," for Universal Synchronous and Asynchronous serial Receiver and Transmitter. Now, the microcontroller USART pins are designed to operate at logic levels-- between 0 and 3-5 V. This means that they can't directly hook up to RS-232 without a level adaptor. They also aren't set up for directly hooking to USB, so an adapter of some sort is usually needed unless you're talking directly to another microcontroller.
Our adapter of choice is the FTDI USB-TTL cable:
This cable has an integrated circuit built in that translates between a microcontroller's serial port (USART) and USB. (That's in fact the same chip that the Arduino has on board for the same reason.)
Here's how to hook it up to one of the microcontrollers:
Three pins on the connector are relevant for us: TX, RX, and ground. (Ground so that your computer and microcontroller board have a common voltage reference.) The TX (transmit) pin of your microcontroller goes to the RX (receive) pin of the cable/computer, and vice versa.
In practice you can do this with a 5 pin header with two teeth cut out, where the fifth pin is connected to ground. This can be done on a target board like we've done here or on a breadboard-- it's a quick way to hook things up without laying out a special board just for the serial port. The serial port pins on the '2313 (above) and '168 (below) are in the same place, so you can hook this up identically on either board.
Now that we have the physical connections ready, we need the software. You can download our example code for the ATmega168 ishere (5 kB .ZIP file), and the code example for the ATtiny2313 is here (5 kB .ZIP file).
Both source code examples contain a C source file and a makefile; they can be compiled and loaded onto the microcontrollers from AVR-GCC or compatible systems; if you've never put code onto an AVR before, you might find our list ofResources for getting started with AVRs helpful.
The source code is meant to be a minimal implementation of bidirectional communication that can talk to the "Serial Call-Response" sketch. The two implementations, for the two different chips, are mostly identical.
We begin by setting several pins to be outputs, using the "data direction registers" defined in the datasheet. The only one of these that's actually important is pin D1, the TX pin, on each board. We also have a place to put an indicator LED on each board, and a few other outputs for optional debugging.
The baud rate is implemented using a non-obvious but relatively compact scheme taken from the datasheet. It takes as inputs the CPU rate and the desired baud rate. The CPU clock frequency is 16 MHz from an external crystal oscillator on the '168 example and 8 MHz from the internal RC oscillator on the '2313 example. (If desired those can be changed with the fuse settings. You know about the AVR fuse calculator, right?)
Communication is implemented through four serial functions: serialCheckRxComplete (which checks whether there is serial data ready to read), serialCheckTxReady (which checks if the serial port is ready to transmit new data), serialRead (which reads a byte of data from the serial port), and serialWrite (which transmits one byte from the serial port).
These functions work directly with the hardware; buffering and interrupts are not implemented. This makes the program lean and mean, with a tiny footprint. Working without interrupts and buffers means that you need to poll (i.e., check for new incoming data) at least as often as new data could appear-- e.g., about 1 kHz or faster for 9600 baud. It also means that incoming serial data will never interrupt time-critical functions that are executing. And the memory footprint is much, much lower. This takes mere bytes of RAM to implement-- making it quite practical on the ATtiny2313 which only has 128 bytes of RAM. (For comparison: the Arduino serial library usually allocates 128 bytes of RAM as a RX buffer alone.)
So, there are tradeoffs-- but these lightweight functions work well enough, and should provide another helpful stepping stoneto AVR, from either above or below.
We've been helping out RoboGames with getting the award designs ready for next weekend. We just got the final prototypes done and handed over for production and we're loving how they turned out! The awesome official artwork by Doctor Popular (below) features prominently on the medals, lit by throwie-style LEDs hidden between layers of acrylic. You want one of these around your neck, don't you?
The event runs Friday-Sunday, June 12-14 at Fort Mason in San Francisco. Get your tickets now!
We'll be bringing CandyFab to show off and lots of kits and pretty LEDs for sale. We hope to see lots of you there next weekend!
CandyFab managed to infiltrate a couple of the other 3D printing projects at Maker Faire this past weekend. That's me above, at the MakerBot booth, in my brand-new MakerBot shirt, explaining MakerBot to some Maker Faire visitors. Below, Kenji's Fab at Home sports a brand new CandyFab vinyl racing sticker. CandyFab itself performed like a champ, printing candy and raising blood sugar levels all weekend while we talked shop with all the other fabbers.
PARIS (AFP) - Astronomers on Wednesday said they had identified an intermediate class of black hole that could explain how supermassive, light-sucking monsters develop in the heart of galaxies.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA cancelled the launch of space shuttle Endeavour on Wednesday for the second time after a potentially dangerous hydrogen gas leak surfaced while the ship was being fuelled for flight.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA postponed the launch of space shuttle Endeavour on Wednesday due to a hydrogen gas leak that developed during fuelling, a space agency official said.
* It could buy you 80 per cent of the 100 million pounds being sought for the purchase of English Championship (second division) - (Reuters) - Manchester United have accepted a world record bid of 80 million pounds from Real Madrid for Portuguese winger Cristiano Ronaldo, the English champions said on Thursday.
KOUROU, French Guiana (AFP) - A European rocket placed the world's biggest commercial telecommunications satellite into geostationary orbit, launch operator Arianespace said.
JAKARTA (AFP) - Indonesia has successfully launched a home-grown rocket into space as part of plans to send a satellite into orbit by 2014, according to officials.
IT services vendor Accenture has won a four-and-a-half-year contract from the European Space Agency, ESA, to support the agency's financial management reform program and implement an agency-wide financial management model and related information systems. Datamonitor estimates the contract to be worth approximately $90m.
Citrix Systems' Government Systems team has partnered with TeleCommunication Systems, TCS, on its Secure Internet Protocol Router, Non-secure Internet Protocol Router, Access Point, SNAP, program for the US Army.
The behaviour of proteins that are popular with researchers is more likely to be reported inaccurately than that of their less fashionable counterparts
A prize for improving automated recommendations for a DVD rental firm may have been won, but putting the results into practice will be a challenge of its own
Designer clusters of atoms that can mimic other elements have for the first time been devised with magnetic properties – the advance could lead to superfast "spintronics" computers
LEDs normally mix colours from multiple components to produce white, but a molecule able to emit white light on its own could cut costs and save energy
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, we are giving readers the chance to win a piece of lunar meteorite. But how do we know it's genuine, asks Roger Highfield
An artificial black hole that traps sound instead of light has been created in an attempt to detect Hawking radiation, the theoretical radiation that causes black holes to evaporate
Physicists have produced the most intense "saser" beams yet – high-frequency ultrasound that could allow more detailed body scans or even faster computers
The latest twist on invisibility cloaks won't hide Harry Potter in the middle of a room, but it might just let spies conceal microphones under the rug or the wallpaper.
Sebring Builders, a privately owned Builder/Developer is hoping to become a “trendsetter”. In 2006, Sebring Builders started planning to build Stone Ridge, a private, gated community in the small central Florida town of Sebring. With single family homes starting just under $200,000, they thought this development had everything to offer, great location, clubhouse with [...]
At the mention of the term natural gas, most of us come to think of it as a gas that, as the name might suggest occurs naturally. Right to an extent, but quite vague in the true sense of it, actually natural gas is a mixture of about eight gases, mainly methane, ethane, butane, [...]
ECOtality has announced a clever new contest aimed at promoting their fresh new blog. It’s been awhile since we’ve published a review anyways, so this is a welcome challenge. Ecotality Life is a beautiful website. I love the how the images add meaningful impact and color to the articles, which are further emphasized by [...]
FeedBurner is a popular online service that gives website owners the ability to enhance and promote their blog and news feeds. Recently the company began introducing their long-anticipated networking service, which gives users the ability to create and manage feed networks based on a topic or theme. These feeds can then be combined and [...]
I hope the price of gasoline and oil doubles in the next year. Actually, I hope it increases 1000%. Why? Because super-inflated gas prices may be the only thing that wakes North America up to the need for change. Public awareness about global warming and climate change has been numbed by increasing media saturation of [...]
Leonardo DiCaprio is best known as a gifted Hollywood actor, but he is also a major spokesperson for the growing environmental movement. For some time now he has also been busy inspiring people to take action to prevent global catastrophe in the face of global warming and climate change. His latest effort is the [...]
This car commercial features a GM EV1 and a hummer. The purpose of this video was to document the car’s existence, as GM has claims they do not have any footage of the car. Those cars were so cool… I’m deeply appalled that they aren’t being produced anymore. Regardless, it was nice to see the [...]
A beautiful, well-designed and frequently updated website community focusing on sustainable living tips and green energy technologies. The daily green tips section includes valuable eco-fashion designs and how-to resources for green outdoor enthusiasts. The forums provide a convenient place for visitors to discuss everything from pollution and climate change to solutions like volunteering and [...]
Rate your conservation efforts with “I Conserve!” challenge cards - the Conservation Council of Ontario distributes cards through The Beer Store’s 441 retail stores across Ontario. By 2009, the Conservation Council of Ontario wants everyone in Ontario to say “I conserve.” The goal is not to become perfect overnight, just better. To make it [...]
SmartPower Urges President Bush to Sign Energy Bill
SmartPower, in a clarion call to the President today strongly urged President Bush to put aside partisan politics and to sign the recently passed Energy Bill. Both the House and the Senate have passed slightly differing versions of this comprehensive energy bill. A compromise bill is expected [...]
As part of our ongoing commitment to bring you the best renewable energy resources, we’ve now launched the AEoogle search engine. Our newest tool combines the power of GoogleTM’s algorithm with the comprehensive resources you’ll find in the renewable energy directory. This fruitful combination provides a more accurate and relevant search result when you [...]
Scientists at Columbia University are proposing a revolutionary new agricultural technology that would bring food supplies closer to the end-user. After studying modern greenhouse techniques they have come up with a new concept to build 30-storey skyscrapers to grow food and raise small livestock, effectively eliminating the shipping and pollution expenses associated with urban living. [...]
Phi Tran submitted this link to me by email. According to Phi, Neo-Aerodynamic introduces a new, history making technology to extract kinetic energy from a flowing fluid, providing “unheard-of” amounts of electricity as the final result; this “rate has not been seen before”. During the development of this technology we have gone from one surprising [...]
This was emailed to me for immediate release. Friends of the Earth Canada has launched a landmark lawsuit today against the Government of Canada for abandoning its international commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. Filed in Federal Court in Ottawa by Canada’s foremost environmental law organization, Sierra Legal, the lawsuit alleges that the federal government [...]
This video raises some serious questions about the perceived advantages of ethanol and the current political hype surrounding its production. Politicians throughout the United States are promoting increased production and subsidies for the so-called ‘green fuel’, but as this video clearly points out, there may actually be zero environmental or economic benefits. Simply put, [...]
In this video a Wrightspeed X1 electric car out-performs both a Ferrari and Porche! What is stunning about this race is just how well the electric car performs. It shoots off the starting line and very quickly races ahead of the other two cars in both races. I’m very impressed! It’s just too bad that [...]
This solar power tower in Spain acts as a powerful electricity generator and graceful work of landscape art. The 40-story high concrete tower is bathed in powerful rays of bright sunlight and it can be seen for miles. This effect is created by 600 large and intensely powerful mirrors which are used to concentrate the [...]
These last few stories blew my mind (thanks to the EcoGeek I have hope). It’s great to see wind energy technologies evolving, and the concepts sure are attractive. Here we have a beautiful new loopwing tip-less blade design, a collaborative design by students of Archinect that can harness the wind energy of highways, and the [...]
According to Dave White of Mobile Magazine there may be a way to convert carbon dioxide emissions into electricity using Solar Power! This amazing new potential technology is being developed by a group of scientists at the University of California in San Diego. Apparently they already have a working prototype of the technology, which would [...]
Being the bicycle enthusiast that I am I can’t help but notice this cool new toy from Segway. It’s great how it can maneuver in tight spaces and stay on two wheels at high speed. The possibilities for this technology seem very promising (as long as it isn’t used for military purposes). I bet [...]
Retired Airplane Product Development Engineer Gary Reysa has compiled the most comprehensive do-it-yourself solar website online. His non-commercial website, Build It Solar, contains plans, photos and links to over 500 DIY solar and renewable energy projects. “While trying to find good solar heating ideas for my house, I noted that there is not much [...]
Artist and Engineer Theo Jansen has been designing and creating these wonderful wind powered vehicles for over 10 years. He uses lightweight plastic yellow tubing to construct the vehicle’s skeleton. I realize these projects do not produce energy, but they are so beautiful that I just had to share them. Also featured in wind power.
The folks at otherpower.com are extremely busy building new wind energy projects, as is evident by the massive amount of information available on their website. Even the most novice do-it-yourselfer could find enough information there to construct a fully functioning wind energy system for their house. There are do-it-yourself instructions, forums, and they even host [...]
Yet another update: We decided to move the energy forums in order to better integrate them with our main site structure. The old forums are still online but are closed for new registrations and posts. Please feel free to register an account and help us get these conversations going!
For over a year I’ve been trying to figure out a way to display the latest alternative energy news headlines in a timely fashion. It has been very difficult. We’ve gone from manual daily updates to daily feed updates via a sub blog. This past month I’ve been setting up and testing a new system [...]
EcoPhotos.com is a stock photo agency specialized in nature, environmental protection, and sustainability related topics. Images illustrate what needs to be protected, threats to people and to the environment, and a wide range of more sustainable alternatives.
A user submitted video from the Discovery Channel. A very detailed and informative introduction to processing biodiesel as a fuel source. The host tours a biodiesel processing plant and gets an explanation of how the process works, as well as how to convert a regular diesel engine to run off of biofuels. Also featured in [...]
What an exciting and fun website! Designed with kids in mind, Meet the Greens uses flash media to present information about climate change and environmental issues. There are games and videos for kids (and adults) to play and watch. I found myself spending quite a bit of time on this site, it is quality educational [...]
This excellent eye-opening video compares the energy crisis in North America with the sustainable energy models that have been developed in Europe over the past 50 years.
This video gives a detailed overview of an amazing Spanish tower that generates power by collecting heat at its base and forcing the air up through a small chimney. Electricity is produced using a power generator located at the top of the chimney. Also featured in solar power.
DSLR built-in flashes are great as a fill-in flash and for general portability. Unforunately they aren't very versatile and give harsh shadows and can overtake a photo. The solution for this is to use a flash diffuser.
You can either purchase one that is specifically made for built-in flashes or yo...
Ever wonder how to do certain things on a Mac that you can do on a PC, but since you switched over, couldn't do? Or have you ever wondered how to stop certain annoying things on your mac?
In this instructable, I'm going to explain how to do some cool tricks.
In this instructable, you will learn how to change the opening in the bottom of an acrylic iPhone case to accept a charging accessory that is otherwise too wide for it.
This photo shows the case itself (the pink thing in the back is a stick-on LCD flashlight) and the charger. The charger is clearly...
This Instructable will show you how to make the ultimate pocket sized tool. It can charge your ipod, Zune, phone, GPS or anything that runs off of a USB port. Its a flash light, and a TV Remote jammer, who doesn't want one of those right?
Those Easy Buttons from Staples are awesome, but they have one small flaw: they don't actually do anything useful. It's my aim to change that.
I'm going to build a USB Easy Button. I found most everything I needed from jro's project and a flickr photoset by tommybear. Plus, I've been dying to try o...
Ever wanted to create the cocktail described as being like having your brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick? Well now you can, with How to make a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster!
Serves 10 (One helluva party).
Have you ever wondered how a deaf person enjoys music? Well, they can't, since you need to hear music and most people know that deaf people can't hear. Anyways, I have created a way to "watch" music by bouncing a laser off a mirror that vibrates when music is played close to it, creating a...
My first submission, so please be gentle. ;)
A short video demonstrating how to light up a lantern scene setter with battery-powered candles. This would also look great using the Skull Scene Setter border.
Turn on your battery-powered candles, tape them on the wall with blue painter's tape in the d...
There are many types of disposable filters on the market, but in this instructable I will show how to build one which is very cheap, reusable and you will let you to adjust how much you want to filter out from your cigarettes.
The materials
A copper pipe (you can buy at home depot)
A wax candl...
Everybody's seen the Topsy-Turvey Tomato planter on TV or at Wal-Mart but why buy when you can build. I along with a lot of you have seen upside-down planters made from 2-liter bottles but they have a couple of flaws. First of all they aren't very sturdy, in windy conditions they can blow around o...
How to make an easy square-foot garden you can put anywhere! Follow step-by-step instructions and learn how to build, fill, mark, and plant your very own square-foot garden.
Plan!
First, make a scale drawing of your garden - a 4"x4" box in a piece of paper. Grid it off every inch so you...
If you by additive free rolling tobacco like "American spirit" it can happen your tobacco is extremely dry when you undo the wrapping. its a well known trick to put some bread to the tobacco....but do you really want to smoke bread crumb?!
This Instructable will help you to get your tobacc...
This instructable will show how I built the chest / abdomen pieces for my fantasy armor costume. This will be similar to my Gauntlet instructable. The armour in the pics looks like it dusty of what-ever, it's just like finger prints from handling it, you can't see it in normal light, just when the...
When I was a kid my parents dragged me to Longwood Gardens on a family vacation. The highlight for me was the topiary dinosaurs, but my Dad was really blown away by a fountain called the Eye of Water. In fact he still mentions it 20 years after we went there. So since it was Father's Day, and this y...
This Instructable will show how to build a very bright usb powered led light. This can come in very handy while working on your computer or lighting up your keyboard in the dark. Another possibility of this light could even be for a mood light, because it can be placed behind a monitor and shine ont...
Two independent studies show that the pandemic H1N1 flu virus binds deeper into the lungs than ordinary flu, which could explain why it is sometimes fatal
Rice that has been genetically modified to produce pollen proteins and then release them in the gut during digestion is ready for human trials, say its creators
This week, a new lunar orbiter sent back its first images and engineers prepared a mock Mars rover to help free Spirit, which is stuck in a sand trap on the Red Planet
A device designed to study astronauts' brain activity has been tested in zero gravity for the first time – one day it could be used to monitor mission-compromising depression
Identifying individual carving styles on ancient tablets takes years of training – and even then can be up for debate – but now a computer can do it in seconds
A mummified dinosaur seems to contain traces of 66-million-year old amino acids - the building blocks of proteins - which could provide vital information about its evolution
The Human Genome Project blew apart the idea that "race" was a biologically meaningful term – but new genetic technologies threaten to revive it, warns Osagie Obasogie
Just one imitation horse was enough to conquer Troy, but two waves of "Trojan" cellular compartments are needed to destroy drug-resistant tumours in mice
This year Aphelion, the point in Earth's
Dubbed a Lyman-alpha blob, an enormous cloud of hydrogen gas spans
This intriguing trio of galaxies is sometimes
Here are some familiar shapes in unfamiliar locations. 
Japan's Kaguya spacecraft crashed into the Moon last week, as planned.
Do underground oceans vent through the tiger stripes on Saturn's moon Enceladus? 
This panoramic image of a starry night looks across
The twice-monthly 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
The event runs Friday-Sunday, June 12-14 at Fort Mason in San Francisco. Get your tickets now! 
DSLR built-in flashes are great as a fill-in flash and for general portability. Unforunately they aren't very versatile and give harsh shadows and can overtake a photo. The solution for this is to use a flash diffuser.
Modify those cheap, low-quality headphones you get on airplanes so that they can be used at home for (almost) anything.
Ever wonder how to do certain things on a Mac that you can do on a PC, but since you switched over, couldn't do? Or have you ever wondered how to stop certain annoying things on your mac? 
In this instructable, you will learn how to change the opening in the bottom of an acrylic iPhone case to accept a charging accessory that is otherwise too wide for it.
Learn How to Make Basic Triangle Top with Skirted Bottom
This Instructable will show you how to make the ultimate pocket sized tool. It can charge your ipod, Zune, phone, GPS or anything that runs off of a USB port. Its a flash light, and a TV Remote jammer, who doesn't want one of those right? 
Those Easy Buttons from Staples are awesome, but they have one small flaw: they don't actually do anything useful. It's my aim to change that.
Ever wanted to create the cocktail described as being like having your brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick? Well now you can, with How to make a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster!
So you want to make a water rocket?
Have you ever wondered how a deaf person enjoys music? Well, they can't, since you need to hear music and most people know that deaf people can't hear. Anyways, I have created a way to "watch" music by bouncing a laser off a mirror that vibrates when music is played close to it, creating a...
My first submission, so please be gentle. ;)
There are many types of disposable filters on the market, but in this instructable I will show how to build one which is very cheap, reusable and you will let you to adjust how much you want to filter out from your cigarettes. 
Everybody's seen the Topsy-Turvey Tomato planter on TV or at Wal-Mart but why buy when you can build. I along with a lot of you have seen upside-down planters made from 2-liter bottles but they have a couple of flaws. First of all they aren't very sturdy, in windy conditions they can blow around o...
How to make an easy square-foot garden you can put anywhere! Follow step-by-step instructions and learn how to build, fill, mark, and plant your very own square-foot garden.
This little how-to will show you some cool things you can do to your mac.
If you by additive free rolling tobacco like "American spirit" it can happen your tobacco is extremely dry when you undo the wrapping. its a well known trick to put some bread to the tobacco....but do you really want to smoke bread crumb?!
This instructable will show how I built the chest / abdomen pieces for my fantasy armor costume. This will be similar to my Gauntlet instructable. The armour in the pics looks like it dusty of what-ever, it's just like finger prints from handling it, you can't see it in normal light, just when the...
Getting good photos of fireworks is easy. You don't have to have an expensive camera to get good shots: I used a Canon PowerShot A470 that cost $105.
When I was a kid my parents dragged me to Longwood Gardens on a family vacation. The highlight for me was the topiary dinosaurs, but my Dad was really blown away by a fountain called the Eye of Water. In fact he still mentions it 20 years after we went there. So since it was Father's Day, and this y...
This Instructable will show how to build a very bright usb powered led light. This can come in very handy while working on your computer or lighting up your keyboard in the dark. Another possibility of this light could even be for a mood light, because it can be placed behind a monitor and shine ont...
