This is the Grounded Experimental Delta 3D printer aka the Simpson, a project built by computer science teacher Nicholas Seward that does away with the excess frames, pulleys, and hardware associated with earlier models. Seward wanted a machine that could print itself and used “less vitamins,” namely metal parts that the machine couldn’t create from scratch. There are still motors and controllers… → Read More
Jack Conte, musician and founder of Patreon, has been on a tear lately with a set of unique music remixes performed by him and a group of pneumatic robots that fire off audio sequences to create some amazing music. → Read More
As a lover of all things mechanical, I’m in awe of Chris Fenton’s Entabulator. Using an old book on mechanical loom-making, a 3D printer, and some serious patience he engineered a computer that can read a program off of punch cards and, in this case, calculate the Fibonacci sequence. The machine runs using a hand crank (Fenton notes you can overclock it by cranking faster) and it is quite finicky… → Read More
Makerbot, the hardware darling that closed on a $10 million round of funding in 2011, has just announced that they will open their new factory and warehouse in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, on Friday. The space is part of the old Brooklyn Navy Yard and will be set up in a complex of older warehouses that dot the waterfront. → Read More
There are few things as satisfying – and dangerous – as burning through stuff with a laser. Drake Anthony AKA Sytropyro is a young man who enjoys making DIY lasers out of things and he recently completed a 3000mW laser made from the diode of an old DLP projector that can blow out a beam so hot that it burns paper, plastic, and electric tape in seconds. → Read More
The weekend isn’t upon us just yet, but here’s a little project to tuck away for when the Sunday doldrums set in — the New York-based tinkerers/part suppliers at Adafruit Industries have worked up a way to give your old pair of Chuck Taylors a bit of luminescent DIY flair. → Read More
Everyone’s favorite electronics hobby shop, Adafruit has posted instructions for building your own HAL 9000 replica out of a big red button, an Arduino board, and some cleverly cut plastic. Best of all? With the press of a button you can make HAL tell you what to do – until you kill it. → Read More
If the whole of human knowledge were to be wiped out tomorrow, how would you recreate the consumer electronics industry so you can jam out to some rockin’ tunes? Why you’d build these unique 3D-printed headphones. Except for some twists of wire, these cans consist of thin pieces of printed plastic and the speakers are actually plastic with a coil of copper wire embedded, by hand, into a set of… → Read More
TinyTap, a Tel Aviv-based platform that allows children to create their own mobile games and “playable” books, is now expanding from the iPad to the iPhone, as it also launches its own social marketplace for apps. Here, users can sell their TinyTap creations to others, or just share them for free. The move comes roughly six months after the company announced its half a million dollar seed round… → Read More
While the Raspberry Pi is great for educating kids about computing, can it brew a mean beer? The BeagleBone Black can. Trevor Hubbard, an engineer at Texas Instruments, uses the new, next-gen board to control heat exchangers and monitors to handle beer temperature remotely. → Read More
Lithopanes are objects created to let light through to different degrees, allowing you to create a sort of greyscale image that is visible when the plate is placed against a light source. Created by the folks at Makerbot, the lithopanes are completely customizable and you can upload your own images that will then print in about an hour on a standard printer. → Read More
Adafruit, the DIY electronics website and marketplace, is espousing the popular strategy of “get em’ young” with a new live action short video series broadcast on YouTube. The series, called Circuit Playground, takes an alphabetical approach to teaching kids about the basics of circuits, components and concepts that will come in handy if the tots watching have aspirations of becoming electrical… → Read More
A Brooklynite named Matt Richardson has built a working prototype of a bicycle headlight that uses a Raspberry Pi to project his current traveling speed as he rides around the city. Richardson calls it the Raspberry Pi Dynamic Headlight, and it’s one of those jaw-dropping DIY projects that makes you wonder why this isn’t something you can buy in a store yet. → Read More
When I used to work in Fairfax, Virginia as a computer consultant during the dot-com boom (actually I was a documentation specialist) we’d all go down to Pizza Hut for their lunch buffet. They had pizzas all laid out – three or four flavors, plus dessert pizza. A salad bar. I’d go with a bunch of people whose names I forget now (I didn’t make a lot of friends when I worked in Fairfax. I’d go for… → Read More
The clincher, the thing that made Quick Key go viral, was a poorly-lit video of an excitable guy holding his iPhone up to a Scantron page, one of those test pages you used to fill out in school. He thumbs through page after page, making comments on students’ performance as the app scans the page and instantly reports a grade. The video was amazingly compelling. The creator, Walter O. Duncan IV… → Read More
Idle 3D printers are the bane of the creative class. That’s why MakeXYZ.com is so important. It is a service that helps you find 3D printers near you and request print jobs. Like the remote batch jobs of yore, you can simply contact a MakeXYZ maker and they’ll print off your item. → Read More
In the underground world of robotic tentacle makers, there are two rules: 1) don’t talk about underground tentacle-making and 2) don’t talk about underground tentacle-making. Both of those rules have been shattered by Matthew Borgatti, a robotics designer who has created a life-like, 3D-printed tentacle that flails around quite disturbingly using Arduino boards and a set of mini air compressors. → Read More
Fans of Star Wars can take their love of droids and kitten heels to the streets with this DIY Instructables project. Created by Mike Warren, an editor at the site, these are the droid shoes you’re looking for. → Read More
If you only watch one video today, it should be this one. You will discover that it is footage of a DIY LEGO pancake maker which is, in my expert opinion, the best thing to come out of Norway since the fjords. Created by Miguel Valenzuela, an American maker abroad, the project has been around for a few years but this video shows us how the project works in detail, further proving that the nascent… → Read More
Gael Langevin wants to give you a robot. The French artist is posting 3D printer files for a humanoid robot he’s building as he completes the various parts, allowing us all to create our very own plastic helper/lover with some ABS plastic, a few Arduino boards, and some motors. → Read More
If you’ve watched and enjoyed the program known as “The Good Doctor Who” in which an alien of some sort who flies around with his little, knobby robotic buddy (I’m not entirely clear on the details), you’ll be pleased to note that one fan, our own former employee Greg Kumparak, has built a real Tardis police box which, using some digital trickery, is really bigger on the inside. → Read More
bMobilized, a New York-based mobile web startup offering small businesses a way to convert their existing websites into HTML5, mobile-optimized sites, has raised an additional $2.5 million in Series A funding, the company is announcing today. The new funding comes from previous investors Norway’s Alliance Venture and Investinor, as well Alden AS. The funding also comes on top of the $1.5… → Read More
When we look back on the events that led up to the rise of our Robotic Overlords, I think this will be a day that will live in infamy. Some foolish mortals at Mad Lab Industries have, for their own twisted reasons, connected a Phantom AX Hexapod robot to a six-rotor helicopter kit, thereby creating a flying/crawling insect hybrid that can walk through tight spaces and then take off. → Read More
In the pantheon of geek projects there are few things as potent as the creation of an FTP server. Rather than doing cool stuff like serving up web pages or handling phone calls, an FTP server just sits there serving up files like a Michelin-starred chef slinging hash at a diner. But what if you made it solar-powered? What then? → Read More
Arduino unveiled a new preassembled board today, one that includes a variety of sensors and controls already assembled, allowing aspiring game programmers to quickly and easily get up and running with functional hardware out of the box, without having to break out the soldering iron. It includes light and temperature sensors, an accelerometer, four push buttons, a joystick and a slider, as well as… → Read More
As someone who has been following the 3D printing revolution very closely, I’m convinced it will bring about a new industrial revolution. What that means – and where it will put us at the end of the day – is a question that I feel I can’t answer yet. But we can, with some clarity, see what is going on with projects like Wiki Weapons. → Read More
For your postprandial pleasure I present the an open-source vibrator that you (or your partner) can play like a theremin. The story of how it came to be is pretty amazing and involves FCC chip lookups, bit-tracing, and lots of assembly code. In short, it’s an amazing effort in DIY hardware hacking that serves the dual purpose of education and giving pleasure. → Read More
Keeping with my theme of DIY projects as gifts, I present to you this little treat, a laser-cut marble machine that comes to us via merry old England. While the mechanism is cool – you turn a little crank and send the balls climbing up a hill and then down a little ramp – the real fun comes in assembling the jolly little machine. → Read More
Geek parents will get a huge kick out of the Solder:Time watch kit from Spikenzie Labs. It’s a cute kit that contains all the parts you need to make a large, readable LED watch. Just grab a soldering iron on Christmas Day and get cracking. → Read More
Here’s a heartwarming story for a Hackathon Saturday: Chad Ruble’s mother suffers from aphasia due to a stroke. She hasn’t been able to use a keyboard for years because she is simply unable to recognize text. In order to help her, he built a Kinect-enabled interface that lets her move her hand around a series of simple icons – happy, sad, upset, etc. – and other icons that signify degree.
After… → Read More
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