1960s General Electric Radio. Watch the skies!

I was recently given an old stereo receiver which was headed for the landfill. It was called the Realistic Modulaire and was manufactured in Japan over 20 years ago by Radio Shack. After years of use, neglect and storage, it was a real mess. The wood case and aluminum channel front panel were covered in a haze of grime. All the "pots" (geekspeak for potentiometers, e.g. volume controls, balance, treble and bass controls) were so dirty that it was impossible to listen to the audio. It was tempting to just give it the ol' heave-ho! But, I liked the size and design of this icon of '70s stereos. Its retro style spoke of a bygone electronic heritage, and I figured, if it could be salvaged, it would make a nice foundation for a modest home theater system for our study.

When attempting to salvage old gear, you've got to resist the temptation to just "plug 'er in and give 'er the smoke test." With the unit unplugged, it's best if you can get into the case and visually inspect the top and bottom of the circuit boards and power supply. Do this in good light or use a flashlight if need be. Look for evidence of obvious problems: loose, rotted wires, charred or missing components, damaged circuit boards and the like. If you discover such problems and don't have the skills to fix them, give the component to an electronically-knowledgeable friend. At the very least, he or she will be glad to have more spare parts and it'll keep one more thing out of the landfill. If your inspection doesn't turn up any obvious problems, plug it in and give it the juice!

The Modulaire was an analog tuner -- that's the kind where you twist a knob and a pointer rides along a dial showing what frequency is being tuned. It had a shiny, opaque, black dial which came to life when I turned it on, illuminating gold markings and lettering silkscreened on the inside of the dial. It positively glowed through the haze. I strapped on a pair of headphones and slipped the plug into the phone jack on the front panel. Turning the volume up, my ears were blasted by a horrific scratching sound. I tried the balance, treble and bass knobs and got the same response. It was time to apply my meager restoration skills.

1962/63 Zenith Royal

For years I've chatted with a friend of mine who repairs electronic equipment for a living. In the process, I've picked up a couple of valuable trouble-shooting tips. The first is: Always check the fuse! He says that often, equipment thought to have been damaged by lightning, or simply worn out, simply needs a new fuse. Most electronic devices including computers, fax machines, stereo gear and satellite receivers, have one or more fuses to protect various circuits from being blown. Most fuses are obvious -- they're located on the back of the device and are clearly labeled. Some, however, are located inside the device. With the unit unplugged, remove the cover and look for circuit board-mounted, glass-type fuses, or plastic circuit breaker boxes. The latter will be small rectangular boxes, usually on edge and mounted to the board. There will often be a label on the board stating that it's a circuit breaker. There will also be a small white, orange or other color button on top. If the breaker has been tripped, it will click when you push down on it.

The second tip is to spring for a can of Radio Shack Tuner Control Cleaner and Lubricant (RS Cat #64-4315). This is a product which seems too good to be true. It's a 4.5 ounce spray can which comes with a "flexible extension tube" for spraying its miracle-making contents into tight places. At just US$8 a can, this product will make you look like an electronics genius. Within seconds, you can breathe life back into radios, TVs, car stereos, Walkman tape players, you name it! If it's got a volume control or switch, it can be cleaned, even without removing the case. In most cases you should be able to pull the knobs off the front of the gear to be fixed. On larger knobs check to see if there's a small set screw on the side of the knob which needs to be loosened before the knob can be removed.

Once the knobs have been taken off, fit the extension tube into the spray nozzle of the can and place it where the shaft enters the control. This is where the dirt is. Press the nozzle quickly for one short blast. You don't have to hose the thing down. Now, work the control's full swing rapidly back and forth for about thirty seconds. On particularly dirty pots or switches, a second or third application may be necessary. Wipe excess spray off with a soft, absorbent cloth. Information on the side of the can claims that it is non-flammable and safe on most plastics, but I don't think I'd want to breathe too much of it.

After bringing the pots back to life on the Modulaire, I was inspired to finish the job. Using non-abrasive cleaners, I attacked the grime on the case and the front panel. Within minutes they were completely cleaned. I rubbed furniture oil into the wood case and the warm walnut veneer, favored on stereo components from this era, looked like new. The aluminum channel shined brightly and I was delighted to see a bright red pilot bulb light up when a stereo station was tuned.

The unit was given to me with the two speaker cabinets it had when it was originally sold. One speaker was blown and the other was of poor quality. In the years since this product was made, small speaker technology has made some impressive progress. By pulling the original speakers from the case and installing inexpensive Radio Shack replacement speakers, I've now got a respectable, if not chest-pounding, audio system for the TV in the study.

Finally, here's a tip on dealing with Radio Shack products. Their website is extremely well done. After you're at the homepage, click on "support." Here you can print out manuals for their entire line of audio, video, telephones, scanners and CBs as well as all their computers and peripherals. In addition, you can download software updates, recovery and computer setup programs. Entering the model number I copied from the back of the Modulaire, I was able to print out a user's manual in minutes, replacing the original which was lost years ago. Unfortunately, they don't have service manuals or schematics online.

After the success I had with the Modulaire, I was inspired to roam the house fixing every scratchy volume control and intermittent switch I could squirt with the cleaner. I rejuvenated everything from old click-stop TV sets to the radio in my wife's car. You just can't beat the satisfaction of saving money on repairs and earning the admiration of friends and family, all for a measly eight bucks!

- Ken Reitz [1/22/99]

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The steam mechanics, oilpunks, contraptors, neo-Victorians cosplayers, retro-futurists, post-apocalyptic Playa pirates, New Dandies, and electric cowboys were all out in force at this year's Bay Area Maker Faire. There was the Victorian castle on wheels, the steam-powered runabout, the steam-effects scooter, the fire-spewing bar with vaudeville side-stage, the radio-tubed Theremin, and the outdoor Victorian sitting room with a disgorged cabinet of wonders of brassy computer mods, rayguns, clockwork guitars, and a light-spewing violin covering several tables. There were also at least three airship crews.

One of the coolest things about all this is that many of these artisans were already great virtual friends, even collaborators, but had never actually met in person. Seen above is a drawing, by the amazing Suzanne Forbes, of the inimitable Jake von Slatt (left) and Datamancer (right). This is the first time these two well-known steampunk makers had met in meatspace. Here they're seen building a special Maker Faire Contraptors' Lounge keyboard (which we'll likely give away here on the blog at some point). More of Suzanne's drawings from the Lounge can be seen after the jump.

Sitting in the Lounge: Crewmembers of the HMS Chronabelle, Magpie of Steampunk Magazine. In the background (left) Captain Robert of Abney Park and Jake von Slatt, (center) MAKE photographer Sam Murphy and me (the bald dude -- and I swear I'm NOT picking my nose), (right) David S. Dowling (black vest). Seen on the table is Molly Freidrich's Sinister Device and one of her rayguns.

One of the tables in the Lounge, this one mainly featuring work by Jake von Slatt, including his clockwork guitar, his copper-plated etched mint tins, his telegraph sounders, and a phone project he's currently working on. Also seen is the forthcoming Steampunk Anthology edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer and a portfolio of Molly Freidrich's work.

Tom Sepe's steam-assisted motorbike.

Jake von Slatt: You've just been "steampunked" (by Meredith Scheff).

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On January 16, 2008, the first joint event of Dorkbot DC and the newly formed Make: DC was held at the Marian Koshland Science Museum. The evening was a smashing success, with some 65 people showing up! We built Arduino-controlled LED Cubes, inspired by the Make: Weekend Projects Podcast on building a "Pocket LED Cube."

One bit of added excitement to our evening was the ever-present fear that we might set off the fire alarm system which would have killed power to the *entire* building. We were told about the room's overly-sensitive alarm system -- blinking its status-light taunts right above our heads and over one of our work tables -- just as dozens of adorable Dorks were pouring into the place, 600-degree firesticks in hand. We nervously moved some tables and scrounged up a bladed fan to push fumes around. As probably 20 irons fired up and that heady, fluxy aroma of solder filled the air, we held our collective breath. I (only half-jokingly) told folks with cameras to have them at the ready so that, when the power went out, as the building filed out into the cold, dark streets, we could at least blog the whole sordid business ("DC Dorks Darken City Block"). Miraculously, no buildings were harmed in the making of our little LED cubes and a great time was had by all (at least as far as I could smell... er tell).

Dorkbot DC has been holding meetings in the Metro area since June 2006. Make: DC is one of a growing number of groups sprouting up in various US cities, started by fans of MAKE who want to get together to build projects inspired by the magazine. So far, there are Make: City groups in Philly, NYC, SF, and now DC. These groups are unofficial, but Maker Media has been kindly supportive of their efforts. For this first Make: DC meeting, The Maker Store generously helped subsidize the cost of the Arduino microcontrollers. A million thanks to Dan, Rob, Sherry, and everybody at Maker Media and at the store.

The next meeting of Dorkbot DC will be Feb 26, at GWU. Check our website for details as they happen. The next Make: DC is not scheduled yet. Adam Koeppel and Nick Farr, co-creators of Make: DC, have put up a website (still being constructed) and will announce the next meeting date and details there.

[Few more pics of the evening after the jump...]

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My Make: Books co-conspirator Brian Jepson has posted a quick n' dirty way of building a 64-node LED matrix (green and red, natch) of holiday lights, driven by a Max 7219 chip and controlled by an Arduino cloneboard. Not too shabby. The resulting LED "net" will only cover a small tree. For a larger tree, you'd have to do a much more ambitious build and cascade Max chips, but it seems to be time-consuming than anything else. Being the geek that he is, Brian also got the thing talking to his mobile phone over Bluetooth, which he promises more info on soon.

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[Read on...]

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Schedule for Next Meeting (last one in 2007)

Gareth Branwyn: Maker Faire: A World of Difference Gareth Branwyn is a contributing editor at MAKE and part of the MAKE: Blog team. He also recently became an editor at Make: Books. His first title in that role is The Best of MAKE, a collection of 75 favorite projects from the first ten volumes. Gareth is also "Cyborg-in-Chief" of the personal-tech website Street Tech and a contributor to Wired.com.

Gareth will talk about (and show pics of) his recent trip to Maker Faire Austin and share his thoughts on the current DIY movement/"handy heyday" and what it means in the greater scheme of things (at least as far as he's concerned). [Photo by Scott Beale]

Philip Kohn: Real-time processing of live video images Interactive video artist Philip Kohn will discuss some of his latest work that combines live video feeds with software that places the subjects in virtual worlds.

Alberto Gaitán: Remembrancer (Part 2 of 2: The Software) Alberto Gaitán is a composer/programmer/artist who creates a wide range of new media work. "Remembrancer" deals with transformation, memory, and the spacial, temporal and cultural resonance of events through automated robotic painters responding in real-time to news data flowing in over the Internet.

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One of the coolest things to happen in deep geekery in the last few years has been the emergence of lots of mom and pop electronic kitmakers. The latest are Jared Boone and Jenny Marx and their company ShareBrained Technology. Their first offering is an awesome, and very buildable, clock kit called The Chronulator ($49).

Inspired by other cool kitmakers of record, such as Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories and Lady Ada at Adafruit Industries, ShareBrained have gone out of their way to make a really sweet kit that’s very easy to build, with well-designed, well-written instructions, an equally well-designed circuit board, and tiny components thoughtfully sorted and bundled in little envelopes.

[Read on...]

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MAKE contributing editor and my Make: Books cohort Brian Jepson has a nice report today on the MAKE: blog about the Maker Store at the Austin Maker Faire. The store was by far my favorite part of the fair. It was a brilliant combination of a killer book store, a hands-on electronics lab, and a demonstration/presentation stage; a three-ring circus that any geek would love. I heard so many people raving about it and all the cool stuff to see, play with, and buy. We also had on-hand Lady Ada, Dave and Cheryl from Solarbotics, Raphael Abrams (Daisy MP3), and other indie kit makers whose wares the Make Store sells. Dan, Rob, Heather, Brian and everyone else involved did an amazing job.

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It's great to be here and I'm excited about the Faire. I'm currently at a Personal Fabrication Summit, a working session/meet n' greet of folks involved in personal fabbing/3D printing, CNC machining, etc.

Speaking of IEDs, I'll be doing Mousey the Junkbot workshops on Saturday and Sunday. I'll be in the Maker Store building. If you're coming to the Faire, stop by and say hi.

If you want to participate in the workshops, you may want to check out the materials I put together before the Bay Area Faire. They're available at here. Hope t o see you there... er here.

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As I've mentioned here before, I have a new gig as an editor at MAKE: Books, the book imprint for MAKE magazine. The latest book to come out of MAKE (done before I came on-board) is Tom Igoe's Making Things Talk. Man am I excited about it. It looks great, it's written in a very clear and approachable voice, and it's loaded with cool, quirky projects for using Arduino/Wiring microcontrollers to create networked objects, embedded devices that can talk to each other and connect to the world via the Web.

Like Dorkbot, one of the things I love about MAKE is how it isn't just for the geekiest among us -- both orgs appeal to creative types/artists, too. Making Things Talk is also geared that way. Throughout its pages, and for each chapter opener, there's an example shown of projects created by artists, art or engineering students, or others who are using Arduino/Wiring hardware and the Processing software language to create cutting edge techno-art. And also like MAKE proper, there's a real "I can do this" energy behind the book. I'm not much of an MCU/programming kind o' geek, but looking through this, I'm inspired to try some of the projects. And with the cost of Arduino hardware so low, there's not a big investment in giving it a try. Like with LEGO Mindstorms, the Arduino LilyPads, and other seriously-cool embedded tech that's coming to market these days, I can't help but wonder what today's generation of hardware hackers will do when this is what they have to cut their teeth on.

Making Things Talk is available in the Maker Store. I have to admit, I find it a tad intimidating that the bar has been set this high at MAKE: Books. According to the intro, the amazing Brian Jepson of Hackszine (who was the editor for this title) actually did all of the projects himself during the editing process. Jeez Brian, way to make the rest of us look like slackers. Don't we have tech editors for this sort of thing? But then, Tom Igoe has created such a juicy book I bet few real geeks could read it and NOT want to do the projects.

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I'm doing a weekly column, called "Provisions DIY" (every Wednesday), for Provisions Learning Center's blog. This week, I talk about printing your own books via Apple's iPhoto Books and Lulu. I use the example of BCP! Bitmaps, a two-off book that Peter Sugarman made, one for me, one for him. Here's an excerpt from the piece:

A few weeks ago, a package arrived in the mail. It was from my friend and long-time collaborator Peter Sugarman. Inside the mailer was a handsome gray and white portfolio box with an Apple logo on it. Inside of that was a gorgeous hardbound black book called BCP! Bitmaps. BCP!, or Beyond Cyberpunk! A Do-It-Yourself Guide to the Future was an electronic book (done in Apple’s HyperCard program) that Peter and I (along with Mark Frauenfelder of Boing Boing, Jim Leftwich, and others) did in the early ’90s. Peter had gone through the entire e-book (called a “Stack” in HyperCard parlance) and extracted all of the B&W 72dpi bitmapped images, along with some evocative cyber-dada statements we’d peppered throughout the stack (e.g. “Art is not a mirror. Art is a hammer,” “You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a clipboard,” “Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?”).

With these images and text, he made this amazing coffee table art book using Apple’s iPhoto Prints service. I’d heard friends (including Peter) raving about this service in the past, about how easy it was to use and how amazing the finished products were. It may take holding one to appreciate just how tasty it really is. The materials are first rate. On this book, the matte black cloth cover, the thick woven silver end papers, the glossy black internal pages, the print quality — it’s all top notch. Everything about it feels like it’s a high-end commercial product, not a two-off (as is the case here).

But like everything else with Apple, this level of quality and style doesn’t come cheap. The books are US$30 for the cover and the first ten pages, and $1 for every page after that. This book cost about $50 to produce. There are cheaper paperback and wire-bound versions available. And when you think about, the price of commercial hardbound books these days, this really isn’t that expensive. If you’re an artist who wants to do a small-run special edition book of your work for a show or similar situ, you could easily sell a volume like this for $60 or $70 (or more) and it wouldn’t be overpriced (by current market standards).

Read the rest here...

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This morning, I posted an item on the MAKE: Blog about Jake Hildebrandt's hack of a Wild Planet video display, the head-mounted video unit that's part of Wild Planet's Spy Video Car. It's pretty easy to make this display work with any video source. Anyway, Wild Planet read the post and offered up this contest (the replacement display unit appears to be no longer available):

Thanks to Jake, for the great hack! So sorry the website is out of stock. Our engineering group has a bin of extra headsets (pre-production samples, engineering test units, etc.) we'd like to make available to 10 clever hackers.

Email us with a one-paragraph proposal of what cool thing you're going to do with your own cyborg headset. Best 10 answers we receive by 5PM tomorrow (Oct. 10) receive a headset. No guarantees-these aren't production samples, but they're free, right?

email us: hack(at)wildplanet(dot)com

Much love, Wild Planet Engineering Team

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There just aren't enough good, clear electronics and getting started in microcontrollers tutorials online. It's a shame because far more people would be interested in this stuff if the barriers to entry weren't so intimidating. And unfortunately, many of these barriers are unnecessary (like tutorials that can't be bothered holding your hand and easing you in slowly).

So, I'm thrilled that one of my favorite hardware hackers, Lady Ada, has put up the first four lessons of her Learn Electronics Using Arduino tutorials. Clear, well-documented, well-illustrated tutorials. It seems so obvious. And yet it escapes so many.

So if you've been wanting to get into MCU/Arduino programming and taking control of some hardware projects, grab your soldering iron, Digital Multimeter, and your Arduino module and hit this link.

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Hackszine points to this nifty project that turns a floppy drive ribbon cable/connector into an SD/MMC card socket. The builder, Rob Wentworth, soldered this onto the PCB of his Linksys WRT54G router. If you're running third-party firmware on your router, like DD-WRT or OpenWRT, this SD socket gives you access to a lot more apps, data, and swap-RAM space. This how-to only covers the SD socket side of things. Here's a tutorial on attaching an SD socket to a WRT54G router.

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Our pal Jake von Slatt has a fun piece on the Steampunk Workshop where he tells the tale of his trip to LA, to appear on Wired Science, interspersed with his prepping of the project he planned to demo there, etching an iPod.

The next step in the process was to clean the iPod back carefully with alcohol and spray a couple of coats of the ER-71 Photo Resist Liquid on it. This had to be done in subdued light, particularly avoiding any light in the blue and UV part of the spectrum. Around here that means kerosene lamp light. After the resist was applied the iPod went into a oven at 140 degrees for about 20 minutes to cure.

Back to my story, after several phone conversations I agreed to ship all of my projects out for a "show and tell" segment, but the producers wanted more "science content" so I proposed etching an iPod in a demo since electrolytic etching with it's anodes and cathodes and electrons and ions is the just about the most "science-y" thing I do.

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Speaking of Maker Faires, I'll likely be at the Austin Faire (Oct 20-21). I'd love to see some of my Street Tech compadres there.

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Like all battery ratings, the iPhone's alleged (up to) 8 hours of talk, 6 hours of Internet, etc. is bullshit. On my new phone, I'm getting maybe 3 hours and change of talk, Web, and other use, AVERAGE use. I haven't timed it, but I had a two-hour-plus doctor's procedure the other day. I'd used the phone a bit in the morning before it, but not much, used it throughout the procedure (phone, EDGE web, video and music) and there wasn't much of a charge left by the time I was done. I can't imagine this thing lasting from one end of the country to the other if you were actually using your iPhone as Gopod intended during the flight.

Which brings me to the Minty Boost, USB charger kit, created by Lady Ada and sold at the Maker Store. I've been wanting to get one, but never really had the need for it. She reports on her site, and PT confirms on MAKE, that it does work with the latest iPhone software update.Maybe with this in my laptop bag, I'll feel confident about using my phone on the plane and still having enough juice left to call people when I reach the other coast. Of course, with this thing in my bag, given my history with TSA, I might never make it off the ground.

I'd love to hear about other people's experiences with traveling with the iPhone on long flights and other situs where other phones hold out. Our Comment system is still turned off, thanks to Russian porn spammers. Please email me at: garethbranwynATmacDOTcom.

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Street Tech pal Thomas Edwards, of Dorkbot DC, has launched a website for his Physical Interactions over IP (or "Phy2Phy") project. The first piece he's working on is called "Touch" and it uses an MCU (the Comfile CUBLOC CB220), a serial motor controller (the Pololu micro serial servo controller), a servo motor, a force-sensitive resistor, and a serial-to-Ethernet network interface (the XPort) to create an Internet-connectible touch-input and force-feedback device. Connect another such unit elsewhere on the interwebs, and you can reach out and touch someone, over IP! Really interested to see where he takes this. The Phy2Phy project wiki will chronicle this piece and others to come. Thomas will also be demoing Touch at the next Dorkbot DC on Sept. 10.

The "Touch" project page has info on all of the tech mentioned above. There's also a YouTube video of the "Touch" units thus far.

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Here's an Instructable on mixing up your own "Moo Glue," called so 'cause milk is one of the chief ingredients (along with vinegar and baking soda). Quick, easy, curiously strong. Of course, with the price of milk spiking...

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Instructables has teamed up with TreeHugger and Popular Science to create a Go Green! project contest. Grand Prize is a gorgeous Breezer Liberty commuter bike, first prize is a Solio Universal Solar Charger, and there are other prizes too. Any project that focuses on reducing, reusing, repurposing, recycling, and rebuilding is eligible. Further details at the link.

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Lady Ada has the second installment of her Multimeter Tutorial on her site. This one covers resistance and the testing of resistors, potentiometers, and LDR (Light-Dependant Resistor) sensors.

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Street Tech pal Datamancer is featured in a new Wall Street Journal Online vid talking about steampunk and showing off his basement workshop and his various casemods and steampunk keyboards. Congrats, Doc!

The dude even has Victorian hair. Now *that's* commitment!

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More "nixie tube" fun, this one a really gorgeous tube clock in a CNC-milled wooden enclosure. The builder has the schematics, layout, BOM (Bill of Materials), firmware, etc. on the site, and is also is making clocks for sale, for US$1,500 each. He says it's about $190-200 in parts. Not the easiest build, with a lot of surface-mount components, but if you're up for a challenge... Cool clock!

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I've been meaning to pitch MAKE an article about the basics of how to use a Digital Multimeter (DMM). The manuals that come with most meters appear to be written by electrical engineers, for electrical engineers, and Radio Shack's "Getting Started" guide on the subject is little better. I so wish, a decade ago, I'd had a tutorial like Lady Ada is constructing on her site. The first installment is on the basics of continuity testing.

Effectively using a DMM is really not that hard, and kind of fun, when it's explained to you in human-readable language and decent photos. Looking forward to posting about the rest of the series.

Here's our Street Tech guide to buying a decent DMM.

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Read the rest of my review...

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Here are the items I blogged this week on MAKE:

Wiimote as car accelerometer - Link
Six-button capacitive touch pad - Link
HOW TO - Make a simple fly trap - Link
Home roasting rigs building contest - Link
Make your own Moonbeam - Link
HOW TO - Track (and document) currency - Link
Huge lens: project or paperweight? - Link
Green steam - Link
Of Moonbeams and motorcycles - Link
Tools you didn't know you needed - Link
Personal blimps - Link
Wii telescope control - Link
BEAM bots with complex behaviors - Link
Game machine hacking at Vienna Dorkbot - Link
Ordering PCBs from China - Link

Wow. That was a lot (Phillip was away at OSCON).

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Here's a MacGyver-ific battery hack. This fellow, looking at a 13-hour flight from Sydney to LA, decided to bodge up a backup power supply for his laptop. He took a 4 D-cell battery holder, sliced it in half and stretched it out to accommodate 20 cells. The whole thing was wrapped in cardboard and shipping tape. I cannot believe he got this thing through airport security. If I tried to take something like this on-board a plane, my nether cavities would never be the same. And I love how he gets on-board with such crude DIY device while this other fella doesn't.

[Via hackAday]

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Fab@Home has been experimenting with 3D printing of electrical circuits, with conductive silicone and conductive ink, and using epoxy as a structural material. They combine these efforts in fabbing a flashlight with an embedded super-bright orange LED.

Okay, so the results are a tad on the funky side, but it's the innovation represented here that counts. They've come a long way from their initial efforts, such as this silicone watchband.

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[Via Make]

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Here's another item for our growing "Geek Sartorial" file. In this project, artist and costumer Jade Falcon shows you how to make a woman's steampunk "artisan apron," complete with clay cogs cleverly stamped out using the end of a thread spool. The project was inspired by Rachel E. Pollack's earlier designs for a similar apron.

[Via Brass Goggles]

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The awesome uC Hobby (that's "Microcontroller" Hobby for you Muggles in the audience) has a very useful article, especially for those new to electronics, on how to identify parts on PCBs that might be useful in future electronics projects.

t's a good idea to keep all of your old electronics gear (modems, cellphones, answering machines, home appliances, etc) and cannibalize it for parts. Once you know what you're looking for, you'll be amazed at what you can find. My technojunk box has saved me from a trip to Radio Crap, or having to place a mail order for a few parts, on many occasions.

[Via Make]

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• 555 chips? Bet you can't eat just one
• Templates for brass etching
• Li-ion Life Extension
• 1930s Japanese robot

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At the most recent Dorkbot DC, while we were sitting around knitting...er... soldering, we were talking about the resurgence of interest in tube-based stereo amplifiers. Someone was asking about the availability of kits. DIYAudioProjects.com tracks just that -- available kits, how-tos, mods to existing kits, etc. The site has links to other DIY and kit-builder audio links and suppliers.

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BTW: In case you're wondering, the pump use to circulate the water gets its juice from the sun, not the local power utility.

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This month's Dorkbot DC is Tuesday night, July 10, at Provisions Library (on Dupont Circle). This Bot will be different from others so far. We'll be working on BEAMbots, teaching folks how to solder, and just generally having plenty of good, lead-fumed, geek fun. So come on by. See the Dorkbot DC website for more details.

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• Barebones Arduino on a breadboard
• HOW TO - Make an aux-in for the Bose SoundDock
• Hamster wheel steam train
• R2-S2 (Steam R2-D2) gets props on Star Wars Blog
• HOW TO - Tell Temperature with Crickets

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More on the geekly dressing tip, here with an Instrucable on incorporating EL wire into a skirt. Fire shirt! Rave on, dudette.

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"With the Weaknees upgrade you 1) may lose the warranty, 2) you lose the original drive so who knows what you do if you ever need to return your HR20, 3) if you ever need to switch HR20s, or upgrade to D*'s next DVR (whenever that is), you're back to square one. A Weaknees benefit is that you don't need to assemble anything.

"With the e-SATA upgrade, you need to buy two parts (the Seagate DB35 750GB HD + MX-1 Enclosure), takes literally 5-10 minutes to install, plug it in, and re-boot. No issues with the warranty, can easily upgrade later to another HR20 or successor to the HR20, and can easily replace the drive if it ever fails (5-year warranty).

"While Weaknees has been great in the past, doesn't seem compelling at this time for the HR20."

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My pal Brian Jepson is posting a lot of very interesting and useful info and hacks for the iPhone on Hackszine, like this one:

If you're a heavy iTunes and iPhoto user, you will probably quickly overflow the limited storage in the iPhone. You could dedicate a day of curatorial work to sifting through your photos and music to pick the ones to put on your phone, but if you want a quick and dirty solution, try creating a Smart Playlist and Smart Album that favor recent music and photos.

Read the rest of this post.

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We were talking about this project at... oh nevermind... just check out this awe-inspiring 4-bit computer built entirely out of K'Nex. Here's the description from the site:

"The K'NEX calculator stands over 10 feet tall, and can perform 4 bit addition and subtraction operations in about 30 seconds. The slowest part of the operation is the user entering the balls. From there the balls trickle down, computing the result of the operation, and then sending that through a 4 bit decoder, which flips a flag that tells the user the answer. Since it is 4 bit, we can add and subtract numbers from 0 to 15."

Read the Ball Theory page for a succinct and graphical description of how this system can be used to create the various logic gates needed in computing (and some of the design challenges involved). The videos explain a lot, too.

[Via Make]

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One of the more interesting people I had the pleasure of meeting at Foo Camp was Jim Mason of The Shipyard, the brilliantly-mad Berkeley art and alternative energy space/community (which was recently forced to vacate their premises and is now looking for donations to re-emerge bigger and more bad-ass, outside of Berkeley. Help out!).

Anyhoo, at Camp, Jim was drumming up interest for The Mechabolic, a crazy-ass bio-fuel slug/digestive system sculpture thingy that he and his cohort plan to build at '07 Burning Man. It's "human anatomy meets hot rod fetishism," er... or something like that. If you want to know more about "Team Metabolic" and their "burlesque of synthetic metabolism," check out the project's website.

BTW: The wonderful Neverwas Haul, featured in my recent Wired.com steampunk piece, was built at The Shipyard.

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You know we're fans of geek sartorial, the nerd "colors," if you will, here at Street Tech Labs, so we'd be remiss if we didn't link to this Instructable for stringing a bracelet with chunks o' motherboard. Not "exactly" my style, but close. I might try something like this. I keep meaning to try my hand at some electronics parts jewelry.

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Atmel's AVR microcontrollers, both the tinyAVR and megaAVR classes, are growing in popularity among hobbyists, roboticists, gamers, and others using embedded computer control. Our pals at Solarbotics use the ATmega8L AVR in their BrainBoard Sumbot add-on kits. Lady Ada has also just released a cheap (US$18) kit for building a USB-powered programmer for AVR MCUs. With the Adafruit kit, all that's missing is a board to house the chip so that you can plug the programmer in and send your code to it (one of the cool features of Ada's kit is that it powers the chip over USB). That's where a target board comes in, and that's what this Evil Mad Scientist Labs how-to is all about: showing you how to build a quick n' dirty target board for a couple of bucks. Nifty.

EMS Labs also has a review of the Adafruit USBtinyISP AVR Programmer kit here.

[Shown above is the Adafruit AVR Programmer and an EMS Labs target board.]

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Street Tech pal and steam robot guru I-Wei Huang has thoughtfully documented the steps to his latest build, a steam-powered, radio-controlled turbine tank, and created an Instructable.

If you weren't tempted to hack some steam-tech before, you likely will be after checking this out. That little Jensen turbine is sweet!

Thanks, I-Wei!

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Without getting all verklempt and making Herr von Slatt too uncomfortable, I gotta tell ya that work like his new steampunk monitor (to go along with his RSS sounder and keyboard) is what makes me happy to come into work every morning (albeit just down the hall from my bedchambers). One of the many things I love about Jake's work is the little surprise or two always contained within the projects, inspired little gems. This one has a number of them, perhaps most awesome of which are the "chime levers" he installed on the underside of the monitor frame to trigger the monitor controls underneath the monitor itself (see image below). ingenious. Looking at the base, you'd swear it was marble. It isn't. It's a *photo* of marble that Jake found in a Google search, printed out, and glued onto wood.

The whole project was inspired by some decorative gas lamp arms he bought from the "mad salvager" at Sequential Glass. They form nifty decorative elements on the bottom corners of the monitor frame.

As usual, Jake includes a video tutorial, this one on how to do mirror image transfers on templates. For this project, he used this technique to draw out some brass curly-q's for the gold-painted aluminum angle stock he used for the frame.

Awesome job, Jake! Let's see: you've done a keyboard, a monitor, an RSS telegraph sounder... Is that case mod I smell?

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Thanks, Craniac!

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Our keypal Jake von Slatt just sent us a link to this project about making your own workshop respirator with a portable, battery-operated air supply. For us four eyes in the crowd, they even have glasses built into them!

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Me in the Mousey build area of the Make booth. Morning, Day 2.
Still half asleep.
Photo by Scott Beale

Well, we're back from the Maker Faire. Very tiring, but supremely satisfying. I'd really wanted to blog the event as it happened, but ended up spending nearly all day, both days, in the Make booth, building mousebots. At night, I was just too wiped to do anything but keel over.

Everything at a Maker Faire is cranked to 11: the size of the event, the creativity of what's being presented, the excitement of the fairgoers, the diversity of the people who show up. So, YOU end up on 11. I heard this jacked amperage was experienced by both fairgoers and presenters alike. The common chant went something like: “This is SO awesome. I LOVE it! There's too much! I'll never get to see it all.”

As workshop presenters, Blake and I saw little of the Faire. The first day, we did open-ended workshops, selling Mousey parts bundles and then helping people build them at workstations we'd set up (until they'd decide to stop and finish the project at home). This meant that we stayed at our post from 10am till I cried “uncle” at 4pm. That was probably the most tired I've ever been in my life. The second day, we ran three one-hour workshops. That was a much saner way to do business and gave us some time to wander around and see some of the Faire.

Our Mousey workshops went very well. For the Faire, we created two parts bundles (put together by the fine folks at Solarbotics). We thought most people wouldn't want to try and build a whole robot at the show, so we made a quicker, easier “car kit.” We ended up only selling three of them! Everyone bought the full Mousey, and a surprising number of people actually sat down and started the build right there in the Make area. Several people were at the workstations for several hours. My favorite was a woman who saw the mousebots, really liked them and said: "You know what? This is really out of my comfort zone, but I'm going to do it anyway. I think I need to challenge myself more." And she bought a parts bundle, chose an old mouse, sat down, and dove right in. There were a lot of kids with their parents, moms and dads alike, working together, which was nice to see. The mice we used for the workshops were provided by James Burgett at Alameda County Computer Resource Center. He was a great asset and fun to work with, so we'd like to give him ye ol' shout out. Thanks, James!

Other highlights of the show for me were Mister Jalopy's talk on Maker Day and his Urban Guerrilla Movie House on wheels (seen here), which he showed next to our Mousey build area in the Make booth. One of my favorite new words is hilaritas, which means “profoundly good natured, full of mirth.” It's more than being friendly, more than being funny. Mister Jalopy is full of hilaritas. I also had a good connection with Bill Gurstelle, the Backyard Ballistics guy. Great fella. Smart. Kinda wacky. Supremely creative. Again with the hilaritas. There seems to be a lot of that within the Maker community. Besides Mr. Jalopy, our other Make boothmates were Phillip Torrone and Bre Pettis, running a cool drawbot exhibit. It was fun finally getting to meet both of them. SRL was at the show, displaying their infernal machinery. Still living up to their rep as the “Most dangerous show on Earth,” their stabbing robot, well, stabbed a guy (in the hand). Got a chance to meet Violet Blue, but not Karen Marcelo (SRL/Dorkbot SF), and never got a chance to say hi to Mark Pauline. Street Tech's webmaster Tim Tate came to the Faire, too, and we finally got to meet F2F (after being virtual friends for some ten years!). Didn't get to spend as much time with him as I would've liked, but we got to walk around to see some of the exhibits during one of my breaks. --->

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Street Tech is representin' at this year's Maker Faire. I'm here to do "Mousey the Junkbot" workshops, my son Blake is here to help, and ST's webmaster Tim Tate is coming too. Yesterday was Maker Day, an all day social with presentations for the Faire presenters, Highlights included Mark Pauline of SRL and John Law (of Suicide Club, Burning Man, Cacophony Society fame) in conversation with David Pescovitz, an awesome talk by Mister Jalopy, and Tim Hunkin talking about and showing videos of his hysterical coin-operated machines. Today is set-up, and tomorrow is the first day of the Faire. Should be a blast.

Here are some pics of yesterday shot by Scott Beale of Laughing Squid.

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I've always wanted a lathe, but would likely use it like once in a forever, so I never felt I could justify the expense. But this hobby lathe, which uses your existing power drill as the business end, is only US$46. Hell, we probably have that much in the family change jar. But then, as they point out on Automata, the tools for it will likely cost more than the lathe itself. I'm just not going to overthink it. Now where is that piggybank...

[Via Make]

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These collector/fan-run sites are an eternal delight. Years ago, I was shopping for an Ericofon on eBay. I did a search, found this site, Ericofon, and within a few hours, I was an expert on these mod/atomic age wonders. I got a really a nice one on eBay that just needed some wire repair work. Found all I needed on the site. One of those "Gawd, I LOVE the internets" moments.

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Please, dear Gopod, tell me that SRL's going to be bringing this with them to the Maker Faire. It's a Hovercraft powered by four pulse jets. No, you can't ride on it (unless you want it to be your trip to the Pearly Gates), it's radio controlled. And loud enough to animate the dead.

Check out this machine test video, and watch all the way to the end, with the nighttime shots. The jets look beautiful in the dark. Now THAT'S a glowstick you want to bring to a rave!

[Via Suicidebots]

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Our pal Jake Von Slatt did a cool steampunk keyboard recently that we blogged about. A fan of his work tried to commission him to make another one, but as Jake put it, that sounded like work. So he asked his bud Doc, a.k.a. Datamancer, to take the job instead. The result, dubbed the Von Slatt Keyboard, is here. Very similar to Jake's version, but in brushed aluminum instead of brass. Love the blue "jewel-style" instrument lights.

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[Via Make]

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But that's peanuts compared to the Laser Cutter contest. Post an Instructable, on anything, and add it to the contest's Group. Five semifinalists will be chosen. You then need to submit a proposal for what you'd do with a US$6,000 BrightStar Laser Cutter. Winner bags the machine.

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Here's a brilliant set of steampunk goggles on Flickr with step-by-step shots of the building process. Really nice work. Check out some of the other project sets on Mikest's pages.

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"I've revived a couple of soaked laptops and iPods, and if the machine isn't turning on, you pretty much have to "disassemble it as fully as possible. You can find guides all over the internet. Cole's Hardware has little screwdriver kits that work well.

"Once it's apart, you'll most likely see that the circuits have white sediment on them. I'm not sure what actually causes that to happen, but it causes (temporary) short circuits. If you get some denatured solvent alcohol from a hardware store and wipe the sediment away with cotton swabs and a toothbrush (don't breathe too deeply--it's not poisonous, but it is irritating), you should be able to get most, if not all, of the components working again.

"Be careful not to let the display get soaked by anything, including the alcohol, because it won't function again after that. That's the part that's most likely to need replacement, and unfortunately, displays are not cheap. My fiancée’s iPod nano got soaked recently, and I was able to get everything but the display to work--and it costs $50 to get a replacement from a third party. Meh."

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Attention circuit-benders, hardware hackers, techno-antique collectors, control panel enthusiasts, analog synth and Theramin fans, and marvelers of magnificent and mad machinery in general. This link will rock your world.

Tim Kaiser is a performance artist and experimental musician. He's built dozens (and dozens) of crazy instruments and other sound-generating gadgets, many of them housed in antique Geiger counters, old telephones, Oscillator boxes, and other retro equipment cases. His site features page after page of amazing DIY tech art. I was swooning by the time I was done, and I don't think I even exhausted the site. It seems to go on forever. Some of the machines have MP3 files attached to them so you can hear what the devices sound like.

One of the most linked-to pieces on Street Tech is the Gallery of Homebrewed Headphone Amps. This is an equally amazing collection of homemade audio gadgets. We can only hope that Tim Kaiser's work generates a similar buzz.

[Via Brass Goggles]

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His latest project should help all of his future projects look even snazzier than they do now. It's a foamcore and packing tape-special, a light diffuser, used to soften the intensity of camera light flash. And as Jake points out in the project's intro, light flare can be particularly problematic when shooting a lot of polished brass, as he frequently does.

Check out the results of using the diffuser on his Telegraph Sounder we blogged about last week. Nice!

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I've always been fascinated by keyboards and the various types of materials and switch technologies that underlie them. This Instructable shows you how to make a cool-looking wallet out of the flexible circuit material used in the typical keyswitch assembly.

It sounds like it's not the easiest cut n' fold job you can do, but it looks like you get a very unique, and uniquely nerdy, bit o' kit out of the effort. Hey, I need me a new wallet. Maybe me and my Leatherman will get Medieval with one of the half dozen old boards I have gathering Radon in the basement.

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One of the more intriguing pieces in the Fringe section is a piece on the Freemasons, by MAKE's Project Editor Paul Spinrad. The basic point of the piece is that the Masons started out as a society of geeks, stone masons/ engineers, who knew the "secrets" of cathedral building. He calls this period "operative Masonry." Over time, more and more members joined who weren't geeks/engineers and didn't have any direct experience of the knowledge held in the Order. He calls this "speculative Masonry." Paul asks the question: Wouldn't it be cool if geeks reclaimed the Masons by joining in large numbers to a create new generation of operative Masonry, a place where people doing amazing things with technology could get together and share their discoveries? As he points out, the Masons have an amazing infrastructure, with lots of cool resources and swanky Lodge buildings. The Masonic membership is looking very gray these days and some Lodges have allegedly closed down because of dwindling membership.

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One of the things I like about Jake's pieces is that he includes video tutorials that can be applied outside of the specific project he's building. For this project, he covers using a Tap and Die Set and how to wind an induction coil using an electric drill.

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Our pal I-Wei of Crabfu has created another amazing steam-driven contraption, this one a "beetle" built on a Tamiya High-Lift Chassis and an aluminum sheet metal "shell." He goes into a decent amount of detail on the construction, with lots of pics, and there's also a video of the mechano-critter in action. Like all of I-Wei's work, this vehicle is gorgeous, and includes such wonderful whimsical details as sheet-metal wings that open out to reveal the Cheddar Pegasus steam engine and steamworks underneath.

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BTW: I have several pieces in this issue, a profile of Jake von Slatt and a piece on TokyoFlash.

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Anyhoo... I'm surprised there aren't more printer hacks out there. Many of the hacks that have made their way online have been featured on Hack-a-Day. Yesterday, they did a round-up of projects they've covered so far and some new ones.

I wish there was a book on printer hacks, but I guess it wouldn't have a very large audience.

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[Via Make]

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My copy of the latest Nuts & Volts arrived the other day and the cover project is on building a fancy-schmacy benchtop regulated power supply, featuring dual 0 - 20V regulators with simultaneous voltage and current metering on digital panel displays. I've been toying around with the idea of building my own, so I was excited to see the piece. But as with a lot with N&V articles, it quickly climbed over my head and left a lot for me to work out on my own. Not that I couldn't figure it out with a little homework, it's just a little too much air pressure on the learning curve to keep my attention.

It did, however, spark my interest in other homebrewed benchtop supplies, so I did a search and found this one. It's a really nice single regulated supply with two modes, a low setting of up to 6v and high at up to 30v, with current adjustment on the low setting between 0 - 1 amps and 1 - 10 amps on the high. The meters are analog. The project is well documented with lots of photos, diagrams, and a PCB layout. This would probably be closer to my speed, although I'd probably be just as well suited building the much simpler, cheaper one we blogged about a few months back.

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[Via Make]

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There's something somewhat unsettling about the fetishistic devotion to your PC implied in a casemod this detailed, this overwrought. But at the same time, there's undeniable skill and artistry at work here. And these construction techniques can be applied to all sorts of modeling and fabrication. The modder's inspiration here was the engine room of the NX-01 Enterprise on ST: Enterprise.

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Jake von Slatt just sent us this how-to on turning an old IBM Model M keyboard into a surprisingly usable steampunk-styled keyboard with raised manual typewriter keys. Jake used actual antique keys, but needed additional Enhanced keys, so he bought brass-rimmed buttons and glued on printed key labels. Jake includes a couple of video segments, and Lady von Slatt even makes an appearance, to demo the board's typing ability.

As I was typing this, my Bluetooth wireless keyboard lost its connection with my computer. I think it's jealous of this bitchin' board.

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I'm planning a foolish mod to a turntable that you all might be interested in. I recently repaired two Bang & Olufsen linear tracking turntables with tonearm problems. These things are absolute engineering marvels, but after 25 years, the belts and lubricants need renewing. I noticed that the control panel that initiates all of the arm functions; START, STOP, CUE UP/DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, terminate in a simple, hackable cable. A little research turned up a kit RF remote control on eBay that would be child's play to interface with the control's connectors. It's also cheap, at US$30, and controls up to 12 functions. This would give me full remote control over the turntable from up to 1km away! 1000 meters is overkill, but I really need to be able to hit 'pause' from my desk when the phone rings. It would be nice to be able to skip a track too, while I'm in the back yard listening to records, or just to show off. I plan to document the modification in photos, and if it looks interesting, I can write up a narrative of the process. [You can tell, I'm sure, that I have way too much time on my hands stuck here in the house with a busted foot.]

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RHERSH12: I just performed a hack that amazed me by working. I took apart a very complicated JBL pro audio tweeter that was 'dead'. There was an open lead in about the worst spot. I managed to splice the hair-fine coil wire with a solder joint about .1mm across and IT WORKED! I even took a picture. This is one of a pair of tweeters from 1960 and I just had to try to get it working. I'm temporarily banned from my stand-up day job because of a broken toe. I've been spending all of my time at home at my bench working on restoring vintage audio stuff.

One of the pieces I've been working on is a kit tube audio amplifier from about 1962. It was built with a couple of tiny soldering faults. The soldering boo-boos completely disabled the operation of the unit and were the dickens to find and fix. It was assembled 99.5% over 45 years ago and never used because it didn't work. It must have taken 50 hours for the builder to get it to the state it's in and it never worked! It's worth a small fortune now because of the scarcity of NOS tube audio. It's not mine, I'm restoring it for a friend. I'll eBay it off for him along wit hthe original box, paperwork, spare parts, etc. It will probably go to a collector in China or Korea for a 4 figure sum of money. It's a strange world.

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Here's a similarly ingenious switch that uses little more than pieces of plastic, a washer and three screws to create a tilt sensor that engages the switch when the plastic wheel turns. Nifty.

[Via Make]

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Currently I'm a Linux SysAdmin, but I've done lots of other jobs over the years. I've worked in a machine shop, as an HVAC tech, a TV repairman and have assembled everything from the little emergency buttons that you press when "you've fallen and you can't get up!" to sensors used in nuclear power plants and undersea sonar systems. I've also worked on or rebuilt just about every automotive component you can think of including automatic transmissions. If you take a look at Vonslatt and Bike Recumbent you'll see that the artsy etching projects are actually a bit of a departure for me!

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He also experimented with an image transfer process using pages from magazines as the transfer medium. Fascinating.

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[Via hackAday]

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If you're a fan of domain hacks like del.icio.us or blo.gs, you might be interested to know that getting a personalized domain of your own may well be within easy reach. Domain Hacks is a search utility that will help you find the combination of domain name and top-level domain that works for you.

And this one, thank Gopod!

Already tired of the relatively new Snap "feature" that pops up an annoying little preview balloon over every hyperlink on certain web sites? Well, it turns out it's pretty easy to get rid of them, everywhere. Just click here to disable the feature using cookie technology (or, go to the Snap page that discusses deactivation and click the link from there).

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[Via hackAday]

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We're currently working on the next Street Tech Thumbnail Guide, on using a Breadboard. Our next one after that was going to be on Using a Digital Multimeter (DMM), but those loveable wingnuts over at MAKE beat us to it! So, while we put the finishing touches on the Breadboard guide, check out MAKE's very nice video and PDF on using a DMM. We might still do ours, but maybe focus on buying the right meter for you, or something else that will complement MAKE's materials.

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Some of the other articles look juicy. I can't wait to see the piece on making this awesome looking storage cabinet out of old PCBs.

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[Via Make]

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One thing not mentioned here that I always recommend, especially for those who aren't electronics savvy, is to label your wall warts as soon as you get your devices. Many warts are not labeled with the brand or name of the device they came with (and you can easily get your warts mixed up). Of course, if you read and understand this short guide, you'll be able to match wart to device by the information printed on them (at least most devices have their power requirements marked on then).

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[Via Make]

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Our new cyberpal Jake von Slatt (whom I profile in an upcoming MAKE) has moved from Electrolytic Etching, which we covered a while back, to Electrolytic Machining (i.e. instead of just etching images onto the surface, etching all the way through the brass). He's put up a two-part tutorial detailing the process, first trying his hand at a three-layer "clockwork trilobite" (which turned out looking a little like the Antikythera Mechanism), then trying to make individual parts using a thinner brass stock.

Herr von Slatt is also responsible for sending Boing Boing the link to the Flickr set for jonny5rd's awesome retro-chic Persistence of Vision (POV) viewer, built from a US$5 POV toy, an X-Acto knife case, and a few other misc parts. Very cool.

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But the important thing is to fire up that iron and start polluting the upper and lower atmospheres in earnest. And if you have any questions related to soldering, don't be afraid to ask.

BTW: I'm working on our next Thumbnail Guide now. It'll be on Breadboarding. Stay tuned...

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He's got some good tips in there, like taking "before" pics of the existing installation to make sure you hook everything up properly with the new power unit. Such uses for digital cameras can't be stressed enough. We all have the damn things on our phones, on our belts, but rarely think to use them as a memory jogger/reference keeper (at least I don't).

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Between these two pieces, there really is no excuse to not learn soldering. If you do decide to learn as a result of these and have any questions, feel free to post them here and we'll try and help you out.

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[Via Make]

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[Via hackAday]

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[Via Kotaku]

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This pics shows two versions, an early one with external rubber duckies (left) which has an effective range of 20'. and the final v1.0 model, with internal antenna. that hides inside of a ciggie pack (and offers less reach as a trade-off). Output power is .1W (high bands) and .3W (low bands). A rechargeable, internal Li-on batt offers up to four hours of ops, depending on number of bands jammed.

The WaveBubble is self-tuning and can jam many frequencies at the same time. A USB port allows you to plug the Wave Bubble into a PC to program new RF bands to jam.

Limor does her typical exemplary job of offering detailed docs, photos, parts lists, and even downloadable CAD, PCB (Gerber files), and schematics. But sadly, this is not a beginner or even intermediate project, as there is a lot of tiny surface mount components here. And no, she won't make and sell you one and will not be offering a kit, as cellphone and other RF jamming is generally frowned upon by the FCC.

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New Street Tech pal Jake von Slatt, whom I profile in an upcoming issue of MAKE, was inspired by Mark Frauenfelder's limited-edition Gremlin Moleskines. Using the 19th century etching process he's been experimenting with over at the Steampunk Workshop, Jake created this stunning series of brass-covered journals. He details the process in this tutorial.

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[Via Make]

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[Via hackAday]

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I love how the Ornament kit has a pull-down for "Original: Includes the F-word," and "Sanitized." "I've had it with these mother-fing elves on this mother-fing sleigh!" No, it doesn't say that, it says: "Merry F-ing Christmas" (or not). Does the evil mad scientist kiss his mother with that mouth?

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1. Uncap the pen and set the cap aside. Put the fountain pen, nib point up, into a padded vise.

2. Take some pliers and carefully pull out the nib (you may want to pad the pliers with tape or otherwise protect the nib from marring). The nib will pull out, making a sort of "Schtuppf!" uncorking sound.

3. Set the nib aside and use an eyedropper or improvised pipette to refill the pen with your favorite fountain pen ink (I like Platinum brand Carbon Ink). Don't use India Ink, it probably won't work.

4. Replace the nib in the pen with the pliers.

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Ryan has built several other automators. Last night, I used the HipsterPDA Cover Generator to make a cover for my organizer. I just grabbed the first JPG I bumped into on my desktop, William Blake's Glad Day, and it fit so perfectly and looks wonderful in action.

Ryan has it set up so that you specify the thickness of your Hipster and the cover is generated with side tabs (and a top width) set to that size. While this looks kind of cool in situ, my Hipster expands and contracts a bit, so the set definition of a width doesn't make sense. I ended up slicing my side tabs off and I'm happier with it. He also says you must use Legal-size paper or card. I had Letter-size card and just moved the art in Acrobat to fit (just barely) on the page. Worked fine.

After the jump are the contents of my breast pocket: my newly covered Hipster next to my Moleskine Cahier and my new best friend, the Varsity Pilot disposable fountain pen. And yes, I know I suck as a photographer.

Thanks to Alberto on the assist!

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[Via DIY:happy]

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This adorable kitty pic from the Machine Project site reminded me of something in Dave Hrynkiw's Junkbots... book about how to remember the polarity of the cathode and anode sides of a diode. He said his Physics teacher used to say: "I fell very negative about cats." (Cathode being the negative side.)

(And yes, I know this particular cat is looking at a capacitor not a diode, so don't send me mail.)

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UPDATE: It looks like the workshop is already sold out. Bummer. I guess that's what happens when Boing Boing announces your limited-seating workshop. But if you're in LA, you still might be able to go to tomorrow night's Dorkbot SoCal MAKE #8 release party, also at Machine Project.

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[Via Make]

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Having all those Mini Cards around has inspired some "Moosters" to make useful, fun things out of them. On Meg Pickard's blog, she shows you how to make Moognets (ugh), fridge mag Moo Cards, and on Red Mum blog, she shows how to laminate them and turn them into Moofobs, keychain decor.

Flickr Moo Card enthusiast Danielle Blue has morphed her Moofobs (say *that* ten tens) into something approaching jewelry.

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You may be unaware of the fact that Raphael has several other, cheaper, open source MP3 kits available. The Sakura, "The World's Simplest Open Source DIY MP3 Player" is here ($72) and the Super Simple MP3 ($72) is here. These are more complicated to build and less user-friendly than the Daisy, but cheaper, much smaller, and may serve you better if you're mainly interested in embedded type applications.

I can't wait to see how all of these players get hacked and what sorts of cool cases and mods people come up with.

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The latter article is available for free as a MAKE sample PDF. You can download it here. The Pummers pictured in the piece were done by Zach Debord, the same builder whom I covered in Street Tech's Twin-Engine Solarroller piece.

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Anyhoo... this project, from Girl on the Rocks, shows you how to weave a "cozy" for an iPod (or other mobile device) out of ye ol' magnetic medium of yesteryear.

[Via CRAFT]

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He created a Perl background daemon to run on his Linux server which houses the serial port he used. He used a solid state and a mechanical relay to do the power switching.

[Via hackAday]

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You definitely want to watch the video. The project posting is followed by a nice long thread about the Time Fountain, where to find the parts, programming the PIC, and more.

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