Ken Moore, a user experience designer at Google, created a very convincing Theremin simulator using a Wiimote and a Roland JV-1080 synth.

I've seen a few Theremin simulators that use accelerometer data, in both Wiimote and iPhone form, but this is the first I've seen that does a good job of recreating an authentic Theremin experience in all its 50s sci-fi awesomeness. Using some IR gloves and the Wiimote's CCD, one hand's horizontal movement controls pitch and the other hand's vertical movement controls volume.

At just $35, the Wiimote is an AMAZING piece of technology. It has an infrared camera in it which tracks the position up to 4 infrared light sources. So I bought a pair of leather gloves, wired up a couple infrared LEDs to 1.5 volt batteries, and poked an LED through the tip of the index finger of each glove.

Then, I connected my Wiimote to my computer (the Wiimote also supports Bluetooth connections): building on top of Brian Peek's Wiimote hacking software library, I wrote a program which detects the two infrared gloves and converts the vertical position of the left hand to volume, and converts the horizontal position of the right hand to pitch. That information is then sent via MIDI to the synthesizer which creates the actual sound.

One of the more interesting possibilities with this setup is that by adjusting the synthesizer, you can use a Theremin-like interface to control a huge number of effects, not just the standard sci-fi sine wave. I wonder if Léon Theremin would approve.

Wii Theremin

Here's a reminder that all craft kits in the Maker Shed are 10% off until the end of November! There are great gifts in there for your kids, your friends, and any other crafters you know. Use promo code CRAFTER at checkout to take advantage of this deal.

MAKE & CRAFT photo editor Sam Murphy points us to this kit for making your own pepper mill. It includes all the complicated grinding hardware and a walnut blank. Lathe not included.

When I need to photograph a small object with my iPhone, the fixed focus lens makes for a pretty horrible image. Inspired by this post, I took a 50mm lens from an old SLR and started using it as an improvised macro lens by holding it in front of my iPhone.

I decided to make a mount for the whole contraption. I realized that the little plastic coffin from the iPhone packaging would work pretty well. I cut a piece of mousepad to cushion things, and mounted it all with a couple of zip-ties and a rubber band. Now, I just slip my phone into the thing and snap away! Here's the Flickr set for larger photos.

While most major computer manufacturers have recycling programs in place, television makers aren't doing quite as well:

With only three months to go until the digital TV conversion, the Electronics TakeBack Coalition (ETBC) today released its new TV Recycling Report Card, grading the major TV manufacturers on their efforts to establish national programs to take back and recycle their old TVs. More than half of the 17 companies ranked scored a failing "F" grade, because they have no recycling program in place. Sony received the highest grade, a B minus, with other companies scoring C's and D's.

The recycling vs. reuse / consumer vs. manufacturer responsibility debates are interesting and seem worth having. Just make sure you're not throwing your TV in the garbage in the meantime! Here's a good way to find your nearest electronics recycler (in the U.S.)

Looking for a stocking stuffer that you or the giftee will use for years to come? Want to only spend $16 bucks or less? Check out the Pocket Reference collection at the Maker Shed store. These little books are like "Pocket Googles" but you can actually find something with them! No network connection required either! Perfect for the workbench, the school desk, the craft table. I've kept one with me for years, these also appear on the MythBusters when they need to look up something. Super handy and there's even a "MAKE" edition....

Let's get started!

Thomas J. Glover Pocket Reference
We kept asking ourselves, "If there was just one tool that no Maker should be without, what would it be?" This may just be the "tool" we'd pick. This great little book is a concise all-purpose reference featuring hundreds of tables, maps, formulas, constants & conversions, and it still fits in your shirt pocket! Packed with mathematical formula, tables, standard conversion ratios, scientific facts, technical specifications, electric wire size vs. load, resistor color codes, Morse code, sun & planet data, earthquake scales, nail sizes, geometry formulas, currency exchange rates, carpentry, automotive, physical science, water friction losses, charts for battery charging, lumber sizes & grades, floor joint span limits, insulation R values, periodic table, and as they say, much, much more! It's no wonder The Pocket Ref was featured in MythBusters! All the reference information anyone needs on virtually any subject is right at the fingertips in this handy pocket-sized guide. Its tables, charts, drawings, lists, and formulas will be especially useful for contractors, students, travelers, electronics hobbyists, craftspeople, and engineers and technicians in virtually every field.
Price: $12.95

Michael wanted a bike stand, but didn't want to pay, and wanted to use it as a project to build his Computer Aided Design and fabrication skills.

We had been using ProDesktop by PTC, to learn how to design mechanical parts. He was doing the tutorials along with his classmates. He worked out the idea in Lego parts. He studied the existing mechanism available from Park Tools. He designed the individual parts, and made an assembly in ProD. When he had the system Then he took the drawings and laid them out on wood and cut using traditional woodshop tools. The full assembly and process are visible on his wiki.

Michael did this project while he was a freshman or sophomore at Duxbury High School. It showed me both the incredible power of the design process, and the amazing things that can happen when you put powerful design tools into the hands of a motivated student. He is now a Senior in Industrial and Mechanical Engineering at Umass Amherst. Graduate school and a promising career figure are just a few of the things in his future. When he did this project many years ago, I could see many possibilities for the techniques and the student.

How do you use Make and Craft to help teach? Have these publications changed the way you see projects and education? Do you have success stories of students who have created amazing things or gone on to fascinating careers as Designers or Makers? Give them and your program a plug by posting into the comments or adding photos and videos of their work in the Make Flickr pool.

Hey Makers, I put together the LED Clock kit today - it took awhile to make but was really rewarding once I got going with it. Obviously the wiring was the hardest part but once you check all your connections and develop a pattern it goes by pretty fast. This kit also taught me a couple of things. One of those was how to tell the polarity of an LED. It all has to do with the length of the legs on the LED. Also I learned firsthand how bring LED's can really be. Unless you just want a clock that appears to be powered by a nuclear power plant inside your house, you will need to cover the clock with a sheet of paper.

All in all although it did take some work I now have a pretty rad LED Clock in my living room now. And I can tell people I hacked it together myself!

As I said before my only warning....would be these LED's are bright....really bright. Check out how they mess with my camera's lens below. If your interested in buying this kit, check out the Maker Shed to order it. More photos after the jump.

Close up of LED Clock Kit in it's box. It all looks so simple with the happy father and his kid looking so content. Will I be so happy at the end of this?

On this episode of Bre Pettis' "Things," Adam Mayer shows off the Model 15 teletype machine from the 1930s he's been working on.

Things - Adam Mayer Explains The Teletype Model 15

The premiere Make: television is 8 weeks away. Here's a snippet of what you'll see in the show -- John Park transforming a shopping cart into a stylish easy chair, and then into a go kart!

Make: television will premiere on Public Television stations and here on www.makezine.tv in January.

Each station programs slightly different schedules, call your Public Television station and ask for "Viewer Services" -- they'll tell you when it will be on.

Let us know what you think in the comments.

Today, Trossen Robotics announces:

Trossen Robotics is proud to be the first in the United States to offer the new MechRC Humanoid Robot! This new ready-to-walk robot is a breakthrough in price to performance. High torque metal gear servos, LiPo batteries for longer run times, a fluid 3D visual software programming interface for easy custom motions, and a remote control unit are included. Everything you need to have you own walking robot is included in this ready-to-walk kit! With over a hundred pre-installed motions and sounds you can get this robot throwing some dance floor shapes or some killer fighting moves straight from the box.

I'd have to spend some time with this bot to see if it's really worth the $600 price relative to, say the I-Sobot, which is only $96 (but obviously doesn't have the sophisticated programming capability of the MechRC, at least not out of the box). Sadly, the I-Sobot has also been discontinued, so get one while you can. The MechRC is definitely cheaper than other fully programmable mini humanoid-type bots, such as the Robonovas and the KHRs, which run in the thousand dollar range.

MechRC

Windell of Evil Mad Scientist Labs is this many, expressed in a binary candle. He shows you how to make your own. Do you know how old he is?

(BTW: I don't think today is really his birthday, but let's play along. He *is* 0100010.)

Binary Birthday

The work with sprouting seeds is rinsing them: don't rinse enough and you get really unappetizing mold in with your fresh greens. Here's a solution to that problem that makes your toilet a little less wasteful. In action:

Of course, you have the added benefit of the odd looks you'll receive when you explain that you sprout food in your bathroom!

HOW TO - Make a Bluetooth handgun handset for your iPhone, ManaEnergyPotion writes-

How to turn an airsoft handgun and a bluetooth headset into a fun, fully functional handset for your iPhone. Pull the trigger to receive calls and to, um, end them. Listen through the barrel, and talk into the grip. I think everyone has made the thumb and forefinger gun-to-the-head sign when someone unpleasant shows up on their caller ID. Eli and I thought it would be fun to make an actual gun handset, and it turned out to be surprisingly straightforward. No glue or powertools were required. Even though it's not very practical, there's something so satisfying about ending a call with this handset. Pow. Naturally, this handset works with any cell phone. You just feel like pulling the trigger more if you own an iPhone.

LEDs are in technology all around us, familiar and helpful for sure but you may wonder - Who invented them? How do I use one? Is it possible to make my own LED?!? Learn the answers to these baffling questions and more in - MAKE presents: The LED

Suscribe to the MAKE podcast | Download in Quicktime

Stormdrane made this beautiful Star Knot by following this tutorial.

Stormdrane's own tutorial for making a Paracord bracelet can be found in the new Make book, The Best of Instructables, reviewed recently by Marc de Vinck and available in the Maker Shed.

Students @ Bancroft Elementary School in Montreal, Quebec are making some awesome music videos as part of the Modern Music Makers after-school program

students (five to ten years old) are divided into groups of four (give or take), and given the means to make their own songs from scratch. Explains Shaw: “Each group got a drum kit with a certain number of sounds on it—bass, melodies and some effects—and they each had a different palate of sounds to work with.” The means and materials at their disposal were limited at best, but that’s the beauty of the program: anyone can conceivably scrape together the minimum kit to pull it off. For Modern Music Makers, this consisted of a malfunctioning point and-shoot DV cam, some primitive green screen effects, a small laptop, a microphone, a soundcard, a midi keyboard, and an instrument from each kid’s bedroom. The real constraint, says Shaw, was time. “We had one hour a week to work with four groups of kids. The maximum [time] each one would get with the technology was 15 minutes. That’s not a lot of time to generate ideas. Luckily, the programs we used are good for doing stuff on the fly.”
[...]
“Being able to put that technology in the kids’ hands and have them work with it and realize they could create a video, create a song—you could see that disconnect being broken down.”

This hockey playing robot is a prototype for a more expressive one no doubt, but we here at Make also like to publish projects that aren't quite finished in order to show the process. This bot detects the movement of the ball and then takes a swipe at it. Next up, Gretsky no doubt!

via RobotGRRL

Sebastian walks you through the process for creating sample kits for use with the Little Sound DJ sequencer cartridge on Gameboy. The small amount of memory you have to work with makes this an interesting process in its own right -

Now, in my opinion there are three places to look for space when choosing where to crop you samples. You may notice that before the initial attack portion of your sample, there may be small amount of silence or almost silence. You can delete this, of course. Not only will this give you more time, but your depending on the length that you delete from the start, your samples may sound more "in time" with the rest of LSDJ (because the sound will be starting on the beat).

I had just set the doll down on the floor of my studio when my kids walked in to see what I was making. Unfortunately, I was in the process of disemboweling yet another one of their beloved toys. This has happened once before during my Mechamo Crab build so I should have known better than to leave this kind of stuff lying around.

Even though they willingly offered me the old toy for dissection, nothing prepares them for the cruel reality that this once loved doll was...well, just a toy. Underneath the silicone skin is a bunch of plastic, speakers, wires, and motors, all waiting for me to hack apart and use in another project. It's a Makers gold mine!

My youngest daughter asked, "Why did her face fall off?" I just smiled and said, "Daddy is making something for work." She accepted my answer and happily ran off. I dodged that bullet! My oldest daughter was obviously fascinated by the inner workings of the doll. YES! She's hooked...another Maker is born!

Do you have any funny moments when you were building something? Post them in the comments below. Thanks!

If you really want to understand electric circuit theory, eventually you will need to come to terms with Ohm's Law. So how can you get the concept across that I=V/R? Will your students be able to figure out that V=I/R or that R=V/I, or that all three of these equations are pretty much the same? How can they integrate these theories with their changing letter designations so they can be used in real life applications? How about throwing some throwies at them?

Many instructional materials for learning to work with electricity and circuits are based on 9 volt batteries. Often they start by having the experimenter place a resistor in series with the LED to reduce current flow, save on battery life and keep the LED from getting fried. Having to use a resistor at such an early stage of learning circuits introduces too much theory at the beginning. 9 volt batteries are also either moderately or unreasonably expensive.

There are many online resources for studying electricity and circuits. I particularly like one from Paul Falstad, which shows visuals for the current flow and direction. You can use his sample circuits, and modify them as well. He has many other visualizations of various math and physics concepts on his site.

Some of the ideas that you can pursue by using throwies are: How long will a throwie stay lit? If you add a second, third, or dozen LEDs in parallel to the 3volt battery, how will that affect the run time of the circuit? If you wire the same number of LEDs in series to the battery, how will that affect the duration of the life of the battery? If you add other components to the circuit, like, resistors, capacitors, transistors or photo resistors, how will the circuit behave? How do you use a multimeter to determine voltage, resistance, amperage, polarity and more?

Another reason to look to throwies is expense. If you take a look at the picture at the top of this post, from Make: Volume 6, page 116, you can find sources and prices for all the parts you need. LEDs are pretty cheap now. The batteries are reasonably priced as well, the magnets will cost some. You should be able to outfit a class full of throwie making supplies for relatively short money, but most of these parts can be harvested out of junk. LEDs are in most of the electronics that we throw out every day. Batteries are in every computer heading for the loading dock, and inside every hard drive is at least a couple of good high strength rare earth magnets. The older electronics are actually better for scavenging than a lot of the new stuff, since the parts were bigger and assembled with more traditional fasteners. If you are going to desolder components, you will need at least a soldering iron and some desoldering braid to go with your safety glasses.

One possible pitfall for this project is the magnets. They are definitely a source of potential mayhem in the hands of the average teenager. Certainly there are some ways to modify the project to minimize the chaos. Sittees? Stickies? Floaties?

Have you taught electricity with throwies or other simple materials? If you give it a try, take some pictures, video or make a posting to the Make Flickr Pool. Add some links to the descriptions. Add some comments to this post with more ideas on great ways to get students excited about learning electricity!

Are there other articles in Make or Craft that you think work well in the classroom or other learning environment? Post your ideas in the comments.

Here is another great idea form James Li. This time he used some scrap cardboard and an old case fan to make a laptop cooler. Let's just hope his laptop does get too hot, cardboard ignites easily.

My laptop needs to be slightly elevated to cool it down, so here is a laptop cooler (unfortunately, not strong enough to be made into a stand) It even runs on USB power! All I need to plug it into a spare USB port. I stripped this USB plug form the masses of USB extenders that Dick Smith ship with their flash drives (that's that black USB plug)

More about the DIY: Cardboard laptop cooler

This is a good place to learn about wireless communications using an XBee and an Arduino. There are a lot of different sensors that could use this same code with only slight variations.

I managed to put together a wireless accelerometer the other night using my two new XBees, an Arduino XBee shield, an XBee Explorer USB, an ADXL330, and some Python. I struggled a bit with some of it, so here's what I learned.

More about XBee & Arduino wireless accelerometer

In the Maker Shed:


Arduino Mini Board, fully assembled

A review of How to Build With Grid Beam @ The Citizen Scientist. Sheldon writes-

How to Build With Grid Beam is a guide to a clever and flexible system of construction for a wide range of home-built projects, from storage units to work spaces to furniture, vehicles, and structures. The system relies on the use of “sticks” or beams of square tube steel or aluminum or wood with holes placed at regular intervals along the length of each stick. Using lag bolts or other fasteners, these sticks can be assembled quickly and easily into structures that are quite robust and easily adapted and reconfigured. And when you are finished with a project, you simply disassemble the project and use the components for something else. By using adapters and add-ons, most of which can be found in hardware stores, industrial supply houses, or fabricated in even a modestly-equipped shop, the system can be expanded to encompass a staggering array of applications.

treasure stolen gold
low the sun and busy bees
prepare for winter

We collected honey from our two backyard hives this fall and I've finally finished jarring it. The new hive, split from last year's hive, produced over 20 pounds of honey. This is more than our first hive produced last year, but the older hive was not to be outdone.

Queen Ann, in the second year of her reign, ran a very productive operation. Her daughters produced some of the lightest, most delightful honey I've ever had. The water content is so low that it pours out like a sheet of glass, folding at the bottom like you might expect from taffy.

From Ann's hive, we collected 100 pounds of honey, making the grand total 120 pounds between the two hives. This is the part we harvested. We leave enough behind for the bees to survive on during the long Minnesota winter, which amounts to another 80-100 pounds.

What's incredible is that all of this honey is produced from the flowers, trees, and vegetable gardens within a 2-3 mile radius of the hives. Two years ago, before I began this hobby, I wouldn't have thought this was possible in the city.

If you're interested in starting a backyard hive next spring, this is what you can look forward to. The real challenge of this urban agricultural experiment is to figure out what to do with the harvest.

Previously
Backyard beekeeping - splitting a hive

The Arkansas Arts Center is looking for submissions to their annual Toys Designed by Artists exhibition. It's their 36th year!