Here’s a fantastic project for make your own DIY sketch tracer/light box with some plastic, wood, and aluminum foil. The author initially made it for his girlfriend who’s a fashion designer so she can trace her sketches easily but this seems like it has many uses.
My Girlfriend is a Fashion design major working on her MFA, and she often needs to trace her sketches. She uses my animation table but it is a bit too large for her to work with, and she can’t m
Here’s the most amazing, DIY magnet machine you will see in a long time, this device simulates Eddy Current using toy magnets. The author built it for his father-in-law’s birthday, I think he should start selling DIY kits so every else can build one. This is much better than those useless machines we’ve seen for she
Here’s a really funky project Jeremy Cook invented from scrap parts incluing his old RC car. The result? Really creepy box that sorta comes alive. Muhahahahaha.
This reminds me of the World’s Most Useless Machine, only a bit more creepier.
Want to dominate the world? Check out this nifty DIY World Control panel that lets you control the world(sorta) with its special buttons.
This could be great toy for your growing-up James Bond and communist toddlers.
My son Harlan and his friend love to play “agents” and he asked me if we coud build “a panel that has a bunch of switches that turn on some random lights”. We worked on it for about 3 weeks, and this is what we came up with.
Here’s a fun way to display how much traffic your router is serving by hacking OpenWRT by adding a bit of code.
(For those of you who don’t know, OpenWRT is an open-source aftermarket operating system for routers that you can install to your router to customize it. There’s also DD-WRT, which is similar. I’ve personally got DD-
I2C is a great way to connect multiple devices for simple networking communication. Of course, because I2C is not encrypted, others can easily read the info by using an I2C sniffer.
If you want to make such an I2C sniffer, there’s a great guide with source code for Arduino but come to think of it, I can’t really think of any uses for this right now(I know it will hit me after I write this blog post) but it can help you learn more about Arduino and I2C. (
You can adjust the capture windo
I used to deal with many touch controllers but they cost way too much money as it comes with a touchscreen and all the shebang. Well, if you want to make a dead, simple touch-sensor controller, perhaps for your latest backyard project, there’s a bunch of low-cost chips you can use now, and here’s a great example you can follow with video demo below:
You know how duct tape can solve a lot of everyday problems including an airplane wing, and here’s another way to apply duct tape to roll your own RFID tag with a bunch of wires.
It ain’t pretty but gets the job done and the RFID read range is on par with commercial RFID tags, unbelievable.
It’s ugly, and I really want to try this experiment over again with a smaller IC
Personally, I never took any classes to learn how to solder, I’ve been doing it since I was 7 years old. Well, I didn’t have steady hands back then but overtime, my hand has gotten steadier also I know a few tricks here and there.
One of those steady-hand tricks is to use your pinky finger as base, so make sure your pinky finger is touching the ground while you solder if you want steadier hands.
Other than that, you just need to get the hang of using “just the right amount” of solder and your soldering iron is at the right temperature. The
Imagine your livingroom/playroom filled with LED lights and animated LED shelving.
Now imagine it syncing with your favorite music and you can have a small group dance party!
The shelves and ceiling have a refresh rate of 30Hz and can generate over 30 thousand colors per pixel. A pixel is a single shelf or can light in this case. Not bad for a few bucks and hours of spare time. Best part, Both the shelves and ceiling consume less than 50 Watts when fully lit. And less than 10 on
