There’s trouble brewin’ on the ‘ol Kickstarter site

This Kickstarter campaign, the AmbioLight, brings RGB LED strips to the masses. The only problem is that some of the backers discovered this RGB LED strip is already on the market. Internet denizens are now frothing at the mouth, complaining the designers of the AmbioLight, “haven’t designed anything,” and are, “just reselling parts which [AmbioLight] put together at … Read the rest

Measuring the speed of sound with science and statistics

Despite what you may have heard elsewhere, science isn’t just reading [Neil deGrasse Tyson]‘s Twitter account or an epistemology predicated on the non-existence of god. No, science requires much more work watching Cosmos, as evidenced by [Ast]‘s adventures in analyzing data to measure the speed of sound with a microcontroller.

After [Ast] built a time to digital converter - … Read the rest

Turning a webcam into a spectrometer

If you want to find out what something is made out of, you’ll probably be using a spectrometer. These devices allow scientists to determine what something is made of by shining light through an object and recording what colors are absorbed. Professional spectrometers cost many thousands of dollars, but you can build your own using a simple USB web cam, … Read the rest

Making a spray booth from an old dishwasher

For several years, [Randy]‘s spray paint booth was a simple cardboard box. Sure, it kept the overspray contained to a small area, but there was a lot of room for improvement. Luckily, after replacing his dishwasher he had the makings of an excellent spray paint booth that can be put together in a few hours.

The build began by tearing … Read the rest

Becoming Gallagher in your mind

The folks at the Louisville hackerspace LVL1 created the handiest and the dandiest kitchen tool you’ve ever seen. It’s not a slicer, it’s not a dicer, or a chopper or a hopper; it’s… a Star Wars Force Trainer that blows up watermelons.

The project is called Mind Over Melon and was created by [Chris] and [Brad] at LVL1 for … Read the rest

Multicolor print head allows RepRap to print rainbows

Multicolor 3D printers have been around for a while, but most of these machines – like the Makerbot Replicator – suffer from alignment problems and the inability to mix colors on the fly. [RichRap] came up with an interesting solution to this problem by having three filament extruders feed into a single hot end, allowing him to change and … Read the rest