Balancing Skateboard/segway

March 21, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 20 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UKxuVliaIA]

[XenonJon] got a lot of attention for a skateboard/segway style balancing platform he took to the Makerfaire in Newcastle. He decided to try to build it the cheapest and easiest possible way in an attempt to help others build their own. The build is documented very well, however you have to email him to request the code for the Arduino. Maybe after enough requests, he’ll just pop it online. We thought this looked familiar, so we searched the archive and found this very similar setup from back in 2005. Unfortunately, that project page appears to be gone now.

LED Lighting, A Learning Experience

March 18, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 18 Comments

[Joel] has a very specific color temperature of lighting he wants in his home. So specific, he’s decided to build his own LED lighting to get it. Actually, he’s still searching for that perfect shade of white, but doing so has learned a lot. He initially made some very pretty PCBs, but then found that hand soldering them made quite a mess. What better time to delve into reflowing? He shares his positive initiation to the skillet method in his latest update. The search still continues for that nice warm glow he’s desiring. We’ve actually seen [Joel] before, he likes smoked meat.

Make Your Own OLEDS

March 17, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 31 Comments

The University of Wisconsin is hosting a tutorial on how to make your own Organic Light Emitting Diodes. This is so amazingly awesome. We want you guys to make some. Someone make your own matrix and display some patterns on it and submit it. Please. Though we’ve seen lots of uses for OLED screens, we never really delved into the process of creating them. It looks much less complicated than we would have imagined.

[via MakeZine]

Bill Paxton Pinball

March 17, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 23 Comments

No, your eyes do not deceive you, you are looking at a [Bill Paxton] pinball machine. [Ben Heck], commonly known for his portable gaming system modifications has finally finished his pinball machine build. We’ve had our eye on it ever since [Jeri Ellsworth] challenged him to see who got theirs done first. As you can see, he’s done a fantastic job on the machine itself. He has also documented it fantastically, there’s a build log, a gallery, demonstration videos etc.

[thanks Matt]

JeeNode Development Platform

March 15, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 15 Comments

It is basically a nice compact layout for an Atmel Atmega 328 with a wireless module. Fully compatible with the Arduino IDE. The JeeNode is available in kit form, but also all schematics and CAD files are available to download. It looks like they are mainly using it for home monitoring and control. So far we’ve seen them put a temp sensor, power metering, and IR LED modules on their flickr set.

R2D2 Build Video

March 10, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 21 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb1Mc0cQ7ck]

Follow along with [Victor] through the journey of building a life size replica of R2D2. While you may not be able to scrape too many specific details from the video, it is still great to see the project progress from his first cut to the finished product as well as some fun little outings. His R2 looks absolutely impeccable and he deserves dome credit for taking it to places to show kids. We would have probably just found interesting ways for it to bring us beers.

[via Makezine]

Tube Clock Database

March 9, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 16 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75Yl9hyPFRE]

[Brian] wrote in to show us a site he’s been working on for a while. He’s been building a tube clock database. We didn’t realize there was actually a big enough draw for such a site, but we have to admit that we spent more than a few minutes browsing through the different clocks. There isn’t a ton of data for each clock, but there are links to individual project pages wherever available. There is also a growing amount of information on the different components themselves, so submit any data you have that he’s missing to help flesh it out.

The video above wasn’t chosen for any reason other than it is quite stylish.