Make Your Own Custom Hot Glue Sticks

August 14, 2011 by Kevin Dady 63 Comments

Hot glue guns can be very handy tools for bonding all sorts of surfaces, while getting you accustomed to plastic burns. The one thing they lack though is color, and while yes, you can on occasion find colored glue sticks, there is usually only a limited selection and they cost way more than the normal amber or clear sticks.

[Ken] solves the blandness problem of hot glue sticks in his kitchen, as shown in this cool slideshow. In a melt and recast process, glue sticks and crayons in a 3:1 ratio are slowly heated on an electric stove in a old can. Metal tubing is lined with silicone parchment paper to act as a release agent. The now vivid and scalding hot glue is poured into the tube and left to cool.

You might be wondering how mixing colored wax into ethylene-vinyl acetate effects the glue’s strength . According to the author if you need decrease the mix viscosity, you can add up to 10% paraffin wax by weight without effecting the bond strength. Color and viscosity control? Hot glue just keeps getting better!

Installing Linux On A 386 Laptop

August 12, 2011 by Kevin Dady 121 Comments

The “cheap” and “easy” way in about an hour! A question that pop’s up from time to time is “I somehow ended up with an archaic old laptop / computer, can it run Linux?” Well of course it can, but that totally depends! On what? Well machine CPU, CPU speed, hard disk space, RAM and most importantly what you are expecting it to do.

Okay, why a Intel 386? Well number one I own a 386, but more importantly its the absolute bottom Intel CPU you can run Linux on. While it wont be able to do much, it will give you a basic system to kick around and “get to know” the insides of Linux without a million things installed and the worry of breaking it.

Unfortunately a 386 requires some special moves as the actual chip was dropped from almost all distributions long ago. All of the modern distributions I have looked at require at least a 486 CPU. This tutorial will be strictly for installing a basic bare bones Linux on a 386. Have a 486? Pentium? Faster? Never fear I will be covering that in a part II later this week.

Linux on a 386 in about an hour? Madness you might think, it probably takes Linux longer to boot on a 386 (and in some cases you are correct)! Want to know the trick? Simple, cheat!

Join me after the break for the parts and steps needed to get you started.

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Arduino Link Libraries

August 12, 2011 by Kevin Dady 7 Comments

Arduino is great, but it sometimes gets in the way due to its entry level style of doing things. One limitation is making your own library that also includes other libraries.[Scott] has sent in a great tutorial that deals with just that issue.

He covers how to make your own custom libraries while building off of preexisting ones. That’s something Arduino’s automatic magic wont touch.He covers getting your library to compile while including aanother library, linking versus compiling, and getting it all linked up.

Add in clear examples, lots of explanation and a hand full of good practices for C with libraries (like Forward Class Declaration vs Includes, and Using Brackets vs Quotation Marks for Includes), and this is one tutorial that any aspiring AVR or Arduino developer should check out.

Make W7 64 Bit Play Nice With Your Programmer

August 10, 2011 by Kevin Dady 21 Comments

External EPROM burners are pretty handy gadgets to have around. They obviously can read and write EPROMS, but often times they will also handle a pile of PIC’s, some AVR’s, and other programmable logic like PAL/GAL and CLPD’s. While you can often find old models floating around for cheap (or free in my case) there are a few issues to be hammered out.

Typically the models you’re going to get for a song and a dance are old parallel port models that use software in MS-DOS or Windows and hasn’t been updated since. The software typically bit bangs the port using it like a 1 byte wide GPIO line, and this was a common trick, that is long gone from current operating systems by default.

[Doug] sought to find a solution to using one of these gadgets on Windows 7 X64, and lots of Google-fu, poking at libraries, and a little code modification he does just that getting his Sivava Willem EPROM programmer working like a champ on a nice new i7 with a parallel port add in card.

1 Chip USB AVR Development

August 7, 2011 by Kevin Dady 30 Comments

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an AVR microcontroller with USB device support built in so you would not need a separate programmer or serial link? Well in fact there are quite a few of them, and this awesome tutorial (google translate) is a quick and easy crash course in using the ATMega 16/32U4 micro controllers.

These 8 bit AVR’s (16k and 32k) have the usual list of features you would expect in a Mega AVR. 26 GPIO pins and a pretty easy to solder 44 pin surface mount package, the micro controller also has a USB 2.0 Full-speed/Low Speed Device Module and allows programming though a standard bootloader.

Once you have a pretty standard board assembled you need Atmel’s FLIP RS232, USB, or CAN device programming software (Windows or Linux) and your favorite AVR IDE setup, you’re good to go!

Join us after the break for a quick video.

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Instructables Joins Autodesk

August 6, 2011 by Kevin Dady 55 Comments

Everyones favorite site, Instructables.com, has announced a big move. They have joined Autodesk along with the same team that is doing Autodesk 123D,

Autodesk is a great cultural fit for Instructables. They make tools for creative people: they’re the world leader in 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software. Even if you don’t recognize the name Autodesk, their software has powered the movies you watch, and designed the cars you drive and the buildings you work in. Instructables will be the community arm of the same team that makes 123D, SketchBook, Homestyler, and Pixlr, which will help provide creative tools, inspiration, and services for all types of creative people. Here’s Carl Bass, Autodesk’s CEO, talking more about his vision for the future of DIY.

Sofar the overall reaction on the site thread is tame, but many comments lean to skeptical, though typical with any transition to “The man” as one commenter called them.

Meanwhile MAKE has posted a in depth article “Autodesk Acquires Instructables: What It Means for Makers” in their usual (long) format. What’s your thoughts?

Would You Like To Play A Game?

August 4, 2011 by Kevin Dady 17 Comments

[Itay] dropped a link in our inbox about creating a simple video game system using Arduino. Yes we all know where that is going … the TV out library for Arduino. However this tutorial should still be mentioned because it pretty much covers everything someone new would need to quickly and easily hook one of these things up, along with wii Nunchuck usage, library basics and creating your first game.

Lots of large pictures, diagrams, and explanation of software is included. Yes we know we feature this little setup a lot, that is because its so darn fun. So if you ever wanted to make your own little video game system (without going crazy bit banging VGA out of a little micro in ASM) this guide will help you get started making that next arcade masterpiece.