BuffaloFeeds » MAKE Magazine » August 5, 2010

The quality of craftsmanship and the attention to detail on these papercraft models of the band Queen are truly stunning. [via DudeCraft]

We Are the Champions

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Phil Shapiro (Takoma Park, Md.) sent us this video of solar cookers being built and deployed by villagers in Darfur. Amazing to think what impact some cardboard and foil material can have on the health and well-being of tens of thousands of people. [Thanks, Phil!]

40,000 solar cookers in Darfur

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Last summer, a commenter on my tutorial about how to make one of these from a shampoo bottle said, "instead of drilling a hole in the bottom of the bottle, you could cut off the bottom, flip the bottle upside-down and voila - hole." Don't know if there's any causal link between that tutorial and/or that comment and/or this anonymous photo recently submitted to ThereIFixedIt, but in any case it does look like an easier way to skin the cat. [Thanks, JP!]

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Looking to take a break from tinkering on your latest project this weekend? Here are some fine maker events to check out, from The Maker Events Calendar. Wish your event was on the list? Add it to the calendar!

Coming up this week:

Learn to solder with Mitch Altman! @Site 3 coLaboratory
Toronto, ON
Thursday, Aug 5, 2010, 7pm - 11pm

Glass Hacking @HeatSync Labs
Chandler, AZ
Thursday, Aug 5, 2010, 7pm +

Arduino! @NoiseBridge
San Francisco, CA
Thursday, Aug 5, 2010, 6:30pm +

Bot Builders Meet up
North Pompano Beach, FL
Saturday, Aug 7, 2010, 5:30pm - 10pm

Public Night @theTransistor
Provo, UT
Saturday, Aug 7, 2010, 6pm - 9pm

Anniversary party / the launch party @Freeside Atlanta
Atlanta, GA
Saturday, Aug 7, 2010, all day

Made By Hand: Mark Frauenfelder @Machine Project
Los Angeles, CA
Saturday, Aug 7, 2010, 8pm +

Annual Make:Philly BBQ featuring Wondergy
Philadelphia, PA
Sunday, August 8th, 2010, 1pm - 3pm

Flamethrower Theory and Practice @Madagascar Institute
Brooklyn, NY
Sunday, Aug 8th, 2010, 1pm - 5pm

Make:SF @reMake Lounge
San Francisco, CA
Tuesday, Aug 10, 2010, 6:30pm - 8pm

Take Apart Tuesdays @Crash Space
Culver City, CA
Tuesday, Aug 10, 2010, 9:30pm - 10:30pm

Processing (with Jesse Kriss) @Baltimore Node
Baltimore, MD
Wednesday, Aug 11, 2010, 7:30pm - 10pm

DIY Beverage Night @FUBAR Labs
Highland Park, NJ
Wednesday, Aug 11, 2010, 8pm +

Start planning for:

Inkscape for Laser Cutting @Metrix Create: Space
Seattle, WA
Thursday, Aug 12, 2010, 7pm - 9:30pm

Starry, Starry Night: Art & Astronomy Slumber Party
Saratoga, CA
Friday, Aug 13, 2010 - Saturday, Aug 14, 2010, 8pm - 8am

Arduino 101 @Austin Hackerspace
Austin, TX
Saturday, Aug 14, 2010 - Sunday, Aug 15, 12pm-4pm

Intro to Chiptunes: Making music with Game Boys @Site 3 coLaboratory
Toronto, ON
Sunday, Aug 15, 2010, 1pm - 5pm

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Thingiverse user Conrad2468 suffered damage to his anemometer during a hailstorm, so he designed new cups, printed them, and glued them on. Excellent!

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Annoyed by all those silica gel packets you get with your shoes, electronics, jerky, and other commodities? Well, don't be so hasty to throw them out, they can be reused repeatedly. A helpful Impact Lab post describes ways the packets could be reused.

Put packs in your ammo cans and gun cases/safes to keep dry.

Protect personal papers and important documents by putting some gel in a baggie wherever these are stored.

Keep with photos to spare them from humidity. Tuck a small envelope in the back of frames to protect even the ones hanging on your walls.

Leave a couple packs in your tool box to prevent rusting.

Use the material to dry flowers.

Place with seeds in storage to thwart molding.

Dry out electronic items such as cell phones and iPods. Remember after the device has gotten wet, do not turn it back on! Pull out the battery and memory card and put the device in a container filled with several packs. Leave it in there at least overnight.

Slow silver tarnishing by using the gel in jewelry boxes and with your silverware.

For items in storage, such as cars or anything prone to mildew.

Tired of buying big bags of pet food only to have it get soggy? Store your kibble in a bin and tape some silica packs to the bottom of the lid.

And once the gel gets saturated, you can recharge it by baking it on a cookie sheet.

[Image by flickr user pigpogm, Community Commons]

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iCircuit recently appeared on Apple's App Store, offering a basic schematic editor, plus circuit simulator with multimeter, and oscilloscope views. Per the app's description -

There are over 30 elements you can use to build your circuits. The app has everything from simple resistors, to switches, to MOSFETS, to digital gates.

The app features a multimeter that you use to probe around the circuit to instantly read voltages and currents. If you want to see how a value changes over time, then you can add values to the built-in oscilloscope. The scope can simultaneously track many signals over time and features a touch interface to control the total time displayed and stacked and unstacked modes to easily compare signals.

Supported elements include:

• Signal generators, Voltage sources, and Current sources
• Resistors, Capacitors, and inductors
• Manual SPST/SPDT Switches, and SPST/SPDT relays
• Diodes, BJ Transistors, and MOSFETs
• Speakers, Buzzers, and LEDs
• ADCs, and DACs
• Logic gates: AND, OR, NAND, NOR, XOR
• JK and D Flip-flops

I gave the app a quick spin on the iPad, and it definitely shows a lot of potential. The simulator had a tendency to lag a bit behind my realtime changes to the schematic, and the UI took some getting used to, but for $10 it sure beats the mobile simulator competition (which is pretty much nonexistent, to my knowledge).

In any case - a handy tool to have around when away from the lab. As the developer notes, the software is rather CPU-intensive so newer devices are recommended (iPhone 3GS or later). iCircuit on iTunes

For a very similar Java applet, check out Paul Falstad's Circuit Simulator Applet.

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Loic Royer wrote in to share his omniscient alarm clock project, Lolo's Alarm Clock. Based around an Arduino, the clock attempts to wake you up at the best possible time based on your sleep patterns. To use it, you set a range of time that you would like to wake during, and it uses an accelerometer to measure your movements and wake you up at the most appropriate time. If that wasn't enough, the clock also has a plethora of environmental sensors that can be logged to a base station.

We've seen clocks that can do this before (and there are also commercial versions), however it's nice to see a version using relatively simple materials to do the same job. Full source code is available, however the author hasn't gotten around to putting up schematics yet.

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Inspired by the classic spherical speaker array Instructable from user mzed, Charles Visnic created these cool wireless speakers by transplanting the guts of a pair of RocketFish speakers into some birch bowls from Ikea, mounted rim-to-rim. It's a very cool build, but I have to say I'm just as impressed with this clever little working tip from Charles' write-up:

The smartest thing I did there was I would head into the hardware store and get what I thought I'd needed. Then I'd go to the car and start dismantling the speaker. When I'd reach an obstacle all I had to do was get out of the car and fetch the right tool for the job.

My Dad always jokes that any project requires at least two trips to the hardware store; next time I'm going to take a page from Charles' book and do all the work I can in my car in the Home Depot parking lot. [Thanks, Charles!]

More:

• DIY: Salad bowl speakers
• 360 Degree speakers
• HOW TO - Make a Low-cost spherical speaker array (from IKEA salad bowls)

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Makers Local 256 member ratmandu (Justin Richards) built this 3D camera rig out of two Powershot A480s. One of the cameras is mounted upside down in order to get the two lenses closer to each other, and ratmandu's custom code automatically flips the image back around.

So see the effect, check out the second photo above (click to biggify) or see ratmandu's two sets of example shots:

These are all cross-eye stereo images (left image on right side, and vice-versa), to view them, you need to cross your eyes until you see two sets of images, then slowly un-cross them until the images in the center start to overlap and finally lock in place and focus on the 3D image in the center.

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An anonymous reader sent in a link to this neat store. Basically, Formufit sells PVC connectors intended for maker projects. They feature glossy, unmarked fittings for pipe sizes ranging from 1/2" to 2".

Just like many of our customers, we got our start making household objects out of PVC pipe and hardware store fittings. However, the plumbing-grade fittings we had access to did not meet the needs of our more and more intense and complex projects. They also were not as attractive or flexible in their roles, and just didn't fit the bill.

Our PVC fittings are high quality; ultraviolet stabilized and made specifically for structure and design applications. What you can create is only limited by your mind and creative prowess, and one can literally create thousands of items using our fittings and off-the-shelf PVC pipe.

So what is the difference between our fittings and what you can get at your local hardware store? Well for one, our fittings have a high glossy finish. There are no manufacturer stampings, raised lettering or barcodes and all of the ends are flush-tapered and are made to look good in whatever application you put them to use in. Additionally our fittings withstand the abuse that sunlight applies to most PVC-based plastic products, keep their color and wont yellow or fade.

As a bonus, they provide Google SketchUp files of all of their connectors so you can plan before you buy.

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It's a portmanteau playground! "Skoons" is better than "spulls," I think. They're made from vintage silver by Tom Sale, aka Pinky Diablo, and are available in both tea- and table-skoon sizes. Of course, the numerous holes limit their utility as spoons; I wonder if the details could be embossed instead of pierced? Also, if the teeth were made a bit sharper they could double as tines, and the whole utensil would become a "skull spork." I'll leave that one to your own imaginations to skoonerize...er, I mean, spoonerize.

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The Hopworks Beer Bike is a perfect storm. It's the culmination of a love of craft and a deep respect for producing a quality product. Designed and built by Phillip Ross and Jamie Nichols of Metrofiets Cargo Bikes for Christian Ettinger of Hopworks Urban Brewery, the dual keg toting pub-on-wheels sports an aluminum pan with fifty feet of draft coil, two custom taps, inlaid old-growth woodwork bar with a split top for easy access to the kegs, an MP3 sound system modeled after a motorcycle's hard pannier bag, and a back rack capable of holding three large pizzas for the unavoidable crowd that forms every time the bike stops.

Catch the Taplister interview with owner Christian Ettinger embedded above or this delightful segment from Discovery Channel Canada's Daily Planet featuring the the Metrofiets crew.

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