BuffaloFeeds » Items by John Baichtal

Items by John Baichtal

MAKE Magazine

The Importance of Sketching

Posted: April 13th, 2012, 12:30pm MDT by John Baichtal

Joel Miller of Massachusetts wrote in to share this great blog post on the importance of sketching up a design prior to booting up the computer. I have been struggling with the design of an enclosure for my CNC mill that would allow me to use flood coolant and contain the mess of metal and [...]
How To: Taxes for Kitmakers

Posted: April 13th, 2012, 8:00am MDT by John Baichtal

In this very special time of the year, Dangerous Prototypes lays out how they do their taxes. We’re not tax professionals, so you need to do the research yourself. Our strategy is to be completely honest, do our best, and maintain exquisite records. We assume that if we don’t hide anything the IRS will help [...]
Happy Yuri’s Night!

Posted: April 12th, 2012, 7:30pm MDT by John Baichtal

Yuri’s Night is an international celebration of the achievement of human spaceflight, named after Yuri Gagarin and in celebration of the 51st anniversary of his flight. Yay Yuri!
Playing With UV-Cured Resin

Posted: April 12th, 2012, 1:30pm MDT by John Baichtal

NYC Resistor members recently spent an evening playing around with resin: For today’s #hackfriday at NYC Resistor a bunch of us were inspired by Junior and ScribbleJ‘s 3D printing projects and experimented with UV curing resin using a DLP projector. We had some JMP UV stamp resin, although it didn’t cure solid with the normal [...]
Quick and Easy Drawbot For Kids

Posted: April 12th, 2012, 8:00am MDT by John Baichtal

Artist Lorenzo Bravi ran a drawbot class for kids as part of the Minimondi Festival in Parma, Italy. His design uses a battery powered milk frother with pens velcroed to it, making some lovely Spirograph-esque art.
Voronoi Bookshelf Generator

Posted: March 28th, 2012, 12:00pm MDT by John Baichtal

Alan Rorie of San Francisco, CA, wrote in to share his Voronoi Bookshelf Generator software that helps you design your Voronoi-pattern bookshelf on-screen, then output files for laser cutting or CNCing. (See more MAKE posts about Alan.)
MicroRAX and Lego CNC

Posted: March 28th, 2012, 8:00am MDT by John Baichtal

Jason Welch built this lovely CNC from MicroRAX t-slot beams with Lego bricks for the linear paths. See the video’s notes for some notes on sourcing the various components.
Drone Sailboat Built by College Students

Posted: February 28th, 2012, 12:00pm MST by John Baichtal

The Missus, a mini (2-meter) autonomous sailboat, will compete in the 6th International Robotic Sailboat Championships this June, in Vancouver, BC. We are a group of Memorial University students who are building an autonomous sailboat to compete in the Sailbot and World Robotic Sailing competition. The team is made up of students from all MUN [...]
PriNXT, a Functioning Lego Printer

Posted: February 28th, 2012, 8:00am MST by John Baichtal

Fourteen-year-old Lego hacker Leon Overwheel built this impressive Lego Mindstorms NXT printer, AKA PriNXT. PriNXT has three motors: two control the X and Y motion, and the third lifts the pen. The first motor, the one in the middle, is very straight forward – it has two long axes coming out of it that connect [...]
Piccolo, a Mini CNC Artbot

Posted: February 16th, 2012, 12:00pm MST by John Baichtal

Piccolo is a pocket-sized stand-alone CNC platform. For less than $70, you can assemble your personal Arduino-compatible kit for tinkering, developing and deploying basic 3D output. Be it plotting quick graffiti, printing a one-off business card on the fly, or multiple Piccolos working together to create a large mural, this kit provides a platform for [...]
Arduino-Controlled Pneumatic Servo

Posted: February 14th, 2012, 7:30pm MST by John Baichtal

Kinetic sculptor David Bynoe of Calgary, AB, sent in this project he’s working on. Looks pretty slick! For an upcoming project I needed a pneumatic ram with a closed loop control system so I could position it accurately. Didn’t have the budget for an off the shelf solution, so I bodged one together with an [...]
PCB Sprayer Machine Helps You Etch Your Own

Posted: February 14th, 2012, 12:00pm MST by John Baichtal

MIT student Christian Reed built this PCB Sprayer top etch his own boards: Plenty of people have published and built CNC machines. Even some 3D printers have started to pop up. Countless tools and devices for creating projects have been published on Instructables and across the internet. All of these devices use circuit boards and [...]
Smartphone-Controlled Ball Launcher

Posted: January 27th, 2012, 8:00am MST by John Baichtal

Andrew and his brother built this great ping-pong ball launcher out of salvaged and repurposed parts. I especially like the 13-ball hopper made from two paper towel tubes taped together, and the clever K’Nex-controlled release mechanism. The launcher is controlled with an Arduino connected to a computer and activated via a remote desktop app from [...]
Shrewbot, a Robot With Whiskers

Posted: January 26th, 2012, 12:00pm MST by John Baichtal

When the whiskers touch an object this causes them to vibrate and the vibration pattern is picked up by sensitive cells in the hair follicle at the base of the whisker. These patterns are turned into an electrical signal which is sent to the brain, enabling the mammal to make instant decisions about its environment [...]
DIY Prusa Flightcase

Posted: January 6th, 2012, 12:00pm MST by John Baichtal

Traveling with a fragile 3D printer can be tricky. MakerBot Industries recommends Pelican cases for their printers, which are pretty much rectangular. However, the RepRap Prusa’s shape is much odder, inducing Thingiverse user crankbmx to build a form-fitting case that even has room for the spool, and can print while fully within the case — peek through the window to watch it in action!
Best of MAKE: Top 10 Hackerspace Posts

Posted: December 28th, 2011, 11:30am MST by John Baichtal

2011 was an important year for hackerspaces, with many new spaces being founded and existing spaces growing in membership and in capabilities. The MAKE blog covered this important part of the maker scene throughout the year. Here were some of our best posts.
#10

Store Front Music: The DIY Edition — Store Front Music is a great project hackerspace CRASH Space L.A. created to let passers-by interact with the space via a musical instrument triggered by ultrasonic sensors.
#9

Mitch Altman Talks About The Hackerspace Movement — The Johnny Appleseed of hackerspaces, MAKE friend Mitch Altman talks up the scene.
#8

SpeedBall Transatlantic Balloon at Maker Faire Detroit — Louisville, KY, space LVL1 is working on a transatlantic balloon project, and brought it to Maker Faire Detroit to show off.

#7

What Does it Mean to be a Woman Hackerspace Member? — The hackerspace scene is mostly male. How can we get more women involved? We got all sorts of responses to this one, ranging from the thoughtful to the indignant.
#6

A History of the Hackerspace Movement, Circa 2008 — Hackerspace pioneers assembled a book describing the scene in its (relative) infancy. Most of 2011′s hackerspaces weren’t even around then.
#5

The Bureaucrat – A Hackerspace Passport Date-Stamping Machine — As hackerspaces spring up in (seemingly) every city, folks are visiting spaces when they’re in town. To keep track of these visits, they’re bringing “hackerspace passports” along with to get stamped. This project, “The Bureaucrat,” takes the work out of stamping by doing it automatically!
#4

Mitch Altman’s Hacker Trip to Egypt — Mitch continues his seemingly endless pilgrimage by visiting Cairo Hackerspace in Egypt.
#3

Make: Live Hackerspace Roadshow — Make: Live visits five hackerspaces around the world, checking out the scene and the spaces’ cool projects.

#2

Hackerspace Happenings: MAKE Interviews Tokyo’s Akiba — We interview Tokyo Hackerspace cofounder Akiba and hear about what his group is doing to help earthquake victims in Japan.
#1

Libraries Create Hackerspaces — Could this be the next wave of hackerspaces, and of libraries? Combine the two!
Grown-Crystal and EL-Wire DNA Lamp

Posted: December 23rd, 2011, 8:00am MST by John Baichtal

Instructables user LucidMovement built this great lamp out of electro-luminescent wire covered in crystals.

So, of course, all of you reading this have thought to yourself at one time or another “I would absolutely love to grow some crystals on el-wire and then encase it in silicone and acrylic.” No? Oh, well maybe it was just me then. Regardless of whether you have had that thought before or not, I’ll show you how I did it. Compared to many things you could spend weeks doing, it is quite a simple matter. It is, however, dirty, messy, prone to failure–don’t be surprised if you end up growing the crystals on the structure several times over until you settle for one that isn’t what you wanted but “oh hell, it’ll do”.

[Via HaD]
FreakLabs Breadboard, the Non-Profit Edition

Posted: November 21st, 2011, 8:00am MST by John Baichtal

Akiba from FreakLabs and Tokyo Hackerspace has released a new product, the FreakLabs Breadboard, AKA the FredBoard:

The FredBoard came out of the necessity for a good learning tool to teach people both electronics and Arduino programming at Tokyo Hackerspace. We needed something compact and sturdy that could easily survive being dropped, put away, and handled.

The concept is simple. The fastest way to prototype hardware is by using a solder-less breadboard to put together a circuit and check out its functionality. The fastest way to prototype embedded software is by using an Arduino to write up a sketch using the multitude of available libraries and check out the functionality.

As cool as the FredBoard is, Akiba is designating some of the units as being HackerMoms FredBoards and the proceeds from these boards will go to support the new all-mom hackerspace.

Mothership HackerMoms is a women’s hackerspace made up of mothers that gives them the time and personal space they need to explore their creativity while having on-site child care to take care of the young ones. There are many constraints placed on mothers since they have to constantly look after their children, spend time with them, and make sure that there is adequate child care if they leave their children. A hackerspace dedicated to moms allows the mothers to stay sane, be creative, and do something for themselves without feeling guilty. Best of all, the children get immersed in the creative, maker, artist, and hacker community while they’re young and get to see it first hand from their favorite person…their mommy!

So, buy the HackerMoms FredBoard and help out a good cause!
Toolbox Review: Circuit Sidekick

Posted: August 30th, 2011, 6:00pm MDT by John Baichtal

My colleague Collin Cunningham has an iPad app called Circuit Sidekick which consists of several tools for assisting electronics aficionados with their work.

Let’s start with the Resistor Values function, pictured above. It helps you determine the value of a resistor by selecting the color bands you see on the actual resistor. The image also demonstrates how Circuit Sidekick looks in portrait mode… I like it much better landscape.

The second tool is the Capacitor Values function, which helps you interpret the sometimes cryptic markings on the component. You can also get a sense of the landscape view of the app in this pic; I like it because you can see the menu at all times rather than having to hit a drop-down menu.

The next two functions help you determine the overall capacitance or resistance of a group of capacitors or resistors. It essentially plays the role of a calculator, letting you type each separate resistor or capacitor’s value and find the total number.

By contrast, the LED Resistor Calculator offers a more clear value since, in essence, it helps you design an actual electronic assembly. You choose the number of LEDs and voltage/current, and the tool tells you how much resistance you need to provide to protect the circuit.

The sixth tool on Circuit Sidekick is an Ohm’s Law calculator. You enter two of voltage, amperage, and resistance and the app fills in the third. Like other aspects of the app, Circuit Sidekick shows you the formula and tells you how it arrives at the answer, which will surely help people learn the stuff on their own. The last two tools are a binary/decimal/hex/octal/ascii number converter and a PDF reader that manages component datasheets.

Circuit Sidekick costs $2.99, a great value if you’re a beginning electronics hobbyist or simply want a ‘tronics-focused app for helping you with your computations. It’s a well-designed and slick app with the potential to save time and keep the magic smoke inside your components.
Hackerspace Happenings: BioCurious Finds a Space

Posted: August 30th, 2011, 8:30am MDT by John Baichtal

Are you a hackerspace member with an event you’d like to publicize? Send it to johnb@makezine.com or tweet me at @johnbaichtal and I’ll post it. Also feel free to subscribe to my hackerspaces Twitter list. Hackerspace Happenings run weekly(ish) Tuesdays, and the next one will come out September 5th.

BioCurious Finds a Space

After raising $35K on Kickstarter a year ago, biology-focused hackerspace BioCurious finally found a home in Sunnyvale, CA. Congrats!

BioCurious is the world’s first hackerspace for biology. With low cost access to high level tools and classes, we enable education, collaboration, and innovation in science. Our Mission: We believe that innovations in biology should be accessible, affordable, and open to everyone. We’re building a community biology lab for amateurs, inventors, entrepreneurs, and anyone who wants to experiment with friends.

LVL1 SumoBot Tournament and Halloween Party

LVL1′s 2nd annual Sumobot tournament will be on October 29th, 2011, 8PM at 814e Broadway (our home). There will be a Halloween party following the fun. All are welcome to join in the festivities. You may even get to see the world famous fire breathing pony, Buttercup! You have a couple of months to build your bot. There will be prizes and eternal glory!

GGHC Prizes to Ship

After swirling rumors that element 14 had allegedly reneged on their promise to award soldering stations and other prizes to Great Global Hackespace Challenge participants, it now sounds like e14 has reaffirmed their commitment to send out the prizes, with emails going out to GGHC contacts on 8/26 alerting them that they can expect their loot.

Hackerspace Charlotte Anniversary BBQ

Hackerspace Charlotte will be holding a BBQ in honor of their first annivesary, Tuesday, September 6, from 7pm – 10pm.

Remember what you were doing last September? You were setting up a Hackerspace! You had no idea what you were getting yourself into… Come celebrate a year of making and breaking things, with our first annual BBQ! (Carnivore and Herbivore friendly)

Video Overview of Hackerspace Bandung

Hackerspace Bandung in Indonesia shot a video of their space as a submission to TEDx Jakarta. Looks like a great space!

Ferrofluid Hacking at Philly’s Hive76

We’re going to be trying to make our own ferrofluid on Tuesday night [8/30] to have available to play with on Wednesday night [8/31]. If our efforts are successful, then for Open House we’ll show you how to make it using old audio cassette tapes and acetone. I don’t know what kind of results to expect, but here’s a video giving an idea of the extreme.

Fall Classes at Houson’s TX/RX

Our Fall lineup of informative, hands-on classes is geared towards individuals who are seeking to increase their skills, broaden their horizons, and try exciting new things. Expert community members and professionals will provide attendees with an exciting and informal learning atmosphere which fosters creativity and promotes collaboration. We hope you will come out and be part of the experience.

Madison’s Sector67 Featured in Isthmus Magazine

Sector67 got some great publicity when they got a nice writeup in a local magazine:

A young boy strides confidently into the warehouse space on Madison’s near east side that houses Sector67, a new community “hackerspace.” His two friends trail slightly behind him as he takes them first into a back room filled with computers, then into another space crammed with several imposing-looking CNC machines — the new generation of computer-controlled milling machines that can create just about anything a user programs them to. The kids’ eyes go slightly wide at the sight, smiles twitching at the corners of their mouths.

Chicago’s PS:One Films RC Videos for element 14

If you’re like me, the RC aviation hobby is as fascinating as it is costly. In the two videos below that we produced for element14 though, we cover how to convert a $10 foam glider into a great training flier and then get even more bleeding edge with a cheap-but-good-for-the-price setup for flying UAV style with a pistol grip camcorder mounted to the plane that transmits to a screen on the ground. Dan Meyer with the help of Ken Zinnen walk you through some of the many exciting facets of radio controlled airplanes.

Lightning Talks at Prague’s Brmlab

This Thursday, September 1st, brmlab will be holding lightning talks.

Lightning talks is an event that takes place at 20:00 every month on the first Thursday. Around 10 lightning talks (each max. 7 minutes long) will shortly introduce audience to various topics. Afterwards people are free to discuss topics they got interested in. The best speaker will receive a nice T-shirt with our logo!

Kansas City’s CCCKC Achieves 501c3 Status

After a long wait CCCKC has finally been approved to be an IRS Section 501(c)3 tax exempt non-profit organization. It’s been a long and hard journey which has finally paid off. Special thanks to the executive board, the board of directors and all of the loyal CCCKC members who helped make this dream a reality.
Lego Greenhouse Packs Lego Dirt and Real Plants

Posted: August 4th, 2011, 4:28pm MDT by John Baichtal

I love Sebastian Bergne‘s Lego Greenhouse…

The Lego Greenhouse is a functioning greenhouse built entirely from Lego; the walls, the floors, even the earth is Lego. The plants and vegetables growing inside are however, entirely real.

[Via MocoLoco]
Rhode Island Mini Maker Faire — Call For Makers

Posted: August 4th, 2011, 8:04am MDT by John Baichtal

The Rhode Island Mini Maker Faire is taking place on September 10, 2011 (1 week before World Maker Faire NY), in downtown Providence RI. We’ll be holding it in partnership with WaterFire, which is a city-wide sculpture combining fire and water that brings tens of thousands of people to downtown. Our Call for Makers is open, and we’re looking for Makers to join us on September 10:

All builders, inventors, innovators, hackers, tinkerers, gadgeteers, designers, artists, fabricators, welders, craftspeople, fabric technologists, bricolaurs, engineers, scientists, garden wizards, and more: Come show off your creations!

[The first two photos are by johngineer, CC]
Daryll’s Digital Dominos

Posted: June 25th, 2011, 5:47pm MDT by John Baichtal

Check out Daryll Strauss’s Digital Dominos:

I revealed the Digital Domino at the CrashSpace booth at MakerFaire this year. It’s a small electronics kit that allows users to line up virtual dominoes and knock them over by pressing a button. Each domino lights up an LED and uses an IR pulse to knock over the next one. They can also be looped to repeat the pulses. We won an editor’s choice award at MakerFaire for them.

These were designed to be very easy to hack. The timing can be changed, the lights can be changed, they can be used to trigger other devices, they can be triggered by a microcontroller, they can sound a buzzer, etc.
Android ADK-Powered Ball Maze

Posted: June 24th, 2011, 5:45pm MDT by John Baichtal

Instructables member pcdevltd of Auckland, New Zealand, inspired by a this labyrinth, used his Android ADK kit (which is SO awesome) to build a phone-controlled ball maze. [Via Hacked Gadgets]
Thermal Tweeter Prints Tweets

Posted: June 24th, 2011, 9:30am MDT by John Baichtal

Send @dangerousproto a tweet and their thermal printer will print it! (Watch it live on Ustream for the time being.)

This is a soft-launch of our project for the Adafruit/Instructables Make it Tweet Challenge. We’ll have some documentation up on Instructables tomorrow, but we need your help stress testing the system today.

Thermal Tweeter is hacked together from a SparkFun thermal printer and the web platform internet development board. No computers are used to query twitter or run the printer, this is a 100% stand-alone Twitter appliance.

[Thanks, Ian]
Lego Technic Super-8 Movie Projector

Posted: May 15th, 2011, 12:00pm MDT by John Baichtal

KGroce of Tennessee wrote in to share this sweet projector, built by Friedemann Wachsmuth:

A fully functional Super 8 Movie Projector I built with Kalle using Lego Technic. The only non-Lego parts are the lens, the reel spindles and the lamp.

The projector uses just two engines and is fully featured with automatic feeding, 24 fps, fast rewind and 120m reel capabilities. A decent LED flashlight makes it pretty amazingly bright.
DIY Water Rocket, With Video

Posted: May 15th, 2011, 9:00am MDT by John Baichtal

Cobbler from Portland, OR, built a water rocket and added video, capturing how awesomely his rocket flew, as well as renewing the adoration of his daughter!

I built the Water Rocket project from vol. 5, made a few small modifications, and shot a video including aerial footage from the on-board camera. Of course, I opted for the increased speed and pressure of an air compressor running at 150 PSI instead of the hand-operated bike pump.

In the Maker Shed:

MAKE: Volume 05
Our Price: $14.99
Homemade electric vehicles, high-powered water rockets, electricity-generating windmill, jet engine in a jam jar, and a backyard zip line!
Stirling Engine Generates 1 Watt

Posted: May 12th, 2011, 8:12am MDT by John Baichtal

Doug Conner‘s Stirling engine may be viewed at the upcoming Bay Are Maker Faire. Check it!

This Stirling engine delivers 1W to a stepper motor used as generator to power a high-power LED. This engine uses electrical heating for simplicity and to simplify efficiency measurements. At 1.7% efficiency, it’s not a good way to power your lights! It’s only for research.
Toolbox Review: Extech 382213 Desktop Power Supply

Posted: May 11th, 2011, 1:30pm MDT by John Baichtal

Don’t let the sexy name fool you, the Extech 382213 is all business — the business of powering your awesome hacking projects!

The 382213 plays the desktop power supply role — it gives you carefully measured voltages to play with when working on a project, reducing the number of batteries you might waste, as well as preventing you from ‘letting the smoke out’ by blasting your components with too much juice. The 382213 is about 6×9 inches and weights 11 pounds.

Like most power supplies, the 382213 has ports for banana plugs and dials for choosing how much voltage and current you want. It maxes out at 30V and 3A, with LCD displays showing clearly how much of each you’ve selected.

However, for me the intriguing aspect of this supply are the “speaker-style” plugs in front, which ordinary wires can be connected — the spring-clips keep them from falling out. Unlike the banana plug ports, however, the spring clips have fixed voltage and current, with one set outputting 5V and the other 12V — not coincidentally, very common numbers for electronics hobbyists. I can see the spring clips being great for longer projects where you just want a couple of wires snaking down from your shelf and powering a breadboard, without needing to have the power supply next to your project. One subtle bonus is that the two positive leads are separated by the two ground leads, reducing the chance of using the wrong one and frying your hack. On the down side, the current is fixed at half an amp for both the 5V and 12V.

My 382213 is currently camped out at the hackerspace, and I’ve already used it in a couple of projects. It seemed elegant and easy to understand, and I could see myself using it for years to come. Wanna buy one? They’re about $200 at Mouser, Amazon and other outlets, though you can get the same product in analog for about $30 cheaper.

More:
See our entire Toolbox category here.
Tips on Printing Mechanical Parts

Posted: March 15th, 2011, 8:00am MDT by John Baichtal

MakerBot Industries blogger MakerBlock is working on a clockwork spider, and went the route of designing his own gears. He’s sharing his observations of designing and printing his own clockwork parts on the MakerBot blog. Here’s a sample:

Don’t make parts too thin. The parts I printed tended to be designed too thin. If you are designing a multi-part mechanism, don’t skimp on plastic and make the parts unnecessarily thin or small. My original gears and cogs were 2mm thick. The problem was that it was easy enough for the teeth in one gear to simply miss the other thin gear. My new design uses gears that are 5mm thick and they never miss one another.
Print Your Own CNC Etch-A-Sketch Gears

Posted: March 11th, 2011, 12:00pm MST by John Baichtal

Thingiverse user BenJackson designed a bracket and two gears that allow you to add numeric ontrol capability to your Etch-A-Sketch.

What can I say? I’ve never been able to draw anything with an Etch-a-Sketch. I won this one in a Christmas gift exchange some years ago and hung onto it with the idea that someday I’d CNC it.

The stepper motors are 7.5 degree Airpax steppers I got surplus many years ago. It turns out those mounting ears are actually NEMA 23 compatible so this should work unmodified with “square” steppers as well.
Mint-Tin FM Transmitter

Posted: March 11th, 2011, 8:27am MST by John Baichtal

Chris’s transmitter uses only 17 parts and has a range of 100 feet indoors.

The goal of this project is for me personally to learn a little more about fm transmitters and fm bug making (may the HAM radio gods bless me in this pursuit). The ideal outcome of this project is a very small and full functional FM transmitter that we can stick into a plastic mint box.

In order to be able to build this, we’ll have to learn a lot about amplifiers, LC oscillators, mixers, antennas and FM. This project assumes you’re already comfortable build your own PCB boards.
Lego Spongebob Terminator Mecha

Posted: February 23rd, 2011, 12:00pm MST by John Baichtal

I don’t know what to say about this project (by AFOL rack911) other than it’s amazing, diabolical, and mind-boggling! [Via The Brothers Brick]
Punchtape Synth

Posted: February 18th, 2011, 12:15pm MST by John Baichtal

I can’t wait to see all the 555 contest entries. Here’s one:

Here are the details for my 555 Contest entry. It is a three channel music synthesiser, capable of four octaves per chanel. The 555′s are used to generate each octave for each voice (or channel). There are twelve 555 timer IC’s used for the synthesiser section and two more for tempo control and paper speed. It is sequenced by a Heathkit H-10 paper tape unit and programmed with a 486 PC running QBasic (seriously, it’s easier).

There are a few reasons why I chose to use a paper tape machine instead of an EEPROM and counters, or a microcontroller. First, I wanted this project to be made with components available in the 1970′s. Also, I think it looks better to have something moving with the music and I’m not a great fan of using IC’s with bazillions of transistors in them.

[Via Hack A Day ]
A-Z of Electronics

Posted: February 18th, 2011, 7:58am MST by John Baichtal

If you haven’t heard, Jeri Ellsworth and Adafruit are teaming up to present 26 videos about electronics, one for every letter of the alphabet. They’ve done the first three letters: A is about amperes, the B is batteries and the C video describes capacitors. The videos are really well done, very engaging, and informative. Check them out!
NXT-Controlled Nerf Gun

Posted: February 13th, 2011, 12:00pm MST by John Baichtal

Love this project by YouTube user wpavalko. Also see its assembly video. [Via The NXT Step]
Bike With Pedal-Powered EL Wire

Posted: February 13th, 2011, 8:59am MST by John Baichtal

This summer I realized that you don’t need a driver to run your el wire if you’re putting it on a bike. I hooked a stepper motor up to a transformer from an old cell phone charger and it ramped up the voltage enough to light up my bike in real-time. It even fades on and off with speed, and changes color with the changing frequency. It was one of my best maker moments – to connect two things I knew – that steppers produce AC and El wire takes AC – and put them together to see if it would actually work in real life and it did!

Pedal Powered EL Wire Bike

BuffaloFeeds » Items by John Baichtal

Feeds

Items by John Baichtal

Posted: April 13th, 2012, 12:30pm MDT by John Baichtal

Posted: April 13th, 2012, 8:00am MDT by John Baichtal

Posted: April 12th, 2012, 7:30pm MDT by John Baichtal

Posted: April 12th, 2012, 1:30pm MDT by John Baichtal

Posted: April 12th, 2012, 8:00am MDT by John Baichtal

Posted: March 28th, 2012, 12:00pm MDT by John Baichtal

Posted: March 28th, 2012, 8:00am MDT by John Baichtal

Posted: February 28th, 2012, 12:00pm MST by John Baichtal

Posted: February 28th, 2012, 8:00am MST by John Baichtal

Posted: February 16th, 2012, 12:00pm MST by John Baichtal

Posted: February 14th, 2012, 7:30pm MST by John Baichtal

Posted: February 14th, 2012, 12:00pm MST by John Baichtal

Posted: January 27th, 2012, 8:00am MST by John Baichtal

Posted: January 26th, 2012, 12:00pm MST by John Baichtal

Posted: January 6th, 2012, 12:00pm MST by John Baichtal

Posted: December 28th, 2011, 11:30am MST by John Baichtal

Posted: December 23rd, 2011, 8:00am MST by John Baichtal

Posted: November 21st, 2011, 8:00am MST by John Baichtal

Posted: August 30th, 2011, 6:00pm MDT by John Baichtal

Posted: August 30th, 2011, 8:30am MDT by John Baichtal

Posted: August 4th, 2011, 4:28pm MDT by John Baichtal

Posted: August 4th, 2011, 8:04am MDT by John Baichtal

Posted: June 25th, 2011, 5:47pm MDT by John Baichtal

Posted: June 24th, 2011, 5:45pm MDT by John Baichtal

Posted: June 24th, 2011, 9:30am MDT by John Baichtal

Posted: May 15th, 2011, 12:00pm MDT by John Baichtal

Posted: May 15th, 2011, 9:00am MDT by John Baichtal

Posted: May 12th, 2011, 8:12am MDT by John Baichtal

Posted: May 11th, 2011, 1:30pm MDT by John Baichtal

Posted: March 15th, 2011, 8:00am MDT by John Baichtal

Posted: March 11th, 2011, 12:00pm MST by John Baichtal

Posted: March 11th, 2011, 8:27am MST by John Baichtal

Posted: February 23rd, 2011, 12:00pm MST by John Baichtal

Posted: February 18th, 2011, 12:15pm MST by John Baichtal

Posted: February 18th, 2011, 7:58am MST by John Baichtal

Posted: February 13th, 2011, 12:00pm MST by John Baichtal

Posted: February 13th, 2011, 8:59am MST by John Baichtal