1800 Mechanical Movements, Devices and Appliances… This looks like a cool book -

A fascinating compendium of early-20th-century mechanical devices, this expansive work ranges from basic hooks and levers to complex machinery used in steam, motive, hydraulic, air, and electric power, navigation, gearing, clocks, mining, and construction. More than 1,800 engravings include simple illustrations and detailed cross-sections.

Thanks Kenneth!

Hack This: 24 Incredible Hackerspace Projects from the DIY Movement by John Baichtal via Chris…

Join today’s new revolution in creativity and community: hackerspaces. Stop letting other people build everything for you: Do it yourself. Explore, grab the tools, get hands-on, get dirty…and create things you never imagined you could. Hack This is your glorious, full-color passport to the world of hackerspaces: your invitation to share knowledge, master tools, work together, build amazing stuff–and have a flat-out blast doing it.
 
Twin Cities Maker co-founder John Baichtal explains it all: what hackerspaces are, how they work, who runs them, what they’re building—and how you can join (or start!) one. Next, he walks you through 24 of today’s best hackerspace projects…everything from robotic grilled-cheese sandwich-makers to devices that make music with zaps of electricity. Every project’s packed with color photos, explanations, lists of resources and tools, and instructions for getting started on your own similar project so you can DIY!
 
JUST SOME OF THE PROJECTS YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT INCLUDE…

• Kung-fu fighting robots
• Home-brewed Geiger counter
• TransAtlantic balloon
• Twitter-monitoring Christmas tree
• Sandwich-making robot
• Interactive Space Invaders mural
• CNC mill that carves designs into wood, plastic and metal
• Telepresence robot that runs an Internet classroom
• Toy cars that are ridden by people
• Bronze-melting blast furnace
• Laptop-controlled robot fashioned from a wheelchair
• DIY book scanner

Getting Started in Electronic – by Forrest M. Mims, III. is a complete electronics course in 128 pages! This famous electronics inventor teaches you the basics, takes you on a tour of analog and digital components, explains how they work, and shows how they are combined for various applications. Includes circuit assembly tips and 100 electronic circuits you can build and test. Forrest has written dozens of books, hundreds of articles, invented scientific measurement devices for NASA, and loves to share his knowledge with eager students! This is a “must have” for the library of anyone interested in learning the basics of electronic theory and principals.

• Begin With the Basics – Learn about static electricity and how to make magnets and solenoids. Find out about direct current and alternating current. Then learn about electrical circuits that use batteries and lamps.
• Basic Electronic Components – Find out how switches, relays, meters, resistor, capacitors, transformers are used.
• Diodes and Transistors – These components are they key ingredients to modern electronic circuits. Find out what they do and how they work.
• Integrated Circuits – From dozens to many thousands of electronic components can be formed on tiny chips of silicon.
• Digital Integrated Circuits – Learn the basics about digital logic gates using switches and transformers.
• Linear Integrated Circuits – Linear circuits respond to only the presence or absences of voltage. Linear circuits respond to a wide range of voltages giving them many applications.
• Circuit Assembly Tips – Learn how to use electronic components to make temporary circuits and permanent circuits using wire and solder.
• 100 Electronic Circuits – Now you’re ready to build any or even all of the 100 tested and working circuits included in the book. The categories of circuits include basic, photonic, digital, and linear.

In stock and shipping now!

“Making Things See Available” for Early Release @ Ideas For Dozens. Greg writes -

I’m proud to announce that my book, Making Things See: 3D Vision with Kinect, Processing, and Arduino, is now available from O’Reilly. You can buy the book through O’Reilly’s Early Release program here. The Early Release program lets us get the book out to you while O’Reilly’s still editing and designing it and I’m still finishing up the last chapters. If you buy it now, you’ll get the preface and the first two chapters immediately and then you’ll be notified as additional chapters are finished and you’ll be able to download them for free until you have the final book. This way you get the immediate access to the book and I get your early feedback to help me find mistakes and improve it before final publication.

With this digital Early Release edition of Making Things See, you get the entire book bundle in its earliest form – the author’s raw and unedited content – so you can take advantage of this content long before the book’s official release. You’ll also receive updates when significant changes are made, as well as the final ebook version. 

Welcome to the Vision Revolution. With Microsoft’s Kinect leading the way, you can now use 3D computer vision technology to build digital 3D models of people and objects that you can manipulate with gestures and spoken commands. This hands-on guide provides all the technical and conceptual information you need to build cool applications for Kinect, using the Processing programming language and the Arduino microcontroller.

Whether you’re a student, hobbyist, maker, gamer, or hardware hacker, Making Things See gets you running with several Kinect projects, and gives you the skills and experience you need to build your own fun and creative projects with this magical 3D computer vision technology. Unlock your ability to build interactive applications with Kinect.

Hackerspaces – The Beginning (the book).

This book documents where the hackerspace movement was in December of 2008. In that way it’s a bit of a time capsule. It’s not an exhaustive book, but we hope there are enough stories in here to show that all your excuses for not starting up a hackerspace are invalid. Each group faced down their own dragons to bring their hackerspace into existence including  floods, rats, and drama. If they can do it, so can you.

A reminder, at Adafruit Hackerspaces get up to 40% off their orders. Use the contact for to sign up your Hackerspace!

Getting Started with the Internet of Things @ ZDNet UK.

Never mind 20 million Google+ users. Since 2008 there have been more ‘things’ connected to the internet than there are people on the earth: by 2050 there will be 50 billion connected devices — from cattle with wireless sensors that report when a cow is sick or pregnant, to implanted defibrillators that upload diagnostic information and heart rate patterns, to bridges that record every time a boat sails underneath them.

There are ambitious ideas about monitoring the weather, detecting when buildings have been affected by earthquakes, predicting traffic jams and avoiding accidents by having cars tell each other where they are (something Ford and Toyota are working on together), spotting epidemics before they start — all by building up massive, real-time data sets to analyse and act on.

Unscrewed: Salvage and Reuse Motors, Gears, Switches, and More from Your Old Electronics, thanks Bob!

Admit it: you love to explore how things work. Screwdriver and pliers in hand, no castoff electronics or old appliances are safe. But once you’ve pulled apart your prey, do you really just want to screw it back together again . . . assuming you could? Unscrewed is the perfect resource for all UIYers—Undo It Yourselfers—looking to salvage hidden treasures or repurpose old junk.

Author Ed Sobey will show you how to safely disassemble more than 50 devices, including: Laser Printer, Radio-Controlled Car, Zip Drive, Videocassette Recorder, Paper Shredder, Audiocassette Player, Electric Drill, Computer Mouse, Keyboard, Fax Machine, Joystick, Floppy Drive, Videocassette Camera, Electric Clock, and More!

Each deconstruction project includes a “treasure cache” of the components to be found, a required tools list, and step-by-step instructions, with photos, on how to extract the working components. It also includes suggestions on how to repurpose your electronic finds. Why pay good money to an electronics store when you probably already have what you need in that old VCR, printer, or hair dryer? Fight the mindset of planned obsolescence—there’s technological gold in that there junk!

Hacking the Xbox, An Introduction to Reverse Engineering – Signed Special Edition…

Hacking the Xbox, An Introduction to Reverse Engineering by Andrew “bunnie” Huang. This hands-on guide to hacking was cancelled by the original publisher, Wiley, out of fear of DMCA-related lawsuits. After a period of direct distribution by the author, “Hacking the Xbox” is brought to you by the No Starch Press and now at Adafruit. The book begins with a few step-by-step tutorials on hardware modifications that teaches basic hacking techniques as well as essential reverse engineering skills. The book progresses into a discussion of the Xbox security mechanisms and other advanced hacking topics, with an emphasis on educating the readers on the important subjects of computer security and reverse engineering. Hacking the Xbox includes numerous practical guides, such as where to get hacking gear, soldering techniques, debugging tips and an Xbox hardware reference guide.

We only have 25 of these at this time, a collector’s item for sure!

Bookmobile from 1929…

“Vagabond” Shop Supplies Isolated Summer Resorts With New Books. LITERARY needs in fashionable but far distant resorts are provided for by this traveling book shop, shown in the photo below. This movable shop parks in some shady corner of a summer resort where books usually consist of the Bible and a school history of the United States. Its stock comprises popular fiction, classics and rare volumes of all natures. The shop is equipped with a writing desk and dining table for the driver.

NEW PRODUCT: Making Things Move: DIY Mechanisms for Inventors, Hobbyists, and Artists by Dustyn Roberts!

Making Things Move reveals practical mechanical design principles to readers who may have no background in engineering and shows how to apply those principles through a wide range of sample projects, from art installations to toys to labor-saving devices.

This book is for anyone who has ever wanted to make something that moves but didn’t know where to start. Maybe you’re a sculptor who wants your artwork to spin around on a pedestal, or a musician who wants to make custom musical instruments that come alive. Whatever the case may be, this book will show you how to turn your ideas into reality.

Makers no longer need to have a machine shop in their garage or an arsenal of spare parts lying around. You can make 3D models using free software, then actually get them printed in 3D at any number of online shops. Heck, you can even make your own 3D printer! Or cut just about any 2D shape you want out of a variety of materials at Ponoko. Combine these with off the shelf parts and simple hand tools and the possibilities are endless.

A unique guide to practical mechanical design principles and their applications
In Making Things Move, you’ll learn how to build moving mechanisms through non-technical explanations, examples, and do-it-yourself projects–from art installations to toys to labor-saving devices. The projects include a drawing machine, a mini wind turbine, a mousetrap powered car, and more, but the applications of the examples are limited only by your imagination. A breadth of topics is covered ranging from how to attach couplers and shafts to a motor, to converting between rotary and linear motion.

Each chapter features photographs, drawings, and screenshots of the components and systems involved. Emphasis is placed on using off-the-shelf components whenever possible, and most projects also use readily available metals, plastics, wood, and cardboard, as well as accessible fabrication techniques such as laser cutting. Small projects in each chapter are designed to engage you in applying the material in the chapter at hand. Later in the book, more involved projects incorporate material from several chapters.

Making Things Move

• Focuses on practical applications and results, not abstract engineering theories
• Contains more than a dozen topic-focused projects and three large-scale projects incorporating lessons from the whole book
• Features shopping lists and guides to off-the-shelf components for the projects
• Incorporates discussions of new fabrication techniques such as laser cutting and 3D printing, and how you can gain access
• Includes online component for continuing education with the book’s companion website and blog (makingthingsmove.com)

Hands-on coverage of moving mechanisms
Introduction to Mechanisms and Machines; Materials and Where to Find Them; Screwed or Glued? On Fastening and Joining Parts; Forces, Friction and Torque (Oh My); Mechanical and Electrical Power, Work, and Energy; Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Motor? – Creating and Controlling Motion; The Guts: Bearings, Bushings. Couplers, and Gears; Rotary vs. Linear Motion; Automatons and Mechanical Toys; Making Things and Getting Them Made; Projects

In stock and shipping now.

The growth of the Processing project, ben writes -

Number of Processing users, every four weeks, since 2005. Long version: this is a tally of the number of unique users who run the Processing environment every four weeks, as measured by the number of machines checking for updates.

More:

Books to learn processing – AN ADAFRUIT GIFT GUIDE.