INCREDIBLE PROJECT! Steampunk Professor Xavier Wheelchair Project – powered with an Adafruit Waveshield!
SMEEON writes…
Finally got around to adding together some video clips I took. I had a lot of people asking about what it does and how, so here is a little walk through.
Don’t worry, Rachel’s is here. This store is for electronic hobbyists, DIY enthusiasts, hackers and triple Es. We specialize in breaking out oddly usefully microchips and designing custom kits. Our primary mission is to educate our customers and provide the clearest documentation of our products and their implementation.
Update: Looks like the site down. Check back later.
This instrument is a new version of one that I did a couple of years ago, the FM kbrd. This version was designed to be more portable (size and weight), to last longer (built out of proper wood),to sound better (in-built speakers + Audio outputs) and with a bigger variety of controls, amongst other things. Consists of: 6 Radios, 6 Keys, 6 Tunning dials, 6 Volume controls, 6 AM/FM switches, 6 LED lights, 6 antenas, 6 audio outputs and 1 power socket. It was built in November / December 2009
US Manufacturing is alive and well. The real issue is manufacturing employment, which is dropping like a stone. And the reason for the drop is an increase in productivity.
1.) The US still manufactures goods. In fact, the US still manufactures plenty of goods. Take a look at the types of exports in the latest trade data from the Census. It includes exports of industrial supplies, capital goods, autos and consumer goods.
2.) While outsourcing does happen — that is, companies do go overseas to open new factories at the expense of US employees — it is not the primary cause of manufacturing job losses.
3.) Going back to the recent post on employment remember that in this recession the unemployment rate of specific groups was heavily influenced by education level. In fact, according to the BLS, higher education levels (college graduates and above) were remarkably untouched in the latest recession while lower education levels (high school graduates, high school with some secondary education) had higher rates of unemployment. Lower levels of education are typically associated with manufacturing and construction employment — the two areas of jobs that account for the largest percentage of job losses in this recession.
US manufacturing would be greatly helped by two developments.
First, China needs to float its currency. A country that has 10% GDP growth but little currency appreciation is obviously manipulating its currency’s value to a high degree. Given China’s growth rate, investors should be flocking to China driving up the yuan’s value. That is not happening. A real free-floating currency would cure a lot of the trade deficit problems.
Secondly, there have been calls for a US industrial policy — that is, for Washington to essentially “pick winners and losers” by promoting some industries that they feel have a high probability of success. Asian countries have been doing this for years with remarkable success and it is a policy which we clearly need to copy. I’m a big promoter of nano-technology, alternative energy and stem cell research, but those are just my choices. There are plenty others out there that would also make sense.
Diana Eng will present the Fairytale Fashion Collection in a technology fashion show on Wed., February 24, 7PM, at Eyebeam. Models will hit the runway while an orchestra of circuit bending DJ’s create music from hacked video game consoles. Seated front row will be celebrity scientists, designers, school children, and traditional celebrities. This event will showcase innovation in fashion through technology.
The Fairytale Fashion Collection uses technology to create magical clothing in real life. Electronics, mechanical engineering, and mathematics are used to create clothing with blooming flowers, changing colors and transforming shapes. Research and development for the Fairytale Fashion collection are shared online at FairytaleFashion.org as an educational tool that teaches about science, math, and technology through fashion. Fairytale Fashion was created with the support of Eyebeam Art and Technology Center nonprofit.
Diana Eng is a fashion designer who specializes in technology, math, and science. Her designs range from inflatable clothing to fashions inspired by mechanical engineering. She is a designer from Bravo’s Emmy nominated TV show, Project Runway season 2 and author of Fashion Geek: Clothes, Accessories, Tech. Diana is cofounder of NYC Resistor hacker group. Diana is currently a resident artist at Eyebeam.
Back in 2008 we wrote about Arne Hendriks’s plan to create a crowdsourced restaurant in Amsterdam. As of December, the resulting eatery—called by its founders “the world’s first open source restaurant”—has now opened.
At the Instructables Restaurant, which launched as a pop-up event at the historic Theatrum Anatomicum of the Waag in Amsterdam, patrons receive not only creatively-cooked food but also instructions for preparing everything they see, eat and use—including the furniture. For example, someone seeking the recipe for the Tom Kha Gai soup they just enjoyed can either claim it at the restaurant or download it online; and anyone interested in making their own versions of the restaurant’s recycled 50-gallon barrel chairs can do likewise.
Everything in the restaurant derives from Instructables, a web-based documentation platform where people share their expertise with others, whether it’s cooking, pottery or woodworking. Even the instructions for creating the restaurant itself are now available on Instructables.com.
Instructables Restaurant is the first open source restaurant in the world. Everything you see, use and eat is downloaded from instructables.com. It is an experiment in “digesting free internet culture”. Instructables – Instructables is a web-based documentation platform where passionate people share what they do and how they do it, and learn from and collaborate with others. The seeds of Instructables germinated at the MIT Media Lab as the future founders of Squid Labs built places to share their projects and help others. Instructables supports the use of Creative Commons Licenses for uploaded instructables.
Instructables Restaurant
Everything in the restaurant is downloaded from Instructables, and what we could not find there, we added to its contents. Download it or take the instruction with you from the restaurant during your visit.
The Instructables Restaurant comes with full instructions for everything. In most restaurants you get to buy and enjoy the food. In some restaurants, if you like the furniture you can buy it. But in the Instructables Restaurant you go home knowing how to make the food as well as the furniture. We give you the instructions and recipes!
The Internet is full of passive information, and more is added every second. By really using and implementing this information not only do you plug into a world of know-how but it’s also great for the people who have shared their knowledge. That’s why crediting them is important!
The Instructables Restaurant originates from the input of others. This creates a different notion of ownership and the intellectual property of a regular business. A lot of the input comes from others. This is what we like about the idea.
The Instructables Restaurant creates a space between limitless information and reality. It’s a 2.0 dock station where digital and real connect and communicate.
Adafruit videos – now have mobile versions on Vimeo – Vimeo has details for those interested..
The Vimeo developers have been hard at work, making it possible for anyone who owns a smartphone to easily watch, like, and comment on your videos! Plus users who own an iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, or Palm Pre can now go to our mobile site, vimeo.com/m and make mobile versions of their videos.
Blender has had a sculpt mode for a while now, but with the recent release of the ground-up recode 2.5, a few minor tweaks have made it into a really powerful tool, especially for people looking to interact with their 3D in a more intuitive way than painstakingly dragging vertices around and fretting over topology. In this tutorial, we’ll start with Blender’s default cube and carve numbers into it! For this tutorial, you’ll need to go grab the latest release of Blender 2.5, which is still in alpha but stable enough to work with. It’s a well-behaved zip file– just dump it in a directory and run the executable.
I have just been asked to join the ARRL Public Relations Committee. I am very excited to join because I want to help connect the maker/hacker community to the ham community. It’s an exciting time because there is a huge growth in the maker/hacker community. It’s hip to tinker. Ham radio operators were the original makers and hackers. And I feel like makers and hackers could learn a lot from an organization where members are building their own portable devices that can send messages or remote control other devices around the world and through outer space.
Making your own printed circuit board can be a truly satisfying process, tying together electronics and the handmade craft of etching. It’s the most accurate way to build a circuit short of sending away to a PCB manufacturer and it’s a lot more fun (+ cheaper too!).
