How the H1N1 vaccine is made... That looks like a pick and place egg machine... The most striking feature of the H1N1 flu vaccine manufacturing process is the 1,200,000,000 chicken eggs required to make the 3 billion doses of vaccine that may be required worldwide. There are entire chicken farms in the US and around the world dedicated to producing eggs for the purpose of incubating influenza viruses...
This wireless temperature sensor project uses an XBee , breakout board, and simple power supply to transmit temperature data to an Arduino base station. This looks like it could be easily expanded into a whole house monitoring system. [via Arduino.cc ] I decided to explore the more advanced features of XBee radios by building a remote temperature sensor. You can get quite a bit of control over an...
The Dangerous Book for Boys Essential Electronics kit presents electronics every kid should know through fun, engaging, and impressive experiments and activities. Read a brief history of the research and discoveries associated with electricity and electronics. A full-color, 32-page, manual guides you through 30 hands-on experiments. Don't let the name fool you, It's a great kit for boys and girls!...
To give his pepper plants some extra light during the winter months, João Silva decided to set up a solar-powered light that would charge during the day, then light a lamp after dark. Rather than simply scavenging a circuit from an old garden lamp, though, he designed his own SolarLamp circuit from scratch. It looks like a fun project, and he has a good explanation of the issues that he ran...
The folks at Sparkle Labs have put up a cute project on their site. It's a simple LED circuit on a breadboard (built with their Discover Electronics Kit ), with some Turkey papercraft attached, to create a Thanksgiving table decoration. This is a great way to get your kids involved in a basic electronics project that becomes part of the holiday festivities (er... for those of you in the States). Thanksgiving...
Microsoft is running another contest for 2010 centered on embedded systems and their embeddedSPARK platform, the Windows embedded software for hobbyists. The grand prize this year is a $15,000. The theme is "Fun & Games." See the embeddedSPARK website for all of the contest details. embeddedSPARK 2010 Challenge Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Announcements |...
My buddy Jon makes these awesome little puzzle boxes from acorns. There are four shown in the video: one pair consisting of a smaller hinged acorn that nests, matryoshka-style, inside a larger one with a wire spring latch; a larger, locking nut that is opened by removing a small pin; and, finally, a large hinged version that is unlatched by knocking it against a surface from a certain angle. Besides...
Know someone that is interested in photography? Or a tinkerer who wants to present their work in a better light? Then we have a guide for you! Here are some project and gear recommendations to help you find the perfect present. Make them a photo with DIY bokeh effects (Free, if you have the equipment) Use your leet photography skillz to make a photo that you can give as a gift, with a bokeh filter...
It's still way too early for holiday music and decorations, however this was too good to pass up. Robobuilder made this RoboBuilder Xmas Dance Routine to demonstrate the capabilities of their 5720t 'Huno' robotics kit. Ok, I'll take ten. [via neatorama ] Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Robotics | Digg this!
Blinking an LED and transmitting text to a serial terminal is not the most exciting thing in the world, but it's very cool to breathe life into a balky computer, even at the most basic level. Also, I have worked with enough development tools to know that it can be a lot of work going from the first build to basic function. Many vendors, like National Instruments, Texas Instruments, and others, have...
Sparkfun is giving away things for free on January 7! You can blame it on Chris Anderson's book Free. After reading his book, I started kicking around the idea of what we can do that's 'free'. Sure, we have free bits (open-source hardware designs, available code, etc.), but we don't have free physical widgets. Now combine that with our love of creating shear havoc (AVC, C&D letter, Portable Rotary...
I am a sucker for a good SketchUp exploded view (although I think the screws shown in this one just have to be wrong). This plan comes from the usbddr project . From the readme file: usbddr is firmware for the Atmel ATMega8 which implements a usb controller ("dance pad") for games such as stepmania . In contrast to other homebrew dance pads, it uses capacitive sensing, eliminating mechanical...
Charles Pax is working on a new MakerBot extruder he's aptly calling the Paxtruder. It makes it super easy to change out the plastic filament, and can even be butted up against another one of itself for potential support material extrusion one day. Check out the plans on Thingiverse . Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in 3D printing | Digg this!
The holiday season is a great time of year, especially for kids! This year I came up with a list of products that will inspire your children, and let you in on the fun too! Many of these recommendations were inspired by my own childhood. I certainly made a lot of kits growing up, and I've included a few of my favorites in this list! Remember, the holiday season is a great time to start a new project...
From the MAKE Flickr pool Flickr member Giant Eye created a handcuff mechanism with his Makerbot Cupcake CNC - 3d printers are incredibly boss, cool, fantastic, and other words that mean they make me tingle. I designed these handcuffs (okay I've only printed one out at the moment) using only fdm printable parts. Nice work! Check out the project plans on Thingiverse . Related: Working printed handcuff...
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