How to make

Now Make you own sterogram 3D pictures

2007-03-13T02:46:00.000-07:00

Ok I’ll admit it this website has little technical value but in the course of another project it stumbled its way into my lap and is worth passing along. According to the numbers 85 - 90% of all people cannot view a sterogram which is what this website creates. I used to be in the group of people who could not seem to view it. Not wanted to be in some sort of inferior seeing group I practices using the methods below and with a little bit of coaxing from this website I can now see the 3D images created by a Sterogram. Thank you Flash-Gear lol.

Here are a couple methods

Method 1

Put your face close to the stereogram. Allow your eyes to relax, and stare right through the stereogram as if your eyes were focused at a point behind the surface of the stereogram. Slowly move away from the stereogram without changing the position of your eyes.

Method 2

Look at your own reflection (or the reflection of another light source) in the screen. Slowly shift your attention to the stereogram on screen without changing the position of your eyes.

Please note that only 85 - 90 percent of people are able to see stereographic pictures in a three-dimensional way.

via: http://www.noheat.com/

How to Make Battery from Potato

2007-02-26T23:10:00.000-08:00

Introduction:

Batteries generate electricity through a chemical reaction between two different electrodes and one electrolyte. Use of Copper and Zinc electrodes and Sulfuric acid as electrolyte is a proven method for this process. We are wondering if we can use any other liquid as electrolyte? This gave us the idea of using a potato as electrolyte. After all a fresh potato has a lot of juice that may serve our purpose as electrolyte.

Problem:

Can Potato be used to generate electricity?

Hypothesis:

Potato juice contains many water soluble chemicals that may cause a chemical reaction with one or both of our electrodes. So we may get some electricity from that.

Material:

For this experiment we use:

A fresh potato
Copper Electrode
Zinc Electrode
A Digital or Analog Multimeter to measure Voltage or Current of produced electricity.
Alligator clips/ Leads

Procedure:

We insert copper and zinc electrodes in to the potato, close but not touching each other. We use Clip leads to connect our electrodes to the Multimeter to measure voltage between two electrodes or current passing through the multimeter. For this experiment we removed the shell of a broken AA battery for our Zinc electrode. (Make sure to test your multimeter by connecting it's Positive and Negative wires to each other that should show no current and no voltage).

Record And Analyze Data:

A digital multimeter showed 1.2 volts between the electrodes, but the analog multimeter showed a much smaller value. In other words even though the voltage between electrodes is 1.2 Volts, the speed of production of electricity is not high enough for an analog multimeter to show the exact voltage. (Analog multimeter gets it's power from our potato to show the voltage, but digital Multimeter gets it's power from an internal battery and does not consume any of the electricity produced by our potato, that is why it shows a larger and more accurate value).
We repeated this experiment with some other fruits and all resulted almost the same. In all cases the produced voltage is between 1 and 1.5 volts, and in all cases they do not produce enough current to turn on a small light.
Another thing that we learned from this experiment is that creating electricity and making a battery is easy, the main challenge is producing a battery that can continue to produce larger amount of electricity for larger amount of time.

http://www.miniscience.com/

How To Make Fire With A Bar Of Chocolate And A Can Of Coke

2007-02-26T04:18:00.000-08:00

You don't have a match? Nothing to worry about as long as you have a '32 Ford and some petrol.

How To Make Smoke Bomb

2007-02-26T02:39:00.000-08:00

In this video i show how to make a BIG and EASY and CHEAP Smoke bomb! just follow the instructions and BE SAFE.
FUSE: you can get the fuse from any firework or just roll some paper :)
I DO NOT TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY DAMAGE CAUSED BY THIS FILM!!!

How to make a simple Battery

2007-02-17T04:28:00.000-08:00

What you will need:

A 600ml plastic bottle
A piece of hose, stem or other form of tube
A Lighter
A cone piece or some foil or an aluminium can

Step One:
Lightly burn the 600ml about 1/3 of the way up, When it is beginning to melt, jam your hose, stem or tube into the melting area so that the other side of the hose goes straight to the bottom of the bottle

Step Two:
Then melt another smaller hole on the other side of the bottle about half way up. This will be your shotty.

Step Three:
Now simply insert your cone piece into the hose (melt the hose around the cone piece if necessary) and you're done and ready to smoke!Note that you can make a cone piece out of aluminium foil or an aluminium can by simply cutting it, modelling it on the end of a pen and once you have the cone shape you are after, insert it into your stem!

How To Make Your Zune Battery Last Longer

2007-02-17T04:13:00.000-08:00

How you use the Zune player can affect the Zune battery lifespan. Under normal situations, a zune battery can up to 14 hours with the wireless setting turned off while playing mp3. If you are watching videos, it can last up to about 4 hours.

Here are some tips that can help maximize your zune battery lifespan.

1. Update Zune Firmware

Always update to the latest zune firmware as higher versions of zune firmware have better power management features.

2. Use either Play All or Shuffle All option

The less interaction there is between you and the Zune player, the laster the zune battery can last. One way of doing that is to either set it to play all or shuffle all option using the playlists.

3. Try To Play Only 128Kbps WMA files

The zune battery has the best performance when you are playing 128kbps windows media audio(WMA) files. If possible, convert other music formats such as mp3 to WMA format.

4. Backlight Settings

Using backlights can drastically reduce their zune battery life. If possible, try to reduce the backlight timing to either 1 or 5 seconds. Do not set to always on.

4. Brightness Settings

The brightness settings is another factor for causing the drain on the zune battery. If you can in an environment where it is bright for example in school or office, then you can set the brightness to low.

5. Wireless Settings

The wireless chipset on the zune player can consume a lot of battery resources when turned on. If you are not sharing files, it is best to turn it off. The amount of files you send or receive when sharing can also affect the zune battery.

6. Turn off the Zune player

When you are not using the zune player, press and hold the play/pause button to turn it off. Turning off puts the zune player in low power standby mode. If there is no activity within 24 hours, it will go in sleep mode and will take about 10 seconds to turn on.

Source

How to make a DRANO Bomb

2007-02-08T01:46:00.000-08:00

These bombs make nice grenades.

How to make The Amazing Steam Candle

2007-02-07T01:54:00.000-08:00

How to make a cool rotating steam engine using only a candle and a thin tube. VERY easy to do and fun to watch! Runs for hours! This is my personal favorite for Christmas decoration.

Building The Amazing Steam Candle - video powered by Metacafe

How to make electricity using two candles

2007-02-04T22:33:00.000-08:00

Are you fed up with the electricity company bills that slip under your door every month? Well, here is something that the power companies dont want you to know, and that is how to generate electricity using two candles! What? You dont believe me? Well check it out for yourselves! It might not be enough to light up a house, but hey.... get a bigger candle and you can make wonders! Tesla, you are still remembered! Respect...

Candle Power - Who Needs Batteries? - video powered by Metacafe

How to Make DIY Christmas Light controller in 5 minutes!

2007-01-24T10:34:00.000-08:00

Okay, today we are going try to build a computer controlled Christmas Lights in 5 minutes.
I’ve been rolling around the neighborhood this late November and some people already have
their Christmas lights decorated.

Well I’ve seen many “static” Christmas lights that always stay on. Today, I will show you how
you can customize your Christmas lights by using a PLC,
a Programmable Logic Controller.

You can also check out our wiki version of on our new FREE DIY wiki too.

UPDATE: Wow, Christmas light controllers CAN BE expensive, check out these prices for these controllers…

How to Make a custom projector screen.

2007-01-24T10:25:00.000-08:00

The quest to build a great home theater is one of our recurring themes for Engadget's How-To Tuesdays. And as anyone home theater buff will tell you, any HDTV worth its weight in salt will present its viewer with a 16:9 (1.78:1) aspect ratio display, or in some cases, project a 1.8:1 ratio. For todays How-To, though, we're building one of the holy grails of the home theater: a 2.35:1 widescreen. Yep, that's movie theater widescreen, alright.

The most important component is the screen material. Mom's old bed-sheet just isn't good enough (and is actually quite nast). Most fabric stores carry rolls of material called curtain backing or black-out cloth. It's a light, opaque white material used to make curtains actually block light. Made from cotton and polyester, one side looks like woven cotton while the other looks like it's plastic coated. At our local fabric store it was about $5 per yard and 54-inches wide. When buying your fabric, we suggest buying at least 4-inches wider and longer than your planned screen dimensions to allow room for construction. If you want to build a MECHA-screen, it's available even wider.

Shopping list:

(3) 1 x 4 x 96-inch Douglas Fir boards
(1) 2 x 2-foot x 13/64 piece of plywood
1-1/8th-inch fine thread drywall screws
Staples
(3) yards of white curtain blackout cloth

Tools:

Drill with Phillips screwdriver bit
Saw
Staple Gun
Hammer
Utility knife or scissors

Our 2.35:1 screen is designed to maximize the materials we purchased. We decided to aim for a 104-inch wide, 44-inch tall screen. By placing 1 x 4 boards at the ends of our 8-foot (96-inch) boards, we achieved 103.5-inches of real estate.

The frame is constructed using theater set 'Flat' construction techniques. 1 x 4-inch boards, some plywood and drywall screws will make a very strong frame. We used Douglas Fir because it was easier to find nice straight boards, and it costs about the same as the more brittle (and bent) select pine. (To visually check the board, hold the end and look down the board lengthwise like a gun barrel. Avoid twisted and curving boards.)

To get started, the 1 x 4-inch boards need to be cut to length. Don't forget that 1 x 4-inch wood is actually .75 x 3.5 by the time it gets to you! Our trick for getting them even is to screw the two boards together and cut both ends at once. Screw two of your 8-foot long boards together and just trim the ends so they're perfectly even. Unscrew them and set them aside. Cut around 45 inches off your last board. Screw the two pieces together and trim one end even. Now cut the two boards down to 44 inches at the same time. (Don't hit the screws with your saw!)

You'll need to cut some 1-foot triangles out of the plywood for each corner. If you don't have a saw, you could just have the hardware store cut out 1-foot squares and use a square on each corner. We cut our triangles on a table-saw.

Lay out your wooden frame on a flat surface. The edges of the 44-inch pieces will be against the ends of the 8-foot pieces. To get the frame square, get a helper and a tape measure. Measure diagonally corner to corner. If the two measurements match, it's square.

Place your plywood triangles on the corners. We uses a scrap piece of 1 x 4-inch to place the triangle evenly off the edges.

Use your screw-driving drill to put the drywall screws in a pattern similar to the picture. (It's generally 3 screws in each corner and a couple along the areas the boards join.) You might want to double check the squareness of the frame as you work just to be safe.

When your frame is done, it'll look something like this. Theater flats usually have a cross bar, but for our light wearing application, it's just not needed.

Now you need a CLEAN surface to work on. Lock the dog in another room and lay your blackout material down on the floor. Carpet or a large clean blanket is important to use. Place your new frame (triangles up) on the middle of the material.

Starting in the middle of one of the long sides, wrap the cloth over the frame.

Apply a gentle tension to the edge of the cloth and staple the cloth about 3/4 of an inch from the outer edge of the frame. Work your way completely to one end. Return to the middle and work the other direction. Repeat for the opposite side. Do the same with the short sides. As you work around, evenly tension the cloth so that there will be no wrinkles. Take your time and it should be fine.

In the corners fold the material over itself and staple everything down.

If the fabric came out nice and even, go ahead and tap all the staples snugly into the wood with a light hammer. Don't hammer so hard that you cut the fabric in the process, you just want the spread the tension of the staple across the fabric.

When you're done, trim the extra material with a utility knife or scissors. Be careful and don't slip and cut your new screen.

Now that the screen is built, mounting depends on you. I used two brass shelf mounting tabs and drywall screws. Just locate some studs (our are part of a cloth covered frame behind the screen). and screw the tab to the back of the frame, and run a drywall screw through the mounting hole. Voila! Total bill of materials: about $35 US

How to make a cool DIY Dry Erase Board

2007-01-24T01:17:00.000-08:00

Elephant Staircase has a nice tutorial on how to make your own Dry Erase Board. It's super simple and requires a few things of the likes: acrylic plastic sheet, washers, wall anchors. All of which is readily available at your local hardware shop.

The article is pretty detailed and also analyzes the other modes of creating a erase board. You might want to try it on a weekend. Takes about an hour to complete. And there is nothing like using your homemade Erase board.

DIY Dry Erase Board

How to build a six-axis 3D controller

2007-01-23T08:48:00.000-08:00

Three Blind Mice Part 1 I've been exploring 3D graphics using VVVV. One of the things you quickly learn when working in 3D is that doing anything with a 2D mouse is a pain. Particularly I found I was spending a lot of time shuffling the camera position which involves a tricky combination of keystrokes and mouse movements. I wanted to get a camera control that would allow me to fly the camera smoothly in 3D space. Looking for "3D Mice" in Google found a variety of more-or-less ugly and expensive commercial options, but also this project linked off Slashdot. Humm I thought, how hard could that be to copy.
The basic principle of Three Blind Mice is to run three threads round three rollers from old mechanical mice. By using the mouse reports to calculate the length of the extended thread this allows the position where all the threads join to be calculated. First job was to interface the mice to a PC. I am using old Microsoft Itellimice. The "z" axis on these mice which measures the position of the wheel is very low resolution and not suitable for this application. So, you need two mice to get the three axis of measurement required. It turns out that Windows makes it rather hard to extract input from individual mice if you have several connected to your PC. It is also rather tricky to override the normal mouse behaviour of moving the Windows cursor. Therefore rather than connect the mice directly to a PC I decided to interface the mice to an AVR microcontroller. The AVR then has a serial interface to the host PC. The PS/2 mouse interface is a bit of pain to work with, but with a bit of effort I was able to get things connected.
With the electronics working I chose to use a box file as the fame for installing the mechanics. I like the idea of hiding this rather odd project inside this ordinary piece of stationary. I cut the mice to just keep enough of the PCB mounting and roller mecanism to meet my needs. For the third axis I introduced a third mouse with only acts as a mechanical frame and as a "remote" optical shaft-encoder for one of the two actually interfaced to the AVR. The original design uses simple weights to tension the cords. I wanted something more compact and portable. I decided to use spring-loaded retracting security badge clips. This photo shows one of the mice and the tensioning device (in fact this is the third-access without any active electronics). The cord is wrapped around the black horizontal roller and through a hole drilled in the plastic tab above the roller. As you can see HOT GLUE is an essential construction component on this project. For the software I decided to run the calculations to get the mouse position on the AVR. This means that the results don't need further processing (except for scaling) on the host PC. At this point a project I had thought might take a week at the beginning had taken more like a month. Still I had a 3D mouse and it actually works pretty well. The main problem is that that the data from the mice does drift leading to innaccurate absolute lenths for the location cords. As long as you don't make too sudden movements you can use it for several minutes without having to reset the reference point. I wrote a couple of little applications in VVVV to show off the mouse both as a camera positioning tool and also as a 3D drawing tool. The problem with camera positioning though is that you have no orientation data for the mouse. You basically can look at a fixed point from different angles, but not change where you are looking. In the back of my mind I came up with a solution to fix this limitation, and I knew that I couldn't rest until the job was done properly. So, with a heavy heart I embarked on part 2 of the Three Blind Mice project.
Three Blind Mice Part 2 The aim of part 2 was to add orientation sensing to the original design. These days you can get a lot of chip-based solutions to sense orientation (except around the vertical axis). However I had an idea which was more in line with the spirit of the original design. An opto-mechanical mouse has two horizontal rollers at right angles to measure the ball's motion. My idea was to remove the ball and add off-centre weights to the rollers so that gravity makes the rollers always want to orient in one position. A bit of experimentation convinced me that this idea could give good enough results to be useful. On the photo you can see the two small nuts I fixed to the rollers. In the first stage of Part 2 I interfaced a third mouse to the AVR and doctored it as described to sense the orientation of the mouse against the horizontal plane. Amazingly it works really quite well! The last challenge therefore was to sense orientation around the vertical axis. To do this I mounted a shaft through the middle of the mouse and connected it to a shaft-encoder. This shaft encoder was connected to the spare on one of the original mice in part 1. Provided you can set some reference for the vertical axis in the mouse you can use this arrangement to get the mouse's orientation in all three dimensions. I should add at this point that the maths to translate from the mouse data to its orientation is mind bending. 3D rotation about arbitrary axis is not a pretty subject.
Phew! So, here we are at the end of the project. A full six axis 3D controller built from old computer mice. Eat your heart out Nintendo and Sony. This is the future. Demo software (running in background on the photo) allows the 3D mouse to control the camera view on a scene. You can pan around the scene any way and observe it from all angles. The 3D mouse is a little odd to start with, but once you get used to it then it actually becomes quite natural. Open the full screenshot from the thumbnail on the right. In the top left window is a red box which shows the position and orientation of the mouse. In the bottom left window you see a scene viewed from the point of view of the mouse. The right hand side is a VVVV patch to create these views. This is a project I am glad to be done with now. Much more hard work then I ever thought to start with, but I do love the fact that finally I got the results I wanted and only used scrap components.
Source: http://lushprojects.com/

How to make videoprojector and spend 0.00$.

2007-01-23T07:44:00.000-08:00

For the beginning we measure the sizes of a forward part of the monitor.

Then, we take a cardboard and on these sizes we make a box in height of 40-50 sm (without a bottom and one side). Now we take a lens and densely we turn a cardboard on its edges, the cylinder should turn out.

Self-made objective

Nom on the bottom of the box precisely on the center we make an aperture of such size that this cylinder could move there. We insert it there and we fix a box on the monitor.

Now all we need to do is to put the monitor on it's place and project the image on a wall
We receive the dimmy and overturned image. But, with this problem it is possible to consult. The decision - ACDSee 7.0.

Push PLAY, turn the correction of autolevels on (for increase in brightness) and we overturn the image on 180 degrees.

As a result we have received a projector almost free of charge.

How to make the grinding machine tool from Hard Drive.

2007-01-23T07:42:00.000-08:00

We have the HDD model Seagate ST9546A Linear Speed 2.4 MB/sec 1995 of release.
What do you think, will suffice the capacity to make the grinding machine tool?

Another attempts with new HDD have failed. At one has failed the engine at the second the controller has burned down.

Here it our pre-production model - it already never will find the former life. But we that trust in reincarnation;)

We break off head HDD that it did not stir to ours test. One of the testers has damaged his hand.

You can see his blood.

We cut out a circle from an emery paper we

Paste an emery paper to a disk.

Start! Yup!! It really works! We have grinded a chisel and a knife. And now this knife we cut a doll from a strong fabric as an edge of the razor.

Look 2 minute video with this test.
How To Make The Grinding Machine Tool From Hard Drive. - video powered by Metacafe

This thing but next time I'll tell you how to overlockinf CPU in 10 times faster

How to make a Coin Ring (Easy Steps)

2007-01-23T01:15:00.000-08:00

This is the way I make a coin ring. You can do
it different ways depending on the tools you have available. So here it
goes!

First you need a piece of steel to use as a base
for the coin to set on. Take the coin and stand it on edge. Tap the
reeded edge with a spoon or a small machinist hammer while continually
rotating the coin, I would recommend using the spoon first until you get
the hang of how the silver feels when it folds. Be patient and don't
rush it, it takes a while.

Once I have the letters on the edge of the coin
folded in that's where I stop and then take a look at the coin and make
sure it's round and the edges are even.

Next take and drill a hole in the center of the
coin. Once the bit goes through the coin it will jam itself on the drill
bit. Leave it on the drill bit.

Next take a piece of sandpaper( I use 400 grit
to start) and hold it against the coin as you run the drill. You can
sand all the dings out of it this way. I then use 1200 grit to finish
it.

Then I take some "Brasso" and put it in a cloth.
Then run the drill with the coin spinning on the cloth. Do this as many
times as you want(use a new spot on the cloth and Brasso each time)
until your satisfied with the shine of the ring.

Next take the coin off the bit and place it in a
pair of vice grips. I use the vice grips with the curved jaw as this
will hold the coin better than the straight jaw vice grips. Make sure
you wrap something like heavy tape around the teeth of the grips. If you
don't you will be sorry. If you have some clamps with rubber or plastic
on the contact points this will work also.

The next step I take a dremmel with a cutting
bit and route out the center of the coin. Be careful as the bit will
jump around if you don't hold it tight. Take your time! Once you get
close to your proper size you want then stop.

I then take a sanding disc and smooth out the
inside and stop at the size you want.

Next step take a buffing wheel and put some
Brasso on it, and then run the dremmel buffing out the inside of the
coin. Do this a couple times. Thats about it! Give it a shot, it takes
time but sure is neat when it's done.

HH

Don/Michigan

Source: http://cleanstream.net/mirrors/coin_ring/

How to Make a Folded-Paper CD Case

2007-01-23T01:00:00.000-08:00

Instead of paying good cash for cd cases, which eventually break and end up in a landfill, how about creating your own, unique folded-paper cd cases that are biodegradable and take up a fraction of the space?

The Props:

8 ½" by 11" paper

a cd

a computer (optional)

labels (optional)

The Procedure:

1. Center a cd, which you’ll be using as a guide, at the top of a sheet of paper, as shown.

2. Fold in sides of paper to sides of cd.

3. Center cd at the middle of the folded paper.

4. Fold bottom up.

5. Fold the horizontal creases, which I’ve identified in red, to sides as indicated by arrows, so the creases are even with sides of original folded sides. (I’ve identified the creases in question with dashed lines for illustration.)

6. You'll have a box-shape sticking up toward you after making the folds in step 5. Just fold this flap down flat as shown below.

7. Tuck the "ears" that are sticking out to the sides in between the original side folds and the fold created in step 4.

8. Slip cd into front pocket and fold down top half of paper.

9. Dog-ear the top two corners of the top half of paper.

10. Slip top half of paper into pocket.

For a personal touch, print labels and photos on the front center of paper to give your cd holder some pizzazz. A picture from a trip of a lifetime or a friend’s favorite tunes.

Print the name of that book you wrote or are working on. Any paper, of course, will do including postal wrap, grocery bags or something of the decorative variety. A sheet of heavier-weight wrapping paper with a printed label makes a great way to store and share holiday pictures.

Sourse: http://www.curbly.com/DIY-Maven/posts/680-How-to-Make-a-Folded-Paper-CD-Case

2007-01-22T11:11:00.000-08:00

Thomas Edison famously spent months trying to make a lightbulb work. He tested one material after another in an evacuated bell jar before he finally got a carbon filament to burn long enough to sell it with a straight face. When I had a free afternoon recently, I thought I'd see if I could do it too.

Edison's first mistake was living before tungsten wire was available. Tungsten is way better than carbon as a filament material, and now you can find it in any metal-supply shop. It lasts longer, is less brittle, and glows with a cleaner, whiter light. His second mistake, repeated in classroom physics demonstrations to this day, was using a vacuum to get the air out of the bulb. Clearing out the air is important because at yellow to white heat (3,500°F to 5,000°F), pretty much all known materials, even tungsten filament wire, react with oxygen and burn up in a few seconds. Remove the oxygen, and the wire can't burn. But a vacuum is the hard way to solve that problem. You need an expensive vacuum pump, a thick glass bell jar to withstand the pressure of the surrounding atmosphere, and several nonleaking pipe joints.

It's a whole lot easier to just displace the air with an inert gas that's at the same pressure as the surrounding air, which is how most modern bulbs work. Common household lightbulbs use a mixture of argon and nitrogen. Fancy krypton flashlights and xenon headlamps use those eponymous heavier noble gases to allow the filament to burn longer and hotter.

I used helium because it's easily available and lighter than air, allowing me to fill my bulb, an upside-down glass ice bucket (wedding present, I believe), from the bottom. The helium floated up, displacing the air inside. With a steady stream flowing in, I didn't even need to seal the bucket very well—I just wrapped a sheet of tinfoil over the bottom to keep eddies of air from wafting in.

For a filament, I used a thick tungsten wire I had lying around the shop and, for the power supply, a small stick welder I got at an auction. It supplied about 50 amps at 30 volts, giving me a 1,500-watt bulb. When I powered up the filament without the bucket in place, it produced a prodigious quantity of tungsten-oxide smoke and didn't last very long. But with the bucket on and a steady flow of helium, the filament glowed brightly and cleanly.

It must have been truly thrilling for Tom when he finally got one of these things to work for the first time. I know I was thrilled, even though I slaved over mine for only about 30 minutes and it worked perfectly the first time—well, the first time I didn't forget to turn on the helium.

Tungsten 74
Melting point: 6,170°F
Boiling point: 10,220°F
Symbol from: The German wolfram, "tin wolf," because it interfered with tin refining
Discovered: 1783, by chemist brothers Fausto and Juan José de Elhuyar in Spain
Primary uses: Lightbulb filaments, ballast
Source: http://www.popsci.com/popsci/how20/58daceed683e7010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html

How to: Make a Mini Air Horn

2007-01-22T10:58:00.000-08:00

“K” shows us how to make a mini air horn in just a few easy steps, using a balloon, film canister, scissors, and a straw. If you have any other tips, please leave us a comment. Video after the jump.

HOW TO - Make a robot from an old computer mouse

2007-01-22T10:40:00.000-08:00

introMousebot Revisited

Mousebot from Make vol 2 is a fun introduction to robotics. So fun that I've created this expanded documentation of a Mousey build from start to finish, with a few extra little tips you won't find in the mag. This how-to is best understood after reading the original article from page 100 of Make vol 2 however it is probably not required.

Mousebot is a simple bot that uses two "eyes" to sense light and then turns towards the light. A single large "whisker" is mounted on the front of the mouse to detect collisions. A collision with a wall will cause the mouse to reverse and turn then take off in another direction. This project is pretty cheap, if you have a mouse to use the other parts can be obtained for less than ten dollars.

How to Make A Nasty STINK BOMB

2007-01-16T10:09:00.000-08:00

Here's how to make a foul smelling stink bomb with a surprise ending! The ingredients combined are repulsive!

How To Make Very Simple Pistol in 2 minutes

2007-01-08T12:35:00.000-08:00

Build for kids or for yourself. Its very easy and really works well.

Very Simple Pistol! Build It! - video powered by Metacafe

Video:How To Make A Dry Ice Bomb

2007-01-08T12:11:00.000-08:00

This is by far the best and easiest way to make a dry ice bomb.

How To Make A Dry Ice Bomb - video powered by Metacafe

How to Make a Solar Power Generator for Less Than $300

2007-01-08T08:38:00.000-08:00

How to Make a Solar Power Generator for Less Than $300

Using parts easily available from your local stores, you can make a small solar power generator for $250 to $300. Great for power failures and life outside the power grid. Power your computer, modem, vcr, tv, cameras, lights, or DC appliances anywhere you go. Use in cabins, boats, tents, archaeological digs, or while travelling throughout the third world. Have one in the office store room in case of power failures in your highrise. I keep mine in my bedroom where it powers my cd player, turntable, lights, modem, laptop, and (ahem) a back massager. I run a line out the window to an 8" x 24" panel on the roof.

1. Buy yourself a small solar panel. For about $100 you should be able to get one rated at 12 volts or better (look for 16 volts) at an RV or marine supplies store.

2. Buy yourself a battery. Get any size deep cycle 12 volt lead/acid or gel battery. You need the deep cycle battery for continuous use. The kind in your car is a cranking battery--just for starting an engine. Look for bargains, it should cost about $50-60.

3. Get a battery box to put it in for $10. (This is good for covering up the exposed terminals in case there are children about If you going to install the system in a pump shed, cabin, or boat, skip this.)

3. Buy a 12 volt DC meter. Radio Shack has them for about $25.

4. Buy a DC input. I like the triple inlet model which you can find at a car parts store in the cigarette lighter parts section for about $10. This is enough to power DC appliances, and there are many commercially available, like fans, one-pint water boilers, lights, hair dryers, baby bottle warmers, and vacuum cleaners. Many cassette players, answering machines, and other electrical appliances are DC already and with the right cable will run straight off the box.

5. But if you want to run AC appliances, you will have to invest in an inverter. This will convert the stored DC power in the battery into AC power for most of your household appliances. I bought a 115 volt 140 watt inverter made by Power-to-Go at Pep Boys for $50. More powerful inverters are available by mail. Count up the number of watts you'll be using (e.g., a small color television(=60 watts) with a VCR(=22 watts), you'll need 82 watts).

6. Use a drill to attach the meter and DC input to the top of the box.

7. Use insulated wire to attach the meter to the wingnut terminals on the battery. Connect the negative (-) pole first. Only handle one wire at a time. Connect the DC inlet to the battery in the same way. Connect the solar panel to the battery in the same way.

8. Close the lid (I use a bungee cord to keep it tight). Put the solar panel in the sun. It takes 5-8 hours to charge a dead battery; 1-3 hours to top off a weak one. It will run radios, fans, and small wattage lights all night, or give you about 5 hours of continuous use at 115 volt AC, or about an hour boiling water. This system may be added on to with larger panels, inverters, and batteries.

Options: A pop-up circuit breaker may be added between the positive treminal and the volt meter. Some of you will want an ampmeter as well. The panels I recommend have built-in bypass diodes, but I recommend charge controllers for people who have panels without diodes. Another option is a voltage regulator, which is not necessary for a system this small, but a larger system would require one.

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2007-01-02T01:01:00.000-08:00

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