MultiMod Consoles Modular Workstation Kit: IKEA for Geeks

Tinkerers, hackers, makers, geeks – whatever you call them, craftsmen who specialize in electronics and software want to customize their work environment. It manifests in lots of ways: custom-built computers, hardware mods and software hacks. But unless they’re also good at carpentry, they may find it hard to personalize their furniture or workstation. That’s where the Kickstarter project called MultiMod kit comes in.

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The kits are based on two simple parts: PVC-coated steel poles and clamp joints. The idea is that you can combine any number of poles and joints to satisfy your needs. Add accessories like countertops, casters and hooks and you can build anything from a small tray to a portable 3D printer stand to a multi-monitor battlestation, as shown in the images above and below. Like LEGO, you can easily dismantle and reuse the parts, which means their usefulness is mainly limited by your needs and imagination.

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MultiMod is actually a bundled version of parts that you can buy piece by piece under the name Fitz Kits. Honestly I don’t why Cody Wilmer and his partners took to Kickstarter for MultiMods when they already have Fitz Kits setup. That doesn’t make their invention any less useful though.

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Pledge at least $75 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a MultiMod kit. The Battlestation kit in the images above can be yours if you pledge at least $95. You can also have a look at the Fitz Kits shop if you don’t need a lot of poles and joints at once.

Cuttable, Foldable Sensors Can Add Multi-Touch To Any Device

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Researchers at the MIT Media Lab and the Max Planck Institutes have created a foldable, cuttable multi-touch sensor that works no matter how you cut it, allowing multi-touch input on nearly any surface.

In traditional sensors the connectors are laid out in a grid and when one part of the grid is damaged you lose sensitivity in a wide swathe of other sensors. This system lays the sensors out like a star which means that cut parts of the sensor only effect other parts down the line. For example, you cut the corners off of a square and still get the sensor to work or even cut all the way down to the main, central connector array and, as long as there are still sensors on the surface, it will pick up input.

The team that created it, Simon Olberding, Nan-Wei Gong, John Tiab, Joseph A. Paradiso, and Jürgen Steimle, write:

This very direct manipulation allows the end-user to easily make real-world objects and surfaces touch interactive,
to augment physical prototypes and to enhance paper craft. We contribute a set of technical principles for the design of printable circuitry that makes the sensor more robust against cuts, damages and removed areas. This includes
novel physical topologies and printed forward error correction.

You can read the research paper here but this looks to be very useful in the DIY hacker space as well as for flexible, wearable projects that require some sort of multi-touch input. While I can’t imagine we need shirts made of this stuff, I could see a sleeve with lots of inputs or, say, a watch with a multi-touch band.

Don’t expect this to hit the next iWatch any time soon – it’s still very much in prototype stages but definitely looks quite cool.



Watch a Guy Hold Burning Fire with His Bare Hands in Slow Motion

The dancing orange wisps of fire looks like choreographed chaos when seen in slow motion. It dances, it burns, it shines and it’s easy to get lost in it. But seeing burning fire is a lot different than actually holding it. The guys from Beyond Slow Motion used a nice little trick that never gets old to sprout fire from their bare hands. In slow motion.

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The Real Mac Mini

On numerous occasions, I’ve thought about going on eBay and picking up an original Macintosh, just so I could have one in my office? But I always talk myself out of it because I don’t really have the desk space for what amounts to a museum piece. Now, one enterprising hacker has the solution – a miniature Macintosh.

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Not only does this 1/3rd scale Macintosh look exactly like the original, it’s actually functional.

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While it doesn’t have the brains of an actual Mac, it uses a Raspberry Pi miniature PC, along with Macintosh emulator to replicate the experience of using an original Macintosh – only smaller.

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RetroMacCast host John Leake built this marvel of miniaturization by hand carving and bending PVC, and set the teensy Rasperry Pi circuit board, power supply and a 3.5″ LCD inside the case. Given the fact that John made the case by hand, it’s just that much more impressive.

Its display only runs at 320×200 resolution, less than the 512×342, 9″ screen found in the Macintosh 128K. Still, this mini Mac has an HDMI output for driving larger screens, as well as USB and Ethernet ports. Unlike the original Macintosh, this one boots off of an SD card, which should prove much faster and more reliable than 3.5″ diskettes.

Congrats on an amazing build, John! If you’d like to learn more about how he built his mini Mac, be sure to check out his blog. You need to start selling these now. I’d buy one in a heartbeat.

[via Mashable]

Electric Paint Pen Lets You Draw Your Own Circuits

As someone who doesn’t know a lot about building electronics, I love learning about products that manage to teach the basics of the field. Bare Conductive’s Paint Pen is one such product. It’s a liquid wire that you can use to make simple circuits or electronic prototypes.

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The ink also works as a solder or adhesive, meaning it can be used to repair circuit boards or attach parts to electronics. Adafruit Industries made a short video that provides a few applications of the pen:

You can buy the pen from ThinkGeek, Amazon, Adafruit Industries or from Bare Conductive itself. Price starts at $10 (USD). MIT also has a great article on conductive paint that also has links to instructions for making your own paint.

[via UniqueDaily]

The Tiny Universe of Lori Nix

Architects, designers, and engineers may create the world around us, but it takes an incredibly talented artist to fool a viewer into believing that they are looking at the real world, when they are actually looking at something that could fit inside a shoe box. Lori Nix creates tiny universes that could fit in a suitcase, showing that size really doesn’t matter when it comes to modern art.

DIY Skee Ball Machine: Great Balls of Fun

Skee Ball machines are a lot of fun. There is something just so satisfying in the act of rolling a ball and watching it bounce into a target. I played as much Skee Ball as I could when I was a kid. Everytime we went to an amusement park I spent the whole day playing. Good times.
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So it’s no wonder that I love this project from instructables user fungus amungus. He loves Skee Ball as much as I do, so he jumped at the chance to make a DIY version. He had some help from the folks at Because We Can who did the design and fabrication of the machine on a Shopbot CNC machine.

It is made almost completely out of plywood. The score board is triggered by a bunch of optical sensors and controlled by an Arduino. He set it up to score more like an arcade game rather than your typical Skee Ball game. The top score so far is 7,777. With that sort of score, you’d think he’d have enough tickets to get the biggest stuffed bear behind the counter.

Etsy reworks guidelines: sellers can now hire outside staff and manufacturers

DNP  Etsy reworks guidelines sellers can now hire outside staff and manufacturers

Etsy, the online marketplace for DIYers, just announced several changes to its seller policies, giving store owners significantly more control over how they run their businesses. Going forward, sellers will be able to hire as many employees as necessary, as well as use outside companies to deliver their products and outsource manufacturing to third parties (provided they receive Etsy’s approval).

Most notably, these changes allow for a wider definition of “handmade” — now, the idea for an item simply must originate with the seller. This means 3D-printed items can carry the prized handmade distinction, for instance. And this change isn’t just about semantics; previously, Etsy customers could assume items that didn’t look handmade were breaking the site’s rules and consequently steer clear.

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Via: All Things D

Source: Etsy News Blog, Etsy’s New Guidelines

3Doodler pens ship to Kickstarter backers

One of the coolest products ever to hit Kickstarter was the 3Doodler pen. This is a pen that uses a meltable plastic material to allow users to draw three-dimensional artwork in the air. This particular Kickstarter project obliterated its fundraising goal on Kickstarter in only hours. Ultimately, it went on to raise over $2 million […]

Watch a DIY Synthesizer Get Built From Scratch in this Absurd Timelapse

Building a synthesizer is a lot of work. It seems pretty safe to assume, but if you had any doubts, just watch this one come together from scratch like the behemoth of circuit boards it is.

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