Eric over at Low Voltage Labs has posted up his design for a simple PCB ideal for putting an LED into a pumpkin. This is very much like our simple LED pumpkin project but in a neat, reusable format. And it makes a mighty cute little jack-o-lantern all on its own.

He has made it available as a kit with PCB, switch, resistor, battery holder and the same candle flicker LEDs which we love so much. Unfortunately, the kit is currently sold out. Hopefully he’ll make more, if not in time for this Halloween, then at least for next year.

For Lady Ada Lovelace Day, we would like to celebrate an area of success for women in science and technology: the open source hardware community. This vibrant community has many strong women it holds up as role models. The newly formed Open Source Hardware Association is well represented with board members Alicia Gibb (president), Danese Cooper, Catarina Mota, and Wendy Seltzer. In addition, the Open Hardware Summit has been organized by women from the start: Alicia Gibb and Ayah Bdeir in 2010 and 2011, followed by Catarina Mota and Dustyn Roberts this year.

The 2012 lineup of speakers included women from all over the world and from an amazing variety of disciplines, including Leah Buechley, Ayah Bdeir, Shannon Doesmagen and Liz Barry, Katherine Moriwaki, Louisa Campbell, Liza Stark, Sylvia Todd, Erin Kennedy, Myriam Ayass, Amanda Wozniak, Meg Pirrung, Valérie Lamontagne, and Hannah Perner-Wilson.

In addition to the speakers, there were even more women presenting posters and demos, including Amelia Marzec, Cindy Harnett, Gabrialla Levine, Jennifer Jacobs, Joanna Cheung, Tesia Kosmalski, Analisa Russo and Jennifer Lewis, Margarita Benitez, Maki Komuro, and Sophi Kravitz.

All of these presenters build on the past two years of excellent content at the summit, and we look forward to the inspiring speakers of years to come.

Photo of OSHWA board members Windell Oskay, Nathan Seidle, Wendy Seltzer, Alicia Gibb and Catarina Mota at the 2012 Open Hardware Summit by Jacob Gibb.

Logan wrote in to let us know how he is using our Art Controllers for his aquaponics project:

Thanks for sharing your project and pictures, Logan!

Over at rasterweb, Pete has been playing with StippleGen2 to create artwork with the laser engraver at the Milwaukee Makerspace.

StippleGen’s output consists of lots of tiny overlapping circles and this piece was made by using vector engraving, where the laser traces out each circle individually. In some places, the lasered marks overlap many times, leading to a new and unusual surface texture. In the closeup above you can see the ridges and valleys formed by the overlapped engraved areas. Go check out his article for the rest of the story about the project!

After reading our post on Improving open source hardware: Visual diffs, Wil wrote in to to tell us about Cube Hero:

I have a demo up of visual diffs for 3D printable models. Here you can see a specific model, and … you can see diffs as I changed the model.

We’re excited to see new tools for collaboration like this being developed. Besides visual diffs, the project aims to provide visual versioning, 3D object sharing, and bill of materials integration. Cube Hero is looking for interested possible users, so go check it out–they’re accepting signups for updates and launch invitations.

Our friend Limor Fried of Adafruit Industries is a finalist in Entrepreneur Magazine’s Entrepreneur of 2012 contest. Head on over and vote! (Yes, we’re sorry–facebook login required.)

Update: As our commenters have pointed out, now you can also vote by texting 170116 to 22333!

Adrian Secord, who wrote the stippling algorithm used in our own StippleGen program, has now published a brand new iPhone app, SnapDot, that can instantly turn your pictures into stipple drawings, including colored stipple drawings.  That is pretty neat indeed.

Whoa! What the heck is that?

It turns out that it’s a flying testbed for new gear-driven turbofan jet engines being developed by Pratt & Whitney. While much can be done on fixed test stands, this lets them test the engines on a real aircraft at high altitude and under a wide variety of environmental conditions.

The little engine under test above— destined for smaller regional jets —is mounted to a “stub wing” on a specially-modified Boeing 747SP.  That’s the same short-body model of 747 that NASA adapted for the SOFIA aircraft-based telescope.  This particular aircraft is a full-time testbed at Pratt & Whitney; its main engines are larger versions of the little one under test.

These new gear-driven engines are interesting on their own; a gearbox between the main fan and the turbine allows each side to run at a more optimal speed, and promises a significant increase in overall efficiency.

Link: Test Flights Start for Titanium-Blade Engine @ Design News.
For more photos, take a look here: PurePower Engine photos

Thanks to Erin “RobotGrrl” Kennedy for being our Artist in Residence this spring! She has headed back to Canada after Maker Faire.

Erin has just written what is perhaps the only “behind the scenes” blog post about life here at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, which you can read over on her RobotGrrl blog.

Erin has also written blog posts here on getting started with AVR microcontrollers, and about unboxing an old Heathkit. She’ll be posting part two of the Heathkit build here in the near future.