All posts by Lenore Edman
Linkdump: February 2019
- The art of transcribing old documents
- 3D Print your own Digi-Comp II
- WRL Technical Note TN-13, April 1, 1989: Characterization of Organic Illumination Systems (139 KB PDF)
- Examples of legal and illegal LEGO assemblies with explanations of why: Stressing The Elements (1 MB PDF)
- Ken Shirriff on Reverse-engineering a hybrid op amp module
- How to make a Super-Hydrophobic Labyrinth Game (YouTube)
- maker.js: A library for creating and sharing modular line drawings for CNC and laser cutters.
- Plotter People #2 is happening on March 13 in San Francisco
- 3D print your own traditional Marble Clock
- A crimp connector compendium (via hackaday)
Linkdump: January 2019
- Chirping bird sculpture made from electronic components (one of many entries in the Hackaday Circuit Sculpture contest which recently ended)
- Glow-in-the-Dark Plotter Clock
- Fast HSV to RGB Conversion for small CPUs
- The Maraschino Mogul’s Secret Life
- Dissection fonts: Typefaces made of pieces that can be assembled into a square, from Erik Demaine Puzzle Font page
- It’s Time to Rethink Who’s Best Suited for Space Travel
- 3D printed Wire Spool Holder With Straightener
- Finding an earth rock on the moon
- Inside the Apollo Guidance Computer’s core memory from Ken Shirriff
AxiDraw on MythBusters Jr
I’m super excited to see the new MythBusters Jr episode tonight, because I’m in it with the AxiDraw!
In their quest to see if a single pencil can write 45,000 words, @valerie_mbj, @NotABombBunkE and @braintwist2112 turn to @1lenore's AMAZING #AxiDraw. But can it substitute for a human? Well … hmm. Don't miss an all-new #MythBustersJr TONIGHT at 8p on @ScienceChannel. pic.twitter.com/YDkOJzF78r
— MythBusters (@MythBusters) January 23, 2019
I had a fun time working with Valerie, Rachel, and Elijah, as well as the great crew.
Plotter People Talk
Yesterday I gave a talk at the inaugural Plotter People meetup titled Plotter Projects from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. My slides were a series of pictures from our projects, so rather than publish the presentation itself, I’m publishing a list of links to all of the projects I talked about.
The first part of the talk was introductory information about Evil Mad Scientist with some example projects from our blog and our early kits.
- Interactive LED Dining Table
- Interactive LED Coffee Tables: Update and kits!
- Larson Scanner
- Fractal Snowflake Cupcakes
- Bristlebot: A tiny directional vibrobot
- Asteroids (the edible kind)
- Circuitry Snacks
The main part of the talk delved into all of our plotter related projects, including hacking plotters, things we’ve made from plotters, software we’ve made for use with plotters, and plotters we’ve made.
- An AVR-based Analog Plotbot with an E-Paper Display
- Solid freeform fabrication: DIY, on the cheap, and made of pure sugar
- Finally, CNC toast!
- The CandyFab 6000
- The Egg-Bot Kit
- Ostrich Eggbot
- The MarshMallowMatic
- Introducing the EggBot Pro
- A Diamond Engraving Tool for Eggbot
- The Egg-Bot Electro-Kistka
- STEM at the White House Easter Egg Roll
- Vector Snowflake Application
- SymmetriSketch: A simple app for playing with symmetry
- Operation: CNC Snowflake
- CNC halftones with ASCII art
- Hershey Text: An Inkscape extension for engraving fonts
- StippleGen 2
- Introducing The WaterColorBot
- White House Science Fair Roundup
- Introducing WaterColorBot 2.0
- Introducing the AxiDraw
- Introducing the AxiDraw V3
- AxiDraw V3 XLX
- AxiDraw V3/A3
- The AxiDraw SE/A3
- AxiDraw Accessories
- AxiDraw CLI (beta)
- AxiDraw Python API (beta)
Many thanks to Plotter People for inviting me to speak!
Linkdump: December 2018
- Pillows based on ant faces. Backstory here.
- The Titanic was on fire, before the iceberg.
- Forever Pizza: Real pizza, encased in acrylic (via Laughing Squid)
- Turn your cell phone into an Etch A Sketch with 3D printing
- On the design of the nacelle struts in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (via io9)
- How to Deal with Difficult People on Software Projects
- How restaurants got so loud
- Giant New Salamander Species Discovered in Florida and Alabama
- A map of locations from which you can see the sun set right in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge
- 3D printed 7-segment clock
- The Best Laid Tracks: Stories of San Francisco’s ghost stations
- Spotify player for the Mac SE/30
- Miniature Japanese Furniture for Cats
- Millitext: Subpixel encoding and a one-pixel-wide font
- A controlled medical study on the effectiveness of parachutes in preventing injury
- A Primer on Bézier Curves
- A collection of mechanical Keyswitch datasheets from keyboard.io
- Recovering Nintendo’s Lost SimCity for the NES
- The best fossilized mummified dinosaur ever (there’s also one named after Zuul)
Plotter People Meetup
There’s a new get-together just for plotter people!
Plotter People is a meetup for creative coders and people interested in collaborating with robots to make art. You’ll get to talk to folks who make generative art in a wide variety of programming languages and software environments, and you’ll get access to pen plotters and the people who make them.
The inaugural Plotter People meetup will be hosted at Github in San Francisco on Monday, January 14 at 6:30 pm. There will be two speakers, including Sher Minn, who will be talking about Recreating Retro Plotter Art, and me, Lenore Edman. I’m excited to have been invited to speak and I’ll be talking about the Plotter Projects of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, from the Analog Plotbot pictured above to the AxiDraw. There will also be time to mingle, talk, eat, and even play with plotters.
The event is free, but please head over to the invite page to RSVP!Stroboscopic Ornaments
Jiří Zemánek, whose EggBot work we have featured before, sent in this wonderful video of stroboscopically animated Christmas ornaments.
The stroboscopic patterns are designed in MATLAB and drawn by EggBot Pro on colored glass Christmas ornaments. Motion of the balls is controlled by custom mechanism built using components from two Prusa i3 MK3 3D printers, like six stepper motors and two Rambo boards. On top of designing the patterns, which is Jiri’s hobby (when he is not busy with research) and building the whole contraption in a very short time, the team had to deal with issues including non-spherical ornaments, or how to use Rambo board to precisely control the velocity profiles.
We love to see how people make things, and Jiri did not disappoint, sharing process photos of making the rotation mechanisms.
With great help from his colleagues Martin, Krištof, and Filip they took Christmas ornaments to the next level and taught them to dance!
The final setup shot captures how they created such a beautiful video.
Merry Christmas to Jiri and the Advanced Algorithms for Control and Communications group! Thank you for sharing your project!
Ultraviolet Hanukiah
For Hanukkah this year, Ol Rappaport modified one of our Deluxe LED Menorah kits into a custom fluorescent acrylic body, substituted UV LEDs and used a USB power supply.
Maker Gift Basket
Gareth Branwyn posted an article on creating a gift basket for makers. It is full of awesome tools, including one of our favorites, the resistor lead forming tool.
He’s also having a give-away for his example basket!
To be eligible, all you have to do is post an entry, on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, mentioning my book, this article, and/or the idea of a tool gift bag, and include this link and hashtag: https://amzn.to/2DPaXAd #tipsandtalesfromtheworkshop. The only things you have to include are the link and the hashtag. You can post as many times as you like. On Dec 12th, I’ll do a random drawing from the hash-tagged entries and send out your gift basket.
Note: This drawing is only available to those residing in the United States.
