Category Archives: EMSL Projects

DIY Fever: Heading to Maker Faire

It’s a busy week at the labs here. We’re getting ready for Maker Faire this weekend in San Mateo, CA– the biggest, baddest, and most awesomest DIY festival of the year.

We’ll be showcasing an updated version of our mechanical Pong game. We’ve added a curved playing field, new user-friendly knobs, and a host of other improvements that we’ll plan to write about at a later date. We hope you’ll come by and try it out–we’ll be on the west side of the Expo hall.

Tabletop Pong - 92
Some of the other projects that we’ve taken to Maker Faire in the last few years include our Interactive LED Dining Table, CandyFab, Bristlebots, Interactive LED Coffee Table, Peggy 2, and Meggy Jr RGB.

We’re also participating in the Open Source Hardware Panel, on Saturday at 1 pm at the Innovation Stage at the south end of the Expo Hall.

Eggbot kit - preview 1

We’ll have much more to say about this later, but we’re thrilled to announce our new collaboration with Bruce Shapiro, Ben Trombley, and Brian Schmalz. While we’re demonstrating the Tabletop-Pong game, Bruce and friends will be giving a sneak peek at the results of our collaboration: a fantastic new version of the Eggbot kit, which we are preparing for release as an open source kit sometime this summer.

Eggbot kit - preview 2

You can sign up here for more info about the kit, and you can try out the Eggbots– or just see them in action –in the center of the Expo Hall.

Lastly, to help get everyone else in the DIY mood, we’re having a DIY Fever sale over at the store, with 20% off of Evil Mad Science open-source kit favorites such as the Larson Scanner, Meggy Jr RGB and the Bulbdial Clock, and 10% off of everything else!

Happy hacking, and we’ll hope to see you all at the Faire!

How to Kick Ass and Take Names in the Spice Aisle

Spice 7

There are a few standard ways to acquire spices. The usual involves buying a new spice now or then when you need it for some new recipe. Or perhaps acquiring a “set of spices” with a built in organizer system. These obviously work, but are prone to being expensive, disorganized, or subject to artificial limits. Obviously, a more optimal solution exists. We set out to create a better, backwards compatible, scalable spice organization system so that you don’t feel silly adding another 20 or 30 or 40 items to your palette.

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Start seeing magnetic fields

Magnetic Fields - 15   Magnetic Fields - 30Magnetic Fields - 02   spin

Magnetic fields are everywhere– you just can’t see them*.

Here we introduce some basic and inexpensive visual tools, as varied as iron filings and Arduino, pre-school toys and OpenGL, for getting to know your local fields. It’s not exhaustive, but might provide you with some useful starting points for your own exploration.

(*Unless you count the magnetic field inside those photonsthat you use to see things.)

Continue reading Start seeing magnetic fields

One of many lemon pickles

Lemon Pickle

Indian style preserved lemons, commonly referred to just as “lemon pickle,” come in probably not hundreds, but thousands of varieties. Here’s how to make just one of these amazing creations: Gujarati Lemon Pickle.

Sweet, salty and easy to make, it takes a few spices, a few minutes and about a month.

Continue reading One of many lemon pickles

Revenge of the Cherry Tomatoes

Revenge!

Revenge of the Cherry Tomatoes is a new game for the Meggy Jr RGB, our open-source 64-pixel video game kit.

“Revenge” is a written-from-scratch sequel to Attack of the Cherry Tomatoes, the built-in game on Meggy Jr. It was written by Chris Brookfield, who discusses the game and shows off its features in our video:

Revenge is available as one of the example programs in version 1.4 of the Meggy Jr RGB library for the Arduino development environment. You can download it at the Google code site for Meggy Jr.

A lap stand for your iPad

ipad 2

Sure, that iPad’s fun. But doesn’t your arm get tired propping up one and a half pounds after an hour or two?

Yes, one thing that the iPad is definitely missing is angle. A laptop has an adjustable screen, and you can just set it on your lap for couchborne surfing. Just set the iPad on your lap and… well… it’s sits there taunting you, pointing at the ceiling.

You can try sitting cross-legged like Steve Jobs, angle your knees with the help of the coffee table, or give up and shell out for a tabletop dock.

No, it’s not the end of the world. But shouldn’t fun new toys just be… fun?

So here is our solution: a DIY adjustable-angle iPad stand for your lap. Inexpensive, cozy, and light. Designed for both portrait and landscape use, and ready to fold up for transport and storage. With a stand, you can use your ‘Pad with zero, one, or two hands, and sit how you darn well please.

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Streaming data from Flash to Peggy

Wicked Cool Flash to Peggy (Arduino) Demo from Leonard Souza on Vimeo.

Leonard Souza wrote in with a pretty neat demo that he put together, generating video in flash and streaming it to a Peggy 2.

His demo video is embedded above, and the direct Vimeo link is here. If you’re not into programming, note that the animations start at about 1:00 into the video.



Leonard has written much more about this project at his site, so take a look if you’d like to see how he put this together or download the source code. Nice!