Relative Measurements

Relative Measurements
Making good guesses using what's at hand (including your hand)
Donald Haas | Make Vol. 16- 2008 | Pdf | 1 pgs | .3 mb

Having the right tool for the job is important, but
sometimes you have to work with what's available.
Relative measurements can be just as accurate as
standard measurements. Memorize the dimensions
of a few common items that you usually have with
you or readily available, and you're set.

I know that with my arms stretched out to the
sides, my fingertips are 6' apart; great for measuring
rope or a rough estimate of a room size. A dollar bill
is 6 1/8" x 2 1/8", a credit/debit/gift card is 3.370"
x 2 1/8", a business card is 3 1/2" x 2", a quarter
has a 0.955" diameter. Most floortiles are 12" x 12"
while ceiling tiles are 2' x 4'. Remember.
it's all relative.
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USB Motion Detector

USB Motion Detector
Turn your PC into an ambush multimedia
Ken Delahoussaye | Make Vol. 16- 2008 | Pdf | 3 pgs | 1 mb

Gone are the days when people's interest could
be held by simple radio or television. Today we're
bombarded with information and we crave interac-
tive experiences that don't waste a single second
of our time. Advertisers recognize the difficulty of
presenting messages that cut through the clutter,
and they've come up with creative ways to capture
our attention.

One example: the multimedia kiosk, now common
in shopping malls, movie theaters, and airports.
Complete with an internal computer, sound card,
and video graphics monitor, these dazzle stations
can be a powerful advertising tool --- especially
when they have motion detection circuitry that
triggers a video presentation at the precise moment
an unsuspecting patron comes near.

This article explains how to construct a USB
motion detector that will give your computer this
hey-you ability, using a free Windows presentation
applet I wrote, USB Multimedia Presenter, so that you
can start your own kiosk advertising campaign. You
can also use the setup for practical jokes, or just to
amaze or amuse your friends.
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Hacking The Glade Wisp

Hacking The Glade Wisp
Make your own scent output peripheral from a piezo air freshner
Wayne Holder | Make Vol. 16- 2008 | Pdf | 4 pgs | 1 mb

Not long ago, my 11-year-old daughter Belle wanted
to create a gadget that would amuse her dog Panda
by dispensing different scents for him to sniff. I had
no idea how to control the dispensing of fragrances,
so we took a trip to the local pharmacy and checked
out the electric air fresheners.

Most of them diffused fragrances with heat or fans,
but one, the Glade Wisp, claimed to use a microchip
to "automatically puff" scented oils into the air.
Intrigued, I bought one to see what made it tick.

The Glade Wisp runs off a single AA battery, which
powers a vibrating piezoelectric disc that atomizes
and disperses aromatic oil in short, smoke-like puffs.
The Wisp turns out to be easy to hack --- for less than
$10 you can make a computer-controlled aromatic
atomizer for all sorts of practical and artistic projects.

Here's how I modified a Wisp to be controlled by an
Arduino board running just a few lines of code.
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The Disembodied Voice of Judy Garland Speaks!

The Disembodied Voice of Judy Garland Speaks!
How to make a Ghost Phone
Greg MacLaurin | Make Vol. 16- 2008 | Pdf | 3 pgs | 1 mb

Currently, I'm obsessed with analog telephones.
I don't know why. My last obsession was with the
severed hands of mummies, but let's not get into
that. Today it's phones. And these Ghost Phones are
fun. The idea is simple: hide an MP3 player and its
headphone inside an old analog telephone, and you
can listen to someone talking to you!

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Chumby Phone

Chumby Phone
Daniel Gentleman | Make Vol. 16- 2008 | Pdf | 4 pgs | 2 mb

There's no simple explanation of the Chumby. It's an
alarm clock on steroids, a digital photo album, a tiny
Linux box, an internet radio player, and more. Owners
can set up a queue of personalized software widgets
through which the Chu mby continually cycles. These
widgets, made interactive through the Chumby's
touchscreen and motion sensors, include news,
weather, email notifications. Flickr feeds, Facebook
friend status, and even Netflix queue status.

Above all, Chumby's open design welcomes
hacking and crafting. The creators of Chumby
offer not only their entire base of source code,
but the schematics to their hardware as well, at
chumby.com/developers/hardware (login required).
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Paulownia Archery Bows

Paulownia Archery Bows
Dan Albert | Make Vol. 16- 2008 | Pdf | 3 pgs | 2 mb

When we took possession of our humble London
home, I was shocked to find that all the window
treatments had been removed. So we suffered
the rat-in-a-maze Ikea gantlet to get a good price
on new Venetian blinds. I hung the new blinds
immediately but it took me months to get around
to tailoring them by removing the extra slats.
As soon as I did, I realized that I had a maker's
trifecta win in my hands: easily worked hardwood,
prefinished and free.

First I built a new box for our kitchen plastic wrap,
then my daughter wanted some doll furniture. Next
was a laminated beam to repair our baby stroller,
and a few slats to serve as drawer dividers for the
clothes dresser I'd built ages ago but never quite
finished. But the piece de resistance was a set of
archery bows that I whipped up to the delight of the
neighborhood kids.
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