It used to be quite difficult to make powerful electric motors - but now we live in an age where old computer part abound. One project that can be done using an old CD-Rom drive is making your own brushless electric motors. This is a very cool read even if only to learn how electric motors work. These little puppies are powerful too, providing enough power to fly a model airplane!
We’ve mentioned the TV-B-Gone before. Here is an cool new way to use it. By combining the power of the TV-B-Gone with the sniping powers of a pair of binoculars your can drastically improve your range of TV turning off abilities.
Using one lens of the binoculars for looking through and one lens for focusing the IR beam, you can easily turn off TV’s that would normally be out of range. Drive by people’s houses and snipe their televisions from your car, you’ll be encouraging them to get off the couch and do something useful - like read DIY:happy.
Being able to crimp network cables is the modern equivalent to having a fast draw. If you can crimp cables, by golly, come high noon you’ll have nothing to worry about. This guide shows the ins and outs of crimping your own cat5 cables but could really apply to any kind of RJ-type cable connector. Go buy yourself a box of network cable and some RJ-45 plugs and you’ll never find yourself with a too-short network cable again.
Crimping Cable.
No Media Kings has a great guide on silkscreening T-Shirts and Posters. Using a screen, a printed image, and an emultion solution you can inexpensively make your own screens that can be used many times. Start your own T-Shirt business or screen your name onto all your tighty-whities.
We would like you all to build this paper airplane (today during work hours, preferably) and confirm reports that it is the “World’s Greatest Airplane.” It has been dubbed the DC-3 of paper airplanes. Go ahead, build one, and aim directly for your boss’s left nostril.
So you have a mouse problem. You want to get rid of the mice, but you don’t want to find a gruesome scene where a mouse has wandered into one of your traps. Perhaps you want the mouse alive, so it can be interrogated or you want to be able to keep it as a pet.
Try out one of these humane mouse trap ideas. The idea is to basically lure the mouse into some kind of cage where the door closes behind them. You can then safely release the mouse into your workplace’s break room, where it belongs.
Here is a very cool medium format pinhole camera made from foam core board. Looks like a fun build that you can get some really neat results with.
I had an idea for a pinhole camera that used 120 medium format film and was panoramic in nature. I also wanted to get as many pictures on one roll as I could. This is the result. I used foam core as my rapid prototyping material.
MaxiPano Pinhole 120 and Flickr Set.
For all of you out there who always loved the Wack-A-Mole game at your local traveling carnival, and who are now addicted to DDR - here’s the perfect mash-up for you. If you don’t know what DDR is, move along - nothing to see here.
In DDR-A-Mole, each button on the dance pad corresponds to a small Wack-A-Whatever display. The little heads pop up, and you step on the corresponding button. Seems like it would be a lot easier to build a video game to do this, but whatever. The project uses a MPC823 micro-controller for the timing and clock. I especially like the pictures they used on the “moles” - great for a Wack-A-Bill Gates game. [via]
No Media Kings has a great article discussing the ins and outs of various self-publishing methods. The article includes a great little how to on how do bind your own hardcover books that is definitely worth checking out. Offset printing, Print on Demand Services, and DIY Perfect binding are also covered making this a great article for aspiring authors or for people who want to do small one time printing and/or binding.
Related: Also check out the Book Binding Flickr Pool, where you can find tons of pictures from peoples self binding projects.
Related: Here is a start to finish photo journal of stitch binding a comic book pointed out by MAKE.
What are you doing this weekend? … I guess that sounds cool, but you should try some of these ideas:
Cover your tracks while spreading mayhem with fake fingerprints.
Make some t-shirts or other art by silk screening it.
Let’s answer the question of the teenage ring tone once and for all… is this real or a bunch of crap.
Keep the bugs away at your weekend BBQ.
Give old bookshelves some new life.
Here at DIY:happy headquarters we have a fair amount of art on the walls that we’ve made and it’s always a great conversation starter and good way to liven up the walls a bit. So if you’re in need of some art and have some free time, this could be an interesting project to undertake. Artist Fred Eerdekens uses the shadows of seemingly random shapes to project a message onto the wall. Check out his picture gallery to see his art and get some ideas for your own creations. (via)
By coiling metal wire around a dowel, you can make a chain for a bracelet or a necklace. No soldering required! A tutorial on this project can be found here. There are also tutorials to many other easy jewelry projects involving wire.
The jury is still out on this one, so you gotta take it with a grain of salt. Apparently this mosquito noise is finely tuned to only be audible to ears of the younger generation. It is used as a teenage deterrent in some shops because it is annoying and doesn’t bother the older, paying generation because they can’t hear it.
So using this sound, you can either annoy the crap out of kids OR make a ringtone for your phone that only you and other youngin’ types can hear. There is some question as to whether a phone’s speaker can actually reproduce the ~18Khz tone or not, but it’s worth a try.
Personally, I’m 25 and hear nothing but some kids chattering in the background, but let us know your age and what you hear in the comments.
The sound that repels troublemakers.
Direct MP3 link of the sound in question.
Edit: I can hear the sound on my computer speakers at work, I guess my Macbook Pro just can’t reproduce the sound.
Speaking of Macbook Pros, I guess this explains why they emit high pitched sounds and Apple won’t fix it - they’re a bunch of old farts who can’t hear it!
We’ve already posted ‘how to solder‘ so now you’re ready to try something a little more difficult. Here’s how to hand solder teeny tiny chips. This definitely takes a steady hand, so make sure you don’t drink too much caffeine and don’t have the hunger shakes when you try this one. (via)
This is an interesting idea that you could use to convey your message but instead of traditional graffiti or light graffiti this is a kind of noise graffiti.
This kinda reminds me of how the US military blasted music to get Manuel Noriega to surrender in Panama back in ‘89.(via)
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