Table of contents for Vol 89 - Summer 2024 in Make:

What retro tech do you not want to see make a comeback? Catherine Graffam Portland, Maine (Game Boy Camera Renaissance) It might be a hot take, but I'd love if LCD games were left in the past. Pablo Garcia Oak Park, Illinois (DIY Camera Lucida) All technology deserves study, but dangerous ones should become and stay obsolete: CFCs, the electric chair, and the atomic bomb, to name a few. Sam Freeman Santa Rosa, California (Photo Roboto) Automatic seatbelts. Never met anyone who wanted, liked, or bothered with fixing ‘em.…

Amazing builds from around the globe Know a project that would be perfect for Made on Earth? Let us know: editor@makezine.com PORTABLE MOSAIC MACHINE NIKLASROY.COM/MM From the very beginning of his career as an artist, Niklas Roy's focus has been on creating interactive and participatory pieces through technology, and the massive community art project he calls Maschinenmosaik may be his most collaborative work yet. He originally submitted the concept as part of an art competition to clean up the graffiti surrounding Anton-Saefkow-Platz, a square in the Lichtenberg borough of Berlin. Roy's idea was to make a mobile arcade machine capable of designing small pixel-art patterns, to give local residents the opportunity to create the square's new mosaic decorations, one spray-painted tile at a time. His proposal won the competition, and…

RETRO ZONE: Old Tech, New Thrill The appeal of looking back to our technological past is undeniable. The tech we use every day does not exist in a vacuum – it was not created spontaneously but rather built upon layers of prior generations of knowledge, ideas, and hopes. It's not surprising then that communities exist which celebrate and explore almost every aspect of technology's complex past. For me, technology has been a lifelong fascination, from the moment my dad brought home a BBC Micro Model B microcomputer for me to play with one weekend. We ended up buying a BBC Master 128, the Micro's successor, when my dad saw how much I loved the Beeb, and by age 6, I was off and running, creating my own worlds in BASIC.…

As a high school senior, I used to be under the impression that vinyl was an outdated medium for audio. But a few years ago I discovered that it was actually quite an amazing format. Almost extinct for new music for 45 years, vinyl has made an enormous comeback as of late. In 2020, more vinyl records than CDs were sold for the first time since the 1980s. And it's not simply for the sound either; surveys suggest that over 25 percent of vinyl purchasers do not own a turntable. People want to hold and feel albums, read liner notes, collect, and listen to them. Creating records has become its own art form. I got into collecting and listening to vinyl records first. I like to listen, but I also…

PROJECTS: LoRa GPS Cat Tracker Recon Log 4269L: The mice are organizing. I believe they have formed an alliance with the crows and other flying vermin to take down the cell towers. Fortunately, the hairballs back at HQ set up a backup communications network to track my reconnaissance missions. I don't need those nannies looking over my shoulder when I'm out in the field, but I do like to show off how deep into enemy territory I patrol. The hairballs say the recon teams from other sectors complain about my off-the-books operations on their turf. As if I care. It's probably that traitorous tabby in Sector 6. I see that useless carpet dweller inside his bunker while I'm out keeping the world safe. Let them all track my work on their…

PROJECTS: Electronics Fun & Fundamentals One thing I learned from Don Lancaster's many writings is that you can use a 555 timer for almost anything. Another thing I learned is that the original version of this very old chip is difficult to damage, even if you do weird things to it. Many years ago, when my understanding of the 555 was still rudimentary, I wanted to make it generate the kind of groaning noise you hear from an audience when someone on a TV game show gives a wrong answer. I planned to mock my friends if we were playing a board game and one of them made a fatal error. Press the button, and — “Ohhhhh!” I guessed that if I used a large capacitor to siphon current away…

A FOND FAREWELL Longtime Make: Senior Editor Caleb Kraft is moving on to bigger and better things, so we thought we'd send him off with his own personalized Make: cover. In his sign-off post Caleb wrote: “I still truly believe that the act of making, no matter how trivial, poorly skilled, unplanned, or rudimentary, is one of the most wonderous things you can do.” Read the rest at makezine.com/go/keep-making-things and follow him on Twitter @calebkraft to keep up with new builds, farm animal shenanigans, and more. Thanks for everything, Caleb! HAPTIC VR GLOVES Kristine Nelson wrote in to let us know that her son Matt, 12, has spent the last few months getting his version of the “Budget VR Haptic Gloves” from Make: Volume 78 up and running and we're…

FEATURES: School Makerspaces MAKING MAKERS Makerspaces bridge the gap between abstract knowledge and the practical skills to build things that help our world function. Running a makerspace can be challenging and expensive, but schools that do so often see rewards in increased student engagement, collaboration, and enthusiasm for problem solving. To learn more about how K–12 schools incorporate making in the classroom, I interviewed three teachers who run parochial school-based makerspaces: • REYCE KRAUSE: Ma'ayanot Yeshiva High School for Girls, a Modern Orthodox school in Teaneck, New Jersey. • DORI FRIEDMAN: St. Matthew's Parish School, a co-ed Episcopal middle school in Pacific Palisades, California. • BARB NOREN: Pressman Academy, a Conservative Judaism elementary school in Los Angeles, California. Each took an unconventional and idiosyncratic path to acquire their skills, but…

Everything old is new again. It's not every day you see an entirely new community spring up around a retro PC almost overnight, but that is exactly what happened with the NABU (Natural Access to Bi-directional Utilities) PC. The NABU is unique and interesting because instead of loading its software from cartridges, tapes, or even floppies, it used an external adapter to download the software over a cable TV connection and then transfer it onto the computer via RS-422. Little more than a year ago, the NABU was a relatively unknown Canadian Z80-based computer from the 1980s. Its rebirth started in late November of 2022 when well-known retro computer YouTuber Adrian Black made a video about the system and mentioned that there was a large collection of them being sold…

Have you ever tried to draw what's in front of you in real life, but struggled to capture it? There's a secret gadget that's long been used by artists to draw from life. It's called the camera lucida and you can build one in an afternoon. The camera lucida is an optical drawing aid that lets you trace what you see. This simple device uses a beam-splitting prism on a telescoping arm clamped to your drawing board. When you look down into the prism, you see a ghost image of the world in front of you floating over your paper. You can also see your hand, so you are able to trace directly from real life (Figure A). For amateurs and beginners, this device offers a less frustrating way to…

PET TOYS 1 Double Pendulum Cat Toy Simple rig creates chaotic mousie motion. makezine.com/projects/string-up-simple-chaotic-double-pendulum-cat-toy 2 Nvidia Jetson Cat Laser Teaser AI recognizes cats, torments them with laser. makezine.com/projects/jetson-tx1-cat-spotterlaser-teaser 3 Fetch-O-Matic Ball Launcher Spinner hurls ball, dog returns to hopper, repeat! makezine.com/projects/fetch-o-matic 4 Kitty Twitty Cat Toy Tweets fierce predator action when you're away. makezine.com/projects/kitty-twitty-cat-toy FEEDERS & WATERERS 5 Cat Scratch Feeder Spring-loaded scratching post releases treats. makezine.com/projects/cat-scratch-feeder 6 VCR Cat Feeder The hacked classic from Make:‘s first year. makezine.com/projects/vcr-cat-feeder 7 Self-Filling Water Bowl Easy setup replenishes H2O for days. makezine.com/projects/self-filling-water-bowl-2 PET ACCOUTREMENTS 8 Tweed Dog Coat Sew a style fit for field, stream, or sidewalk. makezine.com/projects/country-gent-tweed-coat 9 DIY Dog Collar Punch and rivet a great beginner project in leatherworking. makezine.com/projects/diy-dog-collar 10 Dog Collar LEDs Bright lights for night walks or…

There's something undeniably charming about old cameras, and there's something undeniably fun about photo booths. This build brings both together in a blend of low-fi prints, vintage hardware, and modern circuitry. A Raspberry Pi camera inside an old TLR (twin lens reflex) camera takes a user's photo and prints it instantly on receipt paper. Your guests will be able to snap a selfie and keep a thermally printed souvenir. I built the original bot for my wedding, but today we're making an improved version that debuted at Maker Faire Bay Area 2023. FINDING A CAMERA I've tested a Graflex 22 (Figure A) and an Argoflex. Whatever you use, you'll want to make sure there's room for a Pi camera module and a path for the ribbon cable. Since the Pi…

This column marks 15 years of writing about science for Make:. Those columns have covered many kinds of DIY projects plus some history and adventures, and many of them are available online at makezine.com and in Make: Forrest Mims’ Science Experiments (Maker Media, 2016, makershed.com/products/forrest-mims-science-experiments). The columns have ranged from fun projects to serious science, including two columns on how to measure the altitude of smoke, dust, and other stuff in the air using a DIY twilight photometer (“Build a Twilight Photometer to Detect Strato-spheric Particles,” Make: Volume 44, March 10, 2015). That project led to serious atmospheric science and an ongoing NASA assignment to measure the height of atmospheric particles from the historic eruption of the giant Hunga Tonga volcano from under the South Pacific Ocean on January 15,…

1 This vintage design has tiny white balls for you to tip into position as teeth while the captive eyeballs wiggle in place. 2 Roll the “Golden Rods” into place, matching each length in order from shortest to longest. 3 “The Cog Wheel Puzzle” has an eyeleted center wheel. Roll the balls one by one into the spinning cog wheel. 4 “Alice in Puzzleland” asks: Can you roll the balls down the path and set the table while avoiding the hazards? 5 Help Geoffrey Giraffe blow some bubbles in this vintage Toys-R-Us birthday party favor. 6 “Squiggles” is a 1959 maze game from an earlier and less safety-conscious era. Instead of a rolling ball, it contains a hazardous blob of squiggly, liquid mercury!…

“WHAT IS CHIPTUNE?” • Cool documentary about the chip scene: reformattheplanet.vhx.tv • Inverse Phase's talk on chiptune history: youtu.be/_TBOQXCVcp4 • Academic article on chiptune history: journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/96/94 NIKOLA WHALLON is a chiptune and VGM musician, ex-physicist, Al engineer, and amateur game dev. He loves exploring the intersection of creativity and technology both old and new! The Game Boy modding scene has seen decades of development, and continues to evolve even as we celebrate the 35th anniversary of the original Game Boy release in 1989. While many certainly do cherish using modded or unmodded Game Boys to enjoy a vast library of classic games, the scene has been fueled largely by a different use: music-makers utilizing the Game Boy's audio chip to create chiptune music. “What is chiptune?” The question itself has…

OPENSX70 This open source, community project led by Joaquín de Prada in Barcelona is reverseengineering the classic Polaroid SX-70 self-developing Land camera to replace its ancient PCB with Arduinobased hardware and software. The goal? Total manual control of shutter speed, double exposures, flash operation, timer, and more. Join in at opensx70.com. OKTO35 3D-PRINTED MOVIE CAMERA Movie film has become rare and expensive, so this brilliant bit of engineering shoots four Super 8 tracks on a roll of affordable 35mm film. It also takes stills and timelapses, and can even scan old film to digital. Slovenian maker Blaž Semprimožnik is working on a MK3 version; follow along with his amazing builds at blazsemprimoznik.com/okto35. Joshua Bird (“Wigglegram Lens,” Make: Volume 79) aimed for the same goal with his own “absurd and impractical”…

In 2020, I launched a small laser-cut product business with a run of 150 diorama kits that I designed, cut, soldered, and packaged myself. I was confident in my artistic chops at the time, but had never manufactured anything at scale before — and it showed. Three years and several hundred kits later, I'm still finding better tools and ways to optimize my workflow. Among those tools is LightBurn, a layout and control software for laser cutters with some powerful features to help streamline designs for production work. These are my top tips for getting the most out of your projects with LightBurn! 1. DESIGN WITH A “PRODUCTION MINDSET” Whether you plan to make one or one hundred of something, consider the manufacturing process as you approach your design —…