Is it Useless? It's a Machine After All

Can you design a machine that turns itself off?

When you turn on the switch to the machine pictured here, an arm reaches out of the box and turns it off.

Since the 1950s, engineers have tried out design ideas on "Useless Machines."

This article--and the embedded video--provide an interesting look at Useless Machines.

Maker Projects: 1/22 Photogates, Arduino Buggies,Stained Glass

Lots of things happening/available!

We have plenty of glass available if you've never scored and broken glass.

Maker Project: 1/17 Light Source for Physics Photogates

Honors physics has designed and assembled photo-resistor photogates using:

• AAA battery + holder
• 2200ohm resistor
• photoresistor (various)
• 1/8 stereo audio jack
• intercom wire
• Wal-mart travel hygiene bottle (fits nicely into a test tube clamp and cleans things up)

Each group was left to design their own containment vessel and configuration from the bottle. Here's a nice looking setup from Allison, Michelle, and present SCMaker member Nick.

Output from the circuit is recorded using Audacity on the dell 600D laptops running Ubuntu.

The light sources for these require 3 AAA batteries and are quite bulky.

During the meeting time, we will work on adapting a USB mouse circuit to power the LED flashlight. 

TED Talk: Massimo Banzi, the inventor of the Arduino, explains its uses.

I've got to say, the chair that tweets whenever someone farts, is brilliant! I can't wait to see what students at SCHS come up with, once we've got this stuff figured out.

Ultra Thin Silent Cooler

I just found this cooler. It is for next generation laptops and tablets, but I think that if anyone is looking into computers or tech that requires a fan or some sort of cooler, they may want to look into this.


http://www.extremetech.com/computing/143102-ge-develops-ultra-thin-almost-silent-cooler-for-next-gen-laptops-and-tablets

Makerspace Session: 12/11

Howto:  Capacitive Touch Sensors:

If you've got a pencil and paper, you've got a button.

We're going to need Arduinos, so if you have check one out, bring it to the meeting. Also, if you have any LEDs to share with the group, you can bring those too. Otherwise, we can always test over the serial monitor.




Note: Mr. Dittes will be picking up ~15 laptops today that were donated to the SCMakers. So no need to bring your own. We might ask for some help getting Linux onto those laptops.

The Arduino Cloud

I saw this online and just had to pass it along.

This thundercloud contains lights and speakers, all controlled by an Arduino processor.  It's an amazing work of art, absolutely amazing.

If you're interested in building something like this--or learning more about the project, Core77 has video and a link to the code that created it.