DIY

Engineer crafts induction-powered LED ring for love

Engineer Ben Kokes is a lot of things. He's an outdoor enthusiast. He's a Bronco mechanic. He's a tinkerer who builds electronic gadgets for fun. He's also in love.

I'll let him tell his story in his own words: "Once upon a time, a boy met a girl. Then a short amount of time later, the boy decided to design and build a ring for the girl, because doing things in the most complicated way possible is just what he does to show the love." To that end, Kokes made a ring. But not just any ring. It's a titanium ring with internal illumination.… Read more

Print your photographs in 3D

Step aside, home photo printer! The age of the 3D printer is just beginning. But then what are you supposed to do with all those digital photos sitting on your hard drive?

Well, thanks to Amanda Ghassaei of Instructables -- who showed us how to make a 3D-printed record -- you can try printing them in 3D. Using an Objet500 Connex 3D printer that prints at 600dpi, along with ModelBuilder library and the Processing open-source programming language, Ghassaei converted her photographs into a printable topography.

How do they work?… Read more

Zap your pet's blues away with Petcube laser pointer

If you feel bad about leaving Fluffy home alone, consider giving her the laser treatment.

Petcube is stylish box that lets you play with your pet when you're away. It beams leasers around the room while you control it from afar via smartphone.

Connected to your home Wi-Fi network, Petcube is a 4-inch cube that has a wide-angle camera, microphone, and low-intensity laser pointer.

The prototype is made of glass and aluminum and is being developed by robot enthusiast Alex Neskin, along with Yaroslav Azhnyuk, and Andrey Klen. The Ukranian startup recently showed it off at Seedcamp Week Berlin. … Read more

Motorcycle with airplane engine makes a roaring racket

When motorcycle enthusiasts say "loud pipes save lives," I don't think are imagining the Red Baron, an insane two-wheel machine powered by an actual aircraft engine. It's a beast. A monster. A crazed marriage of sky and land. It's also incredibly loud.

German tinkerer Frank Ohle spent 18 months bringing the Red Baron from concept to reality. It's not like you can just pull the engine out of a regular bike and pop in an aircraft engine. Just about every part of the motorcycle had to be customized to make room for the Rotec Radial R3600, a 150-horsepower, nine-cylinder engine.… Read more

Pucker up! Kissing machine rates your smooches

On a scale of 1 to 8, how are your kisses? You could check in with whomever you're smooching these days -- or you could consult the Kissing Evaluator.

The electronic contraption, built by a team of San Francisco makers, reacts to a couple's canoodles with LED lights and woob woob and bleb bleb noises (a method that's been officially certified by the International Association of Kissing Metrics).

The team built the whimsical device for Red Bull Creation, a national competition that challenges contestants to invent something creative around a piece of hardware -- and then display it in public. Red Bull sent this year's participants a "Turbull Encabulator" circuit board that it designed as a tool for making LED light art, along with RGB LED lights and instructions to "make something awesome." … Read more

Students blast off in egg payload rocket contest

Big rockets like the SpaceX Grasshopper and the Orbital Antares have been in the news lately, but those are a little out of reach for the average student. That's why the Aerospace Industries Association's Team America Rocketry Challenge exists. It fans the maker flames by challenging kids to design, build, and launch model rockets.

The rocket challenge finals took place over the weekend. It was a record year for the competition's turnout, with 725 teams battling through the initial rounds. The top 100 teams participated in the final fly-off in Virginia, representing 29 states with teams from schools, 4-H clubs, and even a team made up of Civil Air Patrol volunteers.

The competition was open to students in grades 7 through 12. All the teams had one goal: build the best model rocket. The challenge was to fly an egg to 750 feet up in the air, and then parachute it back to the ground with no damage. That's even harder than it sounds.… Read more

Home networking Part 7: Power line connections explained

Editors' note: This post is part of an ongoing series. For the other parts, check out the related stories section below.

Power line networking basically turns a building's existing electrical wiring -- the wires that carry electricity to different outlets in the house -- into network cables, meaning they also carry data signals for a computer network. And this means virtually all households, in the U.S at least, are "wired for" power line networking. It doesn't replace a regular network, so you'll still need a router, but it's a good way to extend … Read more

'Pinterest stress' not just for moms?

I don't know exactly when it happened, but I can now say for sure that I live in a Pinterest household. The influence of the digital pinboard has infiltrated numerous aspects of life in the Mack family palace, from our wardrobe to nightly dinners to the bling I've been instructed to install on the door of the oven those dinners are cooked in.

That's right, I'm going to bling out my oven because my wife told me to, because it looked cool to her in a thumbnail on a punnily named social network.

This is not quite the future the Jetsons promised us, but we're living it.

So I was very interested to read the findings of a recent survey about what stresses out American moms. The online survey of more than 7,000 women in the U.S. was conducted by Insight Express/NBC News for TodayMoms.com and revealed one particularly fascinating nugget:

Measuring up to all the cool crafts they see on Pinterest causes stress for 42 percent of moms.

Desktop Othermill carves out circuit boards, jewelry

What if you could easily add custom-designed circuits to DIY projects like 3D-printed stuff? Here's a small mill that can churn them out with precision and power.

Othermill is a Kickstarter project that has quickly exceeded its fundraising goal. It's designed to be a portable, desktop three-axis mill that can produce printed circuit boards, jewelry, molds, and other objects.

Conceived by the wizards at San Francisco-based R&D shop Otherfab/Otherlab, known for its crazy inflatable robots, Othermill works with CAD software to cut material in three dimensions. Unlike 3D printing, it cuts material away instead of adding it. … Read more

In Montreal, vintage cigarette machines sell indie art

MONTREAL--For the first time in maybe 20 years, I got a new cassette tape.

It's a bitchin' mix of 1970s funk tunes and it sounds delicious on my car stereo, which fortunately is old enough to be able to play it. But the best thing about this tape is that it came out of a vending machine.

Distroboto is a nonprofit network of machines in Montreal that have been retrofitted to sell works by independent artists. They spit out music, literature, and accessories, all for $2 a pop. … Read more

DIY