Tag Archives: DIY

Digital Free Library | Adafruit Learning System #tech #collections #digital #libraries #portable #gadgets #DIY #projects

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Image Credit: Adafruit

The Digital Free Library is a fun project that will allow you to create your own electronic library to share with others. Similiar to a Little Free Library but digital. READ: Overview | Digital Free Library | Adafruit Learning System

Cool little digital library server project! You could also use the Calibre application but that’s too easy. In library school we developed digital libraries from scratch using Greenstone Digital Library OSS. Now that was a challenge!

Disclosure: I do not endorse distribution of copyrighted or DRM protected file formats. – infophile

 

Watch How One Man Took the #Internet to 60,000 People in Rural #Nepal | Gizmodo #community #communication #tech #DIY #wireless

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HIKING FOR EMAILS from Clemens Purner on Vimeo.

This is Mahabir Pun. Fed up with the fact that he had to hike for two days whenever he wanted to check his email, he decided to connect his home town of Nangi to the Internet. This video explains how he did it. READ MORE: Watch How One Man Took the Internet to 60,000 People in Rural Nepal | Gizmodo

Makerarm: An All-In-One Robotic Laser Cutter, #3D Printer, Painter, Fabricator And Assembler [Kickstarter] | TechCrunch #makerspaces #diy #3DPrinting #robots #tech

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Makerarm is a robotic 3D printer, laser cutter, drawing and ink printer, fabricator and assembly machine all rolled into one that fits on a desktop and promises to make pretty much anything – including an entire laptop (It milled us the TechCrunch logo into a block of wood instead). READ MORE: Makerarm Is An All-In-One Robotic Laser Cutter, 3D Printer, Painter, Fabricator And Assembler | TechCrunch

Hospital #Makerspaces Lets #Nurses Build Their Own #Tools | Engadget #tech #health #medical #DIY #makerhealth

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Makerspaces are great for bringing your gadget ideas to life, but they’re not usually much help to nurses who may want to invent (or improvise) tools needed to take care of their patients. That’s where the University of Texas’ new, permanent MakerHealth Space might just save the day. Nurses and other workers at the school’s John Sealy Hospital now have a dedicated area with 3D printers, laser cutters and other equipment that lets them create or modify devices (say, a pill bottle sensor) without leaving work. The facility sterilizes and reviews every product before it’s put into service, so you shouldn’t have to worry about a risky tool ruining your hospital stay. READ MORE: Hospital makerspace lets nurses build their own tools | Engadget

32 #Makerspace and #Arduino Stories to Spark Your Imagination and #Creativity | #RaspberryPi #microcomputers #makerspaces #DIY #robotics

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Makerspaces

  1. MakerBot Offers 3-D Printing Resources, Ebook for Educators | School Library Journal
  2. New Minecraft Mod Teaches You Code as You Play | WIRED
  3. A Kids’ Book Where Every Character Can Be 3-D Printed | WIRED
  4. 8 experiences you should try on Google Cardboard right now | CNET
  5. Documentary ‘Print the Legend’ Goes Inside the World of 3D Printing | Mashable
  6. BBC launches Technobabble tool for children to make their own games  | The Guardian Site is aimed at 7-14 year-old digital makers: ‘The only requirements are access to the web, a willingness to experiment and an idea’
  7. Animation Made Easy: The best tools for student projects, from stop motion to GIFs | School Library Journal | The Digital Shift
  8. Free Photo Editing Software Lets You Manipulate Objects in 3D | Reframe | Gizmodo
  9. Pixar’s Powerful 3D Rendering Software RenderMan Is Now Free to Use | LifeHacker
  10. 3D sketching system ‘revolutionizes’ design interaction and collaboration | KurzweilAI
    University of Montreal researchers present their Hyve-3D system at SIGGRAPH 2014 conference.
  11. Turn Your iPhone Into a Crappy 1985 Camcorder With This App | Gizmodo
  12. Researchers create a virtual screen with touchable objects | Engadget
  13. With the new 3Doodler pen, drawing in midair isn’t just make-believe | Mashable
  14. MIT unveils 3D printing with glass breakthrough | Mashable RELATED: MIT scientists make it easy to tweak designs for 3D printing | Engadget

Arduino & Robotics

  1. How to Make Your Own Homemade Clock That Isn’t a Bomb | WIRED
  2. This Arduino Basic Kit has everything a newbie maker could ask for | Engadget
    It’s easy to think about tinkering around with Arduino, but take more than 30 seconds to look at the platform, and suddenly it becomes daunting: not only do you need an Arduino itself, but to get started you need resisters, wires, LEDs, screens and a host of other components that are almost always sold separately. Have no fear, newbies: there’s a new Arduino Basic Kit in town, and it has all the spare parts a beginner could want.
  3. Acer’s Arduino-based Cloud Professor wants to get kids into the IoT | arstechnica
    Educational dev kit tries taking sting out of programming cloud-connected devices.
  4. Build Like Ahmed with These Awesome Electronics Projects | LifeHacker
  5. A Kit To Build Your Own Computer Controls | FastCompany
  6. This Tech Giant Taught 3,000 Kids to Build Robots in a Year | WIRED
  7. Skechers stitched the Simon memory game into its new kids’ sneakers | Engadget

Raspberry Pi & Microcomputers

  1. Raspberry, Shmazberry, There’s A $15 Single Board Computer Called The Orange Pi | TechCrunch
  2. Raspberry Pi gets an official touchscreen display | Engadget
  3. Seven Ready-Made Raspberry Pi Projects You Can Install in a Few Clicks | LifeHacker
  4. RetroPie 3 Lets You Play Old Games On Your New Pi | TechCrunch
  5. Now Kids Can Build Their Own HD Display With The Kano Screen Kit | TechCrunch
    Kano‘s crazy cool educational PC is about to get a bit more visual. Kano CEO Alex Klein tweeted out that the company has launched a pre-order for an HD display kit. The Raspberry Pi based platform is a great, affordable way to show kids some of the bare basics of computers and is a great DIY project for hobbyists as well.
  6. The BBC Is Giving Away 1 Million Hacking Kits To Kids | FastCompany
    This fall, every 11- and 12-year-old school kid in the U.K. will be given a BBC Micro:bit, a tiny pocket-sized computer with no screen, no keyboard, nothing that most people would recognize as a computer. Until you program it, it sits there as dead as a circuit board ripped from any other electronic device. But hook it up to the world with clips and cables and sprinkle on a little code and it can turn into a guitar, an automatic plant-waterer, a loudspeaker, a games console, or almost anything a kid can dream up.
  7. This Tiny Computer Stacks Into a Colorful Lego Brick | Gizmodo
  8. Build an Automated Birdwatching Camera with a Raspberry Pi | LifeHacker
    If you have a birdhouse in your yard, you could spend days sitting around with binoculars waiting to see what cool little inhabitants come by. Or you can take Instructables user Sebelectronique’s lead and build a Raspberry Pi-powered camera inside a birdhouse. RELATED: Teach Kids Tech And Life With A Pi-Powered DIY Camera Trap | TechCrunch
  9. Back Up And Sync Your Files Inside A Mason Jar With Raspberry Preserve | TechCrunch
    An innovative DIYer has figured out a way to skillfully merge a Raspberry Pi running BitTorrent Sync with a traditional glass Mason jar. The result is a homemade service that keeps files in sync between all of your devices.

The Rise of DIY Libraries | VICE

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In March, a group of New York library officials released a statement declaring that a “staggering infrastructure crisis” has crept up on the city’s public library system. In Brownsville, Brooklyn, one branch is “routinely forced to close on hot days” due to problems with air conditioning. Others are plagued with water-damaged books and facilities that are too small to accommodate everyone in their community.

General interest public libraries are no less necessary than they were in 1901, when Andrew Carnegie donated the equivalent of $147 million to construct 65 of them across New York City, but their focus is increasingly shifting away from books and toward things like English classes, job training workshops, community meeting spaces, or just places to read the news online for those without internet access.

While the public must continue to fight for these more practical resources, a number of oddball independent libraries cropping up around the North American continent offer an experience that can’t be found in their traditional counterparts. These boutique libraries are working to stretch our very idea about the word “library,” creating a real living community around the often very lonely act of reading.

READ MORE: The Rise of DIY Libraries | VICE

Check Out This Coding Toy—For Grownups | ReadWrite @TeamKano #coding #diy #makerspaces #tech

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I think its a very smart marketing move for Kano to launch products that are gender and age neutral. I volunteer with my public library’s CoderDojo program, which is for 9 to 17 year olds. One of the participant’s parents has actually stayed to learn as well. Its heartwarming to see parent and child learning new concepts together. Learning to code, makerspaces, hackfests, arduino…these activities are fun and instructive for all ages and can be a family activity too.

Check Out This Coding Toy—For Grownups - ReadWrite

Kickstarted into existence in 2013, with a campaign that blasted through its $100,000 goal with $1.5 million in pledges, Kano now makes Raspberry Pi–based computer kits commercially available to children ages 6 to 14. Inspired by those young users, who founder Alex Klein says have created and shared as many as 5 million lines of code, he wants to spread that enthusiasm to a larger audience.

Engineering kits have been popular among kids and a natural fit in the educational space. Likewise, Kano set out following in the footsteps of companies like Little Bits, Adafruit, and Goldie Blox. But Klein now wants to extend Kano’s reach, taking it into grown-up territory. Simply put, he wants to appeal to everyone’s inner “inventor and tinkerer,” he said.

Klein wants to push into the adult maker market by putting out products that are both gender- and age-neutral. The core design, he hopes, speaks to fundamental human impulses: “Everyone has shared urges to look inside,” he said. “Everyone wants to take control. Everyone wants to make and play.”

Kano’s next stage of evolution will involve some fundamental shifts. The company is expanding its line-up with new add-on kits, and plans to open up Kano Blocks—its game-making arena—and online platform Kano World to community development.

All Kano products run on Kano OS, the open source operating system that sits on top of Raspberry Pi. It boasts high computational powers that let it run fast, boot quickly and offer clear graphical rendering. For developers, this means that they will have ample resources to jump on board and quickly create their own projects. Kano World allows for the Kano community to share their creations and add on to existing projects.

READ MORE: Check Out This Coding Toy—For Grownups | ReadWrite