This Faraday Cage phone pouch blocks all radio signals coming in or out of your cellphone. Material costs are about $10, it takes ~ 30 minutes to build, and it can fit in your pocket! The purpose of this pouch is to prevent access to your phone and its data (e.g. location) if and when…
Wearables (aka Wearable Technology) are a new & insanely awesome extension of electronics. These minimalistic, versatile, and detachable lights are designed to allow for a wide variety of creative possibilities and to be accessible to makers of all ages and backgrounds. The process takes about an hour and materials costs are less than $10 per…
A quick and easy way to make light-up pin people! There are endless possibilities for variations on this basic concept. This method uses magnets to serve two purposes: to hold up the LED + wire pin person and to connect the negative LED leg to the battery. Materials LED Coin…
Wearables are an awesome, relatively new extension of circuits. Conductive threads & fabrics make it easy to attach components like LEDs and sensors to clothing/accessories. Plus, they are a super fun introduction to electronics! These LED earrings were designed b/c I wanted a wearable that was simple, unique, and could be built by-hand w/ available materials….
Gardening improves health and quality of life, connecting us to our local environment. Plus, you can eat organic fruits and veggies at very little cost. Alas, remembering to water can sometimes take a backseat to our busy lives. Fortunately, home automation is easier than ever with inexpensive and accessible microcontrollers like the Raspberry Pi 2 Model…
Conserving freshwater is one of those seemingly constant struggles, especially with a human population exceeding seven billion. In the United States, between 80 – 90 % of freshwater is consumed by agriculture, making it the perfect industry to implement more efficient ways of using water! Installing a soil moisture sensor is one way to optimize…
Portable USB chargers are incredibly useful for adventures in the great outdoors, festivals, traveling, or if you are out-and-about all day. Adding in a solar panel provides an additional source of portable power useable (nearly) everywhere. The whole project can be built for ~ $20, even if you don’t have a soldering iron! Parts 1.5W…
Welcome to the wonderful world of controlling physical objects with software! This tutorial is a complete beginners introduction to the Raspberry Pi computer, covering the basic features and functions to help you bring your ideas to life! Blinking a light using the Raspberry Pi’s General Purpose Input and Output (“GPIO”) pins is the hardware equivalent…
What cool things can you do with the Raspberry Pi? Welcome back to exploring the Raspberry Pi! There are tons of awesome things you can do with the Raspberry Pi — (pretty much) everything that you would do on a normal computer, like word processing, surfing the internet, streaming videos, etc. You can write programs…
There are a slew of relatively simple systems to control physical objects w/ software. The most popular options are Arduino, the Raspberry Pi, and BeagleBoard. I’m an avid Raspberry Pi advocate, so let’s start with that! The RPi is a simple & inexpensive computer that has general purpose input and output (GPIO) pins that interface…
