Now more than ever, folks like you and me have to step up and take a stand to protect and preserve our environment (and, quite honestly, our species). One great way to do that is to incorporate renewable energy technology into projects that use electricity. Even if the environmental aspect isn’t enough to get you…
Introduction Create, build, and play an obstacle course for Brush Bots! This is an activity for all ages that teaches the basics of circuits and design thinking while encouraging and inspiring creativity, discovery, and collaboration. Most importantly, it’s super fun! (But seriously though, watch the video it’s adorbs and will make you smile) This tutorial…
Create, build, and play with your very own LEGO-inspired circuit blocks! Explore the basics of electricity and circuits, discover how sensors work and use ’em to design your own experiments, and incorporate upcycled materials to improve on your materials-sourcing & MacGuyver-ing skills! That old gum wrapper? Make it into a resistor or a switch! But…
Light-up cards incorporate two of the best worlds of making (electronics and crafts) with the added bonus of making somebody smile. Heck yes! Here’s my approach to light-up cards and my favorite recent discoveries: pop-ups and cotton balls. Read time: ~ 5 min. Build time: ~ 30 min -1 hr (mostly crafting the card) Cost:…
Checking your car battery life, debugging circuits, and finding that pesky short are all super useful functions that can be performed with just one awesome tool: the multimeter! First of all, what the heck is a multimeter?? Excellent setup question! It’s a handheld device with bunch of different electrical meters — hence, multi-meter! Measuring voltage,…
Walking across large, metal pipes in search of urban adventure, my inner voice joked, “Hey, magnet shoes would be handy right about now.” Well, no arguing with that! Off to build my very own magnetic shoes! This tutorial gives an overview of my build process for a magnetic boot prototype in hopes of inspiring you…
This is a minimalistic design for a proximity sensor glove: a light-up glove that dims in brightness when an object, or person, is close to the sensor. This project costs less than $10, although it does take some time to build (1 – 2 hrs). This is also a modular design, meaning that it is…
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…
