By Evan Ackerman

I wasn’t alive back in the day when someone with no specific tools or knowledge could open something up to fix it or just figure out how it worked. Nowadays, electronics come plastered with dire warnings about how opening the case will void your warranty, destroy the device, and kill you and your pets. This is really too bad, because one of the ways that people learn, or specifically that kids learn, is by experimentation. With this in mind, the Computer Vision Lab at Columbia University has developed the BigShot camera, which comes in a kit designed for kids to assemble while learning about cameras specifically and electronics in general:

The camera can be powered with a battery or with a dynamo, where 6 cranks = 1 picture, a feature I’d love to have in any or all of the cameras I use. It’s also got lenses on a rotating wheel, including a wide angle lens and a prism for taking stereo pictures. It goes beyond just a buildable camera kit, though… The overall mission of the BigShot project aims to keep the camera cheap enough that they’ll be available to kids worldwide, and to create an online social environment of sorts to share photos and teach the principles of photography.

The viability of this whole thing probably depends on what the final price of the BigShot ends up being. It’s currently still in a final testing phase, and my guess is that it’ll end up in about the same place as the OLPC… Great idea, but about twice as expensive as it ideally should be.

[ BigShot ] VIA [ Make ]

There are lots of ways to charge USB devices on the go using disposable or rechargeable batteries, but none of them are as small or as cheap as this DIY one. It’s basically just a female USB connector stuck to the top of a 9v battery, with a voltage regulator in the middle to make sure that there’s only 5 volts coming out. Total cost? If you have a soldering iron and a scrap female USB cable, the voltage regulator will run you about $1.59 plus tax at RadioShack (which I refuse on principle to call “The Shack” like they want me to). The real beauty of this thing is that you don’t have to use a 9v battery. You could use a whole series of D batteries, for example, and go on vacation for a month with your iPod.

Now, yes, you do have to know how to solder if you want to make one of these yourself. But seriously, soldering is easy. And it’s fun! You get to MELT METAL! You can pick up a basic soldering set at The Shack for all of eight bucks, and there are a bazillion beginner guides online (try Instructables or even YouTube). So, have a fun afternoon and learn a useful skill while making a handy little gadget at the same time. Or, you can always just do it with glue, you wimp.

[ AnythingButiPod ] VIA [ Gizmodo ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Have you ever lost your TV remote? Unless you’ve never owned such a contraption, I can almost bet you’ve answered “yes.” Finally, through our great technological advances, there is a way to prevent  ever losing your clicker. All you need to do is get a very large, heavy object (this person used what appears to be a section of a railroad track, but get creative and use your imagination here) attach a length of chain. Next you’re going to need to build a small enclosure for the remote. Attach the enclosure to the chain and voilà!

Of course you could just be one of those people that places the remote on top of the TV every time you’re done. But seriously, doesn’t walking up to the TV defeat the purpose of having a remote in the first place? I think this solution is far more practical.

[ There I Fixed It ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

You can spend hours carving a horrific face in your pumpkin in a vain attempt to scare the neighborhood kids, but no matter what you come up with, I guarantee you won’t get results like Todd Harrison did last year. Inspired by a Make post from last Hallowe’en, Todd’s jack o’lantern looks innocent enough, until you push its small red nose. At first the eyes will start to glow, giving the button pusher a false sense of security, but a second later a set of 105 decibel car horns will blare, scaring the candy corn out of any trick-or-treaters who happened to be anywhere near his front porch.

Todd’s posted a couple videos of the pumpkin ‘in action’ on his website, as well as a materials list and a brief rundown on how it all went together, in case you were hoping to create your own by the 31st.

[ ToddFun.com - Super scary honking pumpkin ] VIA [ Make ]

Make has a link to a pretty interesting discussion on the ‘The Home Shop Machinist & Machinist’s Workshop BBS’ about using a Watts or Reuleaux drill to make a square hole.

Now the idea of using a spinning drill bit to create a square hole is kind of counter-intuitive, but the animation on the right, while not exactly what a Watts drill looks like, helps you wrap your head around the concept.

And if you find yourself amazed at this new innovation in machining, you might also be surprised to learn that the idea isn’t a new one, and Harry J. Watts, for whom the drill is named after, actually received a patent (#1,241,176) for it on September 25, 1917.

[ The Home Shop Machinist & Machinist's Workshop BBS - How do I make a square hole ] VIA [ Make ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Anyone who’s ever taken a picture can probably understand how much of an effect movement can have on your camera. Of course the longer your exposure time, the less movement it takes to create a blur. Tripods are good, but even they are still not perfect. Sure, there are several forms of built-in image stabilization in modern cameras, but what if you’re taking pictures from something a little more bumpy? That’s where it gets especially tricky. There are advanced camera stabilizers out there, but they can be rather expensive. However, if you have a couple of old hard drives and some ingenuity, you can build one yourself.

One Instructables user discovered that a pair of spinning hard drives can create the same gyroscopic effect that professionals use to keep a camera steady. The parts list isn’t too exotic, with most of the parts being easily found in your house or garage.

• Needed: 2 discarded harddisks (HDs)
• Some old discarded computer, or parts
• The part in the old computer which holds floppies en HDs at a 90 degree angle…
• A wooden box or plywood etc..
• A hand grip
• One or two strips of aluminum
• A camera screw
• 3 or 4 car USB phone chargers
• A 12 V power source (lead acid cell, a discarded NiCd cell, or (rechargeable) batteries)
• Some rubber washers and a piece of inner tire
• Contact glue

The actual work to construct the device looks to be a little advanced, so you’re going to need to know your way around a soldering iron. In the end you’ll have an awesome image stabilizer that can work with most cameras. Sure, it won’t look the prettiest, but it gets the job done for around $50 or so in parts.

[ Instructables ] VIA [ UberGizmo ]

By Chris Scott Barr

I used to have issues with my alarm clocks. I wouldn’t sleep through them per se, rather I would wake up just enough to turn it off and go back to sleep. I eventually outgrew it, as I haven’t done that since my high school days. Plenty of other people have that problem, including the guy who made the above video. He essentially took his old alarm clock and hooked up a pair of 140-decibel electric horns to it. If you’re curious how to do this, and have no regard for your own hearing or the sleeping habits of everyone on your block, then the video will tell you how to do it.

[ KipKay ] VIA [ Technabob ]

It’s not Halloween just yet, but I’m pretty sure I know what Jonathan Gleich will be wearing this year. His truly impressive Zoltar fortune teller costume relies on a mostly hidden Segway to make it appear as if the booth is rolling around on its own. Now it won’t make anyone Big, but it did manage to take 1st place in the motorized division of the 2009 Coney Island Mermaid Parade, and will probably continue its reign of contest winning terror as October 31 gets closer.

And for the record it’s no where near as impressive as my Big-themed costume, a 12-year old boy living inside a 30-year old guy’s body, which I never actually take off.

[ Flickr - Zoltar Costume ] VIA [ Make ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Ping pong balls are pretty worthless for any sort of physical confrontation. Sure, they’re decent enough for playing a game, but they’re not going to do much damage as a weapon, right? Wrong. If you build the proper equipment.

One creative mind crafted a ping pong gun, which can make those little plastic balls quite lethal. Think of a potato gun, only much more finely-tuned. It runs off a compressed air line, and can not only fire the balls at a high speed, but accurately as well. Of course, the little balls are most effective when filled with water, at which point they are able to easily pass through drywall and particle board. Though even in their regular, air-filled state they can be quite harmful when fired from this apparatus.  Trust me, you don’t want to find yourself staring down the business end of this thing.

[ TinyEnormous ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

There’s a definite charm to the glowing display on an old-school vacuum tube clock, and if you’ve ever been curious how they work, or how they go together, this Ice Tube Clock Kit let’s you build your own. It comes with everything you’ll need, including a glowing blue tube with 8 digits plus an alarm status indicator, and when assembled you’ll have all the functions you’d find in a traditional model like a snooze button, date functions and even a 2-week battery backup. The kit will set you back $70 from the Adafruit Industries website, but it appears they’re currently out of stock until September 22 at the earliest.

[ Ice Tube VFD Clock Kit ] VIA [ Geeky Gadgets ]