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Red Bullet – build your own working stove from a Redbull can and a Coors.
My wife and I recently decided we needed to upgrade our camping setup. We camp several times a year and have a fairly minimalist mentality about it – usually cooking directly over a fire. However, our last summer trip was during the rainy season in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina and starting…
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Arduino FIST: Fuzzy Inference System Translation
First, let me introduce you to FROBO (Fuzzy Robot). He’s small and he’s got an Arduino for a brain. He uses three parallax ping sensors to sense the world around him. FROBO uses two DC motors with a gearbox to achieve differential drive and wears a speed-flag for safety from other robots (you wouldn’t want…
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The Cost of Prototyping
It is sometimes hard for people who aren’t inventors or prototypers to understand the cost of prototyping. I often look at a commercial product, quickly add up the cost of parts, and scoff at the outrageous price, but this isn’t really fair. Of course, different products have different markups and price points. The Apple iPad,…
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Hardware Hacking: The Right Tools – Post 1 – basics
Here at MakeProto we realize the value not only of good tools, but more importantly, the right tools. I began designing and creating hardware with all the wrong tools. Although I had some success, I had a lot of failures, simply because I didn’t have the right tools. As I progressed in electronics a seasoned…