Shonzilla, a pattern-seeking animal

Fri Oct 15

DIY Space Flight

This blew me away: A guy built a craft to record a flight into space, managed to retrieve it and show it to the world. The whole craft costs below $1000 according to my calculation.

Ingredients:

a weather balloon ($80)
helium and equipment to fill the balloon (under $200)
attached a GoPro HD Hero camera ($260)
iPhone acting as a GPS transmitter (3G, I assume ~$200)
DIY parachute (<$50)
DIY foam casing with some extra insulation to protect the camera from freezing at high altitude (<$30)

As the altitude increases, so does the size of the balloon since the air is less dense the higher it goes. At it’s peak at over 30km (100.000ft), the balloon reached the maximum 6m (19ft) diameter, bursts, and tumbles down supported by the parachute. At that point, the camera is to be tracked if the recorded film is to be collected. This was done with an iPhone and a lot of luck as the balloon landed only 45km away from the launch site on top of a tree. They managed to locate it thanks to the blinking iPhone light. To put this in perspective, weather balloons are usually never recovered.

The result is this wonderful DIY trip to space and some happy kids. :-)

You can support the next mission by either buying the full-length film (90 min) or puchasing the How-to Book, or making a donation.

The enthusiast behind this wonderful DIY project is Luke Geissbühler, who’s a director of photography for several movies incl. a documentary about design I particularly like - Objectified.

Sun Sep 26

I need this!

Bike Shelf from Chris Brigham

[via szymon]

(Source: szymon)

Tue Aug 10

You may not be impressed but I think Carmina Burana is a good illustration how epic this mini-cannon is. Looks like something that can seriously do some damage especially when equipped with, say, a RC controlled car with a camera.

Trivia: Did you know that Carmina Burana was composed by Carl Orff in - 1937?!
I was ignorant thinking it must be at least from 19th century if not older.

Thanks to Gaza for the link!

Sun Apr 18

I must have this.

Me too! I have Nintendo Wii but 2 HD TVs… hm. :-/

[via markoperisic]

Thu Nov 12

In Gaza Zoo, you get to design the animals and you slap them too.

Tue Apr 7

This video clip presents a DIY multitouch surface computer, i.e. multitouch display rivaling Microsoft Surface $12.000US that you can build yourself. More details on how’s done can be found over at MaximumPC article.

[via Maximum PC’s Multitouch Surface Computer]

Fri Oct 24

DIY Lamborghini Countach

Man Builds Lamborghini Countach In Basement, Has To Dig It Out When Complete - Geekologie

“100% hand crafted Countach out of aluminum and a space tube frame. All aluminum body formed on a wooden buck using an English wheel. My own design space frame with Corvette hubs and custom A-arms. Mated to a ZF-25 5 speed. S.S. 180 degree headers GT40 design “bundle of snakes” Boss 351 bored stroked to 377 515hp 48 IDA Webbers. One off TransAm BBS rim shells to my own center section wheels. Custom brake package to fit 16” wheels. Fuel cell, twin aluminum sprint car (Howe) radiators. All aluminum interior with leather dash, Momo seats and 5 point harness, on board halon fire bottle. quick release steering wheel. Low to the ground at 2700 lbs. 100% body correct by using a real Countach to measure from. Over 10 years in the making.”

This is freaking awesome!

Wed Jul 23

A Dead Simple Web Tablet For $200

TechCrunch wants to build “A Dead Simple Web Tablet For $200” that’s as slim as Apple Air and is based on Linux, FireFox, and Skype - technologies that would enable regular internet users to Get Things Done.

TechCrunch tablet concept

This initiative launched by Mike Arrington cause a significant number of comments at TechCrunch. People suggesting ideas and offering their know-how are coming from various backgrounds: server-side software development, web development, Linux hacking, user experience, hardware design…

Although I’m excited by an idea and would like to get engaged (if I weren’t swamped by invoicable and fairly interesting work already), I’m a bit sceptical. A couple of reasons:

So far not a single crowdsourced hardware project has succeeded .
Serious coordination is needed in such a multi-faceted project (concept design, hardware design, software development, industrial/UI design and user experience all tied together)
Seed money is necessary (preferably backed by a consortium of companies without a conflict of interest in the web tablet market niche)
Better invest time&effort into further expansion of a community around one of open mobile platforms like Android, OpenMoko, LiMo, and last but not least Symbian. As an added bonus, you get to phone your friends (and fellow collaborators). :-)

Anyway, my (founded) skepticism aside, I believe TechCrunch should rise to the occasion and show more committment in this initiative. They could do thins in several ways:

Approaching potential partners. Perhaps the “home of crowdsourcing”, Cambrian House, or more hardware-oriented CrowdSpirit should be involved as well.
Taking pre-orders. Committed future customers can be used as angel investors. Has this be done before?
Build a serious community. Community (web site) dedicated to this effort would be a “Web2.0 way” to structure an direct efforts is necessary in such a complex project.
Start small by modifying existing open-sourcesoftware, then iterate. Today, software is almost free replicate but can become more expensive to produce than hardware. Though, hardware design has a higher barrier of entry and it takes some viable software platform solution in order to build hardware for it, especially on a crowdsourced project. Therefore, I would start by modifying open-source software and testing it out on commercial multi-touch tablets out there.

Interested? You have skillz? Help them build it!