Make Every Week: Circuit Boards, For Reals

I always considered circuit boards like this something you bought, not something you made.

Not any more.

I actually helped to make the board in the picture above. And it was awesome fun.

The board is designed to monitor the conductivity (and, possibly, contamination) of water in lakes and streams, with the wonderful feature that it fits through the mouth of a regular water bottle. It’s called Riffle and it is the brainchild of Don Blair, who’s working with Public Lab and the MIT Center for Civic Media. This week I had the honor of working with Don at MIT.

Make Every Week: Heartbeat LEDs

Visualizing one’s heartbeat is just cool. I’ve been into the idea since I learned that signals sent by the Polar heart monitor straps joggers use can be detected with a cheap device.

I’ve made a heartbeat hoodie, which was a lot of fun. But in the end, a bright, flashing sweatshirt starts to annoy the people around you. Now I’m working toward a more wearable wearable, one that changes subtly as my heart beats faster or slower.

This week I took a step on the way to that wearable by getting three LEDs — blue, green and yellow — to light up according to my heart rate. A calm heartbeat and blue glows, a little faster and you get green and really fast lights the yellow one.

Make Every Week: Sewing-Machine Circuits

Sewing by hand can be tedious. Sewing by hand with conductive thread is frustrating.

The thread I use is almost woolly, so if you use too much at once, it twists and tangles in itself. Ugh.

For a project I have in mind, there would be much sewing with conductive thread. But we recently got a sewing machine, and this weekend I thought … heeeeey! The thread actually comes in little bobbins. Maybe I could load one in the machine?

Make Every Week: DIY Accent Lighting

For years, we’ve talked about adding accent lighting to our living room — particularly under the TV on the wall, to light up a small shelf underneath.

I’ve put it off. I just didn’t want to deal with the wiring, the mounting, the falling down, the mounting again. Even finding a fixture was daunting.

But then I spotted these adhesive-backed LED strips! Which can be powered by a 9-volt battery. Excellent.

Make Every Week: Bluetooth Device Sniffer

This week became “Tinker Every Week” more than “Make Every Week,” as I tried to make a new device-sniffing device.

Previously, I managed to detect wifi signals around me, and I wanted to do the same for Bluetooth devices, including gadgets using new “Bluetooth Low Energy,” or BLE, signals. These include iBeacons and other tracking systems being deployed more and more around us.

I got myself a Bluefruit LE Sniffer from Adafruit ...

... and rigged it up to my Raspberry Pi.

Make Every Week: Seal Watch

The buzz in our corner of Manhattan is all about the Inwood Seal.

Not only did the seal appear on a dock in Spuyten Duyvil Creek just off the Hudson River, but he came back. So naturally, we keep an eye out for the cute critter when we visit Inwood Hill Park.

But what about when we’re not there? How will we know if he’s returned?

Now, there’s a bot for that.

Make (Almost) Every Week

I learned a lot this week:

I also used some that new knowledge to write a little program that pulls the title, lead image and date from pages like the one you’re reading right now.

But I didn’t make anything, really. Except a base to build upon.

So while I don’t have a cool thing to post just now, I’m glad for what I’ve learned.

Including the fact that this year has 53 weeks.



#MakeEveryWeek is a challenge to myself to do just that for all of 2015. The original post on the idea is here, and the running list of projects so far is here.

Make Every Week: Remote-Controlled Egg

In a nod to the egg-dying we’ll be doing this weekend, I made an egg I can color from my phone.

In truth, it was the perfect excuse to play with a Metawear board I picked up a while ago. Hatched from a Kickstarter campaign, it’s a bunch of sensors and an LED packed onto a board the size of a postage stamp. You talk to it over Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE).

The idea is that Metaware can help quickly build smart wearables and fitness trackers. To dip my toes into the process, I made an egg.

Make Every Week: Fish Tank Carbon Dioxide Generator

We have a moderately successful family fish tank: The fish seem to survive, the plants do not.

(Also we’re really good at growing algae, and may start feeding it to the children.)

With a coding problem, you Google it and get several excellent solutions. With a fish tank problem, you Google it and get several excellent solutions that contradict each other.

So the excellent solution we’ve chosen to make the plants happy is to add carbon dioxide to the tank. Plants need it, and one of my favorite in-store tanks uses it. So it's settled.

I thought I’d need to pick up a heavy tank of CO2, like when I rented a tank of helium.

Turns out you can coax yeast to make it for you. This Instructable describes how, and is what I used to make ours.