Tag: diy

Kitten-Proof Wiring

This is Charlotte. Charlotte is a kitten. Kittens are cute. When Charlotte is good, she eats out of her food bowl. This is what a kitten should do.

Sometimes Charlotte is bad, and chews on things she should not chew on, like a USB cable. Bad Charlotte! I’m now out one USB cable.

Luckily, that was just a USB extension cable, and not the iPad cable that was plugged into it.

Since Apple is a little picky about who can manufacture iPad cables, I’d prefer not to have to buy replacements unless I really need them.

Luckily, my local hardware store has this great tubing that is just 23 cents per foot, and I’ve got an X-Acto knife.

My plan was to just slice the tubing open and then push the iPad cable into it. Simple enough, right?

In my first attempt I tried to use a steel ruler to get a nice straight line on the tubing, but that didn’t really work, and it was much easier to just freehand the cut. I will warn you that I have a BFA in Graphic Design, so I’ve been using X-Acto knives for well over 20 years. If you’re not as handy with them, be careful when you cut your tubing.

Here’s our new improved cable, with a protective covering. I showed it to Charlotte and she tried to chew on it, but either she didn’t like the taste, or figured out she was not going to chew through it. Either way, I win.

One tip: when you cut the tubing to the length you need, cut it just a bit longer, so you can cut it to the exact length after you’ve fed the cable into it. I managed to cut the first one I made just a little too short, though it was easy to fix with a very small piece of tubing added to the end, and then held in place with some clear tape.

I’m hoping once Charlotte is out of her “chewing” phase I can do away with the tubing, but for now, it works quite well.

Tags damage, destroy, diy, kittens, make, tubing, usb, wires, xacto

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Another Button

I totally failed…. I said I was going to try to go a week without making anything, and then I ended up finishing this button I was building.

And yes… it’s another button.

Oh well, I tried!

At least I didn’t paint this one. Really, that’s the most time consuming part of building one of these. (This one is going to someone else, so they may be painting it.)

NOTE: Need a button? Now you can buy one! Visit raster.etsy.com.

Tags button, diy, make, teensy

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The Photo Booth

Last year I was invited to a co-worker’s wedding. And, since so many weddings nowadays involve being creative on a budget, they had a photo booth there that they set up themselves using Sparkbooth, a great little Adobe AIR-based application. A few weeks later we were having our annual work party, and I was tasked with making a photo booth a reality. Since then I’ve been working on building a better photo booth experience.

NOTE: Need a button? Now you can buy one! Visit our store or Etsy.

For the first one I set up, I used my MacBook Pro. We connected a Sony PD-150 video camera via FireWire and selected it in Sparkbooth rather than using the built-in iSight camera. (The iSight is a small camera, with a tiny lens, so the video camera ended up providing a better image.) We also put a little sticker on the space bar that said “PRESS HERE TO TAKE PHOTOS” and hoped for the best. It worked, but there were just too many moving parts to deal with, like the camera on a tripod behind the MacBook, and a light clamped onto the tripod. It wasn’t elegant.

The Sparkbooth software is great and provides a ton of features, including the ability to upload photos to Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr, Posterous, or a dozen other sites. There are some optional features that would require a keyboard—if you prompt people to enter their name, email, a comment, or choose if they want the image uploaded or not—but the main interaction is through pressing the space bar to start the picture-taking process.

If you need a space bar, you may need a keyboard… unless you build something that can emulate a space bar. When I saw The AWESOME Button on Make, I knew what I had to do. I had to build a button.

The Button

The button is simple, and built into a metal case. It should stand up to abuse that a normal keyboard might not, and it’s pretty simple. You can’t really press the wrong button, there’s only one.

Once I had the button, I set about getting my old iMac set up as the photo booth machine. Not being happy with the built-in iSight (the iMac is about 4 years old, and it’s definitely not as good as the latest round of iSight cameras), I ended up taking the Canon ZR800 from Time Lapse Bot and using that. It worked OK but wasn’t ideal. I didn’t want to have to deal with a tripod and more cables, etc. (I even ended up testing a floor-mount camera holder I built which took pictures of shoes for a specific event—don’t ask!)

Ultimately I settled on using a Logitech HD Pro USB Webcam C910. Its image quality is much better than the iSight, and there’s just one cable to plug in. Just one problem… while it worked fine with my MacBook, no matter what I tried, I could not select it in Sparkbooth on the iMac. I tried everything, including different versions of Adobe AIR, different versions of Mac OS X, reformatting the drive, a clean install… nothing would work. I ended up disconnecting the built-in iSight thanks to some help from iFixIt.

The Completed Photo Booth

So I now had the button and the camera. I then needed something to hold it all together. I wanted a stand to put the iMac on that was about the right height for a “typical human being,” and by that I mean: about my height. (You can also easily adjust the camera by just tilting the iMac a bit.) I ended up building a simple pedestal out of plywood and painting it white. I used thin plywood to save on weight since it needs to be somewhat portable. You can’t see it in the photo but the back has been left open, and there’s an internal shelf for the keyboard and mouse. I keep those handy in case of trouble, or if I need to change any settings in the software. The shelf actually helps structurally as well.

For the light, I used a small IKEA clamp light (you’d be amazed how hard it is to find a small, good-looking clamp light.) There’s an L-shaped piece of plywood behind the iMac that’s held onto the stand with a c-clamp. It works for now. I may upgrade the light in the future.

Photos from the Booth

Here’s a selection of photos from the first official use of the Photo Booth. (Yes, there are two Munchkins on the back wall—it was a “Wizard of Oz” themed party.) I’m asking for a bit of forgiveness in calling this a “Photo Booth” at this point because, while it does take photos, there isn’t an actual booth yet… I need to save something for Phase II of this project…

Stay Tuned!

NOTE: Need a button? Now you can buy one! Visit our store or Etsy.

Tags diy, imac, macbook, make, photobooth, sparkbooth, zr800

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Simple Sandbags

Post author By Pete Prodoehl
Post date 2011-05-17

Typically when we do larger video shoots we hire a grip truck, and the grip truck is loaded with stands, and scrims, and lots of sandbags. Mmmmm, sandbags!

The sandbags are pretty nice. Thick canvas with strong handles, and pretty darn heavy. Of course if you make your own sandbags you can make them smaller and lighter, or bigger and heavier. Customize them as you wish!

Here’s my recipe for simple sandbags:

Sand
Plastic bags
An old pair of pants
Cord

It’s pretty simple really. Take a plastic bag, and put some sand in it. Tie it shut. Put it inside another plastic bag. (Try to get all the air out of it if possible.)

Once you have the plastic bag the size and weight you desire, find an old pair of pants. Cut the legs off. Make sure they are long enough to fit the plastic bag into.

Slide the bag inside the pant leg, and tie up the ends with some cord. That’s it.

You could actually sew the ends shut, but then you need a sewing machine, and you need to know how to sew, and then these aren’t really “simple” sandbags anymore.

These also don’t have any handles, but again, we’ve kept it all pretty simple.

Your new sandbags are now ready to hold your stands down, weight down your dolly, or be used as a makeshift cinesaddle.

Tags diy, make, sandbags

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The Button

NOTE: Need a button? Now you can buy one! Visit raster.etsy.com.

I was in need of a button, but not just any button. A USB-enabled button that could emulate a single key being pressed on a keyboard. This is that button…

It consists of the following materials:

I used a Teensy as it’s a very simple (and cheap!) way to emulate a USB HID. I do wish the Teensy had mounting holes. I ended up not mounting it at all and letting it just hang loose, which should be fine, as it’s so lightweight. There’s a bit of electrical tape wrapped around the Teensy and the solder joints.

For the box, I wanted something metal, so it would be heavier and more sturdy than the typical plastic project box. Matt Gauger of Milwaukee Makerspace suggested I check out Mammoth Electronics, as they make boxes for guitar pedals. I ended up choosing their “tall” enclosure.

For the button, I really like this button over the one I ended up using, but it was too tall to fit in the project box. Unless you’re a “button snob” you probably won’t notice much difference between the two.

If you’ve got USB cables lying around, use one… otherwise, you can get one from Monoprice for less than a dollar. I pretty much buy all my cables from Monoprice.

As for the rubber feet, I picked some up at the local hardware store… as well as some black spray paint. (Note: If you are ordering the button from Sparkfun, just get the rubber feet from them too!)

There was one more item I needed. The button needs a 27.3 mm hole to fit into, which means I needed a hole that was 1.07480315 inches wide. Well, 1.07480315 inches is pretty close to 1.0 inches, so I ended up getting an Ace Bi-Metal Variable Pitch Hole Saw. (The link is not the exact one that I got. I ended up getting mine at the local Ace Hardware store.)

As for the process, the Teensy part took a small amount of time, (see the AWESOME Button) and the drilling was a little tricky, as the 1.0 inch hole was just slightly too small. A bit of creative drilling with a regular drill bit fixed that though. The spray painting was the real time consuming part of it all. As for the assembly, I originally envisioned mounting the Teensy on the bottom plate of the box, and having a hole where the USB connector would be accessible, but I ended up going with what you see in the photo. (I just used the Dremel to cut a small groove for the cable to fit into.)

And why do I need a yellow button that can emulate a key being pressed? Well, sometimes you just need a yellow button that can emulate a key being pressed…

Note: A number of people have asked for the code I used, and even though it is in the comments, I thought I should post it in here as well.

/*
 * Button.pde
 */

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  pinMode(10, INPUT_PULLUP);
  delay(500);
}

void loop() {
  if (digitalRead(10) == HIGH) {
    delay(10);
  } else {
    Keyboard.print(" "); // we print a space
    delay(1000);
  }
  delay(10);
}

Tags button, diy, make, monoprice, sparkbooth, sparkfun, teensy