Awesome Stuff: Maker's Paradise

from the if-you-build-it dept

For this week's awesome stuff, we're looking at some new tools and/or toys for anyone who likes to design, build and tinker with their own technology.

Piezo Film Technology

Polyvinylidene fluoride piezoelectric film is a thin, transparent material that can be used to generate sound. Yes: that means you can make speakers out of it. This Kickstarter project is all about getting this interesting material into the hands of makers and developers, so they can start exploring the possibilities of what it can do. Two of the suggestions — paper headphones, and business cards that play sound — are pretty cool by themselves, but the creator is betting (correctly, I suspect) that people can come up with all sorts of cool ideas of their own.

The Element

The significance of 3D printing has been clear for some time now, but the sea change it promises to usher in has always felt "on the horizon". Everyone's waiting for that tipping point that will make it one of the most disruptive, revolutionary technologies in modern history — and The Element is one more step in that direction. It's a small, go-between USB device that promises to take a lot of the technical hassle out of 3D printing. It makes it easier to find and create designs, and (critically) easier to get them properly formatted and sliced for printing without the huge hassle of trial-and-error, plus it adds handy features like queuing and remote monitoring. If it brings 3D printing a step closer to "it just works" status, then it's done its job.

DuinoKit Jr.

When I was a kid, my parents bought me one of those electronic "labs" from Radio Shack. It was a massive board covered in resistors, capacitors, transistors, diodes, switches and other components, each with little protruding springs allowing you to quickly connect them with lengths of wire. Well, the DuinoKit Jr. is that lab on steroids for the modern age. It's the same basic idea, but with components I only dreamed of like a backlit LCD display, an RGB LED and, critically, an Arduino-compatible processor at the core.

Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: 3d printing, arduino, awesome stuff, maker


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • icon
    Max (profile), 7 Feb 2015 @ 9:44am

    Yeah...

    It's fecking amazing how many people find it a good idea to take a perfectly usable tool (like a 3D printer) and invent countless nonexistent problems with it to which they're more than happy to offer a nothing-short-of-revolutionary solution that you absolutely, positively need (and which will bring about world peace, at the very least - but probably end world hunger too). I'm just very, very sick of it at this point. Hey, how about you go find some _actual_ problems to solve, huh?!?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 7 Feb 2015 @ 6:33pm

    looks like one of those bombs you see in movies

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      orbitalinsertion (profile), 8 Feb 2015 @ 12:38pm

      Re:

      Oh, well we'll find out what happens when they start shipping, or someone takes one on a plane, or some kid gets on a bus with one.

      link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.