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Lectron. I had one of these as a kid. No where near as cool as an I2C setup.

Here is Make magazine's article on "Learn How to Build a Nuclear Fusor":

https://makezine.com/projects/make-36-boards/nuclear-fusor/

There's absolutely a mechanically simple way to refurbish a laptop battery. The technique is not unlike the procedure documented in this how-to. Battery cells are fairly generic electro-chemical parts that are standardized widely across many industries. There's anecdotes about early Tesla cars being built with battery packs made out of many laptop cells wired in series. Apple absolutely refurbishes their own batteries for use in authorized repair shop and depots. The charging and monitoring circuitry (known as a "gas gauge") is a valuable component that can be repurposed in a replacement battery.

As an aside, there's no law that says only OEMs are authorized to produce "refurbished" components. Aftermarket part vendors also will never claim that their parts, refurbished or otherwise, are OEM. Anyone who's come within 10 miles of the Apple supply chain is fully aware that there's no such thing as 3rd-party available OEM parts, and claiming such is a great way to get your shipments confiscated. In my experience ordering components like this (admittedly not in bulk), the customs declarations almost always specify something like "replacement battery for laptop" or "smartphone spare parts."

I used to have AOL CDs, but then I decided I needed a new gaming chair https://makezine.com/2006/03/1...

Half the performance? I built this 2x4 coat hanger antenna and get 149 channels! Most of those Walmart $10 antennas aren't worth $10. I suppose there are inexpensive quality antennas available but all the ones I saw were at least $50. RF signals don't care how much you spent just how well you positioned your antenna. I spent the money I saved on a HDHomerun Connect Quatro so now I can watch OTA anywhere.

Really, Really Random Number Generator

Why a Wall Full of Lava Lamps Is a Terrific Random Number Generator

Well, it isn't hard to build a simple circuit that generates randomness from semiconductor junction noise, but pointing a video camera at a lava lamp is even easier and more within the skill set of an average software geek.

Actually, designing good RNGs isn't in the skill set of an average software geek, no matter the technique.

RNGs are HARD to get right, it requires lots of specialized knowledge.

Well, it isn't hard to build a simple circuit that generates randomness from semiconductor junction noise, but pointing a video camera at a lava lamp is even easier and more within the skill set of an average software geek.

Make magazine had an article about plastic welding by using 3D printer filament in a dremel or other rotary tool. Maybe that'll work for what you need?

"First plasma" is a term referring to an event in the life of a fusion reactor.

It's not all that different from a telescope's "first light".

For the obligatory auto comparison: the equivalent of saying an electric starter was able to turn an engine over -- it doesn't even mean the engine runs, produces power, etc.

"First Plasma" by a private organization is a yawner, though: EMC2, for example, produced plasma in its reactors back in the '90's, and high school kids have built working Fusion reactors for science projects. It just isn't hard to create a reactor capable of Fusion

The difficult part is creating energy from it.

I call the Raspberry Pi "Custom Purpose" simply because if you look at 90%+ of the advertised uses for it, they are just that, controlling machinery, kiosks, etc.

Just look here: http://makezine.com/2013/04/14...

Now, see how many of these types of projects your basic Dell system unit is used in.

Transparent aluminum is a real thing today

Here's an attack that can be used on Wifi
http://makezine.com/projects/b...

You left out throwies.

http://makezine.com/projects/p...

These kinds of fusion reactors have been around for a long time. They are fun and not overly hard to build. They are effectively little more than a big vacuum tube. Here is a Makezine article on how to build one. Here is a Youtube video. They are used as neutron sources, but none of these designs has a prayer of generating more energy than it requires to run. It's certainly a nice science fair project, but it's not a groundbreaking novel discovery.

Most people run Lua on the ESP8266 and there are no Adruino compatible environments for it.

Oh yes there is. I run Arduino on ESP 8266-12E.

And since you didn't bother to google, I'll do it for you just to ruin AC's reputation and trolling attempt:

https://github.com/esp8266/Ard...
And a neato working Instructables to show you how to do this with no additional Arduino needed:
http://makezine.com/2015/04/01...>

Oh...and I even run a server on an ESP8266-12E and I used only the Arduino Sketch interface to upload directly to the ESP8266 like so many before me.

Fine. You don't want to spam the poor mega-corp. How about you open a trouble ticket with them instead? http://makezine.com/projects/s...

Note that you can get the whole kit for $99 using discount code from Make Magazine.

I was cheering for the kid when I first heard the story about the 14 year old who "built" his own digital clock. I was curious as to the implementation. My first guess was an Arduino board, which would still be pretty cool.
Turns out it's nothing but an old alarm clock that he disassembled and put into his pencil box.

http://makezine.com/2015/09/16...

What a giant let-down. He's getting attention from the White House and tech companies for stealing someone's work and passing it off as his own?
Remember back when apple pie and baseball were quintessential "American" things? For some reason, this story seems to represent my impression of the new "America". A country that exudes fear and gives out awards to non-achievers.

This has been around for years. A device from last year uses the same joule thief circuit.

I realize that this is probably a little slanted, but is seems like a good writeup of the situation:
Massimo Banzi: Fighting for Arduino

You could have at least provided a link!

Found this...

http://makezine.com/2015/02/02...

The new BCM2836 SoC is more or less the old BCM2835 with the ARMv6 core cut out and a v7 quad core dropped in it’s place. However there are some other minor changes can you talk about those?

There aren’t any changes to the USB subsystem, but the power system has received a tweak. 2835 has an on-board SMPS: this wasn’t large enough to supply the current needed by the quad Cortex complex, so it was removed, and Pi 2 uses an external SMPS chip. Also, as the Cortex complex has its own 512KB L2 cache, we no longer use the 128KB system L2 — ARM traffic goes directly to SDRAM instead.

Many tasks,
http://hackaday.com/tag/raspbe...
http://makezine.com/category/e...
Seems to me like thousands of people are finding interesting things to do. Of course it is not fast enough for everything, but nor is my i7 laptop, or the 48core server box I use at work.

Small. Ok, that's relative. Its been fine for my uses, smaller than the beagleboard and mini-itx boards I used before. The A+ is even smaller. Interested to know what project you are doing where the pi is too big and too slow, what do you use instead?

Cheap. sorry if $25/$35 is too expensive. Its a quarter the price of the beaglebaord that I used before. Maybe you can find something cheaper for your specific task.

Widely available. In the UK there are several high street shops with it in stock, and lots of online retailers.

Documentation. Personally GPU docs don't interest me (though they are now released, so its the most open arm SoC). When I have wanted to use the pi in a project I have found lots of documentation and tutorials to help me.

Well supported. 2.5 years after release they are still doing regular software updates, including big things like wayland support. Compared to lots of hardware that is released with some old distro image that never gets any updates.

So yes the raspberrypi is awesome. It lets lots of people do interesting things at a good price. Sure for certain things an atmega, beaglebaord, banana pi, gumstix, galileo, an old pc or something else might be better.

And it's pretty cool:
The integrated space plan is an update of the document originally drawn up in the 1980s, and has been variously rediscovered since.

It's a long-view look at where we need to go and what we need to get there. In the 1980s, commercial spaceflight was envisioned somewhat differently than it's happened, and robotics have gotten way more capable, so the refresh is definitely needed.

The big problem with fusion is making it produce more energy than you put in, and most of the science points to it just having to be done on a bigger scale than we have done so so far. Of course building big has it's own issues and considering the paperwork issues just to get ITER started shows the problem many governments have working together on a project of that scale.

Weird as it sounds with all the electronic label printers you can get today, there's just something about the old style "punch the label as a 3D letter into tape" approach that I prefer. Especially when the tape punch is a serious tool, not those cheap plastic versions:

http://makezine.com/review/too...

Fusion reactors capable of producing net power are big, or seem to be being as we haven't actually built one yet.

However, if you just want to produce tritium for a boosted fission bomb, you don't need to generate net power. A farnsworth fusor will do and they are small and inconspicuous.

As for deuterium: Deuterium is produced for industrial, scientific and military purposes, by starting with ordinary water—a small fraction of which is naturally-occurring heavy water—and then separating out the heavy water by the Girdler sulfide process, distillation, or other methods.

So, no point in securing your fusion reactor because the bad guys don't have any real motivation to break in. At least, not to steal anything.

http://makezine.com/projects/m...

did i read about this here a few weeks ago?

Building the right antenna helps a lot for OTA TV:

http://makezine.com/2009/01/12...

I had to build one when the local PBS affiliate reduced their power output when the other stations went digital --- also location, had to run a cable upstairs and put the antenna behind the sofa (have to move it to the window when the weather is bad --- my wife won't let me hang it on the wall).

http://makezine.com/2013/07/06...

Sorry, I've been so involved. For those who aren't familiar the Maker Magazine articleis a good start. Of course the original link above has some info. And Google is your friend. :)

What would be interesting would be to bring the spirit of these old systems into the modern age rather than just replicate them wholesale. Boot into a system which allows you immediate programming (preferably with a modern OO syntax) and access to video, sound and peripherals. If there's anything that has suffered over the past three decades, it's easy access to I/O.

hmmm, if only there was something like that already under our noses.

But what AC left off was the system with the reflective strip also has an 'acoustic microphone' for finding the wing frequency. It uses the infrared illumination to find the location of a bug flying through it, then uses a low-powered laser to determine the wing frequency, followed by a shot from a high-powered laser if the detected bug is on the blacklist.

How is this different than a similar method of identifying bugs from a few years ago mentioned in Make Magazine?

It's MakerBot, so they'll offer that as a bullet point and then send you an addendum that says "About that schematics thing...lolno" in hazy corporatespeak.

Building an Open Source Laptop
By Bunnie Huang | 01/08/2014

http://makezine.com/magazine/building-an-open-source-laptop/

Blueprints:

http://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena_Main_Page

but /. doesn't want to post about it. so here it is.

Building an Open Source Laptop

By Bunnie Huang | 01/08/2014

http://makezine.com/magazine/building-an-open-source-laptop/

Blueprints:

http://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena_Main_Page

Don't need to judge by the cover, you can read an excerpt here.

I recommend the book highly.

Its been done before for less

Microprocessor
http://www.linux-cae.net/Projects/Serial/Laser/laser.htm

Aurdio Laser Modem:
http://makezine.com/2008/08/13/laser-modem-with-an-ardui/

Raspberry Pi
http://www.ohmpie.com/lasermodemvideo/

I can tell you've never tried to make an inkjet printer from scratch. Dispensing fractions of a milliliter needed for high DPI is hard and building the hardware for it is equally hard.

The only DIY feasible printing technology is pen-plotters.

I've seen a number of DIY inkjet printers - e.g. this one - that use ink cartridges from commercial printers. This works because some ink cartridge designs effectively have the print head built into the cartridge. While this still leaves you dependent on the printer manufacturer for the cartridges, you still (theoretically) gain from the fact that your printer won't refuse to print if (say) one colour runs out, or if you refill with off-brand ink, or for some other arbitrary reason - since this logic is generally implemented in the printer rather than in the cartridge.

I would rather watch Game of Drones

I remember first reading about this guy, his daughter, and his DIY genomics in Make and Wired magazines back in 2009. I'm glad to see that, several years on, they at least have a likely culprit identified. It's still a long ways from describing the actual mechanism, effects, and potential treatments, but you have to start somewhere. I am also pleased to see that he has been able to get collaborators in industry and academia, who can put greater resources to it than just his own.

and diesel powered tools...

http://blog.makezine.com/2013/02/22/power-tools-retrofitted-for-the-amish/

Get to a Maker Faire. Several years ago I spent awhile talking with Bre Pettis about his new machine from MakerBot without realizing who he was. Take the kids! Solder your own badge! Learn how to make your own air powered rockets! My kids aren't even into robots think it is a blast. A word of waring... they make you sign a serious waiver for a reason. They expect you to pay attention to your surroundings and not blindly walk into that quadcopter demo. Make sure your kids are not texting as they walk. Look for some of the small booths/tables with guys that brought in their home brewed stuff. They were you not that long ago and would love to talk about hot to get started. The fancy booths are people looking to sell stuff. If your not looking to buy your own laser cutter.... they will let you look and they will be polite but they are looking to sell stuff.
http://makerfaire.com/

If you decide you want to start now and want to learn how things work....

Get this kit for $49:
http://www.adafruit.com/products/193

Follow the tutorials starting here:
http://learn.adafruit.com/lesson-0-getting-started

Soon you will be a master of blinky lights. Think of it as "Hello world" for robotics.

If you think, "HOLY CRAP. I AM MAKING IT REALLY DO THINGS" Then continue. If you went, "HOLY CRAP, I JUST WASTED $50 AND A FEW HOURS OF MY LIFE TO MAKE A STUPID LIGHT BLINK" you might consider some of the more expensive options or re-consider your desire to do this. If you want to continue...

If you have an old printer laying around then rip some motors out of it. In fact anything that has a motor or is older electronics will soon be looked at with, "Hey, that has a nice transformer in it. Those are some nice through hole resisters. Would you look at those hardened steel rods! I wonder why they did it this way?"

Things to consider furthering the addiction:
motor shield with some basic motors
digital multimeter
Soldering iron, do not get one of those nasty Radio Shack $20 pieces of junk. You wouldn't try to build a small deck with a handsaw. This is one of the more expensive pieces you will buy, but it is one of those tools that you will use and will appreciate not having a junk one. This does not mean you need to get a super solder re-work station. Get one with a base station and dial control. Temp controlled would be great.
Go to a nearby electronics place that sells this stuff and buy some general wire, breadboard etc. They will appreciate the business and might be there someday when you really need that one part and don't want to wait for shipping. I was amazed to find one near me. They were rather knowledgeable compared to some certain chains (they had a soldering iron on the counter just in case)
An old computer with the following ports: MIDI(computers used to have a port with real IO, oh my), serial, USB, parallel. You might want to eventually talk to ports and individual pins without the OS in the way. Windows stopped allowing this with XP. A P4 is fast but gets warm and very power hungry. A PIII not so hot or power hungry but not as fast. An old laptop works great for this since it has a small footprint.

Start to follow a few web sites:
http://hackaday.com/
http://www.adafruit.com/blog/?main_page=blog
http://blog.makezine.com/
http://dangerousprototypes.com/
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/
http://diydrones.com/
https://www.sparkfun.com/

A someone who knows a bit about robotics and electronics, I'd recommend the new Arduino Robot: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Robot It has all the essentials you need to build pretty sophisticated robots; the Compass, IR Sensor, 360 degree turn on the spot, 2 micro-controllers, LCD, sensor ports distributed around.... it's a really well thought out, sound basis for robotics. Here's an interesting account of the story behind it: http://blog.makezine.com/2013/05/14/introducing-new-column-from-arduinos-massimo-banzi/ As for the Lego Mindstorms ( I have one); it's good but basic and you're constrained by what your allowed to do. Put it this way... Mindstorms is the Apple iPad (polished and fancy) whilst Arduino Robot is your fav. Linux machine (very capable, expandable and gives you a sound basis on which to build).

Yeah, I didn't think this was even a valid question. The display from 2008 was a static backlit affair. The hotspot allows you to connect a slew of devices to the Internet for a while.

The 2008 display was neither static nor backlit(it was electrophoretic and reflective); but it was effectively useless because it wasn't bitmapped. Unlike the (much more expensive) e-ink screens used in kindles and their ilk, this one had 14 segments, all fixed shape. They didn't do anything to block you from reprogramming it; but all you could do was blink the segments in different patterns(and, unlike the classic '7-segment' LED and LCD displays, these segments were whole letters and chunks of background, not designed for even crude rendering of characters). More or less useless.

I don't have the patience to look at that drawing because it's a bitmap PNG, but thanks anyway and check out this comment in that discussion:
http://blog.makezine.com/2012/09/13/the-rockwell-international-integrated-space-plan/#comment-720128
:-)

Ok, I was a bit overzealous with the Apple comparison. But the fact of the matter is, I don't have blinders on, I've got capitalist glasses on. This response is being typed on a $600 cell phone, which by all rights should cost no more then $200, but we live in a capitalist society. The cost of a 3d printer could be driven down dramatically, but you will never get quality out of mass production. And you will NEVER get quality parts (end user quality) out of an FDM printer.

IF this sort of printing ever manages to take over in the home, it will be with resin printers.

http://blog.makezine.com/2011/04/03/homebrew-liquid-resin-3d-printer-gets-resolution-boost/

And the issue with them isn't the cost of the hardware, its the cost of the resin itself.

The Redpark TTL Serial Cable connects iOS devices to TTL serial devices. So you could hook it up to an Arduino. Except the cable itself costs more than a Raspberry Pi...