PZ-1 Pizza Box DJ Controller

I built this conductive ink DJ controller made from a pizza box. You can build one too! Here’s the guide in the Adafruit Learning System. It’s a real DJ that you control by touch. It even blinks its colorful lights in time to the music!

Build your own DJ controller using a cardboard pizza box, conductive paint, and a Circuit Playground! The PZ-1 pizza box DJ controller uses a Circuit Playground, which senses your capacitive touch and speaks MIDI directly to your software, such as Traktor, Mixxx, and others. With a stencil and conductive paint you’ll create a delicious, functional controller layout. Inspired by a limited edition pizza box turntable from a famous pizza brand, now you can make your own!

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Toner Transfer PCB Silkscreen Fail

This didn’t work.

I wanted to add the graphical silkscreen layer to the top of my guitar fuzz circuit board. I printed a mirror image on the laser printer, aligned it, ironed it, saw the terrible result, and made a sad face.

Here’s plan B, stick a positive version on with double stick tape. Super pro.

Making a guitar fuzz pedal circuitboard

NOTE: I accidentally reversed the electrolytic capacitor (C2) in this drawing.

I’m making a guitar effect pedal for my son, who’s been learning to play guitar and recently borrowed a beautiful Danelectro from my friend Adam Iscove. I found a simple fuzz circuit online called a Bazz Fuss  and decided to replicate it.

I started off on a breadboard and got a good sound out of it, so now I’m making a circuitboard for it.

I re-created the circuit schematic in Eagle CAD, as seen here. I’m not an electrical engineer, and I’m certain I’ve done many things incorrectly and look forward to hearing suggestions on improving things. Heck, I haven’t even soldered it together and tested it yet, so I probably won’t work until iteration #7…

Next, I manually placed and routed the components, also in Eagle.

Winged Ukulele Hanger

  
My son has begun playing ukulele. We needed a way to store it, so I found this lovely winged ukulele hanger model on Thingiverse. 

  
I scaled the wings in a bit to fit the bed of my Printrbot, then printed it in bright red PLA plastic.

  

Making a Gourd Shaker

 

My daughter Beatrix and I decided to make a gourd shaker today. The seriously autumnal decorative gourd had dried out on its own between Halloween and today, so all we had to do was drill a hole, pull out the dried guts and seeds using a hook fashioned from a piece of spring steel, fill with rice and dried corn, shave a cork down to size, and hot glue it in place. A really fun project for us both.

And now, Bea’s first solo gourd shaker performance. The flair move at the end!

Jack Conte Video Featuring Awesome Robots

I really enjoy Jack Conte‘s music, creative video editing, and now, his behind-the-scenes look at the making of his latest video, Pedals. Please check out the video itself, and then enjoy his enthusiastic making-of video. Jack has maker skills!

The hexapod, Dmitiri, in the video was built and programmed by Matt Bunting and the face robot is by Kevin Felstead. Great work, guys.

via BoingBoing

Atari Punk Ukelele

I’m building a square wave synthesizer into a ukelele body for a musician friend of mine.  I’ll be documenting the process to write up in Make: and I’ll be presenting on it at Bay Area Maker Faire 2013.