Category Archives: General News

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories: Year 4

Evil

Happy birthday to us! Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has now been around for four years. We’ve collected some interesting projects from this past year to celebrate.

Microcontroller and Electronics Projects:

Tabletop Pong
Tabletop Pong

Breadboard
Moving from breadboard to protoboard

Revenge!
Revenge of the Cherry Tomatoes

drink making unit
Drink making unit

pin 1
Finding pin 1

xmega - 2
Say hello to xmega

Peggydot
Adding a Chronodot to Peggy 2

Meggy Twitter Reader
Meggy Jr RGB Twitter Reader

twisted wire bundle
Twisted Wire Bundles

LED graph
Some thoughts on throwies

rovin pumpkin
Rovin’ pumpkin

ADXL335 - 10
Accelerometer with an AVR (updated)

LEDcalc - 20
Wallet-size LED Resistance Calculator

Science:

seeing magnetic fields
Seeing Magnetic Fields

Ice Spikes
Ice Spikes

opposition effect in clover
Opposition effect

Kitchen Science 18
Litmus Candy

Beans day five
Gibberellic Acid and Giantism in Sprouts

Simple LED Projects:

fake seven segment display
Fake seven segment display

LED-lit sea urchin
LED-lit sea urchins

Edge Lit Cards
Refining edge-lit cards

Food Hacking:

Ice Cream Gyoza -13
Ice Cream Gyoza

Lemon Pickle
Lemon Pickle

The array
Spices

coffee bean cooler
DIY coffee bean cooler

Marmalade 30
Marmalade: easier than it looks

AtomicCookies 7
Atomic Cookies

asteroids cookies
Asteroids (the edible kind)

Crunchy Frogs01
Crunchy Frog

Kit Projects:

tortiseshell
Bulbdial Clock Kit

Peggy2le-end
Peggy 2LE

Scale
LED Hanukkah Menorah Kit

Larson Scanner
Larson Scanner

D12 bag8
Handbag of Holding Kits

Crafty Projects:

arecibo 2
SETI Scarf

scrap acrylic
Scrap acrylic shelf

Tombstone
24 hour tombstones

ipad 3
iPad lap stand

Custom iron ons 10
Custom iron-on techniques

Geek Design:

symmetrisketch
SymmetriSketch

Typographic Coasters
Typgraphical Character Coasters

Ornamental Components 08
Ornamental Components

Cat String 6
Radio controlled string

Bookend - 9
Bookends for physics geeks

Lego business cards-2
Lego Business Cards

Tie Stools2
Portable Stools

And, don’t forget, you can win a Peggy 2 or one of 13 other prizes in our clock
concept contest
, going on this week.

Related:

DIY Fever: Heading to Maker Faire

It’s a busy week at the labs here. We’re getting ready for Maker Faire this weekend in San Mateo, CA– the biggest, baddest, and most awesomest DIY festival of the year.

We’ll be showcasing an updated version of our mechanical Pong game. We’ve added a curved playing field, new user-friendly knobs, and a host of other improvements that we’ll plan to write about at a later date. We hope you’ll come by and try it out–we’ll be on the west side of the Expo hall.

Tabletop Pong - 92
Some of the other projects that we’ve taken to Maker Faire in the last few years include our Interactive LED Dining Table, CandyFab, Bristlebots, Interactive LED Coffee Table, Peggy 2, and Meggy Jr RGB.

We’re also participating in the Open Source Hardware Panel, on Saturday at 1 pm at the Innovation Stage at the south end of the Expo Hall.

Eggbot kit - preview 1

We’ll have much more to say about this later, but we’re thrilled to announce our new collaboration with Bruce Shapiro, Ben Trombley, and Brian Schmalz. While we’re demonstrating the Tabletop-Pong game, Bruce and friends will be giving a sneak peek at the results of our collaboration: a fantastic new version of the Eggbot kit, which we are preparing for release as an open source kit sometime this summer.

Eggbot kit - preview 2

You can sign up here for more info about the kit, and you can try out the Eggbots– or just see them in action –in the center of the Expo Hall.

Lastly, to help get everyone else in the DIY mood, we’re having a DIY Fever sale over at the store, with 20% off of Evil Mad Science open-source kit favorites such as the Larson Scanner, Meggy Jr RGB and the Bulbdial Clock, and 10% off of everything else!

Happy hacking, and we’ll hope to see you all at the Faire!

Contest reminder!

We’ve seen a lot of great Arduino Halloween projects out there this year. A few of them have been submitted to our Arduino contest over at Instructables, and we’d love to see more. The entry deadline is Nov. 15, so you’ve still got time to send them in.

Speaking of contests, the Make Halloween contest deadline is here. Quick, get those microcontroller projects entered before midnight on Nov. 3!

Instructables Arduino Contest

Over at Instructables, we’re sponsoring an Arduino contest with prizes including Meggy Jr RGB kits. The rules are simple: use Arduino in your project! And by Arduino, we mean any project involving the Arduino IDE in some way. (And yes, you can use your Meggy Jr RGB or your Peggy 2 for this contest.) We look forward to seeing your projects and would love to see them in the flickr auxiliary, too.

Peggy on Make cover!

Make vol 18 cover
We’re thrilled to see Peggy 2 on the cover of Make Magazine vol. 18 which is showing up in mailboxes now and will be on shelves soon. We were especially excited to get our copy so we could see Windell’s article on making a one-ton servo motor out of an electric automotive jack.

Speaking of our friends at Make, Maker Faire is coming right up! We’ll be there again and hope to see lots of you in San Mateo on May 30 and 31. Discounted tickets are only available through May 20, so if you’re planning to attend, get your tickets soon!

20 millicenturies of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

Evil

Happy birthday to us! Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories is now two years of age. Collected below is a “Best of Evil Mad Scientist” for the past year: Some of our favorite projects that we’ve published over the last twelve months. Here’s to the next year!

Quick projects:

Set of bands
Rubberbands made from old bicycle innertubes.

vertical light tent setup
Light tent made from a lampshade.

Still life with yellow paper (group shot 2)
Chip bugs

Enterprise
Bristlebots

Sizing
Spool spinner from an old fan.

Quick C to D adapter
The $1.00 C to D adapter

Electronics projects

Weekend Projects Podcast!
How to make a Joule Thief from Make: Weekend Projects.

lights off?
How to make a dark-detecting LED night light.

The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronics Junk
The Great Internet Migratory Box of Electronic Junk

Finished 1
How to make a Sawed-off USB Key

AVR microcontroller projects

ADXL3XX
Using an ADXL330 accelerometer with an AVR microcontroller

Snapper - 09
Snap-o-lantern

Kit Projects

XX8_complete
AVR Target Boards

Four Panels 2
Interactive Table Kits

Resist1- Wall hanging
Peggy

grayscale
Peggy v 2.0

Crafty Projects

Q*bert close-up
QuiltBert

vintage software book handbag
Software Handbag

iPod inside
iPod cozy

Earrings 2
Fimo Fractals

Miniature Art Car
Mini Art Cars

New wing
Umbrella Bat Costume v 2.0

Food Hacking

cooking
Cooking hotdogs

555 LED flasher 1
Circuitry Snacks

Googly FSM
Edible Googly Eyes

Sierpinski Cookies-11
Fractal Cookies

CandyFab

Sugar Chain
Printing complex shapes: Sugar Chain

Before and after 2
Candyfab improvements: higher resolution and edible output

Papercraft:

Usage 3: First operand
Rotary Fraction Adding Machine

toner - 15
Electric Origami

Observations & silly projects:

Cat volume computation
Volume of a cat

Gourds
Pacman Halloween

Lego Projects:

Lego Shooter
Forbidden Lego review & build

Technic Bits
Efficient Lego Storage

Reviews:

suction tool
Obscure electronics tools

Lee Valley & Veritas catalog
Lee Valley & Veritas Catalog Review

Teardowns:

Twisted leads (close-up)
LED Stoplight

All the parts
pedometer
hp2600n - 178
HP Color LaserJet 2600n