Maker

How to Make (almost) Anything

MAKE sent photographer Carlin Wing to the lab at MIT where students were showing the work they had created in the class in the fall semester. Gershenfeld teaches a three-hour class once a week. The TAs (Raffi Krikorian and Manu Prakash) and shop technician John DiFrancesco spend the rest of the week, weekend, and nights with the students to help them build and put the ideas into practice. Krikorian told us about the projects.

1. Sergio Araya and Ayah Bdeir’s Wall. Sergio and Ayah are setting up their project. They wanted to make a wall surface that could be programmed to set patterns into the wall. The sheet in front of the wall would dance with those patterns.

2. Anmol Madan’s Wireless Wearable. Anmol wanted to integrate accelerometers and Bluetooth GSR (Galvanic Skin Response) sensors so he could feed that information into a computer and have it know how you were “feeling” at the time. He’s exploring affective computing applications to understand how people react under stress during a negotiation or on a date.

3. Gerardo Perez and Han Hoang’s Robot. Gerardo and Han built a macroscale pick-and-place machine. They wanted to build a robot that could assemble structures larger than itself.

4. Vincent Leclerc’s Volumetric Display. Vincent’s display was a 2D grid of LEDs that he spun around very quickly. By controlling when the LEDs go on and off, and relying on persistence of vision, the display looks like an object floating in the air.

5. John Harrison’s Microphone. John’s showing off a project he did during one of the weekly assignments. He rigged up a microphone with ultrasonic sensors so he could tell how far away the speaker was from the microphone and automatically adjust the gain.

6. Christine Liu’s Jellyfish. Christine made a jellyfish that reacts as you approach it, shaking its tentacles and glowing while making a zapping sound. When left alone, this device undulates like a jellyfish does.

7. Amon Millner’s Claytroller. Amon wanted to create an easy way for children to build their own video game controllers. He envisioned a system of blocks that you could assemble, and the bricks would then coordinate to relay their input data to the video game system.

For more information on the 2004 fall class and the rest of its projects, visit fab.cba. mit.edu/classes/863.04.

For more information on people, projects, and processes, Neil Gershenfeld's book on personal fabrication, Fab, will be published in April by Basic Books.

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32 Make: Volume 01