RSVP Collapsible Silicone Funnel
$7 amzn.to/rsvpfunnel
Someone gave us this silicone funnel as a housewarming gift, and I looked cross-eyed at it before shoving it to the back of a drawer. But it turns out that we use it
all the time. It’s been used to funnel olive oil, homemade limoncello, beans, rice,
and filling for a door sock. (It’s also a big hit as a toddler toy.) The funnel is 4" in
diameter and 4" tall when fully expanded, and it does in fact fit in the back of a
drawer when collapsed. That gives it a big advantage over my old plastic funnel
set, which practically needed a drawer to itself. It’s also easy to clean. I’m thinking
of buying a second one (in a fun color) to keep in the car.
Freescale Tower
Microcontroller System
$99 freescale.com/tower
Got a project to prototype? The basic
Freescale Tower kit consists of the 32-bit
microcontroller board with USB and RS-
232 interfaces, accelerometer, four display
LEDs, switches, and a potentiometer.
Additional Tower modules are available,
including different microcontrollers, an
LCD graphic display, sensor board, wi-fi
board, and a prototyping board.
The kit’s DVD contains the Code Warrior
IDE and supporting MQX software. It also
includes 4 tutorial labs.
The Tower system is easy to set up and
begin using. After experimenting with the
labs, I was motivated to wire a solderless
breadboard with light and temperature
sensors to the Tower’s side expansion
port, then modify the lab code to read
these sensors remotely via the internet.
No soldering needed! Freescale’s online
documentation library makes project
development easy.
—L. Abraham Smith, N3BAH
M-Audio Fast Track
$100
m-audio.com
I can remember a time when recording basic multitrack
audio on a desktop computer was a daunting task and
cost-prohibitive for most. Thankfully those days are behind
us, and songwriters looking to record digitally have a number of affordable USB audio interfaces to choose from.
157 Make:
