Maker Project Lab
October 12, 2023 AUTHOR: Donald Bell CATEGORIES: News Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Prime Time [Maker Update]

This week on Maker Update: Bob’s bobble head, machine learning for quirky droids, a laptop with a side of soldering iron, and an easy recipe for haunted mirrors.

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September 28, 2023 AUTHOR: Donald Bell CATEGORIES: News Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

An Ear for Art [Maker Update]

This week on Maker Update: the art of conversation, Halloween contest season, a tombstone with a twist, and a bright idea on pet portraits.

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November 19, 2022 AUTHOR: Donald Bell CATEGORIES: Project Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Building a Remote Controlled Tricycle-Riding Puppet

I’ve published an Instructables guide showing how I made this remote controlled tricycle-riding puppet.

It was such a fun project that I’m already hard at work on an updated version and a more manageable project guide. The bill of materials alone is simply ridiculous. It’s what happens when you’re prototying and just ordering random bits and grabbing things out of your stash of whatever boards you have on hand.

But until the next version is finished, I hope this guide can offer some inspiration.

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November 10, 2022 AUTHOR: Donald Bell CATEGORIES: News Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Pleats and Tweets [Maker Update]

This week on Maker Update: bringing origami to life, Lego lets go of Mindstorms, taking your dragon up a notch, pedaling puppets, and waterproofing your mermaid tech.

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August 30, 2019 AUTHOR: Donald Bell CATEGORIES: News, Project Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Jon-A-Tron’s 3D Printed Animatronic Puppet

Occasionally there are projects that hang at the top of my “someday” list and refuse to budge, nagging me until I tackle them. Jonathan (Jon-A-Tron) Odom’s 3D Printed Animatronic Puppet project on Instructables is one of these projects.

When I started Maker Project Lab, the whole idea was that I was going to be rebuilding, evaluating, and elevating awesome projects that makers have shared online. It’s a process that was part of my job as a Projects Editor at Make: magazine, and it seemed like a cool thing I could continue doing. I mean, isn’t that part of what the Maker Movement is all about — sharing what you’ve done and inspiring people to build their own version and take it someplace new?

Needless to say, if you’ve been following this blog, you know that I got wonderfully sidetracked by making my own weekly show and reviewing tools. What little spare time I have left for actually making my own projects is typically sucked in to paid original project content, or personal projects for which a lot of the appeal is selfishly chipping away at something that’s just for me.

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