This Magic Wand project can be used to get someone young interested in electronics since instead of simply doing something practical this project appears to be magic. The project uses a magnetic reed switch and a magnet embedded into a magic wand to turn things on just by bringing the wand close to them. There are a ton of possibilities here such as hiding the magnet between your fingers and amaze your friends that you have the ability to turn on the items just by the force of your hand and they don’t.

Thanks for the tip Jason.

When think of what a laser cutter can do you normally think of cutting things and etching surfaces. I never would have thought of making something 3D other than making notches that can link together. This video shows a technique that holds the material being worked over the main laser cutter bed using some stilts. Cuts are made in acrylic and since acrylic bends when heated the laser is used to slowly warm the material where it is needed to be bent. Since the work is sitting off the bed it can droop when heated. To see more information on this Laser Cutting 3D Objects method have a look here.

Circuit Lab is now Available Offline so you can design some cool circuits in your cabin in the woods. When you come back to civilization the your new creations will sync so that they are available online for collaboration and sharing.

“Our team is happy to announce that CircuitLab is now available offline! Our belief at CircuitLab is that your electronics design tools should be available to you wherever, and whenever inspiration strikes. With CircuitLab’s offline capabilities, you can now design, simulate, and save your circuits while you are not connected to the internet. (Some features, such as exporting rendered schematics, are currently only available online.) Once your computer comes back online, we will sync all your circuits with your account on our server. Offline mode makes heavy use of advanced features in HTML5 to further blur the distinction between desktop and browser-based software, bringing the best of both worlds to our more than 60,000 monthly active users.”

This forum post over at the EEVBlog Forum gives us a great look at the inside of an old Tektronix 465 Oscilloscope and walks through the repair and refurbishment of the scope. The refurbishment isn’t just taking a cotton swab and rubbing out some dirt, it is rather invasive including a complete system dismantle and cleaning. Nice thing about this method is we get to see all of the internal workings of the device! Thanks to ModemHead for taking the time for documenting this.

When developing a new circuit design you will find that you often drop in solutions from previous projects since there’s no reason to re-invent the wheel every time. HackEDA takes this idea and pushes it out to the web, it’s in beta right now so it might not be able to handle all of your project ideas but by clicking a few buttons you can build the basic framework for many project ideas. After you are done you can simply download your Eagle 6 schematic.

Thanks for the tip Ben.

“At it’s core, it’s a system for collecting reusable-sized pieces of electronic designs, along with the knowledge necessary to reuse them in new designs. The library is available to browse online, you can download the individual bits, and there’s also a tool for creating custom circuits by simply selecting the features your project needs.”

If you have a Raspberry Pi you can use your existing LEGO MINDSTORMS Sensors. Thanks to John Cole from Dexter Industries for sharing this with us.

“This is also a great example of how to get started with I2C on the Raspberry Pi.  We chose the dIMU because it’s easy to access and use, with just four lines to connect (SDA, SCL, GND, and VCC).  You may have to make modifications to attach other sensors.”

Thanks to Danielle from PBS for sending in this interesting video about The First Software Patent. They will be releasing a new video every 2 weeks, check out the channel for a bunch of interesting ones they have already released (there are 6 so far). The guy who invented the screw in coffin might not get rich from the idea but if this was available when the idea of burring our loved ones who passed away came to be I think it would have been adopted. It is simple to install, takes up a minimal amount of room and is simple to relocate if needed.