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Archive for the 'diy' Category

Video Blog: Using Guitar Hero World Tour Wii Drums as MIDI Controllers on OS X with OSCulator

( Gear and Music and audio and diy and originals )

Ever since I heard that Guitar Hero World Tour’s drums were velocity sensitive, I wanted to try using them as MIDI controllers.
Thanks to this post by Camille, developer of OSCulator, I finally got the Wii World Tour drums to work with velocity sensitivity. Unfortunately, as the video demonstrates, they don’t work too well. Either they’re [...]

Burning Man 2008

( Music and diy and drumming and misc and photography )

Burning Man was incredible. If you went to a museum, any museum, you wouldn’t see as much art per square foot, it wouldn’t be as interesting or interactive, and it wouldn’t be free like it was here. There’s nothing like wandering the desert at night and stumbling upon a giant 5 story rocket you can [...]

Quick DIY Portable iPhone 3g Charger

( Apple and Gear and diy and iPhone and misc and originals and science )

I’m going to the desert for a week and wanted a way to recharge my iPhone. I bought a zap rx4-c, which works with most of my other devices, only to learn that it’s not compatible with the iPhone. Zap’s customer service was friendly but they should change their description in two ways: One, you [...]

Turn Wii Rock Band Instruments into Real Instruments with Junxion

( Apple and Electronica and Gear and Logic 8 and Music and New Instruments and audio and diy and drumming and originals and wii )

UpdateCheck out my velocity sensitive full MIDI drumset with the guitar hero set and the rockband set.
Today I figured out how to easily turn the rock band drum set for Wii into a MIDI drum controller:

I did this with Junxion, a program that allows you to transform USB and wireless game controller input into MIDI [...]

How to Make a DIY Music Staff Roller Stamp

( Gear and diy and originals and video )

Here are instructions on how to make a Music Staff Roller Stamp, a rolling ink stamp you can use to quickly draw a staff onto paper for jotting down musical ideas.

You can get all the hardware for less than $10 and it only takes about 2 minutes to make.

Materials:
1 brass door hinge post (~3 inches [...]

Johnny Lee’s wiimote head tracking is even cooler

( diy and video and wii )

Johnny Lee’s latest wiimote hack, tracking your head position and alternating a 3D display accordingly, is even cooler:

I installed the software and it gave me a “FishtankVR has encoundered a problem and needs to close” error, but that was fixed by installing the DirectX SDK.
I can get the program to work just by holding my [...]

Converted DIY IR Pen from Candy Toy

( diy and multitouch and video and wii )

-Update-
I modified my original design, swapping the LED onto the other end of the pen and ditching the cardboard. The thinner end plus the see through tube makes this version work magnificently.
This version was harder because I had to drill holes for the led and the wires to go through several parts of the base, [...]

My DIY Keyboard Drawer

( Music and diy )

So I’ll put up plans later, but here are pictures of my do it yourself MIDI keyboard drawer I just finished (click to enlarge):

HD Receiver alternative – cheap home theatre follow up

( Gear and audio and diy and video )

My do it yourself speaker stand post is the most popular one on the site so I thought I’d follow up with other cheap alternatives I’ve been using to create my home theatre.
I have a great HD projector and a nice AV setup with my DIY stands and 7.1 surround sound computer speakers. I built [...]

My DIY Speaker Stands

( Gear and diy )

So my Creative Inspire 7800 7.1 speakers have a pretty terrible range, so when I saw this post on the make zine blog I knew I had to do thing and make my own speaker stands. The idea is from this post at chrismetcalf.net.
The first step was to get some cheap lamps from wallmart. Yes [...]