I’m building a giant bar graph for the Maker Faire in San Mateo, California. If you’re there, you’ll be able to use it to show your cell phone power level when you’re texting, calling, or going online. I’m definitely nervous about how this is going to work with so many phones in the area and [...]

For the purposes of my project I am defining cell phone signal detection as a change in power level sensed at the frequency of the cell phone. I am not doing any decoding of signals and there is no jamming (although I fully support projects of this type), I am only detecting a very small [...]

20 days until Spring! This has been the suckiest winter ever for snowboarding, I haven’t gone even once. It snowed today and I just didn’t feel like it. Instead I’ve been procrastinating with a Mindbands brainwave detector. Last week I re-spun my cell phone signal detector board in two different versions, both to include smaller [...]

Update: I am still building circuits that detect a cell phone signal. I’m only detecting that there is a signal, or the fact that there is current present. I’m not detecting what that signal actually means, decoded. That would be illegal. Update: it’s not going to be good as a kit design as the chips [...]

High frequency signals are so mysterious! How to design PCBs around them, how to detect the signal, how to usefully process… I’ve ordered some building block parts to string together a detection circuit in the 700MHz to 2.8GHz frequency range. I’m starting with an evaluation board from Analog Devices. I decided to go with an [...]

I’ve been building circuits to detect a cell phone signal. I use Verizon service for my smartphone that runs on the 3G network. 3G by the way, stands for 3rd generation, 1st gen being analog, and the 2nd being PCS. Verizon uses the 800 and 1900MHz frequency band for the 3G network. The basic concept [...]

Since my last post, I have been to Burning Man, the Open Hardware Summit and World Maker Faire NYC.  All of those recent events were AWESOME and have been documented hugely online. However, this post is about Getting Started in creating an electronic or interactive piece. Daniel Rozin’s Wooden mirrors are my absolute favorite interactive [...]

Last week I visited Finowfurt near Berlin, Germany, Europe, Earth, Milky Way, Universe for the Chaos Communication Camp conference. The conference was billed as a conference for Hackers and Associated Life Forms. This photo, taken by Jake Blau, is of a rocket sculpture in the center. The talks included everything from DIY solar to e-waste [...]

Shutter glass goes opaque when current is applied, and clear when there is none. I grabbed the following gif from Liquid Crystal Technologies. I had the cost of 100 1″ x 3″ pieces estimated and it was in the $4,000 range. Sigh. Since this material is essentially glass, the material is fairly stiff, even in [...]

This…you have got to see. .

I have only seen the Pianococktail once, at an ITP student show (2008) at NYU, in New York City. It is a piano whose keys actuate solenoids that open valves to bottles containing drink mixtures, Red Bull, alcohol and soda. Whatever song you play will mix its own special drink. I’ve always thought this was [...]

This past weekend Ollie and I exhibited at Maker Faire in San Francisco. Many of my favorite organizations were there, Exploratorium, Spark Fun, Digikey, Lego, Etsy, Instructables, Google, NASA (!!!)…. and many smaller individuals who haven’t yet grown into largeish organizations, MaceTech, Ira Sherman (chastity belts!!!), Sensebridge, Mark Lottor. Setup was very easy- we shipped [...]