If you have already paid $6,000 for a new Nikon D4, you are either rich enough not to care that adding Wi-Fi costs another $900, or your bank account is now so wiped out that you can’t even afford to charge the battery. If you fall into either camp, though, you might still want to try out his great DIY project which adds Wi-Fi to your supercamera for just $30.
The new iPad makes a great photo studio. It has a 5MP autofocus camera, lets you adjust exposure separately (with a third party app like Camera+), has image stabilization and — like no other camera — has a huge range of editing apps to choose from and use right there in the field.
It is, however, very awkward to hold in one hand while you tap the screen with the other. You end up either almost dropping the thing, or taking a picture of your thumb, or just giving up.
I expect to see camera-friendly cases in the near future. Until then, though, I decided to hack together my own from a discarded iPad case from Speck. And amazingly, it turned out pretty well.
So, you just spent $800 on a shiny new iPad so you could write, paint and draw on the go. But — inexplicably — you’re still too cheap to spend $20 on a stylus to help you do it. And if you’re this tight with your money, it’s likely that you have been hoarding the very ingredients you need to make your own stylus right now. So go grab the detritus lingering at the bottom of your fruit bowl or junk drawer and follow along.
Why spend $20 on a good-quality, purpose-made macro lens for your iPhone when you could spend $10 on 3-D printing your own holder and another $4 for a glass lens to put inside it? That, my friends, is a saving of six whole dollars. Six American dollars that Appsman — the maker of this clever lens — is doubtless frittering away on a night of frenzied celebration. And if you, too, want to make yourself six bucks richer, then read on.
The iPhone makes a wonderful bike computer. It’s tough, comes with great GPS and can be loaded with zillions of navigation and fitness apps. It also enjoys a wide range of ready-made handlebar mounts.
But the iPad, possibly even more useful as a map thanks to its large screen and crazy-long battery life, has precisely zero bike mounts available. So I decided to make one. Here’s how:
Have you ever wanted one of those custom, Pantone-colored MacBook, but don’t want to pay the guys over at Colorware an $800 premium to make your device look like Jonny Ive and Punky Brewster’s illicit love sprog?
Well, the good news is that you can actually do it yourself in your own kitchen. The bad news is that for most of us, the process is so complicated and so likely to end in user error that while you’ll still save over Colorware’s $800 premium, you’ll still have to spend a few hundred bucks replacing your machine.
The boys over at iFixIt have started their teardown of the 2011 13-inch MacBook Air, and while much of the construction is similar to last year’s models, there is some good news for DIY upgraders: contrary to rumors, the SSDs have not been soldered to the board, meaning that you can upgrade your Air’s storage down the line.
Otherwise, iFixIt doesn’t have much to report this time around, except for an explanation of the omission of a FaceTime HD webcam in the Air: the thinness of the display makes it pretty much impossible to put a beefier camera in there at this time. Good to know.
No way would I ever plug in my Gibson SG Les Paul Custom into my iPhone 3G. Just no way. Now that I have the iPhone 4 and its increased processor speed, crystal clear pictures, and hardcore stage presence, I’ll reconsider.
Seriously though, playing an instrument through an iDevice is more of just a hobby or gimmick if you’re going to try and use it for modeling amps and effect pedals. What really convinced me to hook up a quarter inch jack to my phone was the Moog Filtatron App. Synthesizers are most certainly perfect for and acceptable to use in your music even if they’re coming from you Macbook or iPad. If they have the Moog name attatched to it then you’re just that much more legit.
If you have a box full of cables tucked away somewhere, you may have all that you need to construct your very own iRig. Even if you purchased all the cables from The Shack, you’ll probably come away with a cheaper version, and you’ll feel like MacGyver.
Here’s how I put together my own audio interface:
The hardware inside the old Apple PowerMac G4 Cube might not be good for much anymore, but the gorgeous plastic case is still one of the most notable triumphs of Apple’s well-honed sense of design. Why not humiliate it, then, by shaking out all the electronic guts, cutting a hole in the top and turning it into a tissue dispenser? Instructables has the instructions.
I can think of more ignominious ends for a G4 Cube… toilet brush holder comes immediately to mind.
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Back in the days before the iPad, there was the ModBook, a MacBook-to-tablet conversion that could be expensively undertaken by those willing to send off their laptops to the plucky boys over at Axiotron along with a check for $900 bucks. I imagine the iPad has killed off a good chunk of their business, but there are always going to be some people disappointed that Apple’s tablet took the approach of a “big iPhone” when what they really wanted was a convertible OS X tablet / notebook.
If you’re one of those individuals, great news: instead of giving Axiotron your $900 bucks to convert your MacBook into a tablet, a hacker over at Enigma Penguin has come up with a DIY approach that costs just $50.
After scratching his head for awhile and wondering what to do with a Macintosh Classic II , Maker Matteo from Ithaca, New York repurposed his old faithful Mac into a shelf-top clock.
From appearances, it looks like the clock — which Matteo rather laughably calls “steampunk” in style — only came into being after its creator accidentally doused his Mac Classic in acid then shot with a bazooka, but the innards of the admittedly ugly timepiece work well enough: a 16MHz CPU, 4MB of RAM and a 20MB hard drive running MacOS 7 and a dozen different shareware and freeware clock programs, including one that counts down the seconds to Matteo’s death.
Yeah, it’s hideous, but we love it: this is just the kind of bizarro clock I can imagine discovering thirty years from now in the basement of an elderly and now quite eccentric Steve Wozniak. Great work, Matteo!
Even when they’re dead, Apple products are still timely — like the iPod clock or the G4 timepiece.
Here’s a nice step-by-step transformation of a defunct Power Mac G5 into a sleek wall clock.
It’s the handiwork of Japanese Apple fan NOBON — the same one who “printed” Fuji apples with the Apple logo.
Via NOBON
With Time Capsules epidemically failing after an average of 18 months and 22 days, it might be time to start thinking about an alternative use for your pristinely albino, Apple-branded router once its body squirts out its last breath of 802.11-n ectoplasm.
Why not turn it into a lovely gift box? Over at Instructables, there’s a handy little tutorial on how to convert a Time Capsule into an ornamental box worthy of display, simply by prying it open, gutting it, then adding hinges and a silk cushion.
Not the most revolutionary use for an old Time Capsule’s casing, certainly, but this would be great presentation for, say, an iPod Touch gifted to a loved one later this month, and it can even be reused as a jewelry box or even a humidor (for cigars or the disembodied fingers of people who owed you money, you decide).
This print and fold iPhone stand looks like something from Muji: chic, simple and functional.
It’s the handiwork of French industrial designer Julien Madérou, who kindly provided a downloadable template.
If you’ve got dexterous hands (or just the patience to watch the instructional video) and some heavy paper (270 gsm or 100 lb. cover), you can do it yourself.
Via Make
This steampunked iPod is the handiwork of Neal Bridgens , a Toronto-based retoucher and illustrator, who noticed that a piece of copper tubing on his workbench fit perfectly around the rounded edges of an iPod.
From there, Bridgens told CoM that he spent “many, many hours” in this labor of love over the last year building the case from materials he had on hand.
Props to Jordan Horwich who re-engineered a pair of old iPods into speakers.
He’s managed to take out the innards of what look like first gen iPods and replace them with a 2.25-inch speaker cone, volume control, Altoids Tin Speaker and a battery holder.
Bulky by today’s standards, getting a speaker into an old iPod still requires a good deal of fiddling. If you’re feeling up to the task, check out Horwich’s DIY detailed guide.
Horwich had to buy the old iPods to make his speakers (spending about $100 on the iPods and the equipment) but if you’re like me you might have one or two barely working ones in Mac limbo, though it may not look as good without a matching pair.
Via Slash Gear
Inspired by our previous post on an iPhone stand from a standard binder clip, CoM reader Rich Sipe took matters into hand and fashioned another one, a bit more complex than the first one but it looks like it’ll give you a sturdy stand out of pinched office materials.
More on Instructables, too.