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We've seen plenty of uses for laser cutters over the years, and ours certainly churns out the parts at a fair old clip. Peter Walsh, however, is the first person we've seen using a laser cutter to produce optical lenses for use with low-cost lasers in educational programmes. While Peter's project initially began as a means of creating low-cost component mounts for existing optical lenses, Peter and his team soon began trying out something new: cutting clear acrylic in a lens-like profile to see if it could affect the beam of a laser. To considerable surprise, it turns out they...

There are very few individuals who could watch the classic sci-fi flick Alien or its action-packed sequel Aliens and not want to slot a motion tracker into their personal toolkit. While Ash's explanation that the device works based on "micro changes in air density" is met with disbelief from Ripley, maker Bence Lukács has an alternative method in mind for his build: passive infra-red and ultrasonic sensors, all linked up to an Arduino Mega microcontroller. As detailed in his latest Instructable, the project is surprisingly simple: three HC-SR501 passive infra-red motion sensors are used to detect movement within three scanner...

Solar power is a fantastic resource: clean, abundant, and renewable through to a timescale long enough that humanity probably won't have to worry too much. Harnessing it, though, can be complex: while it's entirely possible to simply strap a solar panel or two to a surface and hope for the best, peak efficiency is only obtained through mounts which automatically track the sun - mounts which are, usually, rather expensive. Bruce Helsen's solution? Building his own, powered by an Arduino Mega microcontroller. Created as part of his graduate thesis for a degree in automation engineering - giving him, admittedly, something...

We're always on the lookout for anything that can tame the chaos of an active workshop, and if we can create it ourselves on a laser cutter we're even happier. From our own creations like the WENT laser-cut end table to Wim Van Gool's soldering tool organisers, you'll find plenty of singed-edge wood around our premises - and now we have another excuse to fire up the tube thanks to Athey Moravetz' pegboard accessories. Pegboard - also known as pegwall - has long been a standard for organising often strangely-shaped objects in a confined space. Designed to hang on a...

Standards, the prevailing wisdom in the electronics world goes, are great; everyone should have one of their very own. Where standards can cause problems is when the steady march of time moves on, as Steve Chamberlin knows only too well: a fan of vintage computing systems, Steve's clever floppy drive emulator system relies on the increasingly rare DB-19 connector to interface with his target systems. With supplies running out, Steve had but one solution in mind: kicking off a production run of something nobody's made in the last few decades. The DB-19 connector, also known as the DB-19P and arguably...