
O'Reilly's New Magazine for DIY Tech Projects 207
sargon writes "O'Reilly will begin publishing a new magazine, 'Make,' in early 2005 which is aimed at the do-it-yourself crowd. To quote the home page: 'Make brings the do-it-yourself mindset to all the technology in your life. Make is loaded with exciting projects that help you make the most of your technology at home and away from home. This is a magazine that celebrates your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your own will.' The first issue will focus on kite aerial photography." Any suggestions for what they should cover?
make.oreilly.com - previewed (Score:3, Informative)
At that time, I thought that Make == Popular Mechanics/Electronic + Wired (when Wired wasn't tired). Think of Make as a Mook or a Bagazine.
Here's my blog entry of the presentation at FOO:
The Real Paul Jones - Make = Mook/Bagazine [ibiblio.org]
Will it be like (Score:3, Informative)
RTA - those "gadget" magazines (Score:3, Informative)
Circuit Cellar (Score:4, Informative)
Circuit Cellar does range into more advaced electronic design, but the've done lots of fun and approachable stuff over the years. Back in the early days they did a whole series on making rockets with 2 liter bottles.
Re:Wired House, Wired Car (Score:3, Informative)
"how to make my computer trick my thermostat into thinking it's a full-fledged climate control system,"
http://diy-zoning.sourceforge.net/
"how to make an uber-scary AI haunted house at halloween,"
http://markbutler.8m.com/monsterlist.htm
That being said, the magazine still sounds cool.
Re:This is a tough format. (Score:3, Informative)
So are the parts -- I pretty much gave up on DIY electronics when everything went to surface mount. I mean, when your PCB has rosin drops on it bigger than the components...
More seriously, it's like moving up a level of abstraction. Back in the real old days folks wound their own coils, made their own carbon mikes, and potted their own crystals. These days instead of inserting ICs into DIP sockets, it's reprogramming some embedded PC gadgets and networking them in some novel way.
Scientific American's Amateur Scientist (Score:3, Informative)
long forgotten - a BYTE of Steve (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway, it seems nobody remembers steve, because I expected to see someone here mention how this magazine looks pretty much like a "mainstream" version of Circuit Cellar [circuitcellar.com]. The whole "aerial photography with a kite" thing was done AGES ago in that magazine - as well as helium balloons, hot air balloons, rockets and R/C airplanes, helicopters, and cars (and, I believe I recall, even model trains). And "home control" was the project that got steve started on all this way back when. The magazine often cooperates with manufacturers of chips to sponsor design contests, and some really nice projects have evolved from this.
Re:Focus on old tech (Score:4, Informative)
Experimenting with cheap 8-bit microcontrollers such as Microchip's PIC [microchip.com] or Atmel's AVR [atmel.com]s is quite cheap, and typically all you need is a chip and one (really cheap [covingtoninnovations.com] if want) device - a programmer [netsuite.com] to transfer the (binary/hex) programs from your PC to the microcontroller's flash memory.
You will quickly outgrow Radio Shack unless you need a part right now and you don't have the right one in your own stock pile, often referred to as a "junk box" regardless of actual physical size. You should be getting the free catalogs (or CDs) from Digikey [digikey.com], Mouser [mouser.com], Newark [newark.com], and Jameco [jameco.com]. These all have usable online ordering systems and reasonable minimum order & shipping fees. UK geeks check G3SEK's UK Component and Tool Suppliers [ifwtech.co.uk] web page.
Many useful projects can be made for less than $100 even if you need to buy all the parts. After you build a collection of common parts (common resistors, capacitor values, PIC 16F628, AVR AT90S2313, red & green LEDs, 2N2222A, 2N3904, 2N3906, 2N4401, 2N4403, 2N4416, 4N25, 1N4148, 1N4001, 1N4007, etc.) and tools this cost will go down.
The real question is do they assume a general audience or do they assume a "knowledgeable user" is their target market? If the stuff is purely "cookbook" & kit building (AmQRP kits [amqrp.org] as an example) with little or no encouragement (and knowledge transfer) for the average Make reader to explore and expand it won't survive IMHO. BTW AmQRP kits on their own are pretty limited at expanding your knowledge, but combined with the AMQRP Homebrewer magazine and Conference Proceedings they do teach a lot. There is also the QRP-L mailing list which is very useful for technical questions (and has a rich archive [qsl.net])
I think it should be what Nuts and Volts [nutsvolts.com] magazine tries to be, but without the "legacy" dead weight and filler articles. A gentler introduction to most of the Circuit Cellar [circuitcellar.com] type stuff.
If people think this will recreate the Homebrew Computer Club, I expect they will be mistaken, but if you expect it to awaken the curiousity and encourage youth to learn about electronics, then I hope it is a brillent success.
In the end, I am curious and not quite sure what to expect of Make. It could be really lame if all it ends up being is computer geeks pretending to be electronic engineers (or electronic hobbyists). I hope that at least 10% of it expands what I know, which is more than I can say of books like Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks [oreilly.com] (O'Reilly) and Hardware Hacking: Have Fun While Voiding Your Warranty [grandideastudio.com]. I am more interested in reading stuff like Hacking the Xbox [hackingthexbox.com] (An Introduction to Reverse Engineering) by Andrew "bunnie" Huang which starts simple but gets into FPGAs and reverse engineering.