Circuitry is nowhere near as rigid as it once was. Using softer conductive materials such as inks, threads, and textiles, you can create a wide variety of wearable electronics never before possible. The sewing machine is the new soldering iron, and LEDs are the new sequins. Here are a number of great projects on Make: Projects to help you get your toes wet, or take it to the next level if you’ve already made soft circuits. Pictured above are the Rock Star Headphones, soft, warm, and sparkling, by Syuzi Pakhchyan, which first appeared in her awesome book, Fashioning Technology, a great intro to working with new, smart materials.

Another great starter project is the Electronic Embroidery how-to by Becky Stern. Becky teaches you how to make this neat frog with LED fireflies sewn in. Learn how and then make any pattern you want. The possibilities are endless.

Apply the same technique to make this LED Bracelet by Angela Sheehan.

Want something a bit more functional? How about Becky’s iPhone Gloves. Touch screens don’t work with gloves on, but these ones do! Just add conductive thread.

Or sew up a Syuzi’s playful Space Invaders Tote bag with eyes that light up when you’re receiving a call on your cellphone.

Take it to the next level, and sew up Leah Buechley’s LED Tank Top (or apply the technique to another garment) with an array of LEDs, then program them to display the Game of Life. Impressive!

Or better yet, sew a TV-B-Gone kit into your hoodie, and make the zipper the on/of switch. Zip up your hoodie, and turn off any TV.

Check out the Soft Circuits topic page for more projects! And take a look at Becky’s Epic Soft Circuit Roundup for inspiration.

MAKE Volume 28, the Toys and Games issue, hits makers’ passion for play head-on with a fun 28-page special section, which includes a toy “pop-pop” steamboat made from a mint tin, an R/C helicopter eye-in-the-sky, and a classic video game console, a feature on the beloved View-Master, toys from trash, clothesline robot races, and more. You’ll also build a gravity-powered catapult, a plush toy that interacts with objects around it, a machine that blows giant soap bubbles, a copper tool tidy, a solar wax melter, and a plant light stand, to name a few.

Here on Make: Projects, we’ve shared 5 of the awesome projects in Volume 28 with you. First, there’s Zvika Markfeld’s Gigantic Bubble Generator (seen above in action), the Arduino-controlled Bubblebot that blows enormous, undulating soap bubbles.

Next up is the Coffee Table MAME Console by John Baichtal and Adam Wolf. This cool-looking console lets you emulate the raw fun of classic arcade games, wirelessly on your TV.

Another awesome toy is Charlie’s RFID Teddy Bear by David Harris. This location-aware teddy bear reads RFID tags and plays different customizable sounds depending on where it is or what object it’s near — other toys, books, CDs, anything.

There are a good number of non-toy projects in Volume 28 as well. We’ve shared the useful Water Leak Detector by Jeff Tregre, a small detector you can make for about $25. Jeff’s detector ended up saving him hundreds of dollars.

And finally, check out the Plant Light Stand by Thomas R. Fox, and efficient setup for indoor plant growers.

Check out the MAKE Volume 28 page on Makezine for a full table of contents. You can pick up the full issue on newsstands currently or order online from the Maker Shed. Better yet, why not subscribe and have MAKE delivered straight to your door? Go ahead, you’ve got our permission to play!

The votes have been tallied, the judges have conferred, and the results of the 2011 MAKE and CRAFT Halloween Contest are here! First off, thanks to all of our amazing contestants. We received some really impressive project submissions, and we hope they inspire future makers to build homemade costumes, props, food items, and decor pieces and load them into Make: Projects – not just for Halloween. Also, many thanks to the companies who generously contributed to our pool of prizes and allowed us to offer such awesome prize packs to our winners. Okay, so without further ado, here are our winners:

1st Place in Costume: “They Live” Alien Masks
1st Place in Props: Mini Gun Madness
1st Place in Decor: Asian Fortress Halloween House
1st Place in Food: Halloween Skull Truffles

Grand Prize Winner in Craft: Business Lizard and Brief Case Diorama

Grand Prize Winner in Tech: Scary Ticket Booth Build

Thank you to everyone who participated in this year’s contest! If you haven’t toured all of the projects in the contest, check them out!

We’re always excited by Halloween here at MAKE, but we’re especially jazzed this year with the contest we’ve put together to celebrate our favorite maker holiday. This year, we’re doing things a little differently. For one, we’re doing the contest across both of our sites, MAKE and CRAFT, and we’re hosting the whole hoodoo bash right here on Make: Projects. Here are the gory details:

Starting now, and running through Nov 8th at 11:59pm any Halloween content on Make: Projects (tagged with “halloween2011″) will be eligible for entry in the contest. See the Halloween Landing Page for full contest details. If you’re not already signed up on Make: Projects, it’s easy to set up and fun to document projects in. Get started. Anything Halloweeny is eligible as long as it fits into one of these four categories:

Costume – Anything you wear on your body, including makeup
Prop – Things you carry with you, costume accessories like weapons
Decor – Porch decorations, pumpkins, party decor, and animatronics and haunted house spectacles
Food – Edible favors, candy, and any creations made of food

You don’t have to submit them in these subcategories. This will be left to the discretion of the judges. Just make sure entries are tagged with “halloween2011″ and get them into Make: Projects by 11:59 PST on Tuesday, Nov 8th. You can enter as many times as you like, but are only eligible for one prize.

Entries will be judged on Creativity of Idea: 25%; Project Execution: 40%; Quality of Documentation: 25%; and Presentation: 10%. The two final Grand Prize categories will be “Craft” and “Tech.” Judges will divide the projects into these two categories before judging begins and the entry in each Grand Prize category with the highest total score among all judging criteria will be the Grand Prize winner. Prizes will also be given in each content category for the highest overall scores after the Grand Prize awards are determined.

The prizes are amazing (if we do say so ourselves). Check out the full list of prizes. [Note: As usual, contest is only eligible for entry in the US. We apologize for this limitation.]

So what are you waiting for? It looks like it’s shaping up to be a great Halloween. We look forward to seeing what costumes, props, decor, and food you come up with.

The newest issue of MAKE, Volume 27, the Robot issue, hit newsstands this week, and here on Make: Projects, we’ve shared six awesome projects from the issue with you. Check them out, collaborate, and post up comments or questions. First up, pictured above, is the Yellow Drum Machine (YDM) by Frits Lyneborg. Frits teaches you how to build this funky little free-range drumbot that roams, makes beats, and samples. Check out the video of the YDM in action on the project page, and you’ll definitely want to build one of your own.

Another one of our musically inclined and charming robot projects is Spazzi the solenoid-powered dancebot by Marek Michalowski. The Italian word “spazzi” is a reference to sweeping, which is suggestive of the arrangement/movement of the antennae/eyebrows atop Spazzi’s head as he boogies down to your music. He’s got some sweet moves that you can see in the video on the project page.

The third robotics project we shared is the Teleclaw remote gripper by Gordon McComb. The mechanics include a $2 plastic clamp, a radio-controlled (R/C) servomotor, some stiff wire, and a bracket to hold it all together. The electronics are a simple circuit designed around the Picaxe 08M microcontroller and an infrared (IR) receiver/demodulator module. The remote control unit is an ordinary TV/VCR/DVD remote.

And robots aren’t all we have to offer in Volume 27. Check out the PS/2/You LED sign by Immanuel McKenty. This go-anywhere, instantly updatable glowing digital message board links together three dot matrix LED display modules, housed in a wooden casing, connected to a computer keyboard. Power comes from an AC adapter or six AA batteries for portable operation. You can store and switch between six different lines of text, and it automatically scrolls through lines that are too long for the display.

Next offering: Alex Andon teaches you how to make your own Jellyfish Tank. Jellyfish are hypnotic, with their translucent bodies, sweeping tentacles, and fluid motion, but they require custom tanks to prevent them from getting sucked into filtration intakes. Alex shows you how to either convert an existing aquarium into a jellyfish habitat or how to build your own custom tank from scratch. Your choice.

And last is the super useful $30 Gobo Arm mobile document stand by Adam Flaherty. This simple gadget makes documenting your next build a breeze, making it easy for you to snap process shots and share your build with the maker community.

And those six project are, of course, just a sampling of what MAKE Volume 27 has to offer. You’ll also learn how to create:

• A treadmill desk that keeps you fit while you push papers and pixels;
• A motion-sensitive Do-Not-Touch Box to surprise your friends;
• A solar backpack and wood-gas camp stove to technologize your camping;
• A beer-pong cup that scoots around to increase degree of difficulty;
• A pre-Edison incandescent lighting rig;
• A web-controlled wireless remote surveillance vehicle out of an old Roomba;
• And a primer on ImageJ, the free open source program that manipulates video and photos to create brilliant and beautiful visualizations.

Pick it up on a newsstand near you, buy it in the Maker Shed, or subscribe!

Here at headquarters, we just wrapped up the newest issue of MAKE, Volume 27, the Robot issue. Look for it on newsstands on July 26th. While we were working on the issue, we were curious to see what kinds of bots our community members were making and thought it would be fun to host a little contest. The premise of the contest was simple: we were looking for bots with lots of character. To enter, folks contributed their build photos and text into Make: Projects, along with a video of the bot in action. Entries were judged by the editorial staff of MAKE based on the following criteria: (a) Entertainment Value: 50%; (b) Quality of Written Documentation: 25%; and (c) Quality of Documentation Photography/Video: 25%. We got some great entries, and ran images and links to the winners in MAKE Volume 27. It was a tough call, but we tallied up one Top Bot and 3 runners up. And the winners are…

TOP BOT:
Chopsticks the Spider Robot by Russell Cameron won us over with his big eyes, the way he walks, his awesome legs made of chopsticks and polymorph plastic, and Russell’s fabulous project documentation and videos.

RUNNERS UP:
We loved Robobrrd by RobotGrrl, with its nature-inspired design, colorful appearance, eraser lashes, and RobotGrrl’s great project documentation, complete with hand-drawn sketches.

Belvedere the Butler Robot by Andy Wolff was by far the most utilitarian bot, with his ability to deliver food, play music, dance, and tell jokes. Who doesn’t need a butler bot?

And lastly, the Robot Drummer by Tim Laursen was certainly entertaining (and bizarre). We’re not sure we’ve ever seen that many colors incorporated into a bot before.

Thanks to everyone who entered! We loved seeing what you make.

Got a great project you want to share with the community but not quite sure how to get started? Our own Matt Richardson has posted a great little video to help you get going. Check out the introductory video, and for more info, head to the Start page, the User’s Guide, and the Wiki Formatting Help page. We can’t wait to see what you make!

Here at MAKE headquarters, we’re cranking on producing the next issue of MAKE, Volume 27, themed Robots! What better way to celebrate than to host a fun, simple robot contest? We liked the open-endedness of our Volume 26 Karts and Wheels Contest (must have wheels and carry a person), and the cool, creative entries we got as a result (Bike Buh Que, anyone?). Robots can have so much character, so we decided to make the ruling criteria of this contest most entertaining. Let your robot’s character shine! Why did folks adore Wall-E? His personality, of course. And since robot personalities come through best in action, submitting a video of your new friend is mandatory.

The rules are simple:

1. Come up with an entertaining, original robot with tons of character.
2. Document your build step-by-step with clear instructions, photos, and a video of the robot in action, then share it on Make: Projects.
3. Send an email to robots@makeprojects.com with a link to your Make: Projects entry when you’re done. Easy!

The editors of MAKE will then pick the best project, polish it up, and publish it in MAKE Volume 27. Entries will be judged on the quality of the documentation as well as the entertainment value of the robot. The deadline for entries is 11:59 PDT on May 13, 2011.

All entries will be judged by the editorial staff of MAKE based on the following judging criteria: (a) Entertainment Value: 50%; (b) Quality of Written Documentation: 25%; and (c) Quality of Documentation Photography/Video: 25%. The entry with the highest total score among all judging criteria will be the chosen as the Grand Prize Winner.

The winning entry will be published in MAKE Volume 27. The 3 runners-up will be featured on Makezine.com and mentioned in MAKE Volume 27.

Wondering what our definition of “robot” is? Our Makezine editor-in-chief Gareth Branwyn, when working on his Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Building Robots book, surveyed about 20 experts in the field, and came up with a solid definition:

A machine that senses its world in some way, processes the information from those sensors in some way, and then actuates a response in some way.

Caveat: our executive editor Paul Spinrad pointed out that this definition works as long as “senses its world” isn’t limited to merely sensing whether the world flipped its on/off switch, though switch “sensing” (e.g. bump-switch navigation) is fair game.

Questions? Post them in the comments below. Good luck, and most importantly, have fun!

Wanna know who the adorable robot in the top image is? Makey, of course!

The newest issue of MAKE, Volume 26, is hot off the press! If you’re a subscriber (thanks!), you likely got your copy in the mail and are soaking up all 176 pages of offerings. Volume 26 is themed Karts and Wheels, and hits newsstands on April 26th. Here on Make: Projects, we always post a handful of projects from the new issue so you can collaborate on them. From Volume 26, we have five projects live and ready for you to start building:

The Drill Kart (pictured above) is the cover project, and came about as a collaboration between Gever Tulley and the engineering interns at MAKE Labs. The result is a combination of lumber and bike parts, powered by two cordless drills, with a cannibalized office chair as the throne.

The Simple Longboard, written by MAKE editor-in-chief Mark Frauenfelder, shows you how to make a fun and easy skateboard for cruising around. Mark checked out instructions online and found that there was a much simpler way to make on, and shared his findings with us.

One of my favorites is the Flame Tube, a waveform visualizer by practical pyromaniac William Gurstelle, frequent contributor to MAKE. Using steel conduit and a loudspeaker, connected to an amp and a music source, hook up a propane tank with a regulator, and turn sound waves into standing pressure waves — expressed in fire. When the interns did the test build, we had a lot of fun trying different genres of music to see which made the flames dance the most.

Next up is the practical Solar Food Dryer by off-grid aficionado Abe Connally. With the summer gardening season around the corner, this is the perfect project for preserving your harvest well past growing season.

And our final offering from MAKE Volume 26 is the Truth Meter, which is excerpted from the Biosensing Primer by Sean M. Montgomery and Ira M. Laefsky. Biosensing allows you to track your body’s signals and brain waves and use them to control things. Sweat increases the electrical conductance of your skin, and when this conductance is measured and tied to arousing stimuli, it’s referred to as galvanic skin response (GSR). The Truth Meter measures GSR for display on an LED or for input to a microcontroller.

But these five projects are just the tip of the iceberg of what MAKE Volume 26 has to offer. This latest issue shows you how to build wheeled wonders that you and the kids can race around the neighborhood in DIY style. Put a mini gasoline engine on a bicycle. Make a brain-teasing mini propeller cart that outruns the wind that powers it. Weld together the “Weekend Warrior” soapbox racer, the winner of our online Karts and Wheels contest, then strap on your helmet and five-point safety harness, and race downhill at highway speeds just inches above the road!

In addition to karts, you’ll find plenty of other projects that only MAKE could give you:

An aquaculture tank for growing fresh Spirulina algae “superfood” in a sunny window
An addictive pocket electronic sound looper that lets you play wild rhythms using just two knobs and one button
A mesmerizing fire tube with dancing flames that keep time to music and make sounds waves visible
An introduction to “biosensing” the unconscious signals generated by our bodies and brains, including a “Truth Meter” project that detects stress and a “Brain Blinker” that lights LEDs based on your brainwaves.
A self-watering planter based on an Aztec design, and a fruit juicer based on an ancient Egyptian design.
A tutorial on how to add buttons to various electronics devices in order to control them better.
You’ll also learn how Garnet Hertz hacked the classic 80s arcade road racing game Outrun to create a vehicle that really drives around (slowly), with the real-world roadway in front appearing onscreen just like in the video game. And Mitch Altman shares his advice on how to get your electronics inventions manufactured and commercially distributed without losing your integrity or your mind.

Look for MAKE Volume 26 on newsstands on April 26th or subscribe!

We got some really great, creative entries for our MAKE Karts and Wheels Contest. Folks were tasked with making something original and documenting the build in Make: Projects, with the only criteria being that their creation have wheels and can carry a person. The editors of MAKE magazine then judged entries based on creativity, execution, written documentation, and photography. The Grand Prize winner is (drumroll, please) Jeremy Ashinghurst with his Adult Soapbox Kart (pictured above). Not only is Jeremy’s kart a thing of pro-style beauty, but his documentation is inspirational, well-photographed, and clearly written. Look for his project to be published on the pages of the upcoming MAKE Volume 26. Congrats Jeremy!

We had three Runners Up as well, including the well-documented and stylish Teardrop Camper Trailer by Werner Strama, built upon the salvaged frame of a dilapidated trailer:

Next up is the deliciously dangerous and funny Bike Buh Cue by Tho X. Bui, originally made for the Tour de Fat bike parade, to hand out hamburgers and hot dogs and raise money for the homeless:

The last runner up is Brad Wong’s Quad Roller Skates project, using trucks and wheels from two old skateboards, along with a pair of shoes, to make custom roller skates:

And we just have to give an honorable mention to Monika Wuhrer for making us smile with her Soapbox Out of Found Materials:

Congrats to all the winners, and a big maker thanks to everyone who entered and shared their builds with us! Look for Jeremy’s project in MAKE Volume 26, and keeps your ears to the wire for the next contest, Robots!