Photo of "Tacit" by Steve Hoefer

Tacit is a sonar-enabled glove that helps the blind to detect when objects are nearby. Developed by local maker, Steve Hoefer, Tacit uses sound navigation and ranging to depress pads which alert wearers of their surroundings.

Built using an Arduino Pro, servos and a whole lot of ingenuity, Steve provides the complete instructions for making Tacit on his blog.

Tacit was developed with both form and function in mind. The first prototype was built as a headband, but as Steve explains on his blog, this couldn't work in the long term. Most serious obstacles to the blind occur closer to waist level and "vibrating motors stuck on your skull will drive you insane quickly". Having never placed a set of vibrating motors on my head, I am sadly without first hand experience (though the thought alone gives me a headache).

Steve put together this awesome video explaining Tacit and how it can be used:

Project Tacit: Sonar For The Blind from Grathio Labs on Vimeo.

The Bulbdial Clock show you the time in shadows.

With Thanksgiving creeping up on us this Thursday, we are officially entering holiday gift buying territory.  If you're wondering what to get the DIY enthusiast in your life, here are some great suggestions, all made or supported by local Bay Area companies:

TV-B-GONE: Probably one of the most fun kits to put together! Invented by local Bay Area maker, Mitch Altman, this allows you to turn off any TV within range. This kit takes less than an hour to build and provides endless entertainment! Kits are under $30 and can be purchased here.

Bulbdial Clock: Sunnyvale's Evil Mad Science has put together this kit which works just like an indoor sundial, but with three shadows of different colors to represent, seconds, hours and minutes. These kits start at $65 and go up depending on the components you'll want to include. Evil Mad Science has quite a few kits and projects that are accessible for beginners as well as more experienced electronics fans. Learn more about what they offer here.

Retro Scanner: Completely new to soldering and looking for an easy kit to get started with? Look no further than Applied Platonics' Retro Scanner. Developed by San Francisco maker, Josh Myer, this kit takes roughly an hour to put together, and comes with comprehensive instructions to guide you each step of the way. When complete, you'll have a cool set of blinking lights to show off. The Retro Scanner starts at $15. Check it out!

Monkeylectric LED Bike Lighting: If there's a cyclist in your life, this gift will delight. Designed by Monkey Lectric in Berkeley, their LED Bike kit will light up the spoke of your wheels in an array of pre-programmed designs and colors. These kits are plug and play, so there's no configuration on your part. Simply use the board's interface to select a design, affix it to your wheel and ride! These lights start at $65.

LED Menora, Christmas Tree and Yule Logs: Want to get into the spirit of the season? Holiday kits are all the rage and the Makershed sells them all!

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What to do when all your friends are at Burning Man? Here are six fun activities to inspire the Maker in you.

You may have noticed a few strange occurrences this week: rush hour seems lighter, there are no lines at the grocery store and you can suddenly find parking in San Francisco. As many of us know, this is the week of Burning Man.  The city has cleared out and headed to Black Rock Desert in Nevada to show off their creativity, display feats of engineering and adorn themselves in furry costumes.

There’s no time like this week to take advantage of these activities to fuel your senses and inspire the Maker in you:

1. Visit Burning Man art in the city: Both the Raygun Gothic Rocketship at the Embarcadero and Ecstacy in Hayes Valley were unveiled at Burning Man in years past. They are amazing feats of engineering, art and ingenuity and definitely worth a visit.

2. Take a class at Tech Shop. They are a great resource our us DIYers in the Bay Area. They offer over 20 classes a week in everything from laser cutting, sewing, electronics and CNC mills. Their current space is in Menlo Park and a second location will be opening in the heart of San Francisco soon.

3. Go to the Exploratorium! One of the most fun creative spaces for engineers and DIY freaks, I could spend hours getting lost in their exhibits. Best of all, It’s free tomorrow night.

4. Visit a science cafe. The East Bay Science Cafe is meeting tomorrow to talk particle physics with Dr. Beate Heinemann who will be discussing the Large Hadron Collider.

5. Take a walk in the wild with Forage SF. Learn about all the edibles growing in our back yard on this East Bay walk on September 4th. Future walks take black on both sides of the bridge, but they sell out quickly!

6. Go to Balsa Man. On Saturday evening, the same night that “the Man” will burn in Black Rock City, tiny pieces of art made out of balsa wood will be burnt off the San Francisco coast in what is akin to a much tinier and shorter Burning Man like event.

With so much cool stuff going on, this is a great week to be in town. Enjoy!

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Probably the hardest thing to get your hands on for this project will be the four gold-plated neodymium-iron-boron magnets. Not something you usually find at the local 5-And-Dime. (Or maybe I was just looking in the wrong aisle.) But I'm sure Make Magazine can point you where to get them. Once you do, here's a safety tip: The magnets are very powerful, so make sure they are securely taped down or they might slam together and shatter. Then you'll have to go out and find more gold-plated neodymium-iron-boron magnets.

Do try this at home. But be careful out there. Adult supervision is always a good idea. And make sure to aim your Tabletop Linear Accelerator away from your little brother.

Download Instructions for the Tabletop Linear Accelerator (419.3 KB .pdf)

Watch the Make At Home Tabletop Linear Accelerator television story report online.

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