DIY Nerds

How to nerd-out your house…

Archive for November, 2009

$400 Budget HTPC

Nov 22

Posted by diynerds in Projects | 2 Comments

Home_theater_PC_inside

IT IS ALIVE, and “I am so excited” in a Jessie Spano sort of way, minus the caffeine pills.  I finally have a house to call my own that is all networked up. For me the HTPC has been the heart and brain of my entire dream system.  The purpose of this project was to take advantage of all the free content on the internet and not have to pay a cable bill.  With programs like Boxee, Hulu, TVersity, and Graboid a person should have no reason to pay for tv.  Save the money on all the channels and up your bandwidth to 16mb+ a second.
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2009 Holiday Gift Guide for DIY Nerds

Nov 20

Posted by diynerds in Articles | 2 Comments

This gift guide is going to be a little different than just the usual crap you can buy—it’s a guide that can start you on an amazing journey of building electronics, learning new skills. If you’re really motivated and innovative, you just might invent something new.  Composed from a couple different sources, this gift guide will definitely win the heart of the nerd in your life.

When you see all the DIY Nerd projects here on diynerds.com you might not know where to begin. Through the combination of Gizmodo, Make, and Adafruit Industries here are some favorite tools, resources and beginner electronics kits that will get you going and give you something fun to show your friends. Many kits and gadgets are open source—you can buy the parts, etch a circuit board, build a “breadboard” or in some cases just build parts of them by frankensteining  a junk pile of fail-gadgets which to sum it up means do you don’t have to spend a lot.  Here are some the tips and tools Phil Torrone, senior editor at MAKE magazine and creative director for Adafruit Industries, suggests for all DIY Nerds…

500x_01tools
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Cable Art

Nov 19

Posted by diynerds in Articles | 3 Comments

111809cabledrawings1_rect540

Raise your hand if you have always wanted to draw a picture using the extension cord to your lamp…really I am the only one!?  Artist Maisie Maud Broadhead has found a way to incorporate the cable of a lamp into the decor of a space in most impressive fashion that actually adds to aesthetics! Cable Drawings by Maisie Maud Broadhead is a series of installations created with wire flex and cable fixings. A fantastic idea…we’re now looking at our CAT-5 cables in a whole new light.
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Wire Your House with Ethernet Cable

Nov 18

Posted by diynerds in Articles | No Comments

Networking_tools

It’s time to get down to basics.  See there are birds and then there are bees…sorry let me skip ahead.  You have built your kick ass HTPC.  You got your Mame machine hooked up in the garage and the KitchenPC is good to go.  Wiring your house with Cat-5e cable could make transfer times disappear.
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Ikea Hack Bookshelf Bench

Nov 18

Posted by diynerds in Articles | No Comments

Randygormshelf

The nice thing about IKEA furniture is that it is cheap and easy to hack. In other words, lets say that you were to buy two cheap $30 Gorm shelving units and assembled them to discover them that one was crooked. Well then, it would be really easy to spend an afternoon converting the crooked one into a solid, stylish and symmetric bookshelf bench. As you probably just guessed, this Instructable will show you how to convert a Gorm shelving unit into a bookshelf bench. With a few extra peices of hardware and a couple of basic power tools, you could be on your way to relaxation and organization all at the same time.

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