Tetris on your earlobes and business cards, electromagnet tricks, and finding yourself 🌍

Everyone can appreciate these OLED earrings that provide a steady stream of Tetris pieces. One of the coolest wearables you'll see! Wednesday, January 10, 2018 [Tetris Earrings? Yes Please! »]( Cool Electromagnet Tricks It's really interesting to see the trends that pop up among many unrelated projects. The most recent that has shown itself is experiments with electromagnets. Magnetism is as close to magic as we're going to get (maybe until quantum computing gets up to speed) but electromagnetism is really easy to play around with. You should give it a try! [BetaChecker] has done some formidable prototyping in pursuit of an "[Area stepper motor](. Think of it sort of like a maglev train. The vehicle has magnets which rest over a grid of coils in the roadway. By energizing those coils in a coordinated effort -- like the steps of a stepper motor -- the vehicle moves. Bonus points on the presentation as each coil has its own LED for visual feedback as they are fired. Also new on the IO is [a railgun entered in the Coin Cell Challenge](. [Counciousflesh] used a coin cell to charge up the capacitor bank which is dumped into a set of coils that push a projectile with the powerful magnetic fields they produce. A more approachable build is [this brushless DC motor]( which uses simple parts and an easy to understand analog driver built on a breadboard. A lot can be learned by replicating this one and it reminds of of another favorite: [the 3D printed stepper](. For more on how magnets are made, the different grades and types, and how they're used in various applications it's worth looking through the [transcript of our Magnetization Invasion Hack Chat](. Join us for that discussion was Jeremy Chan, a Prototype Engineer at Nano Magnetics Ltd. [Join our Friday Hack Chat:]( We're talking all about electronics manufacturing with Parker Dillman, Co-Founder and Lead ECE at MacroFab. [Join us Friday]( at Noon PST (UTC-8). Highlights from the IO POPULAR BITS [Edgytokei Clock]( This is an astounding clock design. It's remarkable that it doesn't need a clock face (or body) to function, and is still very readable at an intuitive level. Each "hand" is a part of an arm assembly with one hub shared between the two and one located in the base. They change their orientation using gears on the inside of the hands, and power the shared hub with copper tracks on the outsides of each. [Light Level Geolocator]( This one's like GPS without the satellites. It's a method that uses an accurate clock and a light-dependent resistor (LDR) to establish your geographic location. It measures the day/night cycle and compares it against the date. [Jaromir Sukuba] estimates it's accurate to a few kilometers, and designed it to be ultra low powered. What a neat trick, and we love it that he found beta testers on Hackaday.io to help! [Hexapods Are Better]( We have a new feature that lets you make your own Lists on Hackaday.io. The best we've seen so far is this [List of 22 hexapod projects]( that [Actual Dragon] put together. These six-legged bots come in several different types of designs, the one shown here [the incredibly impressive "Golem" project]( which Kevin M. Ochs entered in the Hackaday Prize. Make your own List by hovering over your profile photo and clicking "[Create a List](. Featured Projects POPULAR BITS [MegaCoinCell Holds Nine 18650s]( [Deadbug with a 132-pin QFP]( [My Business Card Plays Tetris]( [Build Your Own Brushless DC Motor]( Live Events MEETUPS, CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS [HDDG 26 - Robot Meets Radio: Jan 11]( San Francisco | The Hardware Developer's Didactic Galactic talk include Automation in Manufacturing and Amateur Radio and Their Iot with speakers Mo McBirney and Kenneth Finnegan. [Friday: Hack Chat]( on Hackaday.io | Parker Dillman, Co-Founder and Lead ECE at MacroFab, joins us to talk about electronics manufacturing. Discuss strategies for first time manufacturers, and things even seasoned veterans need to know. [Hackaday MakeIt NYC: Jan 24]( NYC | Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Ph.D. will speak about the "Critical Networked Experience", challenging (and subverting) the acceptable notions of how network interaction and socialization. [Terms of Use]( [Privacy Policy]( [Hackaday.io]( [Hackaday.com]( This email was sent to {EMAIL} [why did I get this?](    [unsubscribe from this list](    [update subscription preferences]( Hackaday · 61 South Fair Oaks Avenue · Suite 200 · Pasadena, CA 91105 · USA