We’ve all likely seen the amazing images possible with a scanning electron microscope. An SEM can yield remarkably detailed 3D images of the tiniest structures, and they can be invaluable tools for research. But blasting high-energy cathode rays onto metal-coated samples in the vacuum chamber of a bulky and expensive instrument isn’t the only way to make useful images, as this home-brew laser scanning microscope demonstrates.

This one comes to us by way of [GaudiLabs], a Swiss outfit devoted to open-source lab equipment that enables citizen science; we saw their pocket-sized thermal cycler for PCR a while back. The basic scheme here is known as confocal laser scanning fluorescence microscopy, where a laser at one wavelength excites fluorescent tags bound to structures in a sample. Light emitted by the tags is collected, and a 3D image is built up from multiple scans of the sample at different focal planes.

Like many DIY projects, this microscope is built from old DVD parts, specifically the pickup heads. The precision optics in these commonly available assemblies, which are good enough to read pits as small as 150 nm on a Blu-Ray DVD, are well-suited for resolving similarly sized microstructures. One DVD pickup is used to scan the laser in the X-axis, while the other head is modified to carry the sample and move it in the Y-axis. The pickup head coils and laser are driven by an Arduino carried on a custom PCB along with the DVD heads. Complete build files are posted on GitHub for anyone interested in recreating this work.

We love tips like this that dig back a bit and find things we missed the first go-around. And the equipment [GaudiLabs] lists really has potential for the budding biohacker, which we also like.

Thanks for the tip on this one, [Bill].

Can you hack your dog? Kind of. But you have to use hot dogs.

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The post Hack Your Dog with Arduino-Driven Hot Dogs appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.

The BITalino is great for biohacking — hook up the sensors and play Classic Pong with a swing of your wrist.

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The post Use BITalino to Graph Your Biosignals and Play Pong! appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.

Laying hands on the supplies for most hacks we cover is getting easier by the day. A few pecks at the keyboard and half a dozen boards or chips are on an ePacket from China to your doorstep for next to nothing. But if hacking life is what you’re into, you’ll spend a lot of time and money gathering the necessary instrumentation. Unless you roll your own mini genetic engineering lab from scratch, that is.

Taking the form of an Arduino mega-shield that supports a pH meter, a spectrophotometer, and a PID-controlled hot plate, [M. Bindhammer]’s design has a nice cross-section of the instruments needed to start biohacking in your basement. Since the piggybacks on an Arduino, all the data can be logged, and decisions can be made based on the data as it is collected. One example is changing the temperature of the hot plate when a certain pH is reached. Not having to babysit your experiments could be a huge boon to the basement biohacker.

Biohacking is poised to be the next big thing in the hacking movement, and [M. Bindhammer]’s design is far from the only player in the space. From incubators to peristaltic pumps to complete labs in a box, the tools to tweak life are starting to reach critical mass. We can’t wait to see where these tools lead.

Learn how to pull realtime sensor data from a beehive to monitor its weight, temperature, and humidity over the internet.

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The post The Internet of Bees: Adding Sensors to Monitor Hive Health appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.

For the last couple of years, I’ve become interested in the “quantified self” movement (also known as self-tracking and bio-hacking). QSers like to measure everything they can about themselves: how long they sleep, how well they sleep, how many calories they consume and burn, their blood pressure, their blood glucose levels, their brainwaves, and so on. They do this because they want to find out how their health and sense of well being is affected by their behavior. To find out more about the quantified self movement, visit the Quantified Self blog, started by Kevin Kelly and Gary Wolf.

The Pulse Sensor is a quantified self device designed by Joel Murphy and Yuri Gitman of New York University. As they describe it, it’s a “well-designed plug-and-play heart-rate sensor for Arduino. It can be used by students, artists, athletes, makers, and game & mobile developers who want to easily incorporate live heart-rate data into their projects.”

They’ll be showing the Pulse Sensor at World Maker Faire New York this weekend, and will also be giving a presentation called “Incorporating Biofeedback into your Arduino Projects” on Sunday at 3:30pm. I’m definitely going to sit in on this!

I interviewed Yuri Gitman the Make: Talk podcast. Here’s the interview with Yuri. I also have an upcoming interview with Joel. In addition, MAKE ran an article about the Pulse Sensor in Volume 29.

Maker Faire Project Profile

Pulse Sensor

Pulse Sensor is a well-designed plug-and-play heart-rate sensor for Arduino. It can be used by students, artists, athletes, makers, and game & mobile developers who want to easily incorporate live heart-rate data into their projects.

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Pulse Sensor

Filed under: Arduino