ErnieKey writes: A youth club in Germany, called Toolbox Bodensee, has created an unusual musical organ. It is constructed of 49 floppy disk drives all of which combine to play quite a unique sound. It has the ability to be played manually or act as a playback device. If you have a bunch of old floppy drives and want to assemble your own organ, the 3D print files are available for free download on Thingiverse.

There are a lot of ways to get around Maker Faire, some of them like nothing you've seen before.

An anonymous reader writes: Space policy experts are still arguing where American astronauts should go once they venture into deep space. However, there is widespread agreement that once they get there they should be prepared to stay for longer than just a few hours or days, as was the case during the Apollo missions to the moon. Taking all the material to set up habitats, the astronauts' homes away from home, would tend to be expensive. Toward the end of lowering the cost of long duration space travel, NASA has announced the 3D Printed Habitat Challenge, in partnership with America Makes, as part of the ongoing Centennial Challenge program.

DeviceGuru writes: Arduino announced a smaller, cheaper Arduino Yun Mini version of the Arduino Yun SBC at the Bay Area Maker Faire [Friday]. The $60 Arduino Yun Mini SBC sacrifices a number of interfaces in order to reduce size, and gives the OpenWRT Linux based Linino distribution, which is also used by the original Yun, more control over the board's functions. Arduino also announced a new community web portal called my.arduino.org, plus an open source Arduino IDE-alpha development system that is entirely based on JavaScript, which will be available there by the end of the month.

ErnieKey writes: A wounded loggerhead turtle showed up in Turkey, with significant damage to its upper and lower jaws. It was taken to the Sea Turtle Research, Rescue and Rehabilitation Center at Pamukkale University (PAU) for help. The PAU team, working with BTech Innovation, was able to make a 3D printed titanium jaw implant for the turtle. The operation was a success, and the patient — the world's first sea turtle to receive a 3D printed implant — is recovering.

merbs sends an update on MakerBot, one of the most well known names in the 3D-printing industry. After its acquisition by Stratasys in 2013, defective parts plagued the company's printers in 2014. MakerBot co-founder and CEO Bre Pettis stepped down, and the company laid off 20% of its employees. The new CEO, Jonathan Jaglom, is now talking about how they're rebuilding MakerBot, and where we can expect it to go in the future. "The 39-year-old, Swiss-born Jaglom says that his priorities since taking over have been to dedicate more attention to customer support, to address the remaining fallout from the extruder problem, and to reorient the company to target its Replicators to the professional and educational markets."

Jaglom also envisions a sort of "iTunes for 3D printing," where people can easily buy designs online and print them out at home. He says, "I'll be sitting at home. Maybe something broke; maybe my glasses. Maybe I want to reprint it and I'll go to Oakley, Ray Ban, whatever, Philippe Starck in this case, download the file, pay $3.49 for it, and print it at home. And then you will have to go to your Kinko's or your Fab Labs, your local 3D printing, if you want it in metal or plastics you can't have at home."

Justin McLean is probably best-known for his work with Apache Flex. He also started playing with open source hardware before Arduino, and now works with systems like Fritzing, an open source hardware initiative that can take you all the way from initial concept to production-ready PCBs you can have made by a production house -- or make yourself if that's the way you roll. This can be an educational activity, a way to make prototype boards for potential Internet of Things products or even just a fun way to occupy yourself by making LEDs light up.

An anonymous reader writes: Over on Forbes, Jono Bacon writes about the emergence of an open drone ecosystem spearheaded by the recently announced 3D Robotics SOLO which is largely Open Source and has an Open Source SDK. Bacon's argument is that innovation comes from where we least expect it, so open access to the code and tools is critical in helping the burgeoning drone ecosystem to thrive, solve problems, and grow. See also our videos interviews with open-source drone programmers / users John Hawley, Clay McLure, and Mark F. Brown and Joel Rozenweig at the recent Embedded Linux Conference, where Bacon was also a speaker.

agent elevator writes: UT Austin engineers have come up with a software fix that corrects for the errors GPS has when using the tiny antennas on smartphones. They demoed it using a VR setup and got 2-cm accuracy. For now it runs on a separate processor from the smartphone, but they say they'll fix that. The demo appears to have been done on a rooftop. VR. Outside. On a roof. Doesn't seem like a good idea, does it?

SonicSpike writes with word that Cody Wilson, whose projects to create (and disseminate the plans for) printable guns have fascinated some and horrified others, is not going to quietly comply with the U.S. State Deparment's demand that he remove such plans from the internet. Wilson, says Wired, is picking a fight that could pit proponents of gun control and defenders of free speech against each other in an age when the line between a lethal weapon and a collection of bits is blurrier than ever before. Wilson's gun manufacturing advocacy group Defense Distributed, along with the gun rights group the Second Amendment Foundation, on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the State Department and several of its officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry. In their complaint, they claim that a State Department agency called the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) violated their first amendment right to free speech by telling Defense Distributed that it couldn't publish a 3-D printable file for its one-shot plastic pistol known as the Liberator, along with a collection of other printable gun parts, on its website.

You can call Bob Paulin 'Coach' and he'll probably respond, because he's been coaching youth football since 2005. Now he's also coaching what you might call 'youth science and technology' as the Chicagoland organizer of Devoxx4Kids.org. A motto on the group's website says, 'Game programming, robotics, engineering for kids in a fun way!' And that's what the group is all about, as Bob says in this video (and in the accompanying transcript for those who prefer reading over watching).

Mark F. Brown and Joel Rozenweig build autonomous drones; that is, drones that don't need an operator every second. You tell the autonomous drone, "Pick up package # 941A at the loading dock and deliver it to 451 Bradbury St.' and off it goes. It's going to be a while yet before that happens, but one day....

Back in the present, dronemaking is still a hobby for Mark and Joel, something they do for fun after spending their workdays as software engineers at Intel. Joel says there is 'remarkably little' crossover between their jobs and their hobby, and that (so far) Intel has contributed little beyond some Edison modules (which you can buy for less than $50) and travel to the Embedded Linux Conference, where they gave a talk accompanied by these slides. NOTE: We have a little bonus for you today. We try to keep videos to 10 minutes or less, but we have no such constraints on transcript length. So if you want the 'full' version of this interview, please read the transcript.

An anonymous reader writes: At Microsoft's Build 2015 developer conference today, Steve Guggenheimer, Microsoft vice president of developer and platform evangelism, announced new 3D printing features in Windows 10. More specifically, Autodesk Spark is being integrated into Microsoft's latest and greatest operating system. Spark is a platform for building 3D printing software, hardware, materials, and services. Adding it to Windows 10 is a big win for Autodesk.

XxtraLarGe writes: I work for a small liberal arts college, and have been asked to research makerspaces. I have done a bunch of initial research which tells me a lot about equipment being used, as well as location, etc., but what I'm not finding are what to know before you start, or what it takes to make the effort worthwhile.

I'd be interested in hearing from other educators, staff, students and other maker community members on Slashdot that had makerspaces at their schools or community — can be any level — and what was the experience like? 3D printer, 3D scanner & Laser cutting machines seem to be a given, so I'd like to hear what kinds of think-outside-the-box equipment/materials did you have? We are considering putting it in our library, which seems to be a popular choice with most schools. There's also the possibility of having it somewhere in town that it could be more accessible to members of the community, maybe even as a co-op.

An anonymous reader writes: In the Little Devices Lab at MIT, Jose Gomez-Marquez builds medical tools using a DIY mindset. He's designing cheap alternatives to existing hospital equipment to help spread high-quality medical care around the world. Gomez-Marquez is at the forefront of a large and often-unrecognized group of DIY medical tool builders. Together they are challenging the idea that staying healthy requires extraordinarily expensive, sophisticated equipment built by massive corporations. Harnessing this inventive energy, he argues, could improve the health of thousands of people around the world.

According to Wikipedia, 'Project Ara is the codename for an initiative that aims to develop an open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones.' Google is the sponsor, and the project seems to be moving faster than some people expect it to. There's a Project Ara website, of course, a GitHub repository, a Facebook page, even an Ara subreddit. During his conversation with Timothy Lord, Ara firmware project lead (and spokesman) Marti Bolivar said it won't be long before prototype Ara modular phones start user testing. Meanwhile, if you want to see what Marti and his coworkers have been up to lately, besides this interview, you can read a transcription of his talk (including slides) from the January Project Ara Developers Conference in Singapore.

frank249 writes: In the Star Trek universe, transparent aluminum is used in various fittings in starships, including exterior ship portals and windows. In real life, Aluminium oxynitride is a form of ceramic whose properties are similar to those of the fictional substance seen in Star Trek. It has a hardness of 7.7 Mohs and was patented in 1980. It has military applications as bullet-resistant armor, but is too expensive for widespread use.

Now, there has been a major breakthrough in materials science. After decades of research and development, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory has created a transparent, bulletproof material that can be molded into virtually any shape. This material, known as Spinel (magnesium aluminate), is made from a synthetic powdered clay that is heated and pressed under vacuum into transparent sheets. Spinel weighs just a fraction of a modern bulletproof pane.

An anonymous reader writes in with this BBC story about the niche market of 3D printed "selfie" models. By now we're familiar with tales of 3D-printed marvels, from guns to duck prosthetics. But when I traveled to a physics conference in March, I wasn't expecting to end up with a full colour printout of myself. However, at a small stall that popped up on Industry Day at the American Physical Society's March meeting — that is precisely the service that was being offered. I stepped on to a little rotating platform, tried to stand still for a few awkward minutes while a camera scanned me up and down, and then filled out a form. A few weeks later, a box has arrived in the post. Somewhere inside it, my two-inch twin is waiting for me to overcome my trepidation and show him the light of day. But I'm in no hurry; it all seems a bit... odd. The box sits on my desk for several days. Even though getting 'printed' puts me in the illustrious company of Barack Obama and Richard III, I'm unsure about my decision. What, I wonder, does someone do with a small selfie in statue form? Where does this business find its customers?

New submitter Adrian Harvey writes The New Zealand based commercial space company Rocket Lab has unveiled their new rocket engine which the media is describing as battery-powered. It still uses rocket fuel, of course, but has an entirely new propulsion cycle which uses electric motors to drive its turbopumps.

To add to the interest over the design, it uses 3D printing for all its primary components. First launch is expected this year, with commercial operations commencing in 2016.

John 'Warthog9' Hawley was the boss sysadmin on kernel.org before he jumped to Intel in April, 2014, as an open hardware technical evangelist. He last showed up on Slashdot in June, 2014, with his Dr. Who-inspired Robot K-9. Now he's talking about flight computers for quadcopters, specifically ones based on MinnowBoards. Last month (April 2015) he was speaking at the Embedded Linux Conference + Android Builders Summit. That's where he and Timothy Lord had this conversation about flight controllers for UAVs, which makes it a fitting sequel to yesterday's video, which was also about controlling drones with real-time Linux.