ProdMod ™

**NEW!! - ***Click here for latest assembly intructions***

Craft, a sister magazine of Make, is about to publish a DIY LED Hula Hoop article in Volume 6 due on the shelves Feb 5^th. It caught my eye because I featured jeffkobi’s instructable months ago and planned to create my own DIY instructions using translucent tubing. Obviously Craft beat me to it. If you are a Craft subscriber you can read the digital edition right now. (click on little blue monitor icon)

These hoops are popular at festivals like burningman and at some dance clubs around the world.

Their instructions involve using translucent tubing, color LEDs, resistors, a switch and a battery.

After you are done reading the tutorial, depending on your expertise, you might be left with a few unanswered questions, like:

-How do I choose LEDs with the same Voltage Drop?
-What resistor value do I need for these LEDs?
-How exactly do I strip the wire with a razor blade?

Then you are likely to ask:
-How much is this all going to cost me?
-Can I just buy 10ft of tubing instead of 100ft?

The above are all potential barriers that may prevent you from trying this out. I’d like to avoid that.

In this article I will answer the above technical questions, but I will also show you how much you can save by buying a kit that includes a pre-cut 11ft tube with all the parts you need to make just one LED Hula Hoop. This saves you time, money, and reduces wasted tubing. In the process you’ll also see where you can buy the parts on your own if you dont believe in saving money, or plan to make 10 hoops anyway

So lets start with LED selection:

***By the way, if you want the latest and greatest LED Hula Hoop Making instructions you should skip over to this other page. The post you are reading is quite old****

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Just a quick note to all my subscribers interested in improving the Prodmod LED Camera Light. I did not forget about it and I do see that the highest votes on the poll are for dimming ability and increased brightness. I have some answers for you but the articles still need more work. I can discuss a few ways to dim the Prodmod light and I have also recently compared LEDs from two different vendors and found some surprising results. I will try to finish these articles as soon as possible. If you need any help between now and then feel free to contact me or leave a comment.

Remember, I can experiment and mod faster than I can write about it. When I do write about mods I try to be clear and concise and accurate, so it can take time. Sharing my opinions about Adam Matta or the AirMail is less complex.

More importantly I’d rather write about things you want to know, so please feel free to direct me towards your areas of interest by voting in polls and leaving comments.

Have you seen this yet? It’s a manilla folder for the new MacBook Air. Basically Steve Jobs pulled the new ultra slim MacBook Air out of a manilla folder to prove how thin it was. So a team of artists made this manilla folder looking sleeve for the new laptop and called it AirMail. If you go to the “All you want to know” part of their new site it exlpains what it is made of.

“The AirMail laptop sleeve is handmade out of durable upholstery-grade vinyl, and lined with fuzzy, soft fleece.”

Did they just say fleece?�The last time I took off my fleece pull over I was cursing up a storm about how much static electricity it creates and I couldn’t get rid of it. I even zapped my wife and I still had it.�I am no electronics expert, but I am pretty sure static electricity and electronics� don’t play well together.� I guess laptops are protected from occasional zaps but generating static on the laptop each time you remove it from the sleeve just can’t be good?� Can it?

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I just saw Adam Matta and his friends perform last night at the New Museum here in NYC. Not only is Adam able to reproduce realistic sounds of the city and hip-hop-techno-scratching sounds with nothing but his vocal chords and a microphone - he also has some cool gadgets. This combination of creativity and ingenuity earns him some time on this blog. As a product designer and hacker I think it is healthy to get inspiration from other creative areas, especially music. Guys like Adam remind me that people are capable of great things. And I think there are a few things you and I can learn from him, if not be inspired by:

If you check out the video below you’ll see him spin this bicycle wheel he has propped up on a stool back and forth. He uses it to make turntable style scratching sound effects. He moves the wheel back and forth just like a DJ scratches a record. You’ll see a close up of the device at the beginning of the clip at 6seconds.

Isn’t he just some Beatboxer artist dude? Where did he get that? Did he make that himself? — Yes. Yes he did!

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I have sold a hand full of Prodmod DIY LED Camera Light Kits over the past month and I am dying to see how they all turned out. If you have finished your build I would love to see some pics. Show us all what it looks like inside and out. And show a few samples of how photos look while lit with the camera light.

Did you modify the light in some way? Show us that too.

I have added a new Gallery feature to the site. So far I have one contribution from jburnitt.

You can see his photos on the Photo Gallery page. You can also access it over on the right sidebar under the “Navigate” controls.

And there is a collection of recent photos at the bottom of the sidebar on the right.

If you have pics for me, send them to prodmod at prodmod dot com.