With Christmas rapidly approaching, one of my aims this year is to at least attempt a bit of DIY Christmas gifting. So if you know me, there are potential spoilers ahead and stop reading this right now. So here are five ideas I may or may not be considering as part of my Christmas gift ideas. These really are quite geeky, but then so are most of my friends and family.
1. 3d printed jewellery
We don’t all own 3d printers (yet) particularly ones that can print in precious or semi-precious metals. But head over to Shapeways – a website with a name that sounds like it’s straight from an episode of the Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy and you can print more or less anything you can practically design provided it’s in a format they support. You can also order a printed version of your idea in cheaper plastic before committing to a more expensive material.
For a less daunting project you can contact some of the designers to create customised versions of their work. Lots of designs are available on Thingiverse for you to download and edit (including the ring shape below).
2. Make your own lego brick shaped bath bombs
So slightly less technical but fun nevertheless is to make your own bath bombs or fizzies. These are compacted cubes of Sodium Bicarbonate and Citric Acid that bubble Carbon Dioxide when you chuck them in the bath:
C5H7O5COOH + NaHCO3 → C5H7O5COO–Na+ + H2O + CO2
Here’s a nice recipe from Busy City Mum’s blog for Bath Fizzies which goes into detail about what quantities and ingredients you need. You can now buy silicon moulds in lots of shapes including Lego brick (lookalikes, not official) and the Death Star (not a moon).
In Japan it’s tradition to include a figure inside the bath bomb, so a Lego minifigure would seem appropriate!
3. A custom Raspberry Pi
I had to include a Raspberry Pi based project – there are lots to choose from including Media players and retro computer emulators – but for this I wanted to find something that would be suitably difficult to purchase. One possibility is the Raspberry Pi magic mirror which is detailed on it’s creator’s blog – this is something you simply can’t buy, and looks amazing – although you’ll need a monitor and a mirror for the full effect.
My simpler project is to build a Raspberry Pi audio streamer. Audio streamers are generally very expensive and although the Pi’s default audio output is fairly basic it’s possible to add a DAC to provide really high quality sound output. Thanks to Carla at busycitymum.com for sending me a Wolfson Pi I was able to build a fairly decent Pi Music Box with Airport support.
The recipe for this is as follows – I’ve confirmed this to work with the original Wolfson Pi Audio Card and a Raspberry Pi model A – there is a new version of the Wolfson card available for the newer Raspberry Pi models.
- Download the custom version of Raspbian from www.element14.com/PiAudioCard – on the Mac the custom version of Raspbian unpacks best if you use Stuffit Expander and then Apple Pi Baker to copy the iso file to an SD card.
- Install Shairport using these instructions from Drew Lustro
- For a final bit of polish (particularly if your running a Raspberry Pi as a headless server) you can include a web based shutdown control panel – follow the instructions on the forum here. You can edit the web page to include a nice message to your gift recipient as well!
DIY projects that work with Apple products go down quite well.
4. Bake!
Baking is a much appreciated gift – and given the diversity of cookie cutting shapes available it’s possible to give a nerdy spin on even the most traditional recipes.
Firebox do a nice line in Tetris Cookie cutters – combined with a Gingerbread recipe these make for a pleasing tessellating gift.
I’ve tried a few different gingerbread recipes and Delia’s is by far the best. Thanks to the additional spoon of black treacle the gingerbread is sufficiently biscuity – and you can vary the cooking time if you want a more chewy gingerbread. Other recipes don’t work as well since they opt for either golden syrup or black treacle. Cowards.
Combine with an original Gameboy (search for DMG1) for added wow factor. Works particularly well on millennials.
5. Give a DIY gift
So technically cheating, but you can also give the gift of DIY. I recently reviewed the StoneTurners DIY microscope
which can take awesome pictures of things, and works with the Raspberry Pi.
If you want to spend a bit more the DIY projects from Technology will save us are worth a look. Although they’re more expensive than shopping around and buying the parts, the packaging is lovely and they make quite complicated projects accessible. Plus angry birds on the Arduino is very addictive…