Make: The Best of: 75 projects from the pages of MAKE

Move over MacGyver! The Geeks are coming! Here are 75 of the best projects from the first 10 volumes of O’Reilly’s DIY MAKE magazine. In The Best of MAKE (380 pages) , editors Mark Frauenfelder and Gareth Branwyn have selected a varied assortment of projects and tips that are not only fun to work on, but also have practical applications. Even if you are not a dab hand with electronics and a soldering iron you will almost certainly find something of interest. In fact, you do not actually need to build any of these projects to enjoy this book.

The range of projects is quite varied in terms of complexity, split across the following chapters:

Starting with a description of the tools that are handy to have available, Chapter 1 prepares the groundwork for what you will need to get started on these DIY projects. The following 8 chapters are a roller coaster ride through the pages of Make.

If I had to pick a top 5 projects, my favourites would have to be the Jam Jar Jet, Urban Camouflage, Pinball Resurrected , VCR Cat Feeder and the robot mouse.

I liked this book so much that I bought my brother a copy for xmas! It has even re-ignited my interest in a bit of electronics tinkering. Highly recommended. One thing to note; the Amazon cover photo shows “150 Projects” but it is actually 75.

[BTW, If you like this book, you should also check out Making Things Talk which has a distinctly embedded electronics flavor, and goes deeper into the topic of microcontrollers and programming.]