It is safe to assume that as the speed of the game goes up, you're required to switch your listening from rock ballad to punk. [Like it Cool]

You can find all the details for Batsignal projector (including stencil patterns) at Thingiverse. Fun part is that you can even switch out the stencils just in case you decide that you want a different superhero identity. Spacegirl-signal, anyone? [Thingiverse via Make]

THAT'S MY FAVORITE SHOW TOO!! WHY ISN'T IT ON ITUNES??

Sorry for shouting. I won't do that again. I'll try not to spit, either, but I can make no promises there. I mean, I'll most certainly make earnest attempts, but I really don't want to mislead you. My saliva is not something that I can wield with 100% proficiency, and I want this meeting to be built on trust. Mutual trust.

Anyway, my reason for showing at your door. Frankly, I wanted to know what your house smelled like. No, that's not my primary reason for being here. I view it as a sort of side quest that justified a face-to-face meeting rather than a more conventional email. And no, it's not nearly as creepy as your face is implying. My inquiry was a point of academic interest. Everyone's house smells different, an amalgamation of personal scent, furniture, general upkeep, pets and preference for food. And let me just say, I thought it'd smell like this. You know, kind of blue. Yes, I know blue is a color. I guess I mean, fresh, clean, but maybe even a bit sterile. Not in a bad way, mind you. And the hint of tempeh in the air is really quite welcoming.

OK, OK, I realize that I've gone on for a while here, and at any second, Nigel Lythgoe is going to unpause on your DVR and it's going to sound really loud because both our ears have adjusted to the room's noise without a television blaring—no Apple TV, btw? But that's neither here nor there. My pitch is this:

Sell every iPhone with an accompanying Arduino tank. Like this one. Boom.

The shake-to-erase action works because of a hidden mercury switch which detects movement and you don't really need to worry about the hard drive since this project kinda destroys your screen. [Project Lab via Make]

It's going to be a little different than just the usual crap you can buy—it's a guide that can start you on an amazing journey of building electronics, learning new skills. If you're really motivated, you just might invent something new.

Let's get started! The question I get asked the most is "where to start"—lots of people see all the DIY projects here on Gizmodo and just don't know where to begin. I've put together some favorite tools, resources and beginner electronics kits that will get you going and give you something fun to show your friends. You don't need to buy many things either, since many of the kits and gadgets are "open source"—you can buy the parts, etch a circuit board, "breadboard" it or in some cases just build parts of them with what you may have at home by cannibalizing a junk drawer of fail-gadgets.

BTW, if you hate the gallery format as much as the Grinch hated Christmas, click here.

The Tools

Starting out on your electronics adventure? Want to wield the mighty soldering iron? Tired of saying "I'd totally get into electronics if I only knew what tools to get..."? Working with substandard equipment is a terrible way to learn electronics: A lot of frustration with too little success. The right tool set will keep you progressing without the stressing. This toolbox contains carefully selected hand tools that will last you for many many years. Keep in mind that you don't need to buy this tool pack—just look it over (itemized on the product page). Consider it a list of good things to have to get started. You may even have some of these tool collecting dust in the garage already! $100 [Ladyada's Electronics Toolkit]

Make & Build Stuff

Now that you've got the tools, what's next? Microcontrollers! These are basically cheap, tiny computers that you can run simple programs on, control motors and make stuff happen based on sensor data.

For the longest time BASIC Stamp/PIC was the dominant chip that hobbyists used, and still to this day PICs are very popular. However, over the last few years an open-source project from Italy called "Arduino"—named after the Italian king Arduino of Ivrea, who ruled from 1002 to 1015, of course!—it has captured the hearts and minds of many beginners. No one knows why it's so popular (over 100k units!) but I'd say it's because the software to program them runs on Mac, PC and Linux, there's a huge community of artists who make amazing things and share them, and it's pretty inexpensive. And since it's 100% open source, you can make your own versions, improve on them and sell them if you wanted to.

What do the following projects all have in common? Google Street View on a hacked stationary bike, electronic wallpaper, secret-knock door opener, Ghostbusters proton packs, Barbots, skateboard etch-a-sketch and a Twitter toilet that tweets your poo... They're all made with Arduino!

Make & Build Stuff

You don't need to buy an Arduino, you can "make" one using a breadboard and a lot of parts—but let's say you want to dive in and pick up an Arduino with enough projects to teach you how things work, and help you explore microcontroller basics. Covers LEDs, transistors, motors, integrated circuits, pushbuttons, variable resistors, photo resistors, temperature sensors & relays. I suggest the Arduino ARDX experimentation pack for $85. If that breaks the bank, choose from less expensive packs: a $65 starter pack, a $50 budget pack or just a straight-up $30 Arduino.

If you can scrounge up the parts on your own you can always download and print up the free booklet which includes all the lessons. If you're the book-learnin' type, there's a great little one called Getting Started With Arduino, $13, written by Massimo Banzi, co-founder of the Arduino Project.

Make & Build Stuff

The Arduino is great and there are a lot of "shields" to expand its functionality (music, GPS, internet), but what if you want to get your hands dirty and make something more complicated? Here are three of my favorite beginner electronics kits to get you started—as always, they are open source so you could make these on your own too.

The first lets you juice up all the gadgets—MP3 player, camera, cell phone, etc.—that you plug into a USB port to charge. The Minty Boost is small and simple but very powerful. If you have a new or old phone that always runs down, make one of these to get a lot of extra talk time. Be sure to check the project page for the latest compatibility notes for many devices. $20 [Minty Boost kit]

Make & Build Stuff

Relive the fun of CES 2008 everyday with TV-B-Gone. People are still polarized about the whole CES thing. Everyone was complaining that CES sucked because it was just about "giant TVs" and when someone turned them off for a few seconds the intarwebs world freaked out. I don't have any opinion on it, other than that CES should be more exciting than a TV-turn-off freak out. That said, the TV-B-Gone is a wonderful device to learn the ins-and-outs of IR signaling, and it's fun to turn off TVs in store windows that are closed at night to save power. (That's what I like to do.) The new Universal TV-B-Gone kit is an ultra-high-power version of the TV-B-Gone (assembled), able to reach 150 feet and can be used anywhere in the world. Plus, you make it yourself. $20 [TV-B-Gone (kit or assembled)]

Make & Build Stuff

Spell words in the air with your bicycle wheels using SpokePOV, an easy-to-make electronic kit toy. The project includes a free schematic design and open software for uploading and editing stored bitmap images. Perfect for those late-night Critical Mass rides or your Burning Man transport. $100 for triple; $38 for one [SpokePOV]

Hackable Electronics and 3D Printing

Next up, I put together some of my favorite "gadgets" that aren't necessarily kits but are hackable. Many companies are inviting their customers to hack and mod their devices, the folks are the pioneers!

The Chumby does so many things it's hard to actually tell someone what it is. I usually say it's an internet alarm clock that runs widgets. Most people seem to get that, or they'll get curious enough to check out the site. The latest version, the cool retro-looking Chumby One is out. The product is open source, so you can hack it, mod it, get the source and schematics and best of all make widgets for it. (Chumby trivia: The engineer behind it, Bunnie Huang, is one of the best engineers in the world. If you're old school, you'll remember him as the first person to hack the original Xbox, and as author of Hacking the Xbox: An Introduction to Reverse Engineering.) $99 [Chumby; Review]

Hackable Electronics and 3D Printing

Bug is the Lego of computers. Make a GPS camera MP3 player? You can! It's a modular, open-source system for building whatever comes to mind, by plugging little modules into each other till you get the desired functionality. If you want to program them, you need to know Java, but there are also a lot of apps you can just download. BUGbase core $450; assorted modules from $70; monster kit $750 [Bug Labs]

Hackable Electronics and 3D Printing

MakerBot is a new entry in the world of 3D printing. Based on the open-source RepRap project, Brooklyn-based MakerBot is becoming the default install for any self-respecting hacker space. (Well, that and a laser cutter.) The MakerBot can print 3D objects you make or download—Thingiverse is a great source. The coolest thing I've seen lately is a print out of Thom Yorke's head. $700 [MakerBot]

My Fantasy Gadget

The Giz gang asked me to name a "dream gadget," and of course for me it's something that makes things: A "pick-and-place" machine, namely the MDC 7722fv from Japan. You could use it to make iPhones in your living room if you really wanted to. I have one now, so at least for me, the fantasy has became a reality. I'm currently making accelerometers and Drawdios (musical pencils) but next year expect to see an open-source watch and who knows? Maybe you'll see me selling cloned iPhones on Canal Street in NYC, next to the counterfeit DVD and purse dudes. Over $30,000 [MDC; US distributor]

Got questions or comments? Post 'em up below. I'll try to answer all of them that I can!

Phil Torrone is the senior editor at MAKE magazine and creative director for Adafruit Industries, an open source hardware manufacturer in NYC. In the interest of disclosure, please note that many of the products you see above are sold though Adafruit and Make, but it just so happens, the source for the best info is also the source for many of the goods.

All Giz Wants is our annual round-up of favorite gift ideas, including amazing attainable objects and a few far-out fantasies. We'll be popping guides catered to different interests several times per day for the next week, so keep checking back.

Of course, that means you wouldn't have to sit staring at a wall or a TV while exercising—you could virtually travel down roads anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, the design needs some tinkering to be really usable—but it's a fantastic concept that's really worth pursuing. If there was a commercial product that got this right, I would probably be all over it. Hit the following link to learn how to do something like this at home. [Bako via Make]

A lot of this stuff is just playful, so some of the clothes don't need to be too polished—but I love that electronic wallpaper. Down with lightswitches, I say! [Fairytale Fashion]

Steve Hoefer's secret knock detector is little more than a piezo speaker, a tiny gear reduction motor, an Arduino and some PVC pipe—basically a bunch of stuff he had lying around the lab. It works by keeping track of the time between a pattern of successive knocks. It's probably not the most secure way to lock a door, but Hoefer notes that there is a lot of room for improvement on this design. Besides making it small enough to actually fit in a doorknob, you could program it to accept a variety of knock patterns, including different knocks at different times of the day. Hit the link for instructions on how to build one yourself. [Grathio via Make]

Here's how it works in a nutshell:

- light sensors read the falling notes (brightness set to max)
- light data is sent to an Arduino Mega, which is monitoring for data spikes
- The Arduino filters the data, and sets a threshold for "on" and "off"
- an "on" means the tiny robot finger presses the screen
- the capacitive touchscreen requires a human touch to operate, so a rudimentary Xacto knife/copper wire workaround was created. Simply hold the knife while the robot plays, and the current is enough to trick the iPhone

The code is available for download, should you want to help the robots spread their lifeless 87% accuracy music around the globe. Update: You're right, eagle-eyed commenters. The result is in fact 87%. We're safe! [OhBowz via Boing Boing]

The box has a button and an LCD display on the lid. When you press the button, the display will show you how far, in kilometers, you are from the goal location. It doesn't give you directions, so you need to triangulate where you're supposed to go via trial and error. Oh, and you can only press the button 50 times.

There's a pretty sweet disguised back door built-in as well, just in case the battery dies or the GPS unit fails.

Spoiler: the box only opens when brought to Île-de-Bréhat, France. As for what's inside?

With all the electronics, there wasn't much room inside the box for anything too substantial. I put in a few local (US) gift cards to entice them to visit soon, a set of Kazuo Ishiguro audio books (on a USB key), and an overly sentimental card. And of course, as I pointed out in the card, if either of them fancies doing a little Arduino development, there's a perfectly good Duemilanove to play with, not to mention an LCD, a servo, and a GPS.

I guess the puzzle itself is present enough, really. Pretty cool stuff, no? [Arduiniana via Make]

Live video by Ustream

Meet the Guardian Robot: This friendly little fellow stands on your desk and monitors your Twitter feed for "happy" and "sad" posts by your friends on your Twitter feed. But unlike conventional alert systems, this robot encourages you to interact with the posts it finds.

For example, when it finds a "happy" post, the Guardian Robot raises its head and arm in triumph. It holds the pose until you give it a "high five" by pushing the switch in its raised hand. Once you do that, the robot pass the high five on to your buddy via a reply Tweet.

Likewise, when the Guardian Robot comes across a sad Tweet, it lowers its head in despair. You cheer it up by giving it a hug, which it will forward on with another reply Tweet.

Jesus, this robot is needy. Still, it might be nice too have a Twitter secretary of sorts, filtering through a sea of meaningless tweets about going to the bathroom, eating something with bacon in it...etc. Designer Ken Lim has provided enough information on the build so that you might be able to make one yourself—but even if you don't know your way around an Arduino you can still interact with the Guardian robot by chatting with him on his own Twitter page (#ineedahug and #highfive commands). You can also check out his reaction live on the Ustream video above. [Guardian via Boing Boing Gadgets]

I suppose it could be used as an inexact Etch-A-Sketch, using three skateboards for linear movement, but it seems like an awful lot of effort (and space—it must take up an entire garage!) for that. So help me out: What could this thing be used for? Should I be scared or excited? [MAKE via Crunchgear]

Snoozy the Sloth from Justin Blinder on Vimeo.

The sloth doll uses an Arduino microcontroller, two diaphragm pumps, and a latex glove to act as the "lung;" Blinder makes it clear that he wanted not the illusion of breathing (by having, for example, a mechanically contracting and expanding chest) but the actual intake and expulsion of air. In other words, this thing can gently breathe on your neck, which sounds about the same mixture of creepy and cute as The Police's "I'll Be Watching You." On the other hand, we could totally see kids loving this: They go crazy for dolls with semi-animate features, like giggling Elmo or those dolls that pee (weird!). And kids have less experience than we with machines behaving badly, anyway, so their innocent little minds can enjoy the doll without fear of, you know, horrible robot murder. [Official Site, Thanks Justin!]

PAPERduino is essentially a template for an Arduino board that, when mounted to cardboard, replaces your typical PCB. (It's sort of like a printed circuit board, home edition.) Also, if you're not interested in Arduino at all but would like some geek cred, the PAPERduino will add a free 10 IQ points when you tape it up beside your desk. [guilherme martins via MAKE]

Puff scans the area to find flames then attempts to "blow" it out with his built-in fan. The problem is that Puff's courage only goes so far. If he fails to blow out the candle in two sweeps he panics and runs away. Apparently, Puff had an incident with kids and some Chinese firecrackers a few years back and now he suffers from post-traumatic stress. Hit the following link for a basic visual guide that can help you build your own Puff arduino dragon. [Let's Make Robots via Hacked Gadgets]

The new and much-improved Power Glove is positioned as kind of a 20th anniversary present to the original Glove. The video below gives a pretty detailed instruction for how to tear apart your own Power Glove, presuming you can find one, and also shows him using it with an iPhone boxing game he's developing.

Power Glove 20th Anniversary Edition — Build Video from Matt Mechtley on Vimeo.

Finally, the future looks like we imagined it would in 1989. [Instructables, creator's blog]

You be the judge. I say, resoundingly, yes.

[YouTube via MAKE]

Using tried-and-true Arduino magic, you can build a device that hooks into your existing burglar alarm. If the alarm is triggered, turned on or off, or malfunctions, you will be notified with a hysterical flurry of tweets. Imagine looking on your cellphone to find the following: "I think someone is in the house! I'm scared!" Hit the following link for basic instructions on how to build one yourself. [Kelvin's Thunderstorm via Hacked Gadgets via Slashgear]

It's just a concept piece for now, but the three metalheads behind the project seem like they're intent on selling some or all of it, some day. It uses an Arduino controller to process the input from the wigs accelerometers, then outputs it to a custom game written in the Processing language.

If some sort of jeweled headband controller doesn't find it's way into the next version of Rock Band, I will be disappointed. [Headbang Hero via Kotaku - Thanks, Mike]