USB Hub Monster

A six-legged creature with the ability to hook up to USB devices through any and all of its highly adjustable limbs.



Song: "Sgt. Pepper's Paradise (Beatles vs. Guns N' Roses)" by Jimmi Jammes

- 7-port D-Link USB hub
- 7 one-foot USB extension cables
- 10-foot roll of 9-gauge armature wire
- black fabric (not shown)

Easiest. Step. Ever.

Cut three three-foot pieces of armature wire, bundle them up, and twist them together in the middle. They should stay together and it doesn't matter if they can slightly move around or rattle. A bit of duct tape (the first of many) will take care of that when they're wrapped up.

From each end, find the longest piece of wire and bend it backwards. Now, at the middle of the duct-taped area, bend them out at a right angle. Repeat for the other side and you now have three pairs of legs.

Duct tape these new pieces down for good measure.

Bring together the USB squid from before and merge it with the armature wire. If you did this right, each bit of armature wire should be a little longer than its USB cable. Now duct tape them all together.

You should now be able to create all sorts of poses with this setup. Go ahead and take a break and have some fun with it.

That seventh port shouldn't go unused. With a USB extension cable, or any other spare USB cable, make some eyes.

Snip the cable to get to the tasty red and black wires inside. Solder a resistor to a couple of LEDs and HEY!, we have some lights.

With that extra bit of armature wire left over, wrap it around the body a couple of times and then, with yet more duct tape, tape it down to the body and to the USB cable with the LEDs. You now have a neck and some floating eyes.

This is a good time to test the connections. Plugging in the USB cable to a computer should light up the eyes. Be sure to check the other ports with a spare flash drive, making sure your computer can see all of them.

Measure the dimensions of the hub, including the margin that the USB cable sticks out of the top, and cut out two ovals out of some cardboard that can cover all of this.

Cut a couple of notched curves. Slide them together onto the ovals and it should make a nice connection. Forget to measure and simply eyeball it and you may have to force it a little bit of a lot like I did.

Get an egg carton and cut it up and fold it so you have a cardboard egg. Be sure to cut a hole for the neck.

Cut a couple of holes in the head for the eyes and slide the LEDs in. Be sure to test again to see if they still light up.

If you thought there was a lot of duct tape before, get ready for a bigger amount of hot glue.

First, secure the eyes in the head by putting glops of glue behind them. Now get ready to add some skin.

Cut up some black fabric into strips long enough to cover the legs and glue them on.

Straighten out the working leg and then run a line of glue all along one side. Holding the fabric tight, drop an edge onto the glue and then press down to secure it. Wrap the fabric around and glue down the other edge to secure it. I didn't worry about stray threads since they add to the insect appeal.

I cut out a piece of fabric and then poked a couple of holes for the eyes. Once this was glued down I glued a strip around the head. I repeated this with a couple of more strips for a segmented look.

For the body I used a similar technique, covering up the cardboard with random pieces of fabric and then layering strips with loose threads on top.

The armature wire is easily bendible and surprisingly strong. You can do pretty much any pose you want, except for a headstand. You could probably make some stop-motion animation with it. Or you could just put it on your desk as an early Halloween decoration.