This week on Maker Update: a really wobbly table
Formlabs’ new automation ecosystem
A robot that shames you, A robot that inspires you.
Changing prices, and the Zip Tie Tip Omnibus
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Maker Update.
I'm Tyler Winegarner and I can assure you
that no part of this episode was written by Chat GPT
Probably.
Anyhow, I hope you're all doing well and staying creative.
We've got an awesome show for you,
so let's kick things off with the project of the week.
There's just something satisfying about watching a robot
do something that uniquely human.
Not human like tripping over a curb or rehearsing a speech to impress somebody.
But the elaborate dance of perception and mechanical performance
like trying to balance a ball on a table.
That's exactly what Aaed Musa
created with his ball balancing robot on Instructables.
Of course, we have seen this sort of Stewart's Platform before.
Like Stuff Made Here’s pool cue that won't let you miss a shot.
But what makes this project such a delight is its approachability.
Most of the parts are 3D printed and everything else is hobby servos,
driven by a Pololu Maestro servo controller,
a Pixy camera module provides the feedback loop and the teensy 4.1 controls everything.
You need to go through all the steps to teach the Pixy camera
to track the ball and calibrate the platform,
But Aaed walks you through all of it.
The other place that his writeup really shines
is this explanation of all the maths that go into a robot like this.
It's easy to get deep in the woods and leave most of your audience behind,
but he does a great job of explaining the concepts
of inverse kinematics and PID tuning.
He even has a second video that shows different PID tunings and their outcomes:
like what happens when the robot accounts for the ball's position,
but not its velocity - or its velocity, but not its position.
I think my favorite is when it overcompensated
just slightly, which creates this constant swirling of the ball.
It's not stable, but it sure is cool looking.
On his Instructable,
You can find two separate videos about the project,
A full bill of materials, 3D printing files, code, and plenty of photos
and diagrams illustrating the build and the math that went into the design.
If you've ever wanted to create your own one of these,
it looks like everything you could possibly need.
Time for some news.
Two weeks ago, Formlabs announced their automation ecosystem,
which is a collection of hardware
and software tools used to industrialize your printing workflow.
The most noticeable part is Form Auto, which can attach to modern
Formlabs printers to automatically remove prints from the build plate
and then deposit them into a basket for washing and curing.
Then the build plate goes back into the printer for the next batch.
There’s also a larger reserevior for the resin,
Increasing volumes from 1 liter to 5.
And finally there's a suite of software tools to manage
a fleet of printers, create print queues and check printing status.
It's probably safe to say
that this series of products isn't for most of us,
but it's great to see Formlabs branch out into more automated printing
as an incremental step between prototyping and factory manufacturing.
More projects!
The folks at the software company Monday have a problem.
Open office floor plans can be great,
but they can also be really disruptive -
and this kitchen on one of the floors of their office is a hub of distracting conversations.
So they got their Monday Makers team to solve the problem
with a passive aggressive robot to shush the overly loud folks,
So no one has to be the party pooper.
The robot uses a microphone to determine the various noise levels
and go through different escalations depending on how loud you are.
At its mildest, the eyes glow red and shifty,
and at the most severe, it'll capture a picture of the offending blabbermouth
and post their photo on monitors across the office.
It's a fairly simple ESP 32 project,
but a great testament to how good design and a little bit of light and movement
can really bring a project to life... or just make a good selfie robot.
Caleb Kraft released a video on how he made this gorgeous CNC
milled flame lamp that uses recessed lighting to illuminate
this pattern of waves carved into these blocks of cherry wood.
The design was made in Fusion 360 using a series of spline curves
to make the waves, and once it was all cut, he added one of those
led neon silicone strips for the lighting before closing it up again.
It's a great lesson in how a little bit of design work
can really bring an ordinary piece into the realm of extraordinary.
And finally, via the Cuttle blog, I learned about the Simple Walking Figure
Automata by Federico Tobon.
It's a pretty basic automaton with one crank moving the feet and with the springs
supporting the figure’s head and neck to give it a lovely little bobbing motion.
The best part of the project is the Cuttle template he’s provided,
that lets you fine tune the design
for the thickness of your material and even the kerf of your laser.
So much so that he doesn't even need glue to assemble the wood pieces.
I also love this trick of using pencil graphite to lubricate the moving parts.
You can get access to the template following the link in the video.
Time for some tips and tools.
Lately, we've been hearing an awful lot about A.I.
being used in maker projects,
and I suspect we're going to be hearing about it a lot more in the future.
David Piccuito just released a video on how he used Midjourney,
an AI based art tool,
to design a hand towel holder for his bathroom.
After a few iterations on the prompts, he finally arrived at something
he was interested in executing.
It's sort of like having a robotic muse who's constantly trying to pull you
out of your own mundane ideas to get way outside of your comfort zone.
If you're in a creative slump, this might be more helpful
to get you out of it than Doomscrolling on Pinterest.
From Makers Fun Duck.
We have a guide to reverse engineering e-Ink Price displays
so they can display whatever you want.
Plenty of retailers use these as low power, in-store displays
and there's no reason we can't get in on the fun too.
Once you open up the case, you'll find a set of terminal pads.
In the video, he solders on a few header pins to upload the new firmware,
but it's easy to see the benefit of making a jig or using some pogo pins
If you had to do a whole bunch of these
with the new firmware uploaded, he's able to update the display
with an image file or a paintbrush tool or any number of predefined modes.
This could be useful in a big organizational project.
From Adafruit comes a new board called The Feather Scorpio.
This is an RP2040 based microcontroller
with all the usual Feather bells and whistles,
but with a special two by eight header on the right side of the board.
This board and the header make use of the RP2040 PIO mode, which
allows for DMA control of up to eight neo pixel channels simultaneously.
Plus there's one other core on the CPU,
So you can have that doing any computation for your display
without interrupting the output.
There's even an onboard logic
level shifter, so it's sending the control signals at five volts.
It's currently priced at $14.50.
So it sounds like a lot of power for not much money.
And finally, on Hackaday, I found this wonderful
omnibus on zip ties by Al Williams.
It's pretty safe to say these useful little connectors deserve a home in
just about every maker's toolbox, no matter what you work on.
This article has some fun history on the zip tie, but also a ton of helpful little tips,
like a review of a zip tie tightening gun from Harbor Freight
or a tutorial on how to make tidy wire looms out of them.
And you can even learn about some of the most expensive zip ties you can buy.
There's a bunch of great tips in here.
Check it out.
For this week’s Digi-Key spotlight
Check out this older video on learning how to identify
some of the most common schematics symbols.
Schematics can be confusing enough on their own,
but if you don't have a grasp of what the symbols mean,
it’d be impossible to get a foothold on understanding it.
What's worse, there are at least two major standards for the symbols.
Fortunately, this video does a great job of breaking down some of the most
commonly used icons for capacitors, switches, diodes and power sources.
Give it a watch.
All right.
And that is going to do it for this week's show.
I hope you enjoyed it.
And you aren't too concerned about our expressive new robot overlords.
If you did enjoy the show, leave us a comment.
Give us a like maybe hit subscribe.
As always, huge thanks to Digi-Key for making
this whole show possible and you for watching.
Take care. We'll see you soon.