This week on Maker Update, Pokemon Goes 3D,
Atlas doesn’t skip leg day,
A new twist on coasters, and clamping tips that suck.
Hello and welcome back to Maker Update, the show where we find all the cool
projects that makers are making,
Shake them up and serve them to you in a delightful inspiration cocktail.
I'm Tyler Winegarner, and I hope you're all doing great.
We've got a jam packed show for you, so let's check out the project of the week.
This one is a few weeks old, but I couldn't help but marvel
at this working Pokeball by Kiara's Workshop.
Well, okay, you still need an actual Pokemon
that can shrink itself down to fit inside the ball to be truly functional,
but the ball itself is doing all the right stuff.
You press the button and it lights up,
it wiggles and the ball opens and closes all on its own.
And the amazing thing is that the inside is hollow.
The challenges with this project should be pretty obvious right away.
The ball needs to produce sound, two different kinds of motion,
It has lights and has to have a button,
and it all needs to fit
within the walls of a 3.5” diameter ball.
To keep things compact, she wants to power everything using
a small Lipo battery, so everything needs to run off of three volts.
For the microcontroller, she chose an Adafruit Pro Trinket,
since it met the power spec and had enough brains to run everything.
The motion of the ball is created using these two 9 gram hobby servos.
The sound comes from this SD card soundboard and amplified through this amp breakout
with a tiny speaker.
And somehow she manages to fit all of this in the 3D printed
internal shell, which keeps everything hidden when the ball is open.
The final bit of testing
is finding the right counterweight to use to help sell the wiggle motion.
She eventually used this tungsten pinewood derby weight
to give it enough mass to throw around.
once everything is working, she takes it all apart to give it
this gorgeous metal flake paint job, and it’s all done.
I can't say enough about how satisfying
it sounds when this thing pops open and slams shut again,
and the fact that it rolls forward again as it closes? Totally intentional and totally cool.
Now for some news.
In an extremely creepy but fascinating video from Boston Dynamics,
they've announced an entirely new form for their Atlas robot platform.
Gone are the unwieldy hydraulics,
this new platform is considerably smaller,
and it moves entirely on electric actuators.
While the old version of Atlas focused on more human movements,
This one breaks from that straight away, with joints
and motors that can rotate into almost any position,
creating some pretty unsettling movements from something that looks like a human.
Also, don't miss this farewell video to the old Atlas model.
More projects over on YouTube, I found this fantastic radio controlled
Power Wheels Jeep with a two axis aimable bubble cannon
created by RedRightHandArts.
In his overview video, he shows how he arranged
all of the different components, placing the motor drivers
for the drive in the steering up front and the microcontrollers in the back.
Because the EMI from the motors was causing too much interference.
On his Facebook page, he has a few other videos
going a little bit more in depth about the build, detailing
the construction of the bubble cannon and creating the steering mechanism.
He finished everything off with some nerdy details from the Jurassic Park Jeep.
If you're looking for a cool project to show off at a street fair
or tech festival, something like this looks like a surefire hit.
Upir has a great video on his YouTube channel about how he made this gear
shifter knob for his car that displays the current gear of the vehicle.
Instead of trying to hack the CANbus system of his car to get the current gear,
he built this custom PCB with four hall effect sensors
around the base of the shift lever to detect the position.
The selected gear is shown on this tiny Charlieplex matrix from Pimoroni.
Since this is his first 3D printing project,
there's also a ton of detail in this video about his design process.
He shares all the files on his GitHub
if you want to build your own.
Lewis from DIY Machines has an
outstanding project creating kinetic coasters.
Each one of these laser cut drink plinths has a spinning center
and a set of magnets at each edge.
This means that they can snap together, and the geared edge of the spinny bit
can also turn its neighboring coaster.
But this isn't just a functional fidget spinner,
because when you butt them up against the base, a motor spins up,
turning the coasters automatically.
He also has designs for a 3D printable version of the coasters,
so you won't be left out if you don't have access to a laser cutter.
How often do you get to see how
well your engineering skills stand up against really tough abuse?
Becky Stern recently created these LED poles
for an anniversary celebration of the Madagascar Institute.
She had to create a light-up terrace
that would function without intervention, floating on a raft in an NYC waterway.
Oh, yeah.
And the raft is also on fire.
The most interesting part of this video is when Becky performs
a postmortem on the recovered materials:
seeing which design decisions withstood the event and which ones took a beating.
It's a really cool twist on a project video.
Time for some tips and tools,
Stefan from CNC Kitchen has a video about making
your own multicolor and multi material filaments.
His journey began when he found some old three millimeter PLA filament,
and wanted to rehab it into the 1.75mm diameter
used by all of his current printers.
After some struggles with his filament extruder,
he was able to get consistent results.
He then began experimenting with some techniques
of printing your own bicolor filaments, and then fed those
into the extruder to get a more refined string of plastic.
the most interesting expression of this technique is when he created
PLA filament with a TPU core.
The result is a tough material that overcomes the brittleness of PLA.
David Picciuto wants to introduce you to a wood clamping technique
that's typically used in skateboard and surfboard manufacturing:
Vacuum bagging.
Most importantly, he tells you how to start using this process pretty cheaply.
In his first example, he makes his own bag out of cheap vinyl from the fabric store
and uses a wine saver as a vacuum pump.
He then levels up, creating a curved laminate shape,
still using a homemade vacuum bag, but also using a cheap vacuum pump.
David covers everything you need to know about getting into this:
Tools, glues and techniques.
If you've ever seen an LED project or art installation,
there's a good chance you've got inspired to make your own.
but it's easy to get intimidated since the complexity can ramp up really quickly.
Natasha Dzurny of Technochic has a complete video series crash course
in making projects using addressable RGB LEDs.
She starts things slowly using MakeCode, the MicroBit and a Neopixel strip.
but the projects ramp up into creating animations,
making your project interactive, and networking
multiple projects so they can sync up via radio.
It's a great series and it's still ongoing.
Check it out!
And if you live in a city,
the sight of an abandoned printer on the curb might be a familiar one.
But if you bring one of these home, you'll find that they contain a treasure trove
of greeblies for your next prop project.
Cut Transform Blue has a video dedicated to the zen of taking things
apart and harvesting the spoils for future projects.
For this week's Digikey Spotlight,
we're taking a look at DigiKey's First Look video series playlist.
Like the name says, this is a video series that provides a super quick
look at some of the emerging products that are available on DigiKey
that you might not have known about.
Resettable fuses? Learn about them here.
Mean Well, AC/DC power supplies? They have it covered.
GNSS GPS antennas?
They found them.
Check out this playlist and learn what's out there.
All right.
And that is going to do it for this week's show.
Like always, you can get more info about every single one of these projects
by checking out the links down in the description.
While you're there, leave us a comment,
give us a thumbs up and hit subscribe so you won't miss the next one.
As always, huge thanks to DigiKey
for making this show possible and to you for watching.
Take care. We'll see you soon.