This week on Maker Update: AI Shadow stories,
your own retro cable TV simulator, a relaxing cosplay project,
and building your own toy robot.
Hey, I’m Donald Bell.
And welcome back to another Maker Update,
the show where we update you on cool things makers are making.
I hope you're all enjoying your summer.
I have some cool projects to share with you,
so let's get started with the project of the week.
Check out this project by Aria Xiying Bao and Yubo Zhao.
It's called the Narratron,
And the basic idea is that it generates stories based on the shape of the hand shadow you make.
As someone who sifts through a ton of projects each week,
it's pretty hard to surprise me with an idea I've never seen before.
First, there's the concept - this idea of using a shadow shape
as the seed for an entire story, which is both an ancient concept
and also technologically at the edge of what public A.I.
tools are able to accomplish.
Then there's the technical execution, which weaves together computer vision
to interpret the shadow, GPT to create the story,
stable diffusion to generate the story art panels, and then a realistic A.I.
voice to narrate it all.
But the icing on the cake is the industrial design,
where you have this playful, yet modern 3D printed enclosure with this wonderfully
chunky hand-crank on the side for stepping through the pages of the story.
It's a fun idea that packages all these A.I. technologies
into something unexpected, while at the same time
reminding us of humankind's most basic and ancient form of entertainment.
More projects!
Sometimes a project treads familiar territory,
but executes it at a higher level than I've ever seen.
And that's the case here with this Raspberry Pi vintage cable TV simulator
by Irish Craic Party.
Yearning for the days before everything was on demand and bingeable,
when channel surfing would deliver unexpected gems,
Most of us, we throw a bunch of vintage TV shows on the drive,
hit at random and call it done.
But the vision here for recreating the bygone era
of network TV from the eighties and nineties is so thorough
that they rolled their own custom software.
the solution, essentially creates scheduled programs of content
across multiple channels and automatically inserts
vintage commercials between the chapter markers of TV and movie content.
For the physical build,
they not only nail the vintage TV esthetic, but they also update it
with a smaller screen that displays the current station icon you tuned into.
There are a ton of other amazing details included on this project,
channel three Video Game Input, a scrambled Spice channel,
Even an accurate preview channel guide to see what's playing at a glance.
So definitely give it a look.
Like all these projects, you can find a link to it in the description.
Sometimes a project video is a work of art in itself.
That's certainly the case with this Valkyrie robot cosplay built
by XiaoQianFeng.
The project is a mix of high torque servo animatronics, and traditional EVA foam tailoring,
both expertly done.
But the video itself adds a whole other dimension,
as escapist hobby ASMR.
No narration, just these beautiful
shots of mechanical assemblies while birds chirp through an open window
that looks out onto a sunlit dappled countryside.
It's an unexpected pairing of mech suit
and cottagecore, but I am here for it.
Finally, a slam dunk weekend project from the Ruiz Brothers
is a 3D printed animatronic toy version of Adafruit’s Adabot Mascot.
A servo drives the head back and forth
NeoPixels light up the mouth and a button on the back
triggers random quotes that play through a speaker in the head.
if he gets a little too distracting.
Laying him down puts him to sleep.
It's a great design, but it could also serve as a template
for your own animatronic toy idea.
Now for some tips and tools on his YouTube channel, Alexandre Chapelle
shows a kitchen cabinet project he's doing with these remote
controlled motorized hinges called Servo Drive.
They're pricey, but man, what a cool trick to be able to open
and close your cabinets with a light touch or the press of a button.
There's even an extra large unit
that can be used for larger or heavier doors, like this refrigerator.
And on his YouTube channel,
Teaching Tech has a useful design tip showing
how to build shadow lines into your 3D printed projects.
These are deliberate gaps
around the seams of where two halves of your enclosure meet up.
It's one of those super common
industrial design techniques that are so subtle
that they're easy to miss until someone points them out.
it's also somewhat unintuitive.
You'd think that to make a seam invisible, you'd want to butt up the sides
as close as possible.
But doing that often results in an uneven seam.
A scar that you're I can't help but notice
by designing in a shadow line,
You're embracing the seam and making it look like a deliberate part of the design.
It's a great trick.
And this video does a deep dive on how to create them using common CAD techniques.
speaking of deep dives, for this week's Digi-Key spotlight,
check out Shawn Hymel's introduction to reinforcement learning.
This is a core concept of machine learning, and Shawn
does an outstanding job explaining the concept in broad, relatable terms.
but then after the first 10 minutes, he brings in code examples and takes you
all the way to the finish line of coding your first reinforcement learning program.
It's a great resource.
Alright, and that does it for this week’s show.
Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up or leave a comment if you want.
Big thanks to Digi-Key for making this whole thing possible,
and thank you for watching,
I’ll see you soon.