This week on Maker Update plunging to new depths,
remembering Sanjay Mortimer, a birdsong free form circuit,
mech controllers, lightning infill and how to make paint out of milk.
Hello, and welcome back to Maker Update.
I'm Tyler Winegarner and hope you had a restful, or
maybe productive week off while we took a short break.
We've got another great show for you, so let's check out the project of the week.
Have you ever thought about how submarines work?
I mean, really thought about it?
Sure, when an object is less dense than the volume of water displaces,
it will float.
And if it isn't, it sinks.
Which is why when you have a heavy object like a ship that's made out of steel,
it can float as long as it has a nice big pocket of air in it.
But if you compress that pocket of air, it becomes more dense
and it'll sink into the water.
James, from DIY Perks is
taking this little scientific exploration to its logical conclusion:
Building his own remote control submarine.
There's no shortage of projects like this.
Just look at pretty famous stuff like OpenROV.
But normally they're just neutrally buoyant and get around,
using a set of thrusters and some fins to adjust their direction in the water.
James's design works like an actual submarine.
It uses these huge syringes as the ballast tanks
and compresses them using a pair of geared motors.
It moves around laterally, using an array of water pumps that work like thrusters.
As is typical of James's builds, there's really nothing
fancy going on here other than his ability to problem solve.
The battery pack is just a series of 18650s
in an acrylic housing that's secured with some zip ties.
The ballast motors are these geared DC motors
you've probably seen in other projects, though here he's scavenging the control
board from a servo motor to make it easier to control using an RC transmitter.
He's basically turned them into a really long throw linear servo.
Also, check out how he's made a waterproof on/off switch,
a pair of reed switches open and close a latching relay,
so all he needs to do is wave a strong magnet over the on switch
to turn it on and the other to turn it off again
OK, so you probably won't go following
this video as a guide to building your own remote control submarine, but
maybe you can use a handful of these hacks in some of your future projects.
At the end of the video, he tested out at some local ponds and canals,
and it's worth sticking around just to see all of his clever
work pay off.
Now for the news, while we were on break,
Arduino sold their 10,000,000th Uno controller board.
This is the original Arduino you know and love, and it's
probably the first microcontroller you learn to program for.
To celebrate, they released a limited run of the UNO in a mini form factor.
It has the same pin out as the original Uno.
And it's packed on a PCB that's around one third the size.
The PCB is black with gold printing
and with a USB-C interface for power and programing.
These will likely be in pretty high demand,
but you can get your preorder in now if you want to get your hands on one.
And sadly, last week we saw the passing of Sanjay Mortimer.
Sanjay is best known as one of the co-founders of E3D,
makers of some very excellent high quality extruders
and hot ends for 3D printers.
More than that, he's remembered
for his infectious curiosity and endless kindness.
He was always eager to talk to anyone about their shared passion for 3D
printing, and his work can be found in countless 3D printer designs.
Maybe even the one on your workbench.
If you have a special memory of him you'd like to share,
E3D has set up a special Discord server
just for folks to chat about Sanjay and his passing.
You can find the link for that down in the description.
Moving on, we've got a couple more projects to talk about.
Have you ever had something break on you and instead of
just fixing it, you completely rebuilt it?
That's exactly what happened with the cupholder in Laura Kampf's car.
It broke as old plastic things tend to do.
So she replaced it with an entirely new center console
she built from scratch.
There's a roll top compartment featuring the same tambour technique
that Simone Giertz used a few weeks ago for her puzzle table.
And I love this phone holder charging panel
and a little gooseneck lamp to make stuff easier to see at night,
but keeping the light out of the driver's eyes.
It's also great to see her
using a cardboard prototype to kick the whole project off.
Over on Instructables, I found this gorgeous free
circuit pendant by NanoRobotGeek.
The circuit is composed of a 74HS14 IC
and a number of resistors and capacitors
to form an array of four oscillators,
producing a sound that resembles a chirping bird.
To keep everything as compact as possible.
He built the entire circuit out of 0603 surface mount components,
which made this even trickier to build than your typical freeform circuit.
There's a small solar cell to power the pendant, so there's
no need for a battery.
You'll probably get tired of the sound pretty quickly,
but there's no denying how gorgeous this compact design is.
Over on Hackaday, I found this project by SantiagoSaldana to adapt the controller
for Steel Battalion to work with standard USB Xinput.
You'd be forgiven if you don't remember Steel Battalion.
It was a game for the original Xbox and it came with this massive controller
with twin sticks, a massive array of switches and buttons,
pedals and an eject button with a safety cover.
Impressive all around, but it can only ever be used with one game.
Well, until now.
using some clever coding on a teensy 3.6,
it can now be used as a standard controller on windows.
They demo the controller on a game called Vox Machinae, a similar mech game.
If you happen to have one of these in your basement, maybe give this one a try.
Time for some tips and tools.
I was this many days old when I learned that you can make paint out of milk.
In this frankly gorgeous video by George Romanov,
He shows how you can combine skimmed milk solids with pigment
and slaked lime, and a little bit of water to make paint.
It doesn't produce the most even color,
so this isn't a replacement for stuff you can buy.
But if you're looking for a rustic vintage, look,
this might just do the trick.
The popular 3D printing slicer, Cura
just released version 4.12, and with
it comes a new infill pattern called lightning.
This is a completely different approach to thinking about infill.
If the object you're printing doesn't need to be mechanically strong,
you could potentially
print it out as completely hollow and just relying on the outer shell walls.
The problem is
that eventually you need some kind of internal structure
to support the top layers so they aren't just printing in midair.
This is where lightning infill comes in.
Think of it like tree supports, but for the inside of your model,
they begin on the interior walls and as they extend out,
they also branch out to support the top layers of your print.
It won't make your model stronger since they're still mostly hollow,
but you'll use a lot less filament to print them.
Make: Magazine is continuing
their tradition of the Maker Invent calendar.
This is basically a virtual version of a traditional advent calendar.
As the days countdown to Christmas, you get a new link to holiday
themed projects, guides, videos and deals.
So far, there's a 20% discount for SolidWorks License and a fun
guide to making your own Christmas Story-style leg lamp, and plenty more.
And finally, we have a great video from Maker Monster
on how to get out of that creative lurch.
Pretty much any project you work on is going to have a low point,
a problem that you get stuck on or kills your enthusiasm, or you
just get distracted from it.
These are pretty easy to get through, but as he points out,
every project you do in a series is part of a bigger project.
And when you hit the doldrums in that bigger project,
that's when things get dangerous.
This is when it's really easy to just give up.
He offers some great strategies on breaking out of that rut,
like showing up to do work even when you don't have a project
or making a project just for yourself and not sharing it on social media
or, when in doubt, tidy up.
If you feel a winter creative funk creeping in on you.
Keep this one bookmarked.
For this week's Digikey spotlight,
We've got a brand new video in their Another Teaching Moment series
about calculating resistor values. When your circuit is set up in series,
It's pretty simple.
Just add up all the resistor values and that's your total resistance.
But when your circuit is in parallel, things get trickier.
This video shows you how to plan for that, but also points
you towards Digikey's online resistance calculator so you don't have to.
All right, and that is going to do it for this week's show.
Hope you enjoyed it.
If you did give us that thumbs up, leave us a comment and sign up
for the Maker Update email list so you won't miss the next one.
We've got a bit of a schedule change up this month.
I'll be back with the next week and then later on in the month,
Don and I are going to be on a show together where we break down
our favorite projects over the course of the whole year.
In the meantime, big thanks to Digikey for making this show possible
and to you for watching.
Take care! We'll see you soon.