This week, on Maker Update: a table with an expiration date.
Pi 5's all around Tamagotchi for your plants.
And why you shouldn't use a robot to pick up a baby.
Hello and welcome back to Maker Update
the show where we keep you all up to date on all the cool stuff that Makers are Making.
I’m Tyler Winegarner and I hope you’re all doing great, and working on projects
that are keeping you inspired.
We’ve got a great show for you, let’s get going with the project of the week.
You have to check out this coffee table build by Wesley Treat.
This is a coffee table for his apartment that looks like a Kodak 110 Film cartridge.
110 film was popular in the 70’s and early 80’s,
particularly because of its compact size.
And the cartridge format made it easy to load.
It also had this really unique looking shape,
which looks a little like a table if you squint hard enough.
Despite its table-like shape, it's still not going to be easy
to scale this up and make it out of plywood.
There's a whole lot of very specific curves in this one.
Wesley’s CNC router
earns its keep by cutting out the side profiles,
but the surfaces are all made of kerf-bent plywood.
Wesley has a good recommendation here for the website blocklayer.com,
which has a calculator for how to space your cuts
so you get the radius you're trying to achieve.
Though Wesley ended up coming up with its own formula
because the site's recipe looked too segmented for his liking.
I also just have to be impressed with his attention to detail.
It probably would be enough for most folks just to get the basic shape.
But Wesley manages to work in every last
bit of detail here, like all these ridges and shelves.
The embossed Kodak logo on the side, even this conical shape
for the film take up spool.
after a few coats of paint, he adds the final touches
the label for the film cartridge printed in vinyl and this window
for the film advance direction, printed on construction paper.
The finished table looks amazing and a great example of what can result
when you consider and execute every last detail.
We've got some big news this past week with the announcement of the Raspberry Pi 5.
As the long awaited successor to the Pi 4,
this one sports a 2.4 gigahertz quad core CPU
and an onboard GPU with support for OpenGL and Vulkan.
There's also a PCIe interface for M2 drives, though you'll need an optional
hat to connect them.
While the overall shape is familiar,
The form factor has changed from the Pi 4,
so there's a new case available,
and a new 5 amp power supply to meet the new power demands.
The Raspberry Pi 5 is available for preorder
now and should be shipping out later this month.
There's a four gigabyte version for $60 and the eight gigabyte version is $80.
More projects! Over on Instructables,
I found this smart plant pot called Pet Pot by Mukesh Sankhla.
This is hardly the first microcontroller to help folks that have a black thumb,
but it's one of the first I've seen that does it with a bit of a personality.
There's a small color display on the front
that communicates your plant's mood and needs using emoji.
If you've been neglecting its watering, it might show you a sad or an angry emoji,
and it can let you know if the temperature is too cold and so on.
The brains are provided by a DF Robot Unihiker,
with an added air quality sensor, soil moisture sensor
and an environment sensor for temperature and light sensors.
It's a great project and a cool way to hopefully help you
get better at taking care of your plant buddies.
and from Lone Soul Surfer comes Elements, a DIY synth
designed to be simple but still be capable of some big sounds.
It's built around a PWM oscillator routed through a low pass filter.
The body and front panel of the synth
are both PCBs, so you can easily get them manufactured
on your own with the files that he provides.
And the rest of the synth is all made up of through-hole solder components,
so the assembly is fairly easy.
He provides a full bill of materials for this one,
so you can easily track down the components to build your own.
Check out the link down in the description.
We've got a veritable King's ransom of tips this week.
Starting off, we have a technique from Dave Rig
for hiding the layer lines of your FDM 3D prints.
He's mixing up a paste of cornstarch and UV resin
and brushing that onto his print.
After a trip to the U.V. curing station,
he applies several more coats with a brief bit of sanding in between.
I'm willing to bet that
this could obscure some really fine details.
But this embossed part of the print still shows up pretty well.
And you can see the result on the finished, painted part.
if your Halloween plans call for a 3D printed helmet,
maybe keep this technique in your pocket for painting and finishing
Sakaya’s Digital Attic has a video of how she restored this
Commodore 64 using a cheap $20 oscilloscope.
If you've ever considered getting an oscilloscope,
then you've probably thought about one of these kits
After all, there's a pretty massive price difference between one of these
and a really nice scope from Rigol or Keysight.
But this is one of the first videos
I've seen that actually shows the utility of these cheap scopes.
It helped her identify the components of the computer that needed servicing
before you could use it.
Now, Jeremy Fielding is no stranger to robots, but he has a new video series
introducing people to the very basic concepts of robotics.
Just like with any complex system, the very first step
is understanding and defining the problem you're trying to solve.
This can mean identifying the
differences between picking up an egg and picking up a rock.
Jeremy talks through actuators, sensors, safety, and the additional complexity
of getting multiple robots to work together.
And I don't know if it's because the new Star Wars
series is making this technique popular again.
But I found this tutorial for Kintsugi by Chimahaga.
this is the technique of repairing broken pottery using gold.
It's a multi-day process, so plan ahead.
But this video covers all the steps of prepping the surfaces for repair,
The right adhesive to use, filling the larger gaps,
sealing gaps, and finally applying gold powder to the cracks.
this process is now this process is not only gorgeous, but it's also food safe.
So you can keep using your dish just as you did before it was broken.
Federico Tobon shares this quick tip for creating simple SVG shapes
for laser cutters by just manipulating simple basic shapes.
He's borrowing the technique from a drawing book that he found,
but since a lot of vector drawing software gives you ready access to shapes
like half circles and triangles, he figures
it's just as applicable here.
He creates this adorable looking crow in just a few minutes.
I think the real trick here is understanding how to recognize
the simple shapes that go into making up your final design.
But that's the fun part, too.
And finally on Printables.
I learned about the CoolerMaster Qube 500 computer case and the 3D
printing design contest that Printables is throwing in conjunction with it.
This is a case for desktop computers that is completely modular
and customizable in its design.
But the external panels all have this regular hole pattern, almost like pegboard.
the design contest is for accessories for the case,
and you can find everything here from tool storage,
Kinetic sculptures, Arduino mounts, signs,
Connect 4 Games and, of course, a gridfinity rack.
Fun stuff.
For this week's Digi-Key Spotlight, check out the latest in Becky Stern’s
Electronics prototyping series.
This one is about one step folks
Sometimes completely skip over documenting your project
Documenting isn't just for sharing your methods and techniques with others.
It can also be incredibly useful to you as well,
since you might forget a key detail sometime down the road,
or a specific technique you came up with.
She shares her best habits for taking photos, making notes,
writing stuff down, building a bill of materials, and more.
Alright, and that is going to do it for this week’s show.
I hope you enjoyed it, and if you did,
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As always, great big thanks to Digi-Key for making this show possible.
Take care, we’ll see you soon.