This week on Maker Update: a spaceship from Earth garbage.
Google's Coral Board goes micro, a robot altar
and the spoon for obsessive curry disorder.
Hey I'm Donald Bell, and welcome back to another Maker Update.
I wasn't sure if January was ever going to end, but here we are,
and I hope you're doing well and I've got a fun show for you.
Let's get started with the project of the Week
There's a new video out by Bill Making Stuff that shows how he make this model space ship out of trash.
I still can't get over
how he's able to make these things out of bits of plastic junk and CA glue.
But I think we can all relate to the thrill of free forming a spaceship
designed in Legos.
And I have to believe this feels like an elevated version of that same process
along the way.
Bill shares a bunch of useful model making tips.
He shows how thin sheets of EVA foam
can help add dimension and tie things together,
how a wood burner tool can quickly add realistic damage,
and how you can use a hole punch tool to create an infinite stockpile of rivets and Greeblies.
To keep them from spilling all over the place. He even shows how to improvise your own tray.
Bill sense of humor and his new cat kept me laughing all the way through
this video. Check it out!
Now for some news, Google has
unveiled a new development board called the Coral Dev Board Micro.
This is a microcontroller board intended for machine learning applications.
It comes with a built in color camera and microphone on the board.
For processing, it has a Cortex M4 M7 crossover processor from NXP,
to accelerate the machine learning potential.
It also has a dedicated coral edge TPU chip.
No word yet on pricing and availability,
its expected to run under $100, and the product page says it's coming soon.
Now for more projects, I got a kick out of this interactive
artwork by by to Vytautas lJankauskas called Altar 3000,
this internet connected sandbox includes a color screen,
a robot arm and an nvidia Jetson nano board for driving at all
and processing voice commands.
When it's activated, it presents
a random prophecy, rubs a singing bowl, rakes some sand,
and then asks you if you want to share this random idea on a message board.
It's all a little cyber hippie techno shaman tongue in cheek,
but there's something about it that I'm kind of curious to recreate.
I think part of it is this permission to have a non-religious,
possibly silly, personalized altar in my house.
Also, I've always wanted a reason
to have a robot arm, but I could never justify it.
Maybe I'll never have a good reason, but I like the idea of telling people
that I have a robot arm for my personal internet connected smart alter.
Speaking of personalized inventions, I got a kick out of
Marina Fujiwara's split spoon for eating curry and rice.
Bothered by this seemingly inevitable cross-contamination of curry into rice and vice versa.
Marina designed and 3D printed this double spoon,
allowing her to scoop out separate portions of rice and curry
and then combine them together into a perfect bite
right before it hits your mouth.
The most clever bit here, I thought, was how she included spaces to embed magnets.
It's worth mentioning,
though, that 3D printing isn't typically regarded as food safe.
Fine for proof of concept, but I wouldn't recommend using 3D printed
utensils more than once.
Now, for some tools and tips,
on the I Like to Make Stuff channel, Bob Claggett has a great video
on how to use 3D printing to customize or improve your car.
People are always looking for opportunities to create
functional, practical 3-D printed designs.
As Bob points out, why not start with your car as a point of inspiration?
From printing out replacement parts to modeling custom cupholders?
Bob shows some useful strategies for measuring and modeling your designs,
as well as picking a filament that will hold up to the heat.
On Instructables, Erin the Small has a quick and clever solution
for desoldering a micro USB connection from a printed circuit board.
Maybe you want to replace the port or make the project more difficult
to hack after you've programed it.
Either way, all those little legs on the USB port make them tricky
to heat up at the same time without a hot air rework station.
Erin's trick is to use some solid copper wire or a
clipped lead from a diode and wrap it around the port
this way, when you apply a little flux and heat it up.
The heat will evenly distribute out to all the solder points
and hopefully release the thing all in one shot.
And here is an interesting finishing technique I'd never seen before.
It's developed by a Japanese car customizer called Rohan Aizawa Art Design.
They had the signature technique where they hand engrave entire cars
for it to be noticeable from a distance, though the engraving has to be
deep deeper than the metal would allow on those cars.
Conventional engraving on steel panels also opens up issues with rust,
and it wouldn't be possible on plastic paneling.
So what they actually do is build up a super thick base coat of paint,
engrave to that, and then coat it all
with the special metallic paint that they can polish to a shine.
It blew my mind, and the results look awesome.
It made me wonder if a similar effect
could be achieved with 3D printed engraving and a chroming process,
or some other way to apply this technique to projects or enclosures.
I'd be curious to hear your thoughts in the comments.
For this week's Digikey spotlight, check out the latest episode
of Potentially Genius, this time the crew from Tomorrow
Lab are working on a musical instrument for kids.
The idea is to make something that breaks away from traditional instruments,
but still offers something rhythmic and melodic that kids can improvise with.
From the initial prototypes to the final result,
There are a bunch of surprising, inspiring ideas here to get you motivated.
Definitely check it out.
And that does it for this week's show, be sure to subscribe, leave it thumbs up,
leave a comment, maybe leave some clapping hand emojis for the fabrication
class of Olympia High School, who are working on a Raspberry Pi based,
coin operated Flea Circus for their Final Class project.
I also hear they watch the show every week with their teacher, Mr.
Andrew Woodbridge.
That makes them extra awesome.
Thanks everybody for watching, and I'll see you soon.