This week on Maker Update: an AI targeting system for dog poop.
Watching YouTube on an antique, a spooky phone, and a portable soldering station.
Hey, everybody I'm Donald Bell.
And welcome back to another major update.
I hope you're all doing well and finding ways to make things happen.
If you're in a creative slump, though, I really am finding that letting stuff
go that I've been holding on to for years is starting to make things feel lighter
and easier. It's worth a shot.
Anyway, so let's get to it.
Starting off with the project of the week.
Caleb Olsen is new on the scene
with a channel that only has two videos on it so far.
The first is a video on how he created an AI camera system for his backyard
that would detect and map the places where his dog left a little present for him.
It's a brilliant
and hilarious use of computer vision and machine learning technology.
However, it turns out that a digital turd map alone
is not quite enough to really help with the collection and cleanup.
So in his latest video, Caleb shows how he added a robotic arm laser
targeting system to precisely point out the little piles of fertilizer.
This way when he goes out for a mine sweep,
he can signal the computer vision software with a crossed pair of arms,
and the software will compare his location with its database of the nearest turds.
The laser targets the spot, and once it sees Caleb's
crouching posture, it considers the object to acquired, deletes
the entry and leads him through the rest of the tootsie roll hunt.
Now, I've covered a bunch of
AI and machine learning projects on this show, but this might be
the most practical application I've seen yet.
I mean, it's silly because we're talking about dog poop,
but as a dog owner myself, this is a relateable daily chore.
And sure, humanity has gone this far without needing lasers to locate
pet droppings, but I think any chore is made better with lasers.
More projects on YouTube Veeb Projects shows how they retrofitted
this beautiful old eight millimeter film editing machine with a Raspberry Pi.
They swapped out the old projection screen with an LCD
that just perfectly seems to fit the same dimensions.
A new speaker was added behind that perforated aluminum, and a yellow USB
cable sneaks out from the inside to connect to a keyboard.
Otherwise, it seems mostly untouched
and just has such a cool retro computer vibe to it.
There's also
a great demonstration of YTFZF,
which is a command line script for searching and playing YouTube videos.
That seems like a great trick worth knowing about.
Over on Hackaday, Gary DuPont shares a different kind of retro modification.
He was commissioned to build a phone that would ring and play messages
to guests at The Stranger Things 4 Series Premiere.
The phone was put in a pizza parlor
set, and every few minutes it would automatically ring.
If someone picked it up while it rang they'd hear a randomly selected clip.
It might be a pizza order or an audio clip from the show or spooky sound effects.
If you picked it up while it wasn't ringing,
it would mostly behave how you'd expect you'd hear a dial tone.
The buttons would work and make their touchstones,
but instead of dialing out, you'd hear a busy signal.
I have always wanted to do a payphone project.
Maybe I'm weird.
This is now my go to reference for pulling it off.
It seems a lot simpler than other projects I've seen in the past, yet
it's still very thorough.
To make it work, Gary is using a Sparkfun Thing
Plus RP2040 Board as the main microcontroller.
Not only does it have enough GPIO to handle all the button
inputs and the cradle switch, but it also has enough storage to handle
the audio files and playback.
Gary includes all the code which is done in Circuit Python.
Not only does this make it easy to rapidly modify and test,
but it also makes it super easy to drag and drop sound files right to the board.
I love this project.
I am motivated to do this project.
I'm not sure how hygienic it might be, but I could also see
this as a haunted phone Halloween prop.
That would be fun.
Now for some tools and tips, the amazing Becky Stern
has a great new guide on creating a portable soldering station.
She cleverly figured out how to make these 3D printed folding doors
for the size of this particular model of soldering iron holder.
On one side, she includes a spool holder for solder and solder wick,
and on the other, she has flexible clamps that hold a TS80P soldering iron.
These irons can be powered by a USB C battery bank.
When it's not in use,
Everything packs up inside
the stand and holds together with a rubber band at the top.
It looks like a great little rig and Becky does a great job showing
how she traced the profile of the stand, cleaned it up in Illustrator
and brought it into Tinker CAD to add all the holders and fold lines.
If you're looking for a portable kit, this looks like a great way to go.
On Tested,
Adam Savage shares his guide to sanding tools.
But because it's Adam, it's not just about the tools you get.
His whole philosophy and perspective on sanding,
you get to see his favorite dream machines for sanding.
But he also covers fundamentals around sandpaper, files,
Scotchbrite Pads. For the real tool nerds,
You also get some of the obscure stuff tiny belt sanders, air power disc
sanders, it's a treat.
On Instructables, 3D Sage has a guide on how to make anything rotate.
Essentially, it's a recipe for combining inexpensive DC gear motors,
PWM speed controllers, a battery
pack or coin cell, and a 3D printed enclosure.
They offer the list of parts, 3D files for the enclosures and a video
that shows how to assemble everything with no soldering required.
Also on Instructables, Blorgggg demonstrates how to turn bubble
wrap into a flexible LDPE plastic sheet perfect for vacuum forming.
This is a neat trick, and oddly enough,
for as synthetic as the material is, when it's all flattened out,
it has this natural, scaly skin quality that's pretty rad.
I also have to imagine it would work well for light diffusion
for LEDs or neo pixels.
And this might be yesterday's news for designers
and architects, but this week I got hip to Doris Sung's innovations
in using patterns of thermo bi metals as a window shading system.
These precisely cut bits of metal are actually a sandwich of two metals
with wildly different reactions to heat and cold.
So when they heat up under sunlight, the half of the metal
that's more sensitive to heat expands to the point of warping
the material, flipping it into a different position.
For a building facade, this offers a way to passively
and automatically activate shading on a window
But I have to think that there's a bunch of other interesting
applications for this stuff once amateurs can get their hands on it.
If you have any tips on where to acquire or fabricate your own thermo bi metals,
let me know in the comments.
For this week's Digikey Spotlight,
Adafruit's Lady Ada has a new episode of The Great Search. This time
she's looking for alternatives for her favorite low voltage power regulator.
Having a board or project
that can accept battery power or flexible range of input voltages
means having a reliable regulator as part of the circuit.
You can find everything you need on Digikey, but
many of the most popular options have long lead times.
So to hunt down an alternative solution,
you need to know what to look for and what you can compromise on.
Lady Ada has some great advice
All right.
That does it for this week's show. Be sure to subscribe.
Leave it thumbs up or leave a comment.
Those of you on the Maker Update email list this week will get a chance to win this
Grove Census starter kit.
Check your inbox for details on that.
Thanks to Digikey Electronics for making this whole show possible.
And thank you for watching. I'll see you soon.