This week on Maker Update, a monocycle with some extra kick,
light-up thread that runs off you,
A laser cut spice elevator and an LED coat for the club.
Hey, everybody, I'm Donald Bell,
not yet an AI replica of Donald Bell, though I'm sure that's bound to happen.
Until then, hello, fellow humans.
I hope you're doing well.
I have a great show for you.
Let's get started with the project of the week.
Check out this awesome monowheel robot designed by Joohyung Kim.
He calls it a ring bot and credits the design inspiration
from the vehicle General Grievous uses in Star Wars.
one of the most interesting aspects of the design
are the two servo control legs that sit at the base.
These legs not only stabilize the ring when it's standing still
or tilt the ring for steering, but more importantly,
they can be used to pick itself back up when it tips over.
Another big advantage to this design is how skinny it is
compared to a more conventional multi wheeled robot design.
It's also great that there are relatively few components,
though I have to imagine
some really strong servos are needed to lift this thing up,
and the bigger you scale it, the stronger those servos will have to be.
If you want to learn more about how it all works,
you can find the full video and academic research paper using the link in the description.
Now for some news,
More cool stuff happening on the edge of academic research,
A recent article published on Science.org introduces a high tech
method of creating flexible fibers
that light upusing just electromagnetic energy from your body.
The same fibers can also be used as simple touch sensors woven into textiles.
it looks like a really promising breakthrough for low power
wearables, sensors and interfaces, or honestly, even just some cool fashion.
In other news, the 2024 Open Sauce event in San Francisco is now accepting
applications for projects, booths, exhibits, or whatever
you're interested in presenting.
this year's event is happening June 15th and 16th at the Cow Palace in Daly City.
You can find a link to submit your application down in the description.
More projects!
Here's a woodcraft project with an engineering twist.
On Instructables, Timber Rough shows how they made this crazy vertically rotating spice rack.
I'm not sure what to call this style,
It's sort of elvish steampunk Irish warlock, but it looks amazing.
And though there's a lot of laser engraved decoration going on here,
there's also a lot of mechanical design.
For example, this gear
and chain system is all made from stacked layers of laser cut wood.
There's a lot going on here, and the build guide and video,
don't skimp on any of the details.
the same can be said for this LED coat project from Erin St. Blaine.
She's been doing a ton of excellent projects exploring different uses
and features of the Esp32 compatible
WLED firmware designed just for LED projects.
This project though, steps up the complexity a bit
and also introduced me to these addressable string lights
that are perfect for flexible wearable projects like this.
Erin lays out the project so that you can take it a few ways.
If you want to keep it relatively easy, you can embed LEDs in the trim
of your jacket and control different animations using your phone.
If you want to increase the wow factor, she shows how to create your own
flexible LED matrix panels to really light up the whole coat.
This is a bit trickier and involves defining an irregularly shaped map table
for the matrix, and uploading that map to the WLED software.
Otherwise, the grid of LEDs will be all out of order
and your animations will look super random.
As a third option, she shows how to combine both the trim and the panels.
To do this in a way where the trim behaves one way and the panels
behave another way.
You have to map the LEDs a little different, but man, what a payoff.
Now for some tips and tools on the More Fun Making It channel.
Lee offers some pros and cons on two competing desoldering guns.
If you've never seen the wonders of a desoldering gun before, it's
essentially a soldering iron and a solder sucker merged together.
So instead of the inelegant juggle of reheating
a solder joint and then quickly introducing a solder sucker,
you can get the job done with just one tool.
For most of us, it's overkill for what is hopefully
a rare occasion to undo a soldering mistake,
But if you find yourself salvaging components off boards or doing
repair work, something like this can save a lot of time and hassle.
And if you ever thought a tool like this was out of your price range,
the good news is that one of these is significantly less than the other.
The bad news is that the pricier your option seems to be objectively easier to use,
to use, easier to clean, and less prone to failure.
Check out Lee’s video to see exactly why.
On the Make Something channel, I really enjoyed watching David Picuitto
fully geek out on making his own all natural wood finish
in the first 30 seconds, David shares the exact recipe
the exact recipe to recreate this finish, which looks great.
But honestly, I got more of a kick hearing about his journey
and unexpected struggles finding minimally toxic ingredients to create a mix
he actually wants to use.
You'd think things like
alcohol and boiled linseed oil would be inherently natural.
But the real stuff is tricky to track down.
There's some real secret
knowledge and sorcery offered here, and I recommend giving it a watch.
For this week's Digikey Spotlight, just a public service reminder
that of the many free online tools available on DigiKey.com, nothing comes in
handy quite as often as the resistor color code calculator.
not only do you get options from 4 to 6 band varieties of resistors,
but you can also do a reverse lookup by punching in a value
and seeing the colors you're after.
And look at this in case you need a surface mount resistor
code calculator DigiKey has a link for you right next to it,
along with some other handy tools.
And that does it for this week's show.
Be sure to subscribe. Leave a thumbs up.
Leave a comment from one fellow human being to another.
Big thanks as always
To DigiKey for making this show possible and thank you for watching.
I'll see you soon.