Welcome to Voidstar Lab, my hardware hacking workshop.
I'm Zack Freedman and I...
...am a slob.
[Crashing junk sounds]
Sooo... I might be an augmented cyborg from the near future, but I'm still mostly human,
and like all humans, I can procrastinate so thoroughly that
my brain literally edits the task out of my eyeballs.
Case in point:
> be me
> drifting off into sleep
> thinking
I like my new job as a content creation drone!
It's neat that people are liking,
commenting and subscribing and
OH MY GOD MY PARTS BINS ARE IN EVERY SHOT
AND I'VE NEVER TIDIED THEM UP.
[Screeching, discordant horror-movie music]
This. Ends. Now.
[British computer voice] Today's project: organizing the organizers.
[British computer voice] Hold onto your hiney, we're about to get tidy.
My first workbench, circa 2012, was a desk in
a closet in my childhood bedroom at my parents house.
The first thing I added were some RGB LED strips because I...
...am a classy gentleman.
The second thing was a parts organizer from Harbor Freight.
For you Canucks, Harbor Freight is Princess Auto
except instead of sending you rainbow Monopoly money,
they send you coupons.
For those outside North America, it's a hardware store,
except everything is garbage.
So I bought this parts organizer because I had finally given up on a
TERRIBLE Nerf ammo counter and I needed a place to put the remains.
That's a story for another day, but trust me - the ammo counter deserves its
eternal damnation in my frame of shame.
The parts organizer sucks. It's flimsy,
the drawers flop around in the frame, that stupid pull tab is too small to put
a label on, and the parts fall out.
So of course, i bought two more of them!
I moved my workshop from New Jersey
to the West Village of New York, then Chelsea,
and then back to the Village, and I schlepped these things and all the
parts inside and never once did I think of, y'know,
checking if i still needed them.
you can see the progression of laziness
from big font labels to small font labels to sharpie labels to no labels.
what's funny is that this whole time i started using more surface mount parts
than through-hole parts, and it never crossed my mind to put
those parts into the parts organizers. instead,
i kept them in this pile of unsorted trays like a filthy savage.
the hypocrisy weighs heavily on my soul.
that brings us here.
the time has come to right my wrongs, absolve my sins,
and make the background of future videos look way better.
Today's project is going to be a double whammy.
first we're going to take everything out
of the old parts bins. we're going to sort it out,
pick what to keep, what to donate, what to add.
second, we're going to 3d print some fancy new faceplates
and then we're going to laser cut some labels both to improve the fit and
finish and to make it possible to actually, y'know,
find what the hell i'm looking for.
i think what makes staying organized hard
is that the problems caused by sloppiness are non-events.
Like, you can remember that time you spent forever fixing a bug
or building a pile of something, picking up the pieces when a project smashes on
the ground, but you just don't remember the time you
spend looking around for your wrench, or trying to find a specific capacitor,
or getting on a subway to buy parts.
gathering your parts doesn't feel like part of the project; it feels like
something you do on the WAY to the project,
but it still takes time, and eventually that time will add up and kill the
project. the problem is it feels like life just
got in the way, not that those lost hours pushed your
project beyond a deadline. then there's the unsorted crap - the piles
of resistors, the haystacks of leds, the broken-out boards, assorted chips, trays of parts..
. all in complete disarray, and only a few
hours away from sorting. an unsorted pile of parts, i think, is
even worse than not having the parts at all!
like, you waste time rummaging through it to hunt down what you're looking for and
you might fail, because you can't take inventory of
how many blue leds are in a big pile of leds.
you also waste money on redundant parts, and then you make that pile bigger when
you toss the leftovers into it! it's never as hard or takes as long as
you think to test and sort everything. it takes that pile of parts from a
massive time waster to, you know, stuff that you can actually use! [Awkward laugh]
for me, the more i do that, the harder it is to keep parts, like, in case i need them.
crimp connectors, x and y, capacitors 74 series logic; like, it's just so unlikely i'll use
these things in projects that it's worth the few bucks to just buy a
fresh set if i ever need them. i just think the folks the fab lab could
use them more than i could.
for now i'll just use some blue painters tape to mark
what goes where. i'll just tear these off as i add the
facades and nameplates. so, my philosophy for where to put
components is the same as my philosophy for where
to put tools.
stuff i use often is always within arm's reach, and that means
the bottom right is primo real estate. i'm going to start at the bottom and
fill upwards, because i am short. stuff i use really often, like hot glue sticks,
zip ties, etc. are all going into the bottom-right,
really improve mah produc-tiv-i-tay. i wanted something that would add
a pop of color to the bins, would make them easier to grab,
and also open up more real estate for a bigger label.
i designed this facade in fusion 360 by starting with reference photos taken
from the top and sides. i imported them, calibrated them...
...I gotta make a video about that. i've made a facade that friction fit
onto the bin and it's sized to fully fit the bay.
this keeps the bins from jiggling around and also makes them easier to grab and
pull out one-handed. after a dozen or so prototypes, there we go!
i added a bigger name plate, a chunkier thumb hole, and the underside
is [in a sleazy tone] ridged for her pleasure. finally, i exported the outline of the
label from fusion 360 and i imported it into adobe illustrator.
i created a label for every part,
ran them off in the laser cutter on some
scrap plastic, and there you go!
we got fancy-pants labels for each and every part.
look at that matte acrylic.
Ahh. it's so handsome.
all right, let's print the facades.
small brain: buy three spools of the same filament, run face plates off on my
printer AND the fab lab printers simultaneously,
15 per printer at a time, finish the job in a day.
big brain play: buy a spool of RAINBOW filament, and make a pretty rainbow
gradient of parts organizers. i can only use one printer, but i can
finish the job in three days.
[Trippy techno music] GALACTIC BRAIN: buy that rainbow filament,
print each one ONE AT A TIME to make an even prettier
rainbow and waste an entire week.
you bet your ASS i took the galactic brain option.
so i printed sequentially, which allows the colors to smoothly fade from bin to bin,
instead of that plate of 15 all being the same color.
downside: when printing sequentially, i can only fit five per plate. any time that i gain by not moving the
head around is completely obliterated by having to move it anyways, so that i can
take these fancy pants time lapses. Fun fact: this is 12 gigabytes of photos.
the project just hits different when you're on quaran-time.
i also numbered the back of the facades, in case an organizer falls off the wall
and spills bins everywhere. it's never happened, but Murphy is a cold mother[REDACTED].
the nameplates friction fit into the facades, and i added these
access holes in the side so i can poke them out if i ever need to rearrange the furniture.
all right! time to put the name plates
onto the facades, time to snap the facades to the bins, and finally...
let's see if this was worth waiting eight years to make.
[high five noises]
[Trippy techno music]
i've never recorded a project from start to finish before, and i think this one
turned out great. It is SOOOO satisfying to see the entire
thing come together in time-lapse montage-o-vision.
this project took WAAAY more effort and work than i expected it to,
but i think it really paid off. Voidstar Lab is still a new channel,
and i'm still, like, trying to figure out what types of videos you guys like to see.
this one came out a bit more chilled-out than technical - did you like seeing the
project come together, or should i stick to talking about AI
and mixing drinks and stuff? let me know what you think.
i want YOU to finish more projects,
and the best way i can think to do that is by bringing you
MORE open source technology, MORE tutorials, MORE fun facts,
more hardware hackery, fresh and new,
right here in Voidstar Lab, every single monday.
not everything i build makes it onto youtube!
you can see even more projects by following me on instagram @zackfreedman.
there's no food pics or dog pics; just all projects all the time.
there is the occasional Quagsire, but if you got a problem with Quagsire
you got a problem with me, and i suggest you let that one marinate.
Voidstar Lab is looking better than ever, and there is way more to come.
thank you so much for joining me, and i will see you... in the future.
[BZZZT]
who's ready to play a round of...
Does Zack Remember What His Own Chips Are?
74165... is it an inverter?
[Brooke] it is a parallel to serial multiplexer.
Goddammit!
all right! next up, the ltc4080. this is a switching regulator.
[Brooke] That is a lithium-ion battery charger with a 1.8 volt output.
[REDACTED]
[sheepishly] i guess it's sort of a switching regulator?
TLC 5916... is this a shift register?
[Brooke] it is a constant current LED driver.
[REDACTED]. [REDACTED]!
the ULN2801... this is a half h-bridge driver, right?
[Brooke] it is a darlington transistor.
[REDACTED]
14081. there seems to be some kind of bug dead in here...
is this a nand gate?
[Brooke] it is a quad dual-input NOR gate.
Uuuuuuuuuuuuuugh!
Uhh, 754410. this seems like it has too many numbers.
i think i got three right.
[Brooke] You are a failure.