This week, on Maker Update a compact Rubik's robot,
dog armor, doomsday lamps,
GIF TVs, and the Peloton for TikTok.
Hey, everybody.
I'm Donald Bell, and welcome back to another
Maker Update. I hope you're all doing well
and maybe have some fun stuff planned for the summer.
I'm going to keep it quick this week, but I have a lot of fun stuff to show you.
So let's get started with the project of the week.
On Instructables, AndreaFavero shows how he made this ingenious Rubik's Cube solving robot
I've shown a few different cube solving robots on this channel before,
but this one has a few things that make it notable.
First, it's tiny- is not much bigger than the cube itself.
Part of what's turned me off about projects like this before
is that it seems a little absurd
to have a 3D printer sized machine to solve a tiny toy puzzle.
The second noticeable difference
is that the robot grip mechanism is so simple.
Really, that's what allows the design to be so compact.
You have this hood that drops down to hold the top two layers in place
while the bottom layer twists. The same hood, when tilted back
beyond its open position, acts as little foot
that flips the cube over into a new position.
And finally, the design is almost entirely 3D printed,
making it easy to replicate and again, because the design is small,
it won't take you days to print and fit all the parts.
For the electronics, Andrea is using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 along with the PI
camera module that scans each side of the puzzle.
There are two nice metal servos, one for the lid
and one for the twist action on the base and one of my favorite touches
is the display
on the side that communicates each step and the puzzle solving process.
You can find everything you need to recreate this project
using the link in the description.
Now for some news this Friday, June 10th, is the return
of the NYC Resistor Interactive Showcase in Brooklyn.
Becky Stern is helping to organize it, and this year's
theme is the Cursed Technology Shop.
There are over two dozen contributing artists and it should be
a lot of fun.
I'll leave a link to the event page down in the description.
More projects Martina at Nerd Forge has a fun and entertaining video
on how she made this Viking inspired leather armor for her dog.
The dog is a really good sport here, allowing her to fit the pattern
and make adjustments.
Martina also shows some great techniques for giving leather
a metallic look, both with paint and a high gloss coat.
If you could use a smile.
Don't miss this video.
On Hackaday, we're seeing some great eco focused projects come through for the Hackaday Prize.
One that really caught my attention was this small
solar powered LED lamp by Peter Misenko.
He calls this the doomsday light in part
because it's designed to last a long, long time.
Instead of charging up a conventional lithium ion battery,
which would eventually lose its ability to hold the charge
this design uses a super capacitor.
The combination of capacitor and step up converter
also allows the power to drain down to point three volts before shutting off.
I also like these six fancy photo diodes he's using,
which are easier to sprinkle into a board design than a clunky solar cell
and are apparently more resilient against damage.
Over on Adafruit, there's a fun animated GIF player project
created as part of a collaboration
between the Ruiz brothers, Kattni Rembor and Liz Clarke.
I like the vintage TV set, 3D printed enclosure
and inside you'll find a feather RP2040 board, a rounded rectangle display
for that vintage TV look, a rechargeable battery pack and a slide switch.
You'll need to optimize the size of the GIFs to get them to work.
But what's great is that all you'll have to do
is drag them to the board to get them installed.
And finally, check out Eric Guidry's TikTok scrolling
exercise bike.
By outfitting his stationary bike
with a hall effect sensor and Arduino and a few buttons by the handlebars.
Eric is able to scroll his TikTok feed
and even like videos with the press of a button
if the bike stops or goes too slow though the buttons are disabled it seems like a
clever way to harness social media habits for real world benefits.
If TikTok is not your thing though, Eric’s system seems like
it could be adapted to other software.
Now for some tips and tools, on Hackaday,
I saw this interesting 3D printed flexture design by Topias Korpi.
using a dial indicator on one end and a screw on the other.
To apply force, you get to see how this particular arrangement of print-in-place
flexture joints creates a roughly 15:1 reduction between the two elements
there's a thingiverse link
for printing your own, but really it's meant to inspire you
to explore flextures, and make something useful for you.
On YouTube, Caleb Kraft has a guide for creating your own print-in-place
Mechanical Iris.
Caleb is no stranger to mechanical iris designs.
He's made a bunch, big and small, but the idea of making a print in place
design where everything works just right off the printer bed
was something he wanted to try.
In this 15 minute video, you get to see Caleb's entire design
process in Fusion 360, including all the little tips and tricks
for engineering something to work as a print in place design
Of course, if you just want to download the design and play with it,
he's included a printables link for printing your own.
and if you enjoy the tips and tools section of this show,
be sure to check out Gareth Branwyn's Tips, Tools and Shop Tales newsletter.
This past week, he had a great one that took a look at vertical tool drawers
marking codes for surface mount components,
cleaning brushes with a wire wheel and more.
You can find a link to it down in the description,
For this week's Digikey Spotlight.
Check out their video on how to repair broken traces on a circuit board.
This is a good skill to know about for fixing up old boards
that may have peeling traces.
It's also a good skill for hacking or deliberately rewiring boards
where you need to cut traces on purpose to make it do what you want.
Check it out.
All right. And that does it for this week's show.
Be sure to subscribe me with thumbs up or leave a comment if you want.
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if you want to see what I'm giving away this week as part of my workshop purge,
big thanks to Digikey Electronics for making the show possible
and thank you for watching. I'll see you soon.