This week on Maker Update: A foot pedal for musical expression, launching the 2022
Hackaday Prize, Tool Rolls, wireless touchpads and getting your flex on.
Hey everybody I'm Donald Bell and welcome back to another Maker Update.
I hope you're all doing well and finding ways to stay creative.
I've got a great show for you.
Let's get started with the project of the week.
One way to add an extra human touch to the process of
digital music making is to work with an expression pedal.
With this, you can use your foot to modulate some extra element of your instrument.
It could be the sustain of a piano, or the gain of a virtual guitar amp,
or the cut off filter on a drum machine or a synthesizer.
Best of all, it turns out that it's neither difficult
or expensive to make your own.
Thanks to this guide by the Ruiz Brothers, with some 3D printing and around $20
worth of components, you can make your own USB midi expression pedal.
Sometimes I award Project of the Week to things that showcase an extraordinary
amount of effort or navigated a daunting amount of complexity,
But sometimes a project like
this comes along that shows me something I've never seen done before.
And executes it with a level of polish and thorough documentation that puts
a smile on my face and just feels like it would be fun to make.
I don't need a MIDI expression pedal, and I suspect you probably don't need one either.
But half of the fun of making a Ruiz Brothers
project is stepping into their world for a moment and noticing
the different considerations they made with the design.
And keep in mind, this is essentially a foot-controlled potentiometer.
It's communicating over MIDI in this example, but if you want it to act
as a game controller, or an LED light show control,
or even an analog volume control for some non digital project,
you could absolutely repurpose
this awesome pedal design for any number of projects.
Also, a shout out to Kattni Rembor and Liz Clark,
who also contributed to this project.
Now for some news, the 2022 Hackaday Prize
sponsored by Digikey and Supplyframe is now underway.
This year's theme is sustainability, resiliency and circularity.
The competition is made up of several different projects challenges
that stretch out from now until the end of October.
These include planet friendly power,
Reuse, recycle, revamp. Hack it back.
Climate Resilient Communities and the Save the World Wild Card.
The top 50 finalists across these challenges will receive $500
with larger awards for the second through fifth place winners
and a grand prize of $50,000 that comes with a supply frame design lab residency.
You can find a link to the details down in the description.
More projects! For a project with some universal utility,
Check out Becky Sterns Guide for making your own Waxed Canvas Tool Roll.
Maybe you're like me, and a sewing project is a little out
of your comfort zone, but who can resist a good tool kit?
And making one that fits your specific go-to tools
feels like the kind of maker initiation project we should all aspire to.
Not only does Becky detail every step of the process, both
in her video and the written guide but she also includes some basic patterns
that you can adapt for your own tool roll design.
Check it out.
And back on Adafruit,
Liz Clarke shows how she made this wireless touch screen controller
that allows you to manipulate Pure Data software
with touch and accelerometer gesture control.
This one is more for people ready to jump into the deep end of custom
digital music controllers.
It's not as plug and play as a midi expression pedal,
though you could set up Pure Data to spit out MIDI control signals
If you want to say... manipulate an external synth or drum machine
with a controller like this.
For this guide, though, Liz chose how to install the free open
source software and what's needed to code and communicate with Pure Data.
What's especially cool is that Liz includes a sample Pure Data patch
that you can use right out of the gate
to make the project work, and explore from there.
I also love how she use this $5 resistive touchscreen panel.
Because it's meant to go over a screen, its clear,
but in this case, Liz has it lit up from behind.
Just using the built in indicator
LEDs from the different boards that are tucked inside.
The whole thing has a playful Star Trek original series vibe that I really like.
Now for some tips and tools this past week, SparkFun
announced the availability of the Myoware 2.0 system.
These are different sensors that you can use to create projects that
react to muscle flexing.
The first version has been out there for a while,
but this latest update includes more varieties of boards, more output
modes, more electrode connections, and a more compact design.
I expect these are going to be a killer ingredient in cosplay
props and Halloween costumes going forward.
On YouTube, Electro Noobs has a great tutorial on using coin acceptor
modules with Arduino and how they use induction
and photo transistors to determine the coin size and type
I've always wanted to make a coin operated Arduino project, and I enjoyed
getting a better understanding of how these things actually work.
For those of you expanding into the world of Circuit Python programing, there's
a fantastic resource on Adafruit now called TodBot's CircuitPython Tricks.
These are handy code snippets from Todd Kurt, all sorted by category
So let's say you want some secret code kung fu for working with Neopixel LEDs-
You just select that category on the left
and you get some documentation and code to take you to the next level.
Worth a bookmark, for sure.
And an update on the
Tips, Tools in Shop Tales II book giveaway,
You all delivered some outstanding tips and wisdom,
It was a real pleasure to read through those comments.
Gareth is in the process
of selecting the winners, which he'll announce in his newsletter next week.
You can find a link to that in the description.
For this week's Digikey Spotlight,
Check out the latest episode of Potentially Genius.
This time around, they're brainstorming and prototyping ideas for solar powered
household gadgets.
They land on the idea of solar powered blinds, and it's fun to watch them
work through it.
But it's also great to draft off the creative energy
and eco mindset here to start thinking about solar powered projects
that could find their way into this year's Hackaday Prize.
Check it out.
All right. And that does it for this week's show.
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A big thanks to Digikey Electronics for making the whole thing possible.
And thank you for watching. I'll see you soon.