This week, on Maker Update: cranking up the light pipes,
battling gourd bots, animatronics for your 12 foot skeleton, digital techniques for foam,
bobblehead bots, and a teeny tiny TV.
Hey, I'm Donald Bell and welcome back to another Maker Update.
Hope you're all doing well and enjoying the fall spooky vibes.
Hope you have enough Halloween candy for the big day.
I've got a great show for you.
Let's get started with the project of the week
On Hackaday,
Eric Brandel has treated us to his latest synthesizer sculpture, Corwin Point.
It's gorgeous as usual, but it also seems to be
one of his most playable sculptures.
There's a panel included with
a bank of Potentiometers for controlling different parameters.
The sequence, however,
seems to be randomly generated by an algorithm on the ESP32 board.
at the heart of the design.
The analog section of the synth
is all point-to-point soldered using meticulous grid of rods and components.
But the most striking aspect of the design are these
18 intertwined LED light pipes.
These fiber optic strands sit on an array of LEDs that signal
different aspects of the composition,
including the audio amplitude and the sequence of nodes.
In the six and a half minute video that Eric concludes with his writeup,
he covers every aspect of the build.
Each detail has been considered from how he layers and separates the digital
and analog aspects of the design to the user interface organization,
to the esthetic considerations of all the visible elements.
It really is an incredible sound sculpture, and as someone who's been
following Eric's work for the past few years, it's such a treat
to see how his designs continue to evolve and push forward.
More Projects!
The crew at Kids Invent Stuff have a fun video on how
they made these improvised combat pumpkin robots.
The name of the game here is approachability.
There are no boards to program or parts to 3D print.
You're essentially securing a carved pumpkin to the top of an RC offroad truck.
But the bit in here that I thought was really clever is how they added
remote controlled weapon-ey kind of elements to the design
just by adding a DC motor, a battery
and one of these $15 remote relay kits.
There's no coding with these.
You just wire up whatever you want to turn on and off
like this motor and you can control it with the included remote.
I love the simplicity and it definitely looks like fun.
For a more complex Halloween hack I dug through last year's Hackaday
Halloween contest winners and found this guide by Nelson Biros on how to add
three axis animatronics to those 12 foot skeletons that have become popular.
Nelson updated the servo mount design in July,
making it easier to print. The hack itself seems fairly straightforward to pull off,
however, it does involve cutting into your expensive skeleton prop
to separate the jaw.
The tricky part really is animating the servos and syncing audio
to get it talking.
Nelson points to some software options to get this done.
If you can live without the talking part, though, I imagine
you can get some realistic movement going with Pololu Maestro Board and their free software.
On the Kamui Cosplay channel,
Svetlana shows how she created this Gotham Knights mask using only EVA foam.
What's interesting here is that they actually had the detailed
3D design of the mask as a digital file to work from.
You get to see some techniques in blender for simplifying shapes for pattern making,
making, as well as a technique
for 3D scanning your body to create digital fittings.
The end result looks awesome and you get to see it compared
to a digitally accurate 3D print of the same design.
That Svetlana was able to make
The foam one nearly indistinguishable is super impressive.
Finally, you just have to check out these little robots designs
from Japan's ICD lab at the Toyohashi University of Technology.
These little guys are called PoKeBo cubes,
and there doesn't seem to be much information on how they're made.
But just from looking at the design,
you can see the clever way that springs are added to the base.
Something about those springs adds an adorable natural,
wigglyness to their movement.
Without the springs, you're really just looking at a fairly common servo movement,
but you add the springs
along with the weight from what I think are ceramic elements in the body and head,
and you get a result that's hard to take your eyes off of.
Now for some tips and tools, lots of videos have popped up
around the new version of the tiny TV kit from tiny circuits,
along with an even smaller version called the Tiny TV Mini.
Both of these run on a Raspberry Pi RP2040 processor and include
a little rechargeable battery so that they can run for hours without
being plugged in.
Maybe it's more of a toy than a tool,
but I have to think that there could be a project where having this tiny display
and video player circuit all ready to go could come in handy.
These are currently in a Kickstarter phase with fulfillment in March of next year.
Through the Makezine blog, I learned about a technique
for electroplating 3D prints for a chrome finish.
The included videos are by HEN3DRIK and outlines
a process that takes some time, but it's totally doable.
The gist of the technique is to get your prints super smooth,
Applying airbrushed conductive copper paint and then give it all an electroplating bath.
It takes some work and some precautions around potentially toxic chemicals,
but the finish is better than anything I've seen done with paint.
On the Programing Electronics Academy Channel, there's a video
that outlines two strategies for reading code.
You didn't write.
For me, it's about 99.9% of the code I come across.
And yeah, it's humbling and frustrating every single time.
It's nice to hear that reaction validated by someone with even more experience
and to hear the kind of self-talk and strategies that they use to try
and grasp what's going on in someone else's code.
I also appreciated this video by Yonatan24
outlining four techniques for removing rivets.
I've had to drill out rivet on things a few times, but here you'll see a few
examples of when drilling is just not practical, especially on giant rivets.
If you enjoy taking things apart and scavenging all the electronics,
give this a watch.
For this week's Digi-Key Spotlight,
Be sure to check out the latest in the electronics with Becky Stern series.
This video is fun to watch, even if you're a soldering wizard.
But since most people aren't, it's a great resource
and goes above and beyond to cover best practices for heat shrink,
desoldering techniques,
and even shows advanced manufacturing soldering machines.
Just for context around how commercial circuit boards are made.
Check it out.
and that does it for this week's show.
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Leave a comment if you want.
Big thanks to the agency for making this whole thing possible.
Enjoy your Halloween.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you soon.