This week on Maker Update: a descriptive nose, a scrappy gatekeeper,
laser cut krankies and never ending stories.
Hey, everybody. I'm Donald Bell.
And welcome back to another Maker Update.
It's good to be back.
I hope you're all doing well and I've got a great show for you.
Let's get started with the project of the week.
Check out this giant interactive nose made by Adnan Aga.
Hold an object underneath it,
And after a bit of sniffing, the nose begins to talk
and poetically describes its interpretation of the object’s smell.
[AI Voice] Indulge your senses with a harmonious blend of rich cocoa,
buttery caramel, and a subtle hint of vanilla.
[Donald] As a memento,
A transcript unspools from one of the nostrils that you can take with you.
It's awesome and pretty funny,
but what's really going on here is actually super interesting.
Instead of smelling the nose is actually using a camera
that looks down at the objects placed underneath it
and uses computer vision to figure out what it's looking at.
Once the computer can label the object, that label
then gets kicked over to ChatGPT-4 and is asked to write a richly detailed
summary of what it assumes the object smells like.
The thermal print out of the text seems relatively easy to pull off,
but the brilliant third stroke of AI here
is the synthetic voice that reads it out.
He's using a web-based,
AI-enhanced text-to-speech service
to read out the descriptions in a super realistic voice.
For the hardwre, Adnan is using a Raspberry Pi for Model B,
along with a time of flight sensor to detect when something is under the nose
and the Raspberry Pi camera module to take a picture of it.
The code is in Python.
I did a little digging and found it on GitHub
and I'll leave a link in the description.
The nose itself is 3D printed and made from a scan of Adnan's actual nose.
Which brings us to the real clincher on this project.
It's personal.
Adnan was born without a sense of smell.
He made this project to bring awareness to the community of people like him,
who often wonder what things smell like and rely on other people's descriptions.
For me, I love how playful the project is,
but I also think that technologically,
This is a project for this moment.
You wouldn't have been able to pull off this project a year ago.
That's exciting.
More projects!
On YouTube, Handy Geng shows
how he created his own terrifying robot sentry to guard his workshop.
It's literally a scrappy build, mashing together
old bits of wheelbarrow, ductwork and air tanks.
He arms the robot with a pressure washer,
speakers that play barking dog noises and these chomping metal teeth that,
as he demonstrates,
could easily take out a threatening cucumber.
Federico Tobon shares how he created this Crankie.
It's a hand-cranked scroll based on how old theater productions
would create the illusion of background movement.
For this, not only did he design a laser cut model,
but he created an entire parametric design using Cuttle software.
this way, not only can you adjust the size of the design for your needs,
but you can plug in the thickness of the material you're using,
and all the other parameters will adjust to compensate.
Super useful, especially for classroom projects or workshops.
And on Adafruit,
Erin St. Blaine has another twist on a ChatGPT project,
This one is a magic storybook.
You just open the book,
tell it what kind of story you want to read, and before you know it,
ChatGPT brings your ideas to the page.
The trickiest part of this project
actually seems to be finding and hollowing out a good sized book.
Otherwise, the Raspberry Pi, the touch screen,
the microphone and the reed switch all seem pretty straightforward.
I also like all the little decorative touches
Erin did here, especially the nods to the Never Ending Story.
and because it's an Adafruit guide, the documentation here is very thorough.
It seems like a great entry point into creating a first ChatGPT project.
Now for some tips and tools,
Through the Core 77 blog, I learned about these
structural mycelium building blocks created by PLP Labs.
In a recent video,
they provide a detailed look at the kinds of forms and techniques they’re using
to create these lab grown modular blocks made from mycelium fungus.
The best part is that they're all techniques
that any one of us makers could recreate.
So if you're interested in making your own completely sustainable, natural,
biodegradable panels or building blocks, this is a great resource.
On YouTube, Moritz Simon Geist gives us a behind-the-scenes look at how he created
these MIDI-triggered vibraphone bars.
To create the sound, Each bar includes a solenoid with a felt cover pin that strikes the bar.
But to control the length of each note, there's also a stepper motor
that quickly pushes a dampening pad
on or off the bar with what looks to me like a worm gear actuator.
It's a very clever system and super impressive
that he's able to scale this up,
no pun intended,
and coordinate all these bars.
Finally, if you're curious to know more about the realistic AI text-to-speech tool
used in the project of the week, check out Prime Voice A.I. by Eleven Labs
[AI Voice] This week on Maker Update: a descriptive nose, a scrappy gatekeeper
laser-cut Crankies, and never ending stories.
[Donald] You can play with it for free in your browser,
if you want to build a project around it,
There's an API to play with and some paid options as well.
For this week's Digi-Key Spotlight, check out their recent article on Common
methods for protecting your projects from water and dust.
It deals with IP ratings, gasket seals,
special coatings, and how to run cables
out of your enclosure while still protecting what's inside.
Give it a look.
And that does it for this week's show. Be sure to subscribe.
Leave a thumbs up. Leave a comment.
A big thanks to Digi-Key Electronics for making this show possible.
And thank you for watching. I'll see you soon.