This week on Maker Update,
rolling your own jetpack
machine learning for money,
motion controlled hadouken,
invisible roommates, infrared
mirrors, and mechanical wings.
Hey everybody, I'm Donald Bell
and welcome back to another maker update.
I hope you're all doing well.
I can't complain, summer's here,
I'm actually making plans to do stuff.
It's crazy and I hope you're
finding ways to get back
into the swing of things too.
I have a bunch to catch up on.
Let's get started
with the project of the week.
Some of us grew up thinking
that the future would involve a lot
of traveling by jet pack.
The future didn't
work out that way,
but that's not stopping Ian Charnas.
Ian made this wearable jet engine
that instead of launching
him into the air,
propels him forward on roller skates.
It took Ian three months
to build the final jetpack,
and in some ways it's
a more approachable project
than you'd think.
Specifically, because you don't
have to build a jet engine.
In the United States, at least,
apparently there are no
legal restrictions around the buying
and selling of jet engines,
so Ian was just able to go out and buy
this little cutie.
The real effort goes into
engineering a way
to mount the engine safely to your body.
To make it happen,
Ian makes liberal use of the metal shop,
the welder, waterjet
metal brake, the mill... and the end result
looks straight out of the Acme catalog.
No one on this video is commenting:
"Why don't you just buy this on Amazon?"
This is a delightfully
one of a kind project, and surprisingly
not nearly as deadly
as you'd assume thanks to the heat
shielding built into the frame.
I learned from Ian's project
is that while jet engines
may be relatively easy to come by,
jet fuel is not.
Ian was eventually able
to procure some fuel
from a local private airport,
but it explains why jet
engine projects are pretty rare.
Go check out Ian's video.
It's highly entertaining, and
you'll get a chance to influence
what he'll attach the jet engine to next.
Ian: *laughter*
Ian: "What the? Was I on fire?"
Other Person: "No"
Ian: "Then why... what?"
Now for some news,
Google is holding a contest
to get people to submit projects
that use their TensorFlow Lite
from microcontrollers platform.
If you've been looking for an excuse
to incorporate machine learning
into a project idea,
this could be just the
motivation you need.
Five winners will get $2500.
There's an easy form
for submitting your project details
in a handful of example
projects with code that you can adapt
for your own ideas.
Entries need to be submitted
by July 19th.
One project I've already seen come out of
this is Charlie Gerard's
motion controlled Street Fighter
using Arduino Nano 33 BLE
Sense Board running Tensorflow Lite code.
She's trained it to interpret
different hand gestures
as fighting moves.
You can download the code from GitHub
loaded up on your own board
and play the live demo she made
or using the tiny motion trainer
example code provided by Google.
You can create something similar
to make your own custom gesture
controls for something else.
It looks like a fun way
to get into this stuff.
Another project that has me
excited to explore some new tools
is this augmented reality
experience by Nicole He and Aaron Hilleli.
It's called invisible roommates,
and it was made for space 10, and IKEA,
and the idea is to visualize
all of the devices on your home network.
As these little cartoon creatures,
you can see them past
data back and forth, or
wake up or go to sleep.
It's adorable.
For some actual info on how it was made,
check out the link in the description
to Nicole's newsletter.
She talks about her approach
creating a node server
to detect devices and data packets,
and getting all of that
back to the unity software
where the AR experience happens.
It's fascinating stuff.
Now for a beautiful hardware project,
check out this infrared mirror
by Ruben Strangelove.
He's displaying the output of an Adafruit
infrared camera to a grid of NEO pixels.
A teensy 3.2 board is running the code
making use of the fast
LED library to make the visuals
extra pretty and responsive
for a little bit of additional eye candy
when the mirror doesn't detect movement
after 15 seconds,
it goes into a screen saver mode
that shows off some cool
trippy animations.
You can find the code and design files
all on his GitHub.
Finally, coming full circle on awesome
stuff to wear on your back,
check out these
articulating electric wings by Ohio
Flyer and his son Luca.
The design uses linkages of
U channel aluminum extrusion
with each wing driven by its own short
throw linear actuator
across the wings, quarter inch
aluminum rods are attached
covered in fabric to create
the individual feathers.
Rechargeable 12 Volt battery
wired to a rocker switch drives
the actuator motors in forward
or reverse to open or close the wings.
It's a great design and a fun story,
and there's a look
at a smaller single motor version
down at the end of the Instructable.
Now for some tips and tools on Makezine,
Caleb Kraft explains
how a maker named Jonathan
Gleich uses a motorized camera gimbal
as an assistive device.
Jonathan's hand tremors
make it difficult
to use a soldering iron, but
by attaching the iron to a gimbal,
he can stabilize the iron
and complete his projects.
It's a cool hack
on the cool tools channel.
I take a look at a solid core
jumper wire kit.
This stuff makes breadboard
projects so much cleaner.
If you're an electronics engineer,
you probably got hit to this stuff
right out of the gate,
but for us, tinkerers and late bloomers.
Most getting started kits
omit these in favor of flexible wires
which have their use but
get messy pretty quick.
Bottom line, if you don't know about
solid core breadboard wire
or you don't have any around,
check out the video
and consider picking up a kit.
We've been seeing
a bunch of boards
recently using the new RP 2040 chip
from Raspberry Pi,
the same one used on their $4
pico microcontroller,
but I haven't seen
something like this before.
This is the maker PY 2040 board
from Cytron, distributed by Seeed.
It's a $10 board
designed for robotics
with two DC motor drivers, four
servo output, 7 inputs for Grove sensors.
A piezo buzzer and a built-in
Lipo charger for battery power.
but usually something like
this is a $20 shield or a hat.
The stack on a microcontroller,
but since the RP 2040 is so affordable,
they just threw it in.
It's all in one and just 10 bucks.
Maybe it's too good to be true,
but it's available for preorder
shipping at the end of June.
For this week's digikey spotlight,
if you're an aspiring
hardware entrepreneur,
be sure to check out the new
edition of Digikey's
solutions for startups guide.
Plot your road map from concept
to prototyping funding to distribution.
As we move through each section,
you'll come across videos from Limor
and Phillip from Adafruit
relating their own
experiences and advice.
It's a great resource
and all free for the taking.
Check it out.
And that does it for this week show.
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Jetpack or wings?
Which one would you rather have?
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A big thanks to my patrons on Patreon,
and especially to Digikey Electronics
for making the whole show possible.
Thanks for watching
and I'll see you soon.