This week on Maker Update: A building brick to surpass Metal Gear, the return of Bay Area Maker Faire, Dopp Kitts and Progress bars for daily living.

This week on Maker Update: the simplest way to give your walls some color, a bomb-proof Raspberry Pi, the most over-engineered tally counter ever, and the fastest pen plotter in the west.

This week on Maker Update: a tough nut to crack, hand-made computers, top tips for perfect prints, flexures, supersized switches, and making tensegrity sculptures out of humans.

Tool:

Greeting Card Sound Player Module
https://amzn.to/2xyGzbF

Related tools mentioned:

EBL 18650 3.7V 3000mAh Li-ion Rechargeable Batteries
https://amzn.to/2HbJ9DS

Charger
https://amzn.to/2IZQhZQ

Holders
https://amzn.to/2JjnmPN

Transcript:

It’s time for another Cool Tool review. This is a greeting card sound module. There are a bunch of dirt cheap ones out there, but this fancy one cost me $9 on Amazon. It’s a straightforward way to add sound to your project. And by picking one up using the link in the description you’re helping to support my videos and the Cool Tools blog.

Tools:

Aven Adjustable Circuit Board Holder
http://amzn.to/2FB0s2f

Hakko Flush Cutters
http://amzn.to/2GO1nM0

This week on Maker Update, dedicated hardware for your Keanu Reeves GIF collection, sound reactive sabers, return of the Trash Panda, and machine learning in your pocket.

This week on Maker Update, a paper airplane machine, Microsoft gobbles up Github, a comic vomit bot, a LEGO-style megaphone, printer cable coasters, counting bees, joining wood with plastic bottles, and actual reality games in Hong Kong. This week’s Cool Tool is the Komelon 25Ft tape measure.

We’re going to take a quick look at three very different options in portable soldering irons. The point here is really just to give you a demo of each on the same table and you can draw your own conclusions on what might work best for you. 

This week on Maker Update, solar-power plant monitors, Dale and Naomi make up, a macro for your GoPro, and Make’s desktop fabrication guide. The Cool Tool this week is the DLI IoT Relay.

This week on Maker Update, Blade Runner binoculars, setbacks at Glowforge, custom zipper pulls, JOY pads, and colorized laser engraving. This week’s Cool Tool is the Canary Corrugated Cardboard Cutter.