This week on Maker Update, an Arduino snowflake, a hands-free cookie dispenser, building a big telescope, networked nightlights, budget robots, and the gamification of your couch.

Show Notes

Project of the Week

Arduinoflake by Jiří Praus
https://www.instructables.com/id/Arduinoflake/

More Projects

Hands-free Oreo dispenser by The Practical Engineer
https://thepracticalengineer.com/blog/oreodispenser

Downloadable plans
https://thepracticalengineer.com/plans/oreodispenserplan

Cosmos Mariner: a Large Aperture Dobsonian Telescope by gravitino
https://www.instructables.com/id/Cosmos-Mariner-a-Large-Aperture-Dobsonian-Telescop/

Networked Nightlights with ESP8266 and Raspberry Pi by Andy Warburton
https://makeandymake.github.io/2018/11/29/networked-lights-with-esp8266-and-raspberrypi.html

Putting The Pieces Back Together Again by Ralf Baecker
https://www.creativeapplications.net/robotics/putting-the-pieces-back-together-again-the-order-of-chaos/

Hellcouch by Carol Mertz and Francesca Carletto-Leon
http://shakethatbutton.com/hellcouch/

Tools/Tips

Gareth’s Tips of the Week
https://makezine.com/2018/11/30/tips-of-the-week-binder-clip-hacks-saw-tips-engineering-basics-and-using-a-laptop-as-a-light-box/

BadgeLove contest
https://www.hackster.io/contests/BadgeLove

Large 3V + 5V Analog Panel Meters
https://blog.adafruit.com/2018/11/29/new-products-analog-panel-meters-3v-5v/

Inside the Alexa Billy Bass
https://makerprojectlab.com/opening-up-the-alexa-billy-bass/

Budget Robot Chassis Compared
https://youtu.be/eQiTr46MS4Y

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, an Arduino snowflake, a hands-free cookie dispenser, building a big telescope, networked nightlights, budget robots, and the gamification of your couch.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell, and welcome to another Maker Update. Hard to believe it’s December already. I hope you’re all doing well and staying warm. I have a short but fun show for you today, so let’s get started with the project of the week.

Over on Instructables, Jiří Praus has a guide on how to make this touch-reactive LED snowflake. The project uses an Arduino Nano, 30 LEDs and resistors, and brass rod.

The whole circuit is freeform and the rods are soldered together with tin. There are three distinct layers of brass within the design, plus a brass rod that specifically acts as a capacitive touch sensor. This touch bar can be used to change the animation, turn it on/off, and engage a sparkle mode.

You can find the code and some great step-by-step pictures on the Instructable. It looks like some tricky soldering, especially with all those small surface mount LEDs, but a great payoff. I bet a 3D printed jig could help speed up the process, if one of you wants to give it a shot.

I have a bunch of other projects to share. First, check out this hands-free Oreo dispenser by The Practical Engineer.

What started out as a silly joke about finding a way to eat cookies without taking your hands off your work, turned into this genuinely clever food dispenser you operate with your chin.

The project was made almost entirely from plywood, with a few springs and screws involved and a plastic tube. The design was all laid out in Fusion 360 and there’s a well done set of plans you can purchase for 5 euros to make your own, because I definitely think the holidays call for a candy cane Joe-Joes version of this.

On Instructables, check out this massive large-aperture Dobsonian telescope made by Shane L. Larson. The Instructable is almost as gigantic as the telescope it’s describing. Shane includes links to resources, build plans, advice on mirrors, a bill of materials, making the frame, calculating the mirror support cell — it’s a deep guide with lots of useful photos.

Andy Warburton sent in this great writeup on how he made a set of networked nightlights. Each light uses an inexpensive ESP8266 board connected to a short strip of NeoPixels. The board checks in with a Raspberry Pi on your network for instructions on when to turn on, when to fade out, and what color to use. The idea is, if you have kids, you have on color as a nightlight, and then a routine that slowly steps through red, orange, yellow and white when it’s time to wake up. I think it’s a neat idea.

Also, take a look at this wall of 1,250 stepper motors by artist Ralf Baecker. This is for an artwork called Putting the Pieces Back Together. The motors are mounted on black aluminum and are flailing around pieces of acrylic glass. When the pieces touch each other they reverse direction. The process speeds up and slows down throughout the day and ultimately everything connects back up to a Raspberry Pi. It kinda makes you want to buy 1200 stepper motors.

And finally, there’s Hellcouch. Created by Carol Mertz and Francesca Carletto-Leon, this is a multiplayer game you control with your butt by moving around on a couch. The idea is that there’s a demon under the couch that grumbles and creates fire that you see as red LED lights mounted near the floor. As you move, you put out the fire and prevent it from escaping. I don’t see any reason why this shouldn’t be a standard feature on every couch.

It’s time for some tips and tools. Gareth Branwyn’s latest Tips of the Week column on Makezine shows off a cool idea on how to use binder clips to store tubes of paint on a wall and a neat hack by Skull & Spade for using your laptop screen as a light table for hand tracing art.

Hackster.io has launched a new BadgeLove contest in partnership with OSH Park and Autodesk. There’s $5,000 in prizes, and it’s a great excuse to jump into the world of designing Defcon-style electronic badges. Submissions are due by February 28, 2019.

A new product on Adafruit I’m excited to try are these big analog panel meters. One is rated for 3 volts and the other for 5. You can drive either one from a Arduino’s PWM output. I’m not sure how easy it would be to change out the background on the panel, but I suspect these would look great as a part of some prop design or a gauge on some kind of game simulator. The meters are $10 each.

On the Maker Project Lab channel I have a video up this week taking a look inside the new Alexa-compatible edition of the Big Mouth Billy Bass singing fish. I’ve opened up a lot of these over the years, but this one is definitely the most high-tech and hackable.

Then, over on the Cool Tools channel, I’ve got a roundup comparing 5 different budget robot chassis, from $15 up to $100. I’ve been testing out a bunch of options that I’ve been using on the Letsrobot platform. So if you’ve been thinking about building a little Arduino or Raspberry Pi robot, give it a look.

There are no Maker Faires this weekend, or really for the rest of December. So that does it for this week’s show, be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up or leave comment. Get on the Maker Update email list, because it’s the easiest way to stay on top of each week’s show. And a huge thanks to my Patrons on Patreon who make it possible for me to make any money on this show. Keep being awesome, thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next week.