This week on Maker Update: robots at your command, the best everyday carry holster, getting the most out of a cheap miter gauge, wireless LEDs, singing sculptures, and a rotary phone for your Zoom calls.

++Show Notes [Maker Update Ep. 255]++

-=Project of the Week=-

Dancing Robots by James Bruton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP919dwtG38

-=News=-

Thingiverse Data Breach
https://www.techradar.com/news/3d-printing-site-thingiverse-hit-by-major-user-data-breach

-=More Projects=-

Measuring & Marking Holster by Laura Kampf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjLnTa5qx7E

Lip-Syncing Characters by Cecilia Hillway
https://www.instructables.com/Lip-Syncing-Characters-With-Microbit/

Rotary Phone for Zoom by Diceyukita
https://www.instructables.com/Zoom-Phone/

-=Tips & Tools=-

Getting the most out of a cheap miter gauge by Steve Ramsey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgJVG7_jKZI

Wippersnapper IoT Power Outlet by Dylan Herrada
https://learn.adafruit.com/no-code-wippersnapper-iot-power-switch-outlet

Wippersnapper Overview
https://learn.adafruit.com/quickstart-adafruit-io-wippersnapper

Wireless LEDs for Model Making
https://learn.adafruit.com/wireless-leds-for-model-making

DIY Hack for Table Saw Jigs by Stumpy Nubs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIrsZyE65xk

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

What is a Diode?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kwqBSLZZQQ

-=Transcript=-

This week on Maker Update: Robots at your Command, The best everyday carry holster, Getting the most out of a cheap miter gauge, Wireless LEDs, singing sculptures, and a rotary phone for your zoom calls.

Hello and welcome back to Maker Update! I’m Tyler Winegarner and I hope you’re doing great. We’ve got another great show for you, so let’s not waste any time getting into it. Let’s check out the project of the week.

James Bruton is a robot maker, an interaction designer, and a man with a problem. Before COVID hit, he had built these robots that event goers could control using these small armatures. Events are starting to appear on his calendar again, but he doesn’t want to deal with the risk assessment of needing to sterilize the armatures after each person touches them.

Fortunately he has computer vision on his side! By using a Raspberry Pi Camera and a Jetson Nano, he’s able to perform a lot of computer vision operations like object detection and gesture control. In this case, he’s using a module called Pose Net, which uses the camera to generate a 2d pose figure based on a few recogniseable points on the human body. This gives him a data set to work from that he can use to control the robots without having to touch anything.

I guess this is really common in robotics, but what really surprised me is how he’s using DMX as the communication protocol. DMX is traditionally used to control lighting systems for stage use, but it’s been around for decades so its well documented, and there’s plenty of software out there that can be used to control it. The software also gives him a ton of opportunity to smooth out the animation for the robot so it doesn’t have that telltale jerky servo motion. More importantly he’s able to use it as an abstraction layer between the computer vision control input and the robotic output.

Because the raspberry pi camera has no ability to determine depth, the data created by PoseNet is strictly two-dimensional, which is why the robot’s motions all happen in a flat plane. Still, it’s a really fun interaction to make the robot dance or wave, and see your own motions reflected in the robot’s body. James provides all the code he used to control the robot, as well as all the cad files for you to print your own.

Time for some news, last week the online security site Have I Been Pwned reported a security breach on Thingiverse, one of the most popular repositories for 3d printable models. The breach is reported to affect over 200 thousand users, and can potentially expose their dates of birth, email addresses, IP addresses, Names, Passwords, physical addresses and usernames. The official statement by Makerbot is significantly downplaying the extent of the breach. You can see if your email was part of the leaked data by visiting Have I been Pwned, but its probably a good idea to change your Thingiverse password if you have an account there.

More projects! Last week Laura Kampf came up with the perfect weekend project to make a tool she can use every day – a holster for her measuring and marking tools. In her case, the stuff she always wants to have are a measuring tape, a folding ruler and deep hole marker. It’s a simple enough project – just a wide strap of leather stitched into a pocket, with an additional loop added for the tape measure’s belt clip. But I think the exercise is even more interesting than the execution: what are the measuring tools you’re always reaching for?

A few months ago we featured this animatronic cardboard Skeksis by Cecilia Hillway. Now she’s taken the concept one step further by adding the ability for her characters to perform a live lip sync of her voice. The setup is pretty simple – a single servo controls the head or jaw movement of the character, and the software created in make:code just maps the volume level recorded by the microphone to the servo position. But the result is still pretty convincing! Sure, a lot of this is hinging on her skills as an artist, but its a great way to create some simple satisfying characters for your upcoming halloween gathering.

Finally, on Instructables I found this project from Diceyukita on hacking a rotary phone to be your microphone for zoom calls. Dice is also an interaction designer, and he loves exploring how different objects can transform everyday experiences. What he found is that because you need to hold the phone handset to your face, you end up being far more engaged with the call. He hacked up a USB headset for the microphone and earpiece and then fit them into the handset. The real fun part about this build is the function of the hangup button. Since the hangup button just opens the circuit for the microphone and speaker, it works perfectly as a mute switch – almost. Because it also cuts the speaker, you can’t keep listening on a call. Still, its a fun way to break up the tedium of your daily standups, and adds a fun conversation piece to your desk.

We’ve got a bunch of tips and tools for you this week – Steve Ramsey of Woodworking for Mere Mortals has a bunch of great tips on getting the most out of that cheap miter gauge that came with your table saw. This video is chock full of great tips if you’re just getting started making crosscuts with a table saw and doesn’t skimp on the beginner safety rules. But there’s a ton of other stuff that might not be obvious, like adding an extension fence to your gauge, or using these screws to fine tune the positive stops for 45 and 90 degrees. Maybe this can save your cheap miter gauge from the junk pile.

On Adafruit, I found a guide for using this popular IoT power outlet with WipperSnapper by Dylan Herrada. Wippersnapper is an interactive module for Adafruit IO that allows you to manipulate devices and microcontrollers without writing a single line of code. Perfect for automating your outdoor halloween decorations. And because this relay-controlled power outlet takes all of the guesswork out of powering high voltage devices, its perfect for newcomers or anyone wary of working with high voltage AC. Whippersnapper is still in beta, but there’s a ton of other tutorials on how it can be used in a variety of projects. There’s also a great overview on Wippersnapper, I’ll link to it down in the description.

Also on Adafruit I saw this great introduction to wireless LEDs from John Park. You heard that right – wireless LEDs. If you make book nooks, or models or dioramas and want to add some light but never wanted to deal with wires, this looks like promethean fire. These are powered by a massive inductive loop, but they look like they have the potential to unlock so much creativity for lighting in small spaces.

And finally On the Stumpy Nubbs Woodworking youtube channel I saw this fantastic tutorial for making precision jigs for your tablesaw – and its all based around ⅜ -16 threaded rod. Because this thread happens every ⅙ of an inch, it means that you have a perfect positive stop every sixteenth of an inch. In this case he has two pieces of threaded rod resting against each other, locking in place, but you could just as easily make a hand crank and locking mechanism for more precise adjustments.

For this week’s Digikey spotlight we’re answering a simple question: What is a diode? Ok, you probably already know that it’s a magical one way door for your circuit designs that only allow voltage to flow one way in your circuit and never the other. But this video gets into the actual chemistry of how diodes are made, and how that chemistry affects the way they work. Personally speaking, I bombed out of chemistry so a lot of this goes way over my head, but for those who can follow it, it’s great to see this depth of explanation.

Alright and that is going to do it for this week’s show! I hope you enjoyed it or got something out of it. What would be in your everyday measuring and marking holster? Let us know down in the comments. As always you can sign up for the maker update email list so you never miss an episode or you can do all the subscribe-y, like button-ey youtube stuff too. Big thanks to Digikey for making this show possible. Take care, and we’ll see you soon.