This week on the 200th episode of Maker Update, laser cut data discs, Hackaday Remoticon, 64-bit circuit sculpture, and a Pi-powered Apollo computer.

++Show Notes [Maker Update 200]++

Playlist: All 200 episodes of Maker Update
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHvctKwAXIO93gMWere3Yfa7VXI3dHs16

‏-=Project of the Week=-

Wooden Disc Player By jbumstead
https://www.instructables.com/id/Wooden-Disc-Player/

‏-=News=-

Hackaday Remoticon happens November 6-8 worldwide!
https://hackaday.com/2020/09/22/remoticon-tickets-and-workshops-just-dropped/

‏-=More projects=-

God’s clock 64-bit binary counter Tauno Erik
https://hackaday.io/project/175011-gods-clock

Accurate Apollo DSKY Replica by M.daSilva
https://hackaday.io/project/174524-accurate-apollo-dsky-replica

‏-=Tips & Tools=-

Creative sign making by Make Something
https://youtu.be/tRagjHpF5fE

Thingiverse Competitor Called Thangs
https://thangs.com/

Gerber EAB Lite Pocket Knife
https://kk.org/cooltools/smallest-utility-knife/

Adam Savage’s Favorite Tools: Trammel Points and Rotape Beam Compass!
https://www.tested.com/art/makers/914304-adam-savages-favorite-tools-trammel-points-and-rotape-beam-compass/

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

What are Transformers? How Do They Work?
https://youtu.be/4957VOh6JPw

Transcript

This week on the 200th episode of Maker Update, laser cut data discs, Hackaday Remoticon, 64-bit circuit sculpture, and a Pi-powered Apollo computer.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell, and welcome to what is technically the 200th episode of Maker Update. It’s crazy! I don’t know if it’s a big deal or not, but it feels like an accomplishment. 

I’m just going to keep going. I think the only thing I’m going to change now is to take the episode number out of the title going forward. After 200, I think it just starts to look intimidating to people — like a book they’ll never finish. 

Anyway. We’ve got a great show. Let’s get started with the project of the week.

Jonathan Bumstead is one of my favorite makers. He’s great at creating projects that are completely unique. 

His latest is this wooden disc player, which at first sounds like an olde tymey project, but it’s actually an experiment in storing and playing back binary data on laser cut wood circles.

Think of it as a DIY, lo-fi CD ROM. If a CD can hold 700Mb of information, these can hold only 700 bits — enough to encode a short message. The larger the disc, the more it can hold.

At its core, it’s an Arduino project. With just an Arduino Nano, a few op amps, and stepper motor driver board, he’s able to drive all the main features here and read back the data.

There are two low-power lasers used in the design, each paired with a photodiode to detect when the laser is shining through a hole, and when the light is reflecting back. The red light you’re seeing on that white vertical strip is actually the lasers shining through and diffusing. 

The first laser is fixed near the center and is just used for timing. Every disc starts with a ring of holes so that the system can understand how fast it’s turning. 

The second laser is attached to a lead screw that moves it slowly across the rest of the disc and is turned by the stepper motor. This is the laser that actually reads the binary data from the disc, and you see each sequence of ones and zeroes plotted out on the LED matrix across the bottom. 

To make it even more interesting, a MIDI output is included that plays a musical note every time a 1 is read instead of a zero. You’ll have to connect this up to synth or your computer to actually hear anything, but it’s a cool addition.

When the final bit is read, the message displays across the LED matrix.

Finally there are the discs themselves, which he glues up with cut-up magazine clippings and then lasercuts the pattern on. The pattern is created using Matlab software, which converts your binary message into a disc pattern that you can export as an SVG file and use with a laser cutter.

It’s weird and wonderful, and beautiful project, and a great excuse to explore the mechanics and challenges of encoding and replaying information from physical media. Along with his Instructable, John has a great video explaining the whole project and showing every phase of its construction. Don’t miss it.

Now for some news. The Hackaday Supercon is now the Hackaday Remoticon, and it’s coming up on November 6-8. As the name implies, this will be a remote event, with workshops and demos that you can experience from the comfort of your own home. 

You can register now for a free ticket (or chip in a little if you feel like it). The workshops will be ticketed separately at $10, just to make sure they go to good use. 

You can learn more overon Hackaday, or by using the link in the show notes.

Now for more projects! Binary seems to be the theme this week. Check out this 64-bit binary counter Tauno Erik. 

This is one of several projects Tauno’s built for the Hackaday circuit sculpture competition. It’s my favorite one of his so far. 

It’s using an Arduino-programmed ATtiny13 chip connected to 8 shift registers to control each row of 8 LEDs to create the 64 LED matrix.

There are two modes — a flashy mode shown here which randomly shuffles the LEDs on and off, and a binary counter clock shown briefly in the video, which just counts up for a long, long time.

It’s a beautiful design. There’s definitely some clever jig work here. I particularly like the golden look of the yellow LEDs and the contrast with the natural looking black wooden base. Well done.

Also on Hackaday, M. daSilva shows how he created this mechanically accurate Apollo DSKY replica. 

This is one of those projects that bubbles up from time to time as someone’s engineering holy grail. I can’t blame them. I’m always fascinated by these, and this version seems particularly approachable.

The enclosure here is all 3D printed, based on the original MIT mechanical plans. All the STL files you need are included on GitHub. For some of the pieces, you will need to use threaded inserts to fit them together.

Inside, instead of the rat’s nest of relays and wires that would be in the original, we have a Raspberry Pi running software called VirtualAGC or Apollo Guidance Computer. 

A 4.3” screen is connected as the display and a custom wired mechanical keyboard is connected by way of an Arduino Leonardo. 

It’s great project, and super cool that it’s functional and mechanically accurate.

Now for some tools and tips. On the Make Something channel David Picciuto shows off some sign making techniques that make full use of desktop fabrication tools. He’s using a CNC router to create a textured background on some wood, then adds laser cut acrylic letters using a template. As a final touch, he creates a welded steel frame. It’s a great mix of materials and really opens your mind to the possibilities of making signs with CNC tools.

Through the Core77 blog I heard about a new alternative to Thingiverse called Thangs. It’s another place where you can upload and share your 3D models. It’s potentially killer feature is that you can search by geometry.

So, regardless of how someone titled or tagged a design, you may be able to come across what you’re looking for just based on its shape.

On the Cool Tools blog, I talk with Tyler Winegarner about the Gerber EAB Lite Pocket Knife. Really, it’s like a utility blade that folds down small enough to fit in your coin pocket. It costs around $15 and the blade is easy to replace.

On Tested, Adam Savage talks about trammel points and rototape — two tools you can use for drawing big circles. In the case of trammel points, the size of the circle is only limited by the material you use to connect the points. These were both new to me.

For this week’s digi-key spotlight, check out this recent video on transformers work. Not the autobot kind, but the ferromagnetic power transforming kind. 

If it plugs into a wall, it’s bound to have one of these in it, but what exactly does it do, and what’s with all the coils. This video does a fantastic job of showing you and explaining what’s happening inside a transformer. It’s only two minutes long, but it solved a mystery for me. Check it out.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up, leave a comment. A big thanks to my patrons on Patreon and to Digi-Key Electronics for making this possible. Looking back on my first year of doing this show just as a hobby, it feels awesome to be here 200 episodes later with Digi-Key as a sponsor. Thank you all, and I’ll see you next week.