This week on Maker Update, a brass thread injector, drag and drop Arduino storage, PyGamer, robot fish, a blacklight parasol, a hand-crank GIF player, and a 7-segment circuit sculpture.

++Show Notes++

-=Project of the Week=-

Heat Set Insert Rig by Ruiz Brothers
https://learn.adafruit.com/heat-set-rig

-=News=-

You Can Now Drag and Drop Files Onto Your Arduino Like a Thumb Drive
https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/05/28/an-arduino-that-shows-up-like-a-disk-drive-yes-it-is-finally-here-arduino-adafruit/
https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_TinyUSB_Arduino

Introducing Adafruit PyGamer by Kattni Rembor
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-pygamer

Adafruit Feather format takes flight with the SparkFun Thing Plus
https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/05/23/adafruit-feather-format-takes-flight-with-the-sparkfun-thing-plus-sparkfun/

-=Adafruit Projects=-

Trash-Built Robotic Fish by Dano Wall
https://learn.adafruit.com/trash-robo-fish

Archimedes’ Boat by Dano Wall
https://learn.adafruit.com/archimedes-boat

Personal UV HotSpot Parasol by Erin St Blaine
https://learn.adafruit.com/personal-blacklight-uv-parasol

Paper-Craft Crystal Gem Lantern by Erin St Blaine
https://learn.adafruit.com/paper-craft-crystal-gem-lantern

Make your own “play.date” animated gif player with a crank
https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/05/28/make-your-own-play-date-animated-gif-player-with-a-crank-playdate-panic-arduino/
https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_Arcada_GifDecoder

-=Contributed Project=-

CircuitPython 7-Segment Character Clock by Alex Padilla
https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/05/30/circuitpython-7-segment-character-clock-circuitpython-feather-adafruit-adafruit-_ohm51-hackadayio/

-=Tools/Tips=-

Next Level MakeCode Arcade Games by John Park
https://learn.adafruit.com/next-level-makecode-arcade-games

MakeCode Arcade Platformer Level Design by John Park
https://learn.adafruit.com/makecode-arcade-platform-level

Choosing an ADC by mike stone
https://learn.adafruit.com/choosing-an-adc

Adafruit Arcada Library
https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_Arcada
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-pybadge/arcada-libraries (Libraries Setup)

Playing Gamebuino META Games on Arcada by lady ada
https://learn.adafruit.com/playing-gamebuino-meta-games-on-arcada

Playing Arduboy Games on Arcada by lady ada
https://learn.adafruit.com/playing-arduboy-games-on-arcada

Layer By layer – PyBadge Case
https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/05/19/new-layer-by-layer-pybadge-case/

Circuit Playground Express USB MIDI Controller and Synthesizer by Kevin Walters
https://learn.adafruit.com/cpx-midi-controller

-=Product Spotlight=-

Adafruit AirLift FeatherWing – ESP32 WiFi Co-Processor
https://www.adafruit.com/product/4264

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, a brass thread injector, drag and drop Arduino storage, PyGamer, robot fish, a blacklight parasol, a hand-crank GIF player, and a 7-segment circuit sculpture.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell, and welcome back to another Adafruit Edition of Maker Update. I hope everyone’s doing well. The Adafruit team has been busy as usual, working up new projects and tools and code. So, let’s catch up on some of the highlights starting with my pick for the project of the month.

After a lot of trial and error and design revisions, the Ruiz brothers, along with Bill Binko, finalized their design of this rig for embedding threaded heat set inserts into 3D printed projects.

If you’re new to the idea, this is a way to add durable brass screw threads to your 3D prints, allowing for multi-piece designs that can fit together or break down easily with common machine screws.

And while the technique has been around for awhile, it’s a hard one to master, even with a steady hand and a lot of practice. This rig removes some of the headaches by ensuring that the inserts are pressed straight down.

The design uses a single piece of 2020 extruded aluminum fitted into a 3D printed base and a plank of wood. The mechanism holding the soldering iron is also 3D printed, and uses some bearings and nylon rope to create a smooth, straight motion.

What’s funny is that the design makes liberal use of the same brass inserts that you’re building the rig to help you with. So by the end of building it, you’ll really appreciate having a tool that will make the process easier the next time around.

It’s also worth noting that the Ruiz brothers have a soldering tip attachment they recommend, which is sold by Adafruit. These are specifically made for the job and designed so that they don’t wedge into the threads. They also feature a longer shank than some similar options out there, which helps reach into recessed areas without accidental melting.

It’s a great guide, with a useful video, and you can find all the parts available directly from Adafruit.

It’s time for some news. On the Adafruit blog, Lady Ada and Phillip show off a new board support package that uses TinyUSB stack support to enable your Arduino to show up like a disk drive on your computer.

There’s a Github repo with example code for you to give it a try yourself. With it you can drag and drop files over a USB connection that are stored on SD or SPI Flash. You’ll still need to program your Arduino using an IDE, but this makes it a lot easier to transfer over audio files, fonts, images, and things like that.

This past month also saw the release of the Adafruit PyGamer board. This is an open source board that is unmistakably designed for portable handheld gaming. It’s compatible with CircuitPython, Microsoft MakeCode, or Arduino. And while the board itself is a work of art, there’s a cool laser cut acrylic enclosure you can buy for it that gives it a more polished look, and probably keeps some palm sweat off the board too.

It’s also exciting to see that SparkFun has now joined the growing list of manufacturers using the Adafruit Feather pin layout standard. The new SparkFun Thing Plus is a powerful board with a SAMD51 microcontroller, and FeatherWing pin compatibility, allowing you to take advantage of all the great Feather add-on boards out there.

Now back to more projects from the Adafruit team. Dano Wall has a couple of nautically inspired projects for Circuit Playground Express.

The first is what he calls a Trash-Built Robot Fish, made from plastic wrap, cardboard and straws. A continuous rotation servo and a paperclip create the motion needed to wiggle the tail and fins for a fun prop. Just don’t actually put it in the water.

But you can put his milk carton boat project in the water. This one uses a Circuit Playground Express to turn two spiral propellers made from wooden skewers and hot glue. It’s worth checking out this project for his hot glue technique alone.

Once assembled, you can load up different routines using MakeCode. It’s like a turtle-style robot, but for the water.

Erin St. Blain is back with another exciting wearable LED project. This one is a ultraviolet LED parasol that creates a little blacklight spotlight on you. This way if you’re wearing anything that glows under UV light, you’ve got a way to keep it lit up.

This project also uses a Circuit Playground Express board, but pairs it with UV NeoPixel strip and a rechargeable battery. Adafruit even sells fluorescent pigment you can use to try it out, in case you’ve misplaced your neon green wig.
Erin also has a surprisingly effective method for creating these glowing lanterns that look like giant crystals. The key is to laminate wrinkled up cellophane gift wrap and then use a paper craft pattern to cut and fold a crystal shape. The Neopixel ring from the Circuit Playground Express can be used to create all kinds of glowing effects, but she also shows how smaller crystals can be lit up using just a single Neopixel.

And straight from Lady Ada herself we’ve got a demo showing how to create an animated GIF player that advances using a little hand crank.

The idea is a riff on the recently announced Playdate portable game system from Panic. This version from Lady Ada uses a rotary encoder and a 3D printed crank, controlling the new PyGamer board.

The code is available on GitHub and makes use of both the Arcada library for developing games in Arduino and the TinyUSB Arduino support package I mentioned earlier for loading images to the board using drag-and-drop.

I also want to recognize a project that came through the Adafruit community. This 7-segment character clock by Alex Padilla is inspired by Mohit Bhoite’s electronic sculpture projects.

It’s using an Adafruit ItsyBitsy M0 Express, the Adalogger Featherwing to provide a real-time clock, and an Adafruit 4-digit 7-segment display. The connections are all made using brass rod. You can find the full guide on Hackaday.

I have a bunch of tips to share. Just in time for the flurry of MakeCode Arcade compatible Adafruit boards, John Park has two new guides on game design. One is on taking your game designs to the next level with imported graphics, background music, and responsive NeoPixels. The other takes a look at what you need to know to design your own side-scrolling platformer game.

Mike Stone has an in-depth guide to choosing an Analog to Digital converter for your project. When you really need a project to take an accurate, reliable reading from an analog signal, it’s good to know how these converters work and what to look out for.

The Adafruit Arcada Library makes it easier to create and edit games for PyBadge and Pygamer using just Arduino code. Of all the ways to program these boards, this is the most involved, and requires a dozen different libraries to install. But you get the flexibility and familiarity of Arduino.

You also get an ability to port over other Arduino-based game libraries. Lady Ada has a guide on using Arcada to play Gamebuino META games or Arduboy games on PyBadge or PyGamer hardware.

Speaking of PyBadge, the Ruiz Bros. have a 3-part layer-by-layer video on how they designed a snap fit PyBadge case. There’s a lot to learn here, and it points to a PyBadge PCB CAD file you can use to build your own design around. You can also simply download and print the awesome case that they came up with.

And if you’re into making your own musical MIDI controllers, Kevin Walters shares some tips on how he was able to turn the Circuit Playground Express into a capacitive touch-controlled USB MIDI interface. Not only does each pad trigger a note, but the two buttons act as octave up and down keys and the accelerometer behaves as a pitch bend or expression pedal. It’s very cool.

Finally, for an Adafruit product spotlight, let’s talk about the new AirLift FeatherWing. For $12.95, this board gives your Feather projects an ESP32 Wi-Fi co-processor.

Having Wi-Fi handled by a separate chip makes your code simpler, because you don’t have to cache socket data, or compile in & debug an SSL library.

This chip can handle all the heavy lifting of connecting to a WiFi network and transferring data from a site, even if its using the latest TLS or SSL encryption, because the ESP32 has root certificates pre-burned in.

And because it’s modular, it also means that you can use the Feather board that’s right for your particular project, or be able to use whatever latest and greatest Feather comes out without holding your breath for a Wi-Fi version.

So check it out. It’s the AirLift FeatherWing.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave the show a thumb’s up, or leave a comment to let the Adafruit crew know that you like seeing this show here on their channel every month. Help me impress the boss.

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Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you soon.