This week on a special Adafruit edition of Maker Update, clocking in with a cube, Grand Central MIDI control, wireless Neopixels, a rainbow archway, and a Mini Mac with a skull inside.

Show Notes

Project of the Month

Adafruit IO Time Tracking Cube by Ruiz Bros. and Brent Rubell
https://learn.adafruit.com/time-tracking-cube

News

MakeCode Arcade Details
https://makecode.com/blog/arcade/01-18-2019

MakeCode Arcade with Raspberry Pi Zero
https://learn.adafruit.com/makecode-arcade-with-raspberry-pi-zero

MakeCode Arcade with SAMD51 M4
https://learn.adafruit.com/makecode-arcade-with-samd51-m4

MakeCode Arcade Game Repo
https://arcade.makecode.com/

Create With Cartoon Network
http://www.createwithcn.com/

Microsoft Education Team Announcement
https://educationblog.microsoft.com/2019/01/microsoft-makecode-cartoon-network-and-adafruit-team-up-to-inspire-a-new-generation-of-creators/

Adafruit Projects

Build a mini mac with HalloWing that displays boot screen actually plays startup chimes! by Ruiz Bros.
https://learn.adafruit.com/hallowing-mac

Pearl’s Gem Weapon – Steven Universe by Ruiz Bros.
https://learn.adafruit.com/pearl-s-spear-steven-universe

Grand Central USB MIDI Controller by John Park
https://learn.adafruit.com/grand-central-usb-midi-controller-in-circuitpython

Spinning Disc Step Sequencer by John Park
https://learn.adafruit.com/spinning-disc-step-sequencer

Circuit Playground Powerpuff Girls Valentine by Erin St Blaine
https://learn.adafruit.com/circuit-playground-valentine

Wireless NeoPixel Controller by Erin St. Blaine
https://learn.adafruit.com/neotrellis-neopixel-controller

Glue Stick Light Pipe Sculpture by Dano Wall
https://learn.adafruit.com/glue-stick-archway

See also: “Fiber Optic” LED Matrix by jbumstead
https://www.instructables.com/id/Fiber-Optic-LED-Matrix/

Grand Central Soundboard in Ten Minutes by Mike Barela
https://learn.adafruit.com/grand-central-soundboard-in-ten-minutes

Other Projects

Interactive LED Dome With Fadecandy, Processing and Kinect by amygoodchild
https://www.instructables.com/id/Interactive-LED-Dome-With-Fadecandy-Processing-and/

The Plotti Botti: An Internet-Controlled Drawing Robot! by 8bitsandabyte
https://www.hackster.io/8bitsandabyte/the-plotti-botti-an-internet-controlled-drawing-robot-51225a

Tools/Tips

Grand Central Guide
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-grand-central

John Park interview on Cool Tools
https://kk.org/cooltools/john-park-professional-maker/

New Fusion 360 Layer by Layer – Print In Place Hinges
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6AqZDajXHM

Product Spotlight: Circuit Playground Express
https://www.adafruit.com/product/3333

Circuit Playground guides
https://learn.adafruit.com/category/circuit-playground

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, clocking in with a cube, Grand Central MIDI control, wireless Neopixels, a rainbow archway, and a Mini Mac with a skull inside.

Hey everybody, I’m Donald Bell, and this is the first Adafruit Edition of a show I do called Maker Update. If you’re new to the show, it’s just a quick, visual recap highlighting projects, news and tips I think you’ll be into.

For this monthly Adafruit edition, I’m really just going to tackle Adafruit-related content, which is easy because there’s just so much great stuff here. So let’s get started with my favorite project of the month.

It’s a tough choice but I have to give it up to the Adafruit IO Time Tracking Cube by Brent Rubell and the Ruiz Bros. I’ve just never seen anything quite like it, and for the right person it really could make life a little easier.

The idea is, you connect the cube up to your computer and use it to track how long you spend on different tasks.

Coding, tinkering, writing, coffee break — each activity has an icon on the cube. When the icon is facing up, the time spent on that activity is automatically logged into a Google spreadsheet so you can account for your time throughout the day.

The Ruiz brothers created this futuristic 3D printed cube design, with snap-fit panels for each side and holes for mounting the project board and neopixel strip.

Inside the cube you have an Adafruit Feather Huzzah board to handle the code and Wi-Fi, plus a Prop-Maker Featherwing to power the lights and sound and detect the cube’s orientation.

It’s an intermediate project, not too pricey, and a great way to to get started with Adafruit IO.

It’s time for some news. It’s been a busy month for Adafruit. Not only did they announce their Create With Cartoon Network partnership along with Microsoft, but they also announced their involvement with Microsoft’s MakeCode Arcade platform.

The Cartoon Network partnership means that you’ll be seeing more beginner-friendly Circuit Playground projects that tie-in Cartoon Network characters. I think it’s a great mashup for kids.

The MakeCode Arcade also has a great hook for kids. You can program and modify and play little JavaScript-based retro games using the MakeCode web editor. But if you want a little handheld version, Adafruit has hardware and guides to make it happen, either on the Pi Zero or an M4 Express board.

Now for more projects. First let’s do a rapid-fire recap highlighting some of the cool projects that came out this past month from the Adafruit team.

John Park continues to build out his sound lab with a USB MIDI controller based on the new Adafruit Grand Central board. My favorite, though, is this optical step sequencer he made with a Crickit and a Feather M4. I want to make a giant version of this to hang on my wall.

The Ruiz Bros. also showed us how to turn a HalloWing board into a 3D printed Mac Mini, complete with startup chime. And hooking back into that Create with Cartoon Network announcement, they made Pearl’s Gem Wand from Steven Universe using a Circuit Playground Express, neopixels and some basic craft materials.

Erin St. Blaine shows how to make an interactive Powerpuff Girls Valentine using a Circuit Playground Express. She also did this really cool build showing how to use the Adafruit NeoTrellis keypad and a Feather Radiofruit board to make a wireless neopixel controller.

Dano Wall wrote up a fun guide on making this fiber optic rainbow archway using a Neopixel Dot Strand and hot glue gun sticks. It turns out that hot glue sticks are a great way to direct and diffuse LED lights. For another take on this idea check out Jon Bumstead’s Glue Stick LED Matrix on Instructables, which posted a few weeks back.

Finally, for those of you lucky enough to have your hands on the Grand Central board, Mike Barela has a useful guide on how to turn it into an audio soundboard in just ten minutes.

Outside of the Adafruit universe, there were a few standout projects I highlighted this past month that I’ll quickly recap.

On Instructables, Amy Goodchild has an outstanding guide on how she made this geodesic dome covered with over 4,000 Neopixels that react to a Microsoft Kinect.

A combination of 11 Fadecandy LED controllers, each with their own power supply, were needed to drive all the lights. The whole thing is awesome and Amy generously includes every little detail, template, and bit of code. Go check it out.

8bits and a Byte have a guide on how to make this internet controlled wall plotter, using a Raspberry Pi and software from Lets Robot. They call it the Plotti Botti, and it uses two stepper motors, an Adafruit stepper motor hat, and a Pi camera module. I can’t imagine the internet has a lot of nice things to draw, but let’s keep an open mind.

I have some tools and tips to share. You’ve been hearing a lot about the Grand Central M4 Express board, and seeing all the cool projects, but have you read the Primary Guide? There’s an incredible amount of features on this board, and this is the best way to get yourself up to speed.

The Cool Tools podcast has a new episode up with Adafruit’s John Park. John goes over some tool recommendations, but also spends a fair amount of time running through the live video streaming setup he uses for Adafruit videos.

The Ruiz Bros. have a great Layer by Layer tutorial video up that covers how to make print in place hinge designs in Fusion 360. What’s especially cool is that they show how to take advantage of user parameters so you can adapt the same hinge for other designs just by changing a few numbers.

Finally, let’s take a moment to acknowledge the awesomeness of the Circuit Playground Express. It’s easy to get distracted with all the new stuff Limor and Phil show us every week, but behind the scenes this board has been racking up around 150 project guides.

You can program it with Microsoft MakeCode, Circuit Python, or Arduino. It has lights, buttons, a speaker, a microphone, a motion sensor, a temperature sensor, capacitive touch pads, and even a place for you to write your name on the back so it doesn’t walk off. It’s one of the few boards I can recommend to anyone without reservation, so check it out.

Alright, and that does it for the first Adafruit Edition of Maker Update. Be sure to give it a thumbs up or leave a nice comment so that Limor and Phil can see that you’re into it. When I’m not here, you can catch Maker Update every week on the Make: magazine YouTube channel, or jump on the Maker Update newsletter to get show notes emailed directly to you. Alright? Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you back here on the Adafruit channel next month.