This week on Maker Update, a test machine gets its groove back, the winner of the 2020 Hackaday Prize, 3d printed HOTAS, Controller teardowns, perfect circles, cutting felt with a table saw.

++Show Notes [Maker Update #208]++

-=Project of the Week=-

I Made An Electromechanical Shaker/Guiro out of a very modified bit of test equipment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLroMYb-xH8

-=News=-

THE BYTE IS THE GRAND PRIZE WINNER OF THE 2020 HACKADAY PRIZE
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/07/the-byte-is-the-grand-prize-winner-of-the-2020-hackaday-prize/

-=More Projects=-

3d printed DualShock 4 HOTAS
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4618312

SHIELD Cam & Mic Indicator
https://www.instructables.com/SHIELD-Is-Someone-Watching-You/

Nerf Light Gun Controller
https://www.instructables.com/Nerf-Light-Gun-Controller/

Neopixel Vase
https://www.instructables.com/The-Neopixel-LED-Vase/

-=Tools/Tips=-

PS5 Controller Teardown
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rNITneXnCo

Cutting Perfect Circles, 4 methods
https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Cut-Circles-4-Methods/

9mm PET Felt Material
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbMyVUxYuTc

Motion Gen – Designing Robotic Motions
https://motiongenpro.appspot.com/

Designing for complex 3d shapes
https://youtu.be/2Gj2HqlANm4

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

I2C and SPI: Communication Protocols – Tech Basics | Digi-Key Electronics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgb_qNzcy6o

Transcript

This week on Maker Update: a test machine gets it’s groove back, the winner of the 2020 Hackaday Prize, 3d printed HOTAS, Controller teardowns, perfect circles, cutting felt with a table saw.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Maker Update! I’m Tyler Winegarner – I normally host the Adafruit edition of Maker Update but Donald decided to hand me the keys for this week’s show. I’m really excited about the projects I get to share with you, so let’s check out the project of the week.

Over on the Look Mum No Computer Youtube channel, Sam Battle has recently acquired a piece of industrial test equipment from Danish company Bruel & Kjaer. On its own, that’s not very interesting – but it’s full of these mechanical counters that all make a satisfying click with every digit that counts up.

Look Mum No Computer is a channel dedicated to DIY electronic instruments – and what Sam does modify the unit to turn it into a sort of mechanical shaker or guiro. The challenge is to trigger the 13 counters in a cascading pattern instead of all at once.  There’s no microcontroller – a serial to parallel shift register handles the triggering of each counter, and there’s a 555 timer and potentiometer to set the clock speed. 

Once it’s all assembled, there’s different buttons to trigger all 13 clickers, a single click or a short 3 hit click. There’s also an input port so he can trigger it from other instruments or sequencers, and there’s a contact microphone inside so he can further shape the voice. It’s still a pretty raw mechanical sound that’s probably not going to appeal to most listeners, but it’s a fascinating transformation from an old piece of test equipment into a usable rhythmic instrument. 

Sam doesn’t provide the schematic for the circuit, but you could probably just take a screenshot of the video if you wanted to build something similar. When he’s able to open it, the mechanical shaker will be on display at the Museum of Everything Else, but in the meantime you can get samples of the instrument down in the description.

Now for the News, The Byte has been announced as the winner of the 2020 Hackaday Prize. The Byte is a hands-free human interface device that can allow people with cerebral palsy or severe spinal injuries to use computers or other devices.  Since the mouth and tongue are core motor functions, most people retain a high degree of mobility here even if they’ve lost ability to control the rest of their body. 

Inside the silicone rubber enclosure is a pressure sensitive bite sensor and a four way pressure sensitive joystick. The demo shows how The Byte can be used to emulate a mouse, but because the control unit is a microcontroller, you could adapt this to control just about anything – wheelchairs, prosthetics, even smarthome controls. And the good news is, the bill of materials is just a few dollars, so it can be accessible to just about anyone.

More Projects! On thingiverse I found this 3d printed attachment from Akaki to turn your Dual Shock 4 controller into a HOTAS. HOTAS stands for Hands on Throttle and Stick – they’re popular controllers for making flight simulators more immersive. If you remember the clip-on steering wheel for the Xbox controller from a while back, its like that, but gone crazy. He admits that it’s a little bit flimsy, but he takes time to demonstrate it in a video and it looks pretty solid.

He also shows how to print a second stick with trigger and thumb buttons to make a Hands on Stick and Stick controller for games like Star Wars Squadrons, and there’s some additional designs available for other game controllers. Check out the link down in the description, but make sure you’re not taking a drink when you hear how he pronounces this controller arrangement.

On Instructables I saw this universal webcam and microphone warning indicator from Tovi Levis that lets you know when software has activated either of these devices. Most webcams have a warning light, but microphones don’t. He wrote an application in C Sharp that detects when software activates either device – it lights up a warning and sounds a tiny buzzer. It doesn’t report when you’re muted within an application, but it will let you know if software is listening to you when you’re unaware, like in Fortnite.

I also found this mod from Britt Liv to turn a Nerf gun into a light gun controller for  the Mame arcade emulator. She’s gutted almost everything but the outer shell and replaced them with 3d printed parts to house the new electronics. There’s two versions – one is wired and the other connects wirelessly via bluetooth. Her instructable shows you everything you need and walks you through the whole retrofit.

Finally, MakeTVee designed this 3d printed this neopixel vase that uses clear filament as light pipes to channel and diffuse the color. An Adafruit Neopixel ring is hidden in the base, and the light is directed up the body of the vase through 16 different pieces of unextruded clear filament. The filament is softened in the oven to make it pliable before fitting it into the base, and the effect is really striking. It’s cool to see filament used as a raw material for projects. 

Now for some tips and tools, you can’t get your hands on a Playstation 5 console yet, but you can buy the controller – not much to do then but take it apart. You’ll find plenty of teardowns on YouTube but TronicsFix looks at it from a repairability perspective. The good news is that its all snap fit tabs and screws with very little adhesive and no welded plastic, so it should be easy to work with. No mention of useable solder pads for modifications for accessibility or DIY Scuf controllers, but you do get a good look at how the fancy new haptic feedback triggers work.

Montreal DIY shows off four different methods for cutting wooden circles – there’s the familiar method of using a plunge router with a circle cutting jig, and a combination method that uses a router, a jigsaw, and a flush trim bit. This jig for cutting circles on a tablesaw looks tedious and a little dangerous, but this jig for cutting small to medium circles on a bandsaw looks easy and super satisfying. Check it out.

AS a material, you’ve probably heard of felt before, but not like this. Cristiana from the Get Hands Dirty Youtube channel shows off this 9mm felt made from recycled PET plastic. It comes in 8×4 foot sheets just like plywood, and you can use woodworking power tools to cut it. She using it to make an acoustic panel for her desk in a geometric pattern. The material comes from a company called Re:Felt, and unfortunately, it’s not cheap – each sheet costs $150 Euro. But it’s got a great look and seems like a fun material to work with.

While working on Empire State Maker Faire I learned about MotionGen. MotionGen is a web app that helps you design mechanical movements for robotics. You can design 4 bar linkages driven by a single motor, or shoulder and elbow mechanisms with multiple motors. The real power is being able to see the motion path of each of your joints. There’s also a tool where you can draw your desired motion path, but the output looks a little inefficient. There’s plenty of options for exporting your data as well. You can sign up for an account by following the link down in the description.

If you stick around to the end of Akaki’s video of his 3d printed HOTAS controller, he’s got some great tips for designing parts to fit around complex 3d shapes, like what you’d find on game controllers. He’s using paper cutouts to test cross sections for what will fit snugly around the forms of the controller – since the 3d model files you can download don’t reflect reality close enough for a proper fit. Once he’s found the right profiles, he brings them into cad for his final design. 

For this week’s Digikey Spotlight, check out this video comparing i2c and SPI, the two communication protocols you’ll likely use in a project.  These days most breakouts work over i2c because it’s so simple – you just need 2 data pins. But SPI can run a lot faster than i2c, though it requires a greater number of data pins. However, if you’re running multiple breakouts on the SPI protocol, you can spread it out since you only need a single clock and data pin from your main board.

Alright and that’s going to do it for this month’s show – be sure to subscribe, give us a thumbs up, leave us a comment if you like! As Donald mentioned last week, Sophy Wong will be taking the helm next week, so be sure to look out for that, and then we’ll all be taking the week off the following week for Thanksgiving. Huge thanks to everyone at Digikey for making this show possible, and you for watching. You can see me next on the Adafruit Maker Update in December – I’ll see you then. Take Care.