This week on Maker Update, meals on wheels, Prusa goes big, Alexa Wheatley, a PC tower tavern, and fortune telling with a quantum computer.

++Show Notes [Maker Update Ep.260]++

-=Project of the Week=-

How to Transform a Piano into a BBQ Car by Handy Geng
https://youtu.be/Nv_FcwtBLJQ

-=News=-

Prusa XL
https://blog.prusaprinters.org/original-prusa-xl-first-look_58312/

-=More Projects=-

Wheatley: Personal Assistant by Steve Turner
https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/MrRoboto19/wheatley-personal-assistant-d1b278

NerdForge Builds a PC Inside of a Fantasy Tavern Model by Martina
https://blog.adafruit.com/2021/11/18/nerdforge-builds-a-pc-inside-of-a-fantasy-tavern-model/

Quantum Death Machine 💀 By Görkem
https://www.instructables.com/-Quantum-Death-Machine-/

-=Tips & Tools=-

Dead Spray Paint Cans – Empty them the Easy way by Deek Diedricksen
https://youtu.be/GnHNg4rvwUw

Exotic Round Displays and How to Use Them by Mr. Volt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJBDXjI5Zu4

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

How to Use Logic Level Shifters
https://youtu.be/GCoYO-sfi8Y

-=Transcript=-

This week on Maker Update, meals on wheels, Prusa goes big, Alexa Wheatley, a PC tower tavern, and fortune telling with a quantum computer.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell, welcome back to another Maker Update, and happy turkey day to my fellow Americans. I’m going to keep this one short, so I can get back to eating and napping. So let’s take a look at the project of the week.

In the spirit of eating, entertaining, and multitasking, I absolutely loved this project by Handy Geng on YouTube. It’s a piano, with a built-in spinning kebab grill.

That right there is good enough for me. But of course, to keep yourself entertained you have to make it so that each key on the piano triggers one of the kebabs to rotate. To get an even grill, you really need to reach deep into the song catalog and play every single key.

But if the smell of the grill and the sound of your crazy song aren’t enough to entice people over, Geng made sure that he could bring the whole experience over to them. The whole thing is on wheels, with a single motorized wheel under the seat that you can steer by twisting around.

Seriously, it’s fun, one-of-a-kind projects like this that really put a smile on my face. When I go to a Maker Faire, this is the stuff I want to find.

Now for some news. Last week, Prusa unveiled their newest 3D printer, the Prusa XL.

As the name would indicate, this is a printer for people who want a bigger build volume. This one can print 36cm or 14.17 inches in any direction. By comparison, the popular Prusa Mk3 has a print volume of 25×21cm, or 9.8 inches — so it’s a significant jump.

It’s also a totally different kind of machine, and I think that’s what excites me more than the volume since I don’t typically print big stuff or have the patience for it.

There’s some cool stuff going on with the new segmented heat bed, a new extruder, new gearbox for the filament, and a whole new way to probe and calibrate the build plate for the first layer of your print.

I don’t see any reason why these features won’t trickle down to an eventual new model of their original Prusa.

You’ll be waiting either way, because the XL isn’t expected to ship until 2022. Our global shipping situation, along with the same supply chain problems everyone’s dealing with, means you’ll need to be patient. You can preorder, though, with pricing expected to start around $2,000.

Now for more projects. Check out this animatronic Wheatly from Portal. This one is made by Steve Turner, but it owes a lot to designs from Mr. Volt and AmazingOomoo, whose designs are linked in this Arduino project guide.

Steve’s version uses 5 servos, 3 Neopixel rings, and is controlled by an Arduino Nano 33 IoT board.

By going with this particular Arduino you can use Amazon Skills within the Arduino IoT cloud for voice control, which is something you want with a robot assistant.

It’s a cool build, and Steve includes a 25 minute video on how he assembled everything. If you really want to make your own, it looks like everything you need is right here.

For a project that’s a little more art than science, you have to see Martina’s custom PC case on the Nerdforge channel.

People go to some pretty extreme lengths creating computer enclosures, but I’ve yet to see a 3-tier medieval tavern. This thing is nuts, and it’s easy to appreciate the final result, but what I enjoyed most was seeing Martina’s process.

From cardboard mockup, to sketching details in procreate, laser cutting panels, weathering the foam bricks, painting, and then painting some more — it’s just a real treat to see a project of this scale from start to finish.

For an enclosure that’s a little more my speed, check out the Quantum Death Machine by Görkem on Instructables.

This plywood cabinet includes a skull, a thermal printer, a fingerprint sensor, and a Raspberry Pi.

What it lacks in razzle-dazzle, it makes up for in concept. You put your finger on the sensor and in exchange you get a printout that predicts the cause of your demise.

It sounds simple enough, but in the spirit of the random nature of death, Gorkem attempts to randomize the results using the most advanced method currently available — quantum computing.

So in this guide you’ll learn how to use the Qiskit library for Raspberry Pi, allowing you to remotely perform basic tasks on IBM’s Quantum Computer. In this case, it’s a task they call Quantum Dice which acts as a random number generator.

Even without the quantum computer angle, I think there’s something darkly fun about this. But if you’re interested in dipping your toe into the world of quantum computers, it’s kind of a fun way in.

Now for some tools and tips. On his YouTube channel, Deek Diedricksen has a great tip on fully emptying your spray paint cans.

Not only is this a great way to keep paint out of the landfill, but it’s also a way to get a useful amount of paint out of cans that have run out of propellant. It also makes it possible to recycle the empty cans as metal scrap.

Also on YouTube, Mr. Volt shows off some of the latest and greatest options available in circular screens. From around 1-inch up to a whopping 5-inch, $200 display.

These can be great for wearables or creating animated eyes for robots or animatronics. A lot of them also include capacitive touch if you want them to be interactive.

For this week’s Digi-Key spotlight, they’ve got a new video up on using Logic Level Shifters.

Between Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Esp32, Teensy, Micro:bit, the logic level voltage of your board might not match up with the components you have connected to them.

For me, this becomes obvious when I’m connecting them up to addressable LEDs that want a 5v data input instead of the 3.3 volts that’s becoming more common.

This is where logic level shifters can come to the rescue. This video walks you through what’s going on behind the scenes, and also mentions a few circuits you can whip up for smaller projects.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up, or leave a comment. Enjoy the leftovers. Tyler and I will be off next week for a little break, but we’ll be back soon. Take care, and thanks for watching.