This week on Maker Update, an attractive clock, robots on the ceiling, Micro:Bit gets an upgrade, a cylon scooter, pocket model kit, a box of life, and OLED fangs.

++Show Notes [Maker Update 203]++

‏-=Project of the Week=-

Mechanical-Digital Steel Ball Clock By Eric Nguyen
https://www.instructables.com/Mechanical-Digital-Steel-Ball-Clock/

‏-=News=-

Toyota Research’s Ceiling-Mounted Domestic Robot
https://www.core77.com/posts/102246/Toyota-Researchs-Ceiling-Mounted-Domestic-Robot

New BBC Micro:Bit
https://microbit.org/new-microbit/

‏-=More Projects=-

LED Cylon Scooter – 80s Larson Scanner By bekathwia
https://www.instructables.com/LED-Cylon-Scooter-80s-Larson-Scanner/

3D Printed Card Model Kits by Nakozen
https://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=nakozen+sprue&type=things&sort=relevant

The Lil’ Box of Life by Emily Velasco
https://youtu.be/utt3tJ99TU4
https://github.com/emilyvelasco/TVGOL

PixelMask by Build XYZ
https://www.buildxyz.xyz/pixelmask-covid-19-halloween-mask/

‏-=Tips & Tools=-

How To Pick The Right Size Motor For Homemade / DIY Projects by Jeremy Fielding
https://youtu.be/64Ky4mJE7bU

Best Pocket Tripod review by Tyler Winegarner
https://youtu.be/4IJQyw0Hd4E

Building a Video Deck in Two(ish) Days by Zack Freedman
https://youtu.be/72a85tWOJVY

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

Testers and stand-offs @adafruit @digikey
https://youtu.be/ZOroV-K0Rfo?t=927

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, an attractive clock, robots on the ceiling, a Micro:Bit gets an upgrade, a cylon scooter, pocket model kit, a box of life, and OLED fangs.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell, and this is Maker Update, your weekly update for maker-y things. I hope you’re all doing well. I’m finally getting some Fall vibes around here, and I like it. Change is in the air. I’ve got a fun show for you, so let’s get started with the project of the week. 

Check out this clock from Eric Nguyen. It uses a combination of magnets and steel balls to create the numbers. Every minute, a pair of servos holding it up turn the clock face down into this tray where it can exchange the steel balls and update the time. 

It’s very clever. It also makes a satisfying ker-chunk sound as the magnets engage. 

Behind the clock face you’ll find an Arduino Nano, a real-time clock module, and around 28 SG90 servos. Each servo horn is connected up to a single segment made of laser cut wood and magnets. The servo pushes the segment forward when it wants to populate it with steel balls, and then retracts it to clear them off.

One tip I picked up from this project is how to make use of servo signal reversers. I’d never heard of them before, but they seem to be common in RC projects. It’s a little bit of hardware you wire in-line with a servo that just turns it the opposite way it’s instructed. 

Eric’s using one here for the hefty hinge servos on each side. This way he can mirror the orientation of how they’re mounted, and they can both be wired up to the same servo output without twisting in opposite directions. 

I also just have to mention Eric’s choice of materials here. A lot of this is lasercut sheets of plywood with a walnut veneer already on the faces. But the clock face is actually laser cut acrylic with a walnut veneer glued to it. It looks great, and it’s another trick I hope to use someday.

Now for some news. Last week, Toyota Research Institute showed off their concept for a ceiling mounted domestic robot. 

They call it a gantry robot, because it actually runs along a framework on the ceiling to access different parts of your home. The idea is that navigating floorspace is such a complicated task for robots, that putting them on the ceiling simplifies things and keeps the robot out of the way. 

Granted, you have to make sure it doesn’t zoom by and decapitate you, but the demo here shows it going very, very slow. 

I mention it because I think it’s a neat frontier for us to explore — ceiling robotics. Maybe a ceiling mounted robot that could follow your pets around with a laser pointer for entertainment. There’s possibilities up there.

Also, this week the Micro:Bit foundation has announced a new version of their Micro:Bit board. It’s essentially the same form factor. They’ve added a microphone and a speaker, and increased the speed of the processor. 

A power saving mode has been added so that you can power down your project without disconnecting it. As a small design improvement, they’ve notched the connection pads to make it easier for alligator clips to stay on. 

Otherwise, the design is all made to be as backwards compatible as possible. If you have a project that works on the first-gen Micro:bit, it should work here too with no problem. It should be available in November and I expect pricing will be about the same.

Now for more projects. Becky Stern has a new guide on how she added these Knight Rider style animated LEDs to her boyfriend’s scooter. It’s the perfect ‘80s touch to an awesomely ‘80s scooter design. 

It actually turns out to be a much simpler project than I expected. Becky is using a 5v Trinket board attached to a short strip of Neopixels. For the code, she’s using an existing Arduino sketch from Phil B.

What surprised me is that she’s actually powering the Trinket directly from the scooter’s 12 volt battery. Even though it’s at the upper limit of what the Trinket can handle, it turns out that the voltage regulator on the Trinket can convert that down to the 5 volts needed for the board and the LEDs. 

Crazy. And it gets me thinking about what other lighting effect projects you could make for cars and scooters.

On Thingiverse, Peeto Skeeto (aka Nakozen) has been very busy uploading these tiny, 3D printable model kits. Some are modeled after real planes and rocket ships, but there’s also a lot of fun sci-fi ships too. 

These are fun to make, quick to print, and a lot of them include an optional design with a loop built in to turn it into an ornament, or something you can hang from your ceiling robot. 

Emily Velasco posted a video for this Arduino- powered Conway’s game of life. It’s using the Arduino TV out library to send out a composite video signal. If you love the look of old TVs but wonder what you could plug into them to make them useful, this is a cool way to go. You can find the code on Github. I have a link down in the show notes.

If you’re wondering how to mask up your kids for Halloween, check out this animated monster mask on the build XYZ blog. 

This 3D printed design uses N95 replacement filters on the sides and an OLED display on the front. There’s a microphone built-in that animates the mouth as you talk. With the touch of a button, you can make the screen show a Trick or Treat sign. All of it runs off an Arduino Nano.

It doesn’t look super comfortable, but when was the last time you had a comfortable Halloween mask. As far as COVID safety goes, you’re rolling the dice with any homemade solution, so proceed at your own risk.

Now for a few tools and tips. On his YouTube channel, Jeremy Fielding answers a recurring question he gets: “How do you pick the right motor for your project?”

In the video, he not only walks through the formula for how to figure out the motor power needs for your project, but he demonstrates what it really means to trade off speed for torque. It’s a great video.

If you’re looking for an inexpensive and reliable pocket tripod for documenting your projects, check out this recommendation from Tyler Winegarner on the Cool Tools channel. The UltraPod comes in two sizes, and unlike a gorillapod, it includes a strap to tightly secure it around things.

Also, I recommend checking out this video by Zack Freedman on how he built this 3D printed video transport controller in a weekend. It’s really a tips video disguised as a project video. 

Zack offers up some useful strategies for planning out any weekend project, designing for quick iterations, accepting the flaws, and hitting your deadline so that the project doesn’t turn into a dusty box of “someday I’ll finish it”. If you struggle to finish the projects you start — and we’ve all been there — Zack’s tough love pep talk may be just what you need.

For this week’s Digi-Key spotlight I’m going to feature this video from Lady Ada on the Adafruit channel. She shows how she uses the Digi-Key search to find just the right standoffs and spacers for her projects. 

In the process, she also offers some tips on how to measure for the standoffs you need using calipers and explains when you may want to go with a nylon option instead of metal.

If you’re ordering just a handful of these, the pricing on Digi-Key may not blow you away. But as she explains, as soon as you’re ordering 100 or 1,000 of these for kits or manufacturing, Digi-Key’s bulk pricing is going to be hard to beat.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up or leave a comment. You can get on the Maker Update mailing list, so you never miss a show. A big thanks to my patrons on Patreon and to Digi-Key electronics for beig awesome and making this whole thing possible. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next week.