This week on Maker Update, a foot pedal for musical expression, launching the 2022 Hackaday Prize, tool rolls, wireless touch pads, and getting your flex on.

++Show Notes [Maker Update]++

-=Project of the Week=-

MIDI Foot Pedal By Ruiz Brothers
https://learn.adafruit.com/midi-foot-pedal/

-=News=-

2022 Hackaday Prize
https://prize.supplyframe.com/

-=More Projects=-

Waxed Canvas Tool Roll by Becky Stern
https://beckystern.com/2022/04/03/waxed-canvas-tool-roll/

Wireless ESP32-S2 Touch Screen Controller for Pure Data By Liz Clark
https://learn.adafruit.com/wireless-esp32-s2-controller-for-pure-data/overview

-=Tips & Tools=-

MyoWare 2.0
https://myoware.com/

Induction Coin Selector with Arduino by Electronoobs
https://youtu.be/Kl7uTviiOG0

Todbot’s CircuitPython Tricks
https://learn.adafruit.com/todbot-circuitpython-tricks

Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales 2 – Book Giveaway Update
https://www.getrevue.co/profile/garethbranwyn

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

Solar-Powered Household Device – Potentially Genius™
https://youtu.be/bGV8ouyyj58

-=Transcript=-

This week on Maker Update, a foot pedal for musical expression, launching the 2022 Hackaday Prize, tool rolls, wireless touch pads, and getting your flex on.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell, and welcome back to another Maker Update. I hope you’re all doing well and finding ways to stay creative. I’ve got a great show for you, so let’s start off with the project of the week.

One way to add an extra human touch to the process of digital music making is to work with an expression pedal.

With this, you can use your foot to modulate some extra element of your instrument. It could be the sustain of a piano, or the gain of a virtual guitar amp, or the cutoff filter of a drum machine or synthesizer.

Best of all, it turns out that it’s neither difficult or expensive to make your own. Thanks to this guide by the Ruiz Brothers, with some 3D printing and around $20 worth of components, you can make your own versatile, USB MIDI expression pedal.

Sometimes I award project of the week to things that showcase an extraordinary amount of effort, or navigated a daunting amount of complexity.

But sometimes a project like this comes along that shows me something I’ve never seen done before, and executes it with a level of polish and thorough documentation that puts a smile on my face and just feels like it would be fun to make.

I don’t need a MIDI expression pedal, and I suspect you probably don’t need one either, but half the fun of making a Ruiz Brother project is stepping into their world for a moment and noticing the different considerations they made with the design.

And keep in mind, this is essentially a foot-controlled potentiometer. It’s communicating over MIDI in this example, but if you wanted it act as a game controller, or a LED lightshow control, or even an analog volume control for some non-digital project – you could absolutely repurpose this awesome pedal design for any number of projects.

Also, a shout out to Kattni Rembor and Liz Clark who contributed to this project.

Now for some news. The 2022 Hackaday prize, sponsored by Digi-Key and Supplyframe, is now underway. This year’s theme is Sustainability, Resiliency, and Circularity. The competition is made up of several different project challenges that stretch from now until the end of October.

These include Planet-Friendly Power; Reuse, Recycle, Revamp; Hack it Back; Climate Resilient Communities; and the Save the World Wildcard.

The top 50 finalists across these challenges will receive $500, with larger awards for the 2nd-5th place winners and a grand prize of $50,000 that comes with a Supplyframe DesignLab Residency. You can find a link to the details down in the description.

More projects! For a project with some universal utility, check out Becky Sterns guide for making your own waxed canvas tool roll.

Maybe you’re like me and a sewing project is a little out of your comfort zone. But who can resist a good toolkit – and a custom one made to fit your specific, go-to tools feels like the kind of maker initiation project we should all aspire to.

Not only does Becky detail every step of the process, both in her video and written guide, but she also includes some basic patterns that you can adapt for your own tool roll design. Check it out.

And back on Adafruit, Liz Clark shows how she made this wireless touch screen controller that allows you to manipulate Pure Data software using touch and accelerometer gesture control.

This one is more for people ready to jump into the deep end of custom digital music controllers. It’s not as plug and play as the MIDI expression pedal, though you could set up Pure Data to spit out MIDI control signals if you wanted to say, manipulate an external synth or drum machine with a controller like this.

For this guide, though, Liz shows how to install the free, open source software, and what’s needed to code and communicate with Pure Data.

What’s especially cool is that Liz includes a sample Pure Data patch you can use right out of the gate to make the project work, and explore from there.

I also love how she used this $5 resistive screen panel. Because it’s meant to go over a screen, it’s clear. But in this case, Liz has it lit up from behind just using the built-in indicator LEDs from the different boards tucked inside. The whole thing has a playful Star Trek Original Series vibe that I really like.

Now for some tips and tools. This past week, Sparkfun announced the availability of the Myoware 2.0 system. These are different sensors that you can use to create projects that react to muscle flexing.

The first version has been out there for awhile, but this latest update includes more varieties of boards, more output modes, more electrode connections, and a more compact design.

I expect these are going to be a killer ingredient in cosplay, props, and Halloween costumes going forward.

On YouTube, Electronoobs has a great tutorial on using coin acceptor modules with Arduino, and how they use induction and phototransistors to determine coin size and type.

I’ve always wanted to make a coin operated Arduino project, and I enjoyed getting a better understanding of how these things work.

For those of you expanding into the world of Circuit Python programming, there’s a fantastic resource on Adafruit now called Todbot’s CircuitPython Tricks.

These are handy code snippets from Todd Kurt all sorted by category.

So let’s say you want some secret code kung fu for working with Neopixel LEDs – you just select that category on the left and you get some documentation and code to take you to the next level. Worth a bookmark, for sure.

And an update on the Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales 2 book giveaway. You all delivered some outstanding tips and wisdom. It was a real pleasure to read through those comments. Gareth is in the process of selecting the winners, which he’ll announce in his newsletter next week. You can find a link to that in the description.

For this week’s Digi-Key spotlight, check out the latest episode of Potentially Genius. This time around, they’re brainstorming and prototyping ideas for solar-powered household gadgets.

They land on the idea of solar powered blinds and it’s fun to watch them work through it. But it’s also great to draft off the creative energy and eco mindset here to start thinking about solar-powered projects that could find their way to this year’s Hackaday prize. Check it out.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up, or leave a comment. Get on that email list if you’d like to get each week’s show notes right to your inbox. A big thanks to Digi-Key electronics for making this whole show possible. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you soon.