This week on Maker Update, a blazing fast 3D printed RC car, soft robotics in Korea, taking pictures with an Etch A Sketch, a robot recycler, and reading your pet’s RFID.

++Show Notes++

-=Project of the Week=-

3D Printed RC Car V3 — Tarmo3 — Front Parts [1/3] by KrisCubed
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3546277

-=News=-

Raspbian Update
https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/

RoboSoft 2019 Preview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anLRQ-Ryg0M

-=More Projects=-

Hacking an Etch-A-Sketch with a Raspberry Pi and camera: Etch-A-Snap!
https://www.twobitarcade.net/article/etch-a-snap/
https://imgur.com/gallery/T5n8g5l

Grippy the Arduino Nano-Driven Robotic Arm by DIYODE
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3534566
https://diyodemag.com/projects/build_grippy

Automated Recycling Separation Enabled by Soft Robotic Material Classification
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdzbDoEh44U
http://lillych.in/files/Chin-2019-robosoft.pdf

-=Tools/Tips=-

An Interactive Introduction to Fourier Transforms by Jez Swanson
http://www.jezzamon.com/fourier/index.html?\

Best Gripping Micro Cutters
https://youtu.be/3G-scCrSH60

SHOUTBOX Switch for Accessibility, Gaming (and More)
https://blog.tindie.com/2019/04/shoutbox-sound-operated-switch/

Bind MIDI inputs to LED lights using a Raspberry Pi by Aaron Chambers
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/midi-controlled-led-lights-raspberry-pi/

PiSugar Battery for Raspberry Pi zero A battery designed for Pi zero by Jdaie Lin
https://hackaday.io/project/164733-pisugar-battery-for-raspberry-pi-zero

Use Your Pet’s RFID Tag Implant for Home Automation Andreas Spiess
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y89yJ1Fq-hQ&feature=youtu.be

REPRODUCING VINTAGE PLASTIC PARTS IN TOP-NOTCH QUALITY by Eric Strebel
https://hackaday.com/2019/04/08/reproducing-vintage-plastic-parts-in-top-notch-quality/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3ZaPlV10z8

GET GREAT 3D SCANS WITH OPEN PHOTOGRAMMETRY
https://hackaday.com/2019/04/07/get-great-3d-scans-with-open-photogrammetry/

Meshroom software
https://alicevision.github.io/#meshroom

-=Product Spotlight=-

Pimoroni MLX90640 Thermal Camera Breakout
https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/pimoroni-ltd/PIM365/1778-1231-ND/9606191
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZqO-g5M8j8

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, a blazing fast 3D printed RC car, soft robotics in Korea, taking pictures with an Etch-A-Sketch, a robot recycler, and reading your pet’s RFID.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell and welcome to another Maker Update. I hope you’re all doing well. Thanks for joining me here again on the Digi-Key YouTube channel. I really appreciated all the support and comments on last week’s show. I’ve got another fun one for you, so let’s get started with the project of the week.

Over on Thingiverse, Kris Cubed has a 3-part guide on making this 3D printed, high-performance RC car.

You have to bring your own brushless motor, speed controller, and a servo for steering, but most of the project is 3D printed. From the drive shaft, to the tie rods, to the gearing, it’s all basic PLA plastic, and to hear it from Kris, it holds up about as well as a conventional RC car kit.

Which isn’t saying too much, because from my experience with my son’s RC car, something breaks nearly every time we go out with it. But the advantage to a system like this is that you can 3D print multiple replacement parts in advance.

It looks like a lot of fun. You can find the instructions, 3D print files, and bill of materials on the Thingiverse page down in the show notes.

It’s time for some news. Last week there was an update to the Raspbian OS for Raspberry Pi. With the update, you get new versions of the Chromium web browser, an update to the VLC media player, a bunch of performance improvements, and external drives will now mount to the desktop by default. You can find the updated image file at raspberrypi.org/downloads.

And this week there’s a conference on soft robotics in Seoul Korea called RoboSoft. It’s an exploration of different types of robots that use air-filled or fluid-filled appendages and actuators to interact with the world.

There’s a great video that runs through dozens of different robot demos you’re likely to see at the conference. Most of them are robotic concepts I’ve never seen before. It’s worth a look.

Back to more projects. Martin Fitzpatrick has a beautiful guide on how he hacked his Etch-A-Sketch to automatically draw pictures taken with a built-in camera.

This is a Raspberry Pi project that uses the Pi Camera module to snap a photo, then convert it to a 1-bit, high-contrast image that gets rendered into a line drawing with a single, continuous line.

Two inexpensive stepper motors plot the image onto the Etch a Sketch. The gears, knobs, and frame are all 3D printed based on a Tinkercad design. You can find the project guide, the code, and the 3D design files all on twobitarcade.net.

From DIYode, there’s a great guide on making your own robot arm using 3D printed parts, an Arduino Nano, servos, and a handful of other components.

It’s a cute design, simple enough to print and construct in a weekend, and definitely ripe for modifications.

For something much more complex, the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab has a video and two academic papers on RoCycle. This is a soft robotics arm that can automatically sort recyclable materials into seperate bins.

While it’s not the most efficient recycler, the cool thing here is how it’s detecting materials based on feedback from how squishy it is. There’s actually no computer vision going on here — just flexible plastic robot fingers reporting back on how squishy the thing is they’re gripping.

It’s time for a few tips and tools to share. First up, there’s this brilliantly done web-based, interactive introduction to Fourier transforms by Jez Swanson. From an audio perspective, it’s a way to break down complex sounds into a series of simple overlapping sine waves. But, there are all kinds of applications for this same idea, and it’s a great brain-stretcher.

On the Cool Tools channel I take a look at two types of nippers that include a kind of lead catcher, to keep your workbench tidy. Apparently this is an old idea, but the style is more rare these days.

On Tindie, I learned about a maker-made product called Shoutbox. It’s a device to help with accessibility, either for playing video games or controlling equipment. With it, you can trigger a button press with a shout or any loud noise that can be picked up by the built-in microphone.

Aaron Chambers has some Github example Python code for how he was able to synchronize addressable LED strip with MIDI commands from his music keyboard.

On Hackaday, Jdaie Lin showed off an idea for a rechargeable battery solution for the Pi Zero called the PiSugar. It’s a battery and board that take up the same footprint as the Pi Zero and transfer power to the Pi using spring pins to keep the design skinny. It’s not a product yet, but it has a lot of potential.

Andreas Spiess has a video that goes over how to read your pet’s RFID tag implant to use for home automation projects. Because it uses an uncommon frequency, you have to get a specific type of reader. Once you have it, though, you can create pet feeder or pet door projects that are specific for your animal.

Industrial designer Eric Strebl has a video showing how he was able to cast and recreate a vintage clear plastic cover for a VU meter. I’ve seen a lot of videos showing how to cast plastic parts, but not clear plastic like this. Plus, Eric has some new techniques that make use of his laser cutter that I haven’t seen before.

And through Hackaday I learned about a relatively new tool for processing images into 3D designs. It’s called Meshroom, and it’s free, open source software for Windows and Linux. There’s a great video overview on the Prusa 3D channel of how to use it to create designs for 3D printing.

For this week’s product spotlight, let’s take a look at the Pimoroni thermal camera breakout. This is a heat-vision camera that you can use with an Arduino or Raspberry Pi over an I2C data connection. It can detect temperatures from -40 to 300°C with 1-degree accuracy and up to 64 frames per second. It also comes in a standard or wide angle option.

Maybe you want to make a night-vision camera, or a robot that knows when to flip burgers at your barbeque, or put twist on that Pi Etch a Sketch project. You can order the board on Digi-Key, or even just add it to your favorites for when the right project comes along.

And that does it for his week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave thumbs up or leave a comment. Get on the Maker Update email list to get show notes sent out to you automatically along with a few bonus projects. A big thanks to my patrons on Patreon and also to Digi-Key for sponsoring the show. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next week.