This week on Maker Update: toast without borders, dissecting a droid, bending epoxy in the sun, wigglegrams, Lack hacks, and playing Tetris on your pumpkin.

++Show Notes [Maker Update Ep.307]++

-=Project of the Week=-

Pocket Toaster by Joel Creates
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3mbSd3gwkY

-=More Projects=-

Pumpktris by HaHaBird
https://www.instructables.com/Pumpktris-The-Tetris-Pumpkin/

Innovation in Star Wars Droids by James Bruton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpHlCWpQh-I

Wigglegram Camera by Profiel
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/PVDwAEtDep0

-=Tips & Tools=-

Lack Hacks Contest by Printables
https://www.printables.com/contest/157-lack-hacks

8 Ways to Attach a Tabletop by 3×3 custom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNfqnJH5YEA

Epoxy Bent Lamination by Blacktail Studio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCmE2yY8Kvk

Electrical Arcs at 1.75 million FPS by Slowmo Guys and Electroboom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDzVD-cqiWM

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

2022 Hack-a-Pumpkin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP4-wDKLcEM

-=Transcript=-

This week on Maker Update: Toast without borders, dissecting a droid, bending epoxy in the sun, wigglegrams, Lack Hacks, and playing Tetris on your Pumpkin.

Hello and welcome back to Maker Update. I’m Tyler Winegarner, I hope you’re all doing well, and relaxing into the post-spooky season. I hope your costumes all held up, the decorations look great, and you write down all your ideas for next year – it’s never too early to start planning. In the meantime we’ve got a great show for you, so let’s check out the project of the week.

As kitchen appliances go, it’s hard to top the humble toaster. Sure, they only do one thing, but a slice of toast is just so dang delightful that you never want to be without one. But one if you could have a toaster on the go?

That’s exactly what the latest project from Joel Creates is all about – making a portable, pocket sized toaster that can run on battery power. – the pocket toaster.

The first task to solve is the correct arrangement of nichrome wire for the heating element. Both the length and the gauge of the wire determine the current draw of the wire from the power source – its a balancing act between keeping the wire from getting too hot, and not pulling more power than the battery can safely provide.

The next problem to solve is making sure that heat just goes into the bread, and doesn’t melt the housing. Normal toasters get around this by having a bunch of empty space between the heating element and the outer shell of the toaster, but since the goal here is to make it as small as possible, that’s not an option.

What is an option is a collection of specialized materials to insulate and direct the heat. The other shell is made from Poly ether ether ketone, or PEEK, which can handle up to 500 degrees F. An aerogel patch and some Mica sheets keep the heat away from the bottom of the unit, and a stainless steel grille makes sure it escapes through the top, and into the piece of toast.

To use it, you just plug in the external 3 cell battery and hit the on switch – you have to wait two minutes for the toaster to warm up – otherwise it dries out the bread before toasting it. From a fully charged battery he can get three pieces of toast – so its not terribly efficient, but its a fun way to make toast on the go, and a project thats full of interesting problems to solve.

More Projects! I know Halloween is done for the year but you have to check out Pumpktris by HaHaBird. I found this over at Instructables and its pretty much exactly what it sounds like: It’s Tetris, but on a Pumpkin. There’s a matrix of 8 x 16 LEDs on the front, and you control the falling pieces using a joystick disguised as the stem.

The crazy part, to me at least, is that they didn’t take the easy route and use one of the many pre assembled LED matrices that are easily and cheaply available. Instead they used a pair of these Adafruit LED Matrix backpacks for the driver, and then wired up their own matrix with 128 individual LEDS. Its a project with a crazy amount of dedication to a gag, but this seems like a good one to know about – even if its just using the code to put Tetris on one of your future projects.

Speaking of the future, James Bruton has a new video out where he explores the kinematics and mechanisms of the B2-EMO droid from the Star Wars Andor series. A key part of this process is looking at the movements of the robot and working backwards to determine the placement of motors and actuators to replicate the motion. Of course, you can build just about anything if you throw enough money at it, but James is trying to do this on a budget – so he prints his own Mecanum wheels, forgoes actuators for lifting the feet for passive suspension, and a 3d printed rack and pinion system to extend the wheelbase. Its really fun to see how quickly the characteristic motions of the character come together.

And from Hackaday I learned about this custom camera hack by Profiel to create wigglegrams. These are pseudo-3d animated gifs that have a unique sense of motion and depth by taking three pictures that each have a slightly different parallax. After scavenging lenses from disposable cameras, he designs and prints up a custom lens for his Sony mirrorless camera. Because each of the captured images has a slightly different parallax, when you animate between them, it feels like the viewer is shifting just slightly back and forth in front of the subject. It’s a neat effect, and the incidental vignetting from the lens gives these a sort of weirdly vintage look.

Now for some tips and tools, over on Printables, I found the spoils of their Ikea Lack Hack printing contest. The humble and affordable Lack table has been the skeleton for a number of DIY projects, from 3d printing enclosures to server racks. Since it’s a 3d printing site it definitely leans more in the direction of printing accessories – brackets for joining and stacking the tables, tool holders, lighting, shelves, pretty much anything you could want to extend the use of a simple, cheap modular table.

Tamar from 3x3Custom has a guide for eight different ways to attach a tabletop. This is one of those things that sounds really simple, but if you attach the tabletop in the obvious way, you stand a really good chance of ruining the table as it expands and contracts with the seasons. From slotted stretchers to figure 8 fasteners, this video helps you get a grip on a deceptively complicated part of making your own furniture. Check it out.

From the Blacktail Studio youtube channel I saw this technique for turning a giant poured slab of epoxy into a bent lamination. Of course, you can’t use the traditional bent lamination techniques of cutting a bunch of tiny kerfs – but what did work was just leaving it out in the sun. There’s a bit more to it than that – he builds a form out of wood, uses a bunch of clamps and straps to help pull it into shape – but it’s a cool technique to learn to see the epoxy get soft and pliable again with nothing more than the hot sun.

And finally, we have a fun video from The Slowmo Guys and ElectroBoom, where they turn their high speed cameras towards the the electrical arcs of tesla coils. It goes without saying that its both fun and fascinating to see the arcs formed in hyper slow motion, But you also get some great explanations from Medhi as to what is happening. In the second part of the video they record some high speed footage of his Marx generator, to see if all of the arcs are generated simultaneously, or in sequence. It’s a fun video that’s full of discovery, give it a watch.

For this week’s Digi-Key spotlight, we’re closing out spooky season with their Hack-a-Pumpkin contest Live Stream featuring Allie Weber and OddJay. You’ll get to see Becky Stern’s version of Penny’s computer book from Inspector Gadget, Elijah Horlund’s pumpkin typing ball, Michael from Digikey’s pumpkin that screams when you stab it with a knife, and lots more. Its a super fun wrapup of halloween projects from across the entire internet, check it out.

Alright and that is going to do it for this week’s show. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, tell us why down in the comments, give us a thumbs up, maybe hit that subscribe button. As always, great pumpkin sized thanks to Digikey for making this show possible, and to you for watching. Take care, and I’ll see you soon.