This week on Maker Update, an Alexa-powered L3 droid, a pedal-powered art machine, a robot snake, robot bread, an FPV rover, last call for cocktail robots, and creative clamping techniques.

Show Notes

Project of the Week

Alexa-based L3-37 Droid from Solo: A Star Wars Story by Patrick Stefanski
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4KK212-Jss
https://github.com/PatchBOTS/L337

News

Hackaday Robotics Module Challenge Winners
https://hackaday.com/2018/06/12/these-twenty-amazing-projects-won-the-robotics-module-challenge/

More Projects

D4E1 : MARBLE PAINTER 1.3 By Babette_Hendryckx
https://www.instructables.com/id/D4E1-Marble-Painter-13/

Bioinspired Robotic Snake by Will Donaldson
https://hackaday.io/project/158997-bioinspired-robotic-snake

Becky Stern Baguette Wobbler
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVulfYvR-tg

Based on Randy Sarafan design
https://www.instructables.com/id/Simple-Bots-Wobbler/

FPV ROVER V2.0 By markus.purtz
http://www.instructables.com/id/FPV-Rover-V20/

Cool Tools

This week’s Cool Tool recommendation is the Robert Larson 800-2875 Plastic Center Finder. For around $8, this thing will let you quickly find and mark the center of circular objects (it works for squares too). Here’s my full review.

Tools/Tips

Call for Makers at MFNY is open (9/22,23)
https://makerfaire.com/new-york/call-for-makers/

Cocktail Robotics Grand Challenge (7/15)
https://www.dnalounge.com/calendar/2018/07-15.html

Cocktail robot entry form
https://www.dnalounge.com/tickets/robots/contestants.html

I saw Tom Sachs use a MixKwik on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/tomsachs/
http://amzn.to/2sFd4yp

3D printed MixKwik alternatives for small pain bottles
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2946370
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2825417

Tips of the Week
https://makezine.com/2018/06/15/tips-of-the-week-29/

PlastiDip on EVA Foam by KamuiCosplay
https://youtu.be/WVcfaIGedtk

Creative Clamping with Barb Noren
https://youtu.be/qSelpOYUAeE

Maker Faires

Prague Czech Republic
Kansas City, Missouri USA
Taguig Philippines
Honolulu, Hawaii USA

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, an Alexa-powered L3 droid, a pedal-powered art machine, a robot snake, robot bread, an FPV rover, last call for cocktail robots, and creative clamping techniques.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell, and welcome to Maker Update. This is a show I’ve been doing for a few years now, but it’s my first time hosting it on the Make channel. Basically, I comb through the internet looking for cool projects and then once a week I share the best ones with you. If you’re into it, be sure to leave me a thumbs up. Alright? Now let’s get started with the project of the week.

Patrick Stefanski created this 3D printed, animated robot head modeled after the L3 droid from Solo.

To bring the droid to life, he’s using a single servo to tilt the head up and down and an LED in one eye that turns on when the head is up.

Patrick is using an Arduino triggered by a Raspberry Pi to drive the servo and LED. The Pi is in there because it’s running Amazon voice services, turning it into an Alexa—but better, because you can define “L3” as a custom wake word instead of saying “Alexa”.

Patrick also configured it so that once it wakes up, it answers back in an appropriately sassy female British accent.

It’s a great project and you can find a Github link to all the code and 3D print files down in the show notes.

It’s time for some news. This past week, Hackaday announced the 20 winners of their robotics module Hackaday prize. These are projects that could be easily incorporated into larger robot designs.

The winners include 3D printed actuators, brushless motors designed into circuit boards, robot arms, prototyping systems, mowing modules for farm robots, and more. A Hackaday post collecting the winners is included in the show notes.

It’s time for more projects. A lot of robot projects this week for some reason, but let’s start off with an art machine.

Babette Hendryckx (Hendrix) has an Instructable up showing this bike-powered machine that randomly tosses paint and marbles over a clamped down t-shirt.

Aside from the bike frame, the design is mostly made of wood. It looks like a fun activity to have at a kid’s birthday party, or a camp, or a local children’s museum.

Now for more robots! Back on Hackaday, Will Donaldson has the details for building a slithering robot snake.

The body is made from a bunch of servos mounted in 3D printed links. An Arduino Nano controls the servo motion.

The tricky part is powering it all. The cable you see coming off the end of the snake goes out to a bench power supply, sending out 5 volts at 20 amps. Very cool though, and a little creepy.

For something far more approachable, Becky Stern has a guide up on making a robot from a baguette.

Made for an interactive show at the NYC Resistor hacker collective titled “self-driving carbs”, Becky’s breadbot is a riff on a simple robot design by Randy Sarafan.

Each wheel is really a continuous rotation servo that’s had its controller chip removed. It’s a cheap way to make a geared DC motor you can run from batteries, plus you get all the neat servo shaft attachments.

Randy made his original design inside a little plastic tub, but I think we can all agree that a baguette makes a superior enclosure.

That said, I’ll forgive Markus Purtz for not using bread for this 3D printed, remote control, FPV rover.

This is a tank tread design, with a wireless camera system on the front and back, plus servos to tilt the cameras up and down and I think there’s even an infrared LED on the front for a night-vision mode.

This looks like so much fun—maybe even more fun than the baguette robot. Sorry Becky.

I have a few tips to share. First, the call for makers is now open for Maker Faire New York, World Maker Faire. The faire takes place September 22 and 23rd at the New York Hall of Science.

If you’re into cocktail robotics—either making them or drinking from them—the Grand Challenge of cocktail robotics is happening at DNA Lounge in San Francisco on Sunday July 15th. There’s still time to enter a robot.

Have you ever heard of a MixKwik? It’s an attachment for a reciprocating saw that turns it into a spraypaint can shaker. Personally, I don’t know if it’s any good, but I learned about it when I saw artist Tom Sachs put one to use on Instagram, and that’s endorsement enough for me.

I also did a little digging and found some 3D printed designs on Thingiverse made for shaking small model paint bottles.

Over on makezine.com Gareth Branwyn’s Tips of the Week column includes a tip on using PlastiDip spray on EVA foam from KamuiCosplay. There’s also great overview of creative clamping from Barb Noren of Barb Makes Things.

Maker Faires! This weekend we have Prague in the Czech Republic, Kansas City, Missouri; Taguig, Philippines; and Honolulu, Hawaii. If one’s near you, go check it out.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe to Make’s channel if you’re not already. I’ll also include a link to my channel at the end here where you can catch up on the back catalog of Maker Updates, if you’re curious. You can also join the Maker Update email list to get each week’s video and show notes emailed out to you automatically.

That’s it, thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next week.