This week on Maker Update, a Neopixel trampoline, pocket power supply, a mirrored arcade cabinet, light-up fingernails, Pixel Time, and a psychedelic scuba mask. This week’s Cool Tool is Socket Bit Hex Shanks.

Show Notes

Project of the Week

LED Trampoline by Ruiz Bros.
https://learn.adafruit.com/led-trampoline

More Projects

Variable Portable Power Supply by Lonesoulsurfer
https://www.instructables.com/id/Portable-Variable-Power-Supply-1/

DC-DC Variable Voltage Regulator Board on eBay
https://www.ebay.com/itm/New-LM2596-DC-DC-4V-35V-to-1-23V-30V-Step-Down-Power-Module-Voltage-Regulator-3A/252867939335

Grotoro by Concrete Games
http://shakethatbutton.com/grotoro/
https://concretegames.itch.io/grotoro

Neopixel Manicure by Sophy Wong
https://learn.adafruit.com/neopixel-manicure

Pixel Times v2 by Dominic Buchstaller
https://2dom.github.io/PixelTimes/

Infinity Mirror Scuba Mask by Curt White
https://hackaday.io/project/116475-infinity-mirror-scuba-mask

Cool Tools Minute

Socket Bit Hex Shanks
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B01NCOIF4G/ctmakerupdate-20

Tools/Tips

3D PRINTER TIME LAPSE VIDEOS DITCH THE BLUR
https://hackaday.com/2018/04/13/3d-printer-time-lapse-videos-ditch-the-blur/

Octolapse
https://github.com/FormerLurker/Octolapse

Loek Vellekoop Talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxwysC9ZqKA

Maker Faires

New Orleans Mini Maker Faire w/ talk by Jimi Diresta!
Bloomsburg Mini Maker Faire
Maker Faire Westport
Bowling Green Mini Maker Faire
Dnipro Mini Maker Faire
Albuquerque Mini Maker Faire
Mohawk Valley Mini Maker Faire
South Bend Mini Maker Faire
Kadikoy Mini Maker Faire
Roanoke Mini Maker Faire

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, a Neopixel trampoline, pocket power supply, a mirrored arcade cabinet, light-up fingernails, Pixel Time, and a psychedelic scuba mask.

I’m Donald Bell and it’s time for another Maker Update. This week, I’m going to try something new and instead of covering 2 or three new projects, I’m going to quickly run through 6 of them. So brace yourself, and let me know what you think.

My favorite project this week is this LED trampoline by the Ruiz brothers on Adafruit. They’ve rigged it up so that with each bounce, a ring of LED stip set in the trampoline will flash different colors or trigger animations.

The project uses a length of Neopixel LED strip connected to one of Adafruit’s new $12 ItsyBitsy M0 Express boards. A $1 vibration sensor is triggered with each jump, which the board takes as an input and activates the LEDs. Everything is powered from a portable USB power bank just to keep things simple.

It’s a fun project, especially for kids, and one of those projects that I’ll be surprised if there isn’t a commercial version of this idea soon.

More projects! Over on Instructables, Lonesoulsurfer has a guide on making a pocketsize variable power supply using a 9 volt battery, voltage meter display, a potentiometer, banana plug sockets, and these cheap voltage regulator boards you can get for $1 on eBay.

It’s not the most practical design since it will suck up 9v batteries, but if you need something small and portable as part of an electronics kit, it’s a neat idea. Also just cool to know about those cheap voltage regulator boards.

I also got a kick out of seeing this custom arcade cabinet made for an indie space shooter game called Grotoro.

It’s basically just a box with a monitor mounted on one end and controls built into the bottom side. But by using reflective paper on the inside, the screen’s image is multiplied to give it a whole different feel. The game itself is downloadable for Windows for whatever price you feel like paying for it.

Back on Adafruit, Sophy Wong has a guide on making a Neopixel LED manicure. She’s using these tiny, individual Neopixel Nano LEDs, wiring them up to each other and a Gemma M0 board, loading up some included Circuit Python code, and then super gluing them to acrylic nails.

It’s a super cyberpunk look, though probably not the most practical considering all of those wires.

Dominic Buchstaller has a writeup on version 2 of his Pixel Times display. It’s a 32×16 grid of multicolor pixels that works as a clock, or weather station, or just displays cute pixelated animations.

The design is built around what’s called a P10 LED panel, commonly found as part of a large electronic billboard. It’s a loose grid of addressable LEDs and they’re cheap — around $15.

By placing a 3D printed grid of plastic over each LED, Dominic’s design isolates the light of each light, creating these well-defined pixels. Behind it all is an inexpensive NodeMCU board, which uses Wi-Fi to pull down time and weather data, and load up new animations.

And for the last project here, Curt White made this Infinity Mirror scuba mask that has a small hole cut out so that you can actually see through it.

The project uses a dense strip of WS2812b LEDs or Neopixels, a Jacques Cousteau style scuba mask, a AA battery pack, an Arduino, a switch, a sheet of mirrored acrylic, and an optional accelerometer for making the animation responsive to body movement.

I’m not sure what I’d use it for, but it might be good to have on handy as a last minute psychedelic scuba costume.

It’s time for another Cool Tool review. This time we’re taking a look at a socket bit adapter set for a drill or impact driver. These cost me around $8 on Amazon, and if you want to pick some up for yourself you can use the Amazon link in the description which helps support my videos and the Cool Tools blog.

For reasons I don’t understand, my socket wrench set and most of the sets I see on Amazon, don’t include a basic adapter for dropping a socket bit into a drill or impact driver. This is dumb.

Fortunately, you can fix this oversight for around $8 and get a set of adapters that will fit 1/4″, 3/8″, and 1/2″ sockets.

Now you can just pop a socket onto the correct adapter, chuck it in your drill or driver, and make quick work of nuts and bolts. Whenever I use this, I feel like I’m part of a NASCAR pit crew.

There’s nothing fancy about them, and I can’t think of any reason you’d need to pay more to get a better result.

If you’re lucky, you can find a place to keep them in your socket wrench set. Mine tuck right in under the wrench, which helps me keep everything together.

That’s all there is to it. Such a simple thing, but I wish I’d gotten them sooner, and I wish more socket sets just came with these.

You can grab the same ones using the link in the description. And remember, you can see thousands of reader recommended tools like these at Cool-Tools.org

Two last things to share with you. If you have a 3D printer and you use Octoprint as a wireless server to feed it designs, there’s an Octoprint plug-in called Octalapse that allows you to create these timelapse videos of your prints that makes it look like they just grow magically.

Because the timelapse software can synchronize with the printer, it only ever takes a picture when the print nozzle is out of the picture. It’s cool, right?

And if you remember from a few episodes ago I talked about those funky looking thumb pianos made by Loek Vellekoop. Well I’m talking with him today live on YouTube at 11am Pacific. I’ll include a link where you can watch it live and ask a question, or see the archived recording.

Maker Faires! There’s an insane amount of faires this weekend including New Orleans, Louisiana; Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania; Westport, Connecticut; Bowling Green, Kentucky; Dnipro, Ukraine; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Utica, New York; South Bend, Indiana; Kadikoy, Turkey; and Roanoke, Virginia. Seriously, one of those have got to be nearby, so go check it out.

And that does it for this week’s show. Did you like having more projects covered in less depth? Or fewer projects with more breakdown? Let me know by leaving a comment. And like always, be sure to subscribe and leave me a thumbs up. Join the Maker Update email list to get show notes and and even more projects. Get some socket bits for your drill. And if you really appreciate the work I put into these, you can buy me a coffee. Alright? Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next week.