This week on Maker Update, a Star Trek themed alarm clock, Oblique Strategies, an animated GIF display, a high tech View Master, a NeoPixel corset, and a blood glucose display.

Catch next week’s show on the Digi-Key YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/digikey

-=Project of the Month=-

PyPortal Alarm Clock by Dave Astels and Ruiz Bros.
https://learn.adafruit.com/pyportal-alarm-clock

-=News=-

PyCon: Explore your new Circuit Playground Express using CircuitPython!
Afternoon May 3 – May 5. Hosts: Kattni, Dan, Scott, Melissa, Bryan, Brent
https://us.pycon.org/2019/events/open-spaces/
https://github.com/adafruit/PyCon2019

-=Adafruit Projects=-

Tappy Robotic Hand by Dano Wall
https://learn.adafruit.com/robotic-tapping-hand-with-CPX

PyPortal Oblique Strategies by Collin Cunningham
https://learn.adafruit.com/pyportal-oblique-strategies

PyPortal Animated GIF Display by lady ada
https://learn.adafruit.com/pyportal-animated-gif-display

PyPortal Weekly Countdown Clock by John Park
https://learn.adafruit.com/pyportal-countdown-clock

PyPortal Event Countdown Clock by John Park
https://learn.adafruit.com/pyportal-event-countdown-clock

PyPortal Event Count-Up Clock by John Park
https://learn.adafruit.com/pyportal-event-count-up-clock

PyPortal Air Quality Display by John Park
https://learn.adafruit.com/pyportal-air-quality-display

PyPortal Astronauts in Space by John Park
https://learn.adafruit.com/pyportal-astronauts-in-space

PyPortal YouTube Views and Subscribers Display by John Park
https://learn.adafruit.com/pyportal-youtube-views-and-subscribers-display

PyPortal NeoPixel Color Picker by Kattni Rembor
https://learn.adafruit.com/pyportal-neopixel-color-oicker

PyPortal View Master by Ruiz Brothers
https://learn.adafruit.com/pyportal-view-master

LED NeoPixel Corset with Circuit Playground Express and MakeCode by Erin St Blaine
https://learn.adafruit.com/led-corset-with-circuit-playground-and-makecode

CRICKIT Exhibit Demo Board by Dano Wall
https://learn.adafruit.com/crickit-exhibit-demo-board

-=Contributed Projects=-

Displaying your realtime Blood Glucose from NightScout on an AdaFruit PyPortal by Scott Hanselman
https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/03/30/displaying-your-realtime-blood-glucose-from-nightscout-on-an-adafruit-pyportal-by-scott-hanselman-shanselman-nightscoutproj-diabetes/

More on Scott’s blog
https://www.hanselman.com/blog/DisplayingYourRealtimeBloodGlucoseFromNightScoutOnAnAdaFruitPyPortal.aspx

-=Tools/Tips=-

Use CircuitPython boards on the TI-83 Premium CE calculator!
https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/03/31/use-circuitpython-boards-on-the-ti-83-premium-ce-calculator-tiplanetnews-ticalculators-circuitpython-circuitpython/

PyPortal Case by Ruiz Brothers
https://learn.adafruit.com/pyportal-case

PyPortal Wall Mount by Ruiz Brothers
https://learn.adafruit.com/pyportal-wall-mount

Sophy Wong Talks Circuit Playground Express
https://youtu.be/Kz4C7sCLWb0

Product Spotlight

PowerBoost 1000 Charger – Rechargeable 5V Lipo USB Boost @ 1A – 1000C
https://www.adafruit.com/product/2465

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, a Star Trek themed alarm clock, Oblique Strategies, an animated GIF display, a View Master, a NeoPixel corset, and a blood glucose display.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell, and welcome back to another Adafruit Edition of Maker Update. My big news to share with you is that I will no longer be doing this show on the Make magazine YouTube channel. You can continue to catch it once a month here on Adafruit, and starting next week you’ll also start seeing it on the Digi-Key YouTube channel. It’s a big change for me, but I’m really excited. And now let’s get started with my pick for the Adafruit project of the month.

Check out this Star Trek themed alarm clock by Dave Astels and the Ruiz Brothers. It’s so freaking cute. Like a lot of Adafruit projects over the past month, it’s using the new PyPortal all-in-one Internet Display.

To make it a practical alarm clock, they’ve added small speaker, an arcade button snooze that can take some abuse, a barrel jack for plug-in power, and a rechargeable battery and power boost board as a backup power supply.

The 3D printed enclosure fits together with little machine screws, and provides a nice, big snooze bar up front. On the back you have a full size USB port you can use to charge up your phone. There’s also access to the micro USB port on the Power Boost, which you could use to power the clock instead of using the barrel jack, if it’s more convenient.

The last little bonus feature here is the ability to trigger another IoT device from the touch screen. By default, there’s a coffee cup icon for triggering a Mugsy open source coffee maker. But you can change the code to make your IoT lights turn on, open your blinds, or something else. It’s awesome.

A little bit of Adafruit news to share. Pycon is coming up in Cleveland, May 1st through the 9th. Attendees are getting a free Circuit Playground Express board. And now they’re also getting a chance to explore how to use the board by participating in a series of informal, drop-in workshops throughout the weekend. You can learn more using the link in the description.

And now for more Adafruit projects, rapid fire. Dano Wall posted this simple but awesome guide on making this motorized cardboard hand that drums its fingers.

For the electronics, it’s basically a Circuit Playground Express and a continuous rotation servo, but you can also make it portable with a battery pack. The rest of it is just cardboard, hot glue, and a wooden skewer.

From low tech to high brow, Collin Cunningham shows how to turn a PyPortal into a touch controlled Oblique Strategies deck. These are prompts written by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt in 1975 meant to help unblock your creativity.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of PyPortal projects this month. Lady Ada herself made a guide on how to load up a PyPortal with an animated GIF.

John Park shows how to use one as a weekly countdown clock, or a single event countdown clock, or a count-up clock to mark a special occasion.

John also has a project using a PyPortal to display local air quality, or the number of astronauts currently in space (which is one of my favorites), or the number of views and subscribers on a YouTube channel.

Taking advantage of the JST connections on the back of the PyPortal, Kattni Rembor shows how to use one as a color picker for two strips of Neopixels. You can assign different colors to each strip or sync them to control both at once.

And for something totally unexpected, The Ruiz Brothers show how they turned a PyPortal into a retro View Master style portable photo viewer.

You can load images directly to the board or use an SD card. The code is fairly straightforward. Really it’s the mechanical design I love about this project, and of course the googly eyes.

Erin St. Blaine has a guide on making this corset that uses NeoPixel side-light strip to create a psychedelic future-retro mash-up. A Circuit Playground Express is used as the main control board, hidden behind that corsage in the middle.

There’s also just something great about this demo board made by Dano Wall. Especially if you’re working in a classroom, and you want a quick way to demonstrate the kinds of physical interactions possible with a Circuit Playground and a CRICKIT expansion board.

The demo here shows off servo movement, motors, solenoids, lights, sound, capacitive touch, and button input. And it’s all mounted on cardboard for you to tweak and modify for your own needs.

And finally, an inspiring project from the Adafruit community. Check out this blood glucose display by Scott Hanselman.

The project uses a PyPortal board to communicate with Nightscout, an open source software that, in Scott’s case, takes data from a continuous blood glucose monitor to help him manage his Type 1 diabetes.

On Scott’s blog, you can find out how he turned the PyPortal into a glanceable display to keep an eye on his blood sugar.

Now for a few tips and tools to share. This week we found out that the TI-83 Premium CE calculator can be used to interact with boards running Circuit Python. By way of TI Planet News, you can see how some calculator hackers have been able to connect to boards with a USB OTG cable and interact with them directly. It’s impressive.

The Ruiz Brothers have both a case design and a wall mount design for the PyPortal. Both are 3D printed, and the case design is especially cool because it’s meant to be used as a portable system for taking the board on the go.

The wall mount is cool too, though, and allows you to pop the board onto any existing light switch plate or power outlet.

And over on the Cool Tools channel, I’ve got an interview I did with maker Sophy Wong. We talk specifically about how she uses the Adafruit Circuit Playground Express board for prototyping projects, including her recent space helmet design.

And to close things out here, I’d like to highlight an Adafruit product that’s doing a lot of heavy lifting behind the scenes. The PowerBoost 1000 is a power management board that makes it easy to take your project portable.

With it, you can run your project off of USB for a wired connection, or a 3.7v rechargeable battery pack. Not only will it step up the battery voltage to 5.2 volts, but it will also recharge your battery when it’s plugged into USB.

This is the board used on the alarm clock, the view master, and the PyPortal case, but it’s also great for Raspberry Pi and Arduino projects. Go check it out.

That does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a comment, or leave a thumbs up. A reminder that this show will not be returning to the Make magazine channel next week. I’ll leave a link in the description to the Digi-Key channel, but really the best way to keep up with this show in all its forms is to get on the Maker Update email list. You can find that down there too. Alright? Thanks for watching and I’ll see you soon.