This week on Maker Update, an artificially intelligent coffee maker, a one-button music remote, talking skulls, singing fish, and blinking bots.

++Show Notes [Maker Update Ep. 250]++

-=Project of the Week=-

An Espresso Maker That Knows When You Want Some by Mark Smith
https://surfncircuits.com/2021/09/03/an-espresso-maker-that-knows-when-you-want-some/

-=News=-

Maker Faire Prague
https://makezine.com/2021/09/09/maker-faire-prague-goes-big-again-in-2021/

Hackaday Halloween Hackfest
https://hackaday.io/contest/180664-halloween-hackfest

Mayku Multiplier
https://multiplier.mayku.me/machine

-=More Projects=-

Push the Button Box by Sophy Wong and BlitzCityDIY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B4BU1NuXvE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i17e8ODk7xg

ChatterPi by Aspiring Roboticist
https://hackaday.io/project/181612-chatterpi
https://github.com/ViennaMike/ChatterPi

DIY Animatronic Singing Bass Fish with micro:bit by TechnoChic
https://browndoggadgets.dozuki.com/Guide/DIY+Singing+Fish+-+Bobby+the+Bass/372

-=Tips & Tools=-

How To Make Robots Move Smoothly by James Bruton
https://youtu.be/jsXolwJskKM

Best Pneumatic Engraver and Vise for Beginners by Caleb Kraft
https://youtu.be/UhGxRlbXKkk

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

How to Splice and Tap Wires
https://youtu.be/evrw0ojvzz0

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, an artificially intelligent coffee maker, a one-button music remote, talking skulls, singing fish, and blinking bots. 

Hey, I’m Donald Bell and welcome back to another Maker Update. I hope you’re all doing well and finding some time to work on your own projects. This weekend I had fun designing a custom, 3D printed tamp for an espresso machine I’m restoring. Just a little thing, but sometimes those are an opportunity to really get lost in the details.

It also happens to be a great tie in with my pick for the project of the week.Over on the Surfin Circuits blog, Mark Smith shows off how he turned his Rancilio espresso machine into an automated, internet-connected, perfection-seeking instrument of legendary coffee. 

When you buy a machine like this for your home, the dream is to be able to make espresso whenever you want. But the reality is that these machines take a long time to warm up the water and build their pressure before they’re ready to go. 

To solve this problem, Mark gives his machine the ability to predict when he’ll want coffee, and warms up the machine 30 minutes ahead of time so it’s ready to go.

To do this, he’s using a Raspberry Pi Zero and a machine learning algorithm that’s trained on when he typically turns on the machine. 

But that’s not all! He created a web dashboard so that he can track the stats of his machine from anywhere in the world. From here he can also manually trigger it to start warming up. 

He’s added a PID type sensor in the boiler so that he can dial in the brew temperature within 1 degree accuracy. 

By harnessing this temperature sensor, he’s created an “auto-shot” mode that with a single-press, automatically brings the boiler up to a defined temperature and pulls the shot without you having to do anything.

And as a final touch, he’s added a Nixie tube on the front of the machine that indicates the level in the water tank, as well as the temperature of the boiler and the progress of the shot while you’re brewing. 

All of this, and he’s still managed to non-destructively install all of the electronics and sensors into an already crowded machine. You can find the instructions, source code, 3D printed files, and bill of materials all on his website.

Now for some news. This past weekend, Becky Stern gave a talk at Maker Faire Prague and was nice enough to share some video clips she took. 

One of the highlights was this giant version of Jiri Praus’ mechanical flower sculpture. Some of you may recognize Jiri’s work from the small circuit sculptures we’ve covered on this show. It’s great to see him continue to develop these ideas.

Becky also showed us some footage of a table clock called xxOx. It uses these retro, electro-mechanical segment displays that have that awesome split-flap sound. 

You also get 20 alarm sounds, it’s USB rechargeable, and it’s smart enough not make all those click sounds while you’re trying to sleep.

Honestly, I’m just so happy to see a big Maker Faire like this happening again. It gives me hope.

Hackaday and Digi-Key have teamed up for a Halloween Hackfest contest. If you have a Halloween project or costume that uses electronics you can enter to win a $150 in Digi-Key credit. That amount is doubled if your project happens to use an Adafruit board. 

You can find more details using the link in the description. The contest closes on Monday, October 11th.

In hardware news, last week vacuform manufacturer Mayku announced a new, higher resolution machine called the Multiplier.

The added detail is possible because they’ve added pressurized air into the chamber, which helps to push the vacuum formed material into all the nooks and crannies of your form. 

Combined with resin casting, you get something comparable to injection molding but without the complexity and expense of machining out mold.

No word on pricing or availability, but it’s neat to see some new tool ideas out there. 

Also, I have to say that for something that could have easily come out looking like a panini press, they put a lot of effort into making this thing look awesome. Teenage Engineering, the design group that makes the OP-1 synthesizer and all those fun Pocket Operator sequencers, they’re the ones that did the product design on this.

Now for more projects. There’s a great collaboration between Sophy Wong and Liz from BlitzCityDIY. They made this one-button Bluetooth remote control that works as a play/pause button for media playback on Apple devices. 

The project uses an Adafruit Feather Bluefruit board and is coded in CircuitPython. Liz has the code posted on Github, which you can essentially drag and drop to your board.

But I’ll be honest, I don’t really have a use for a dedicated play/pause button. But what I’m sure to use is this recipe for making a cool, 1-button enclosure.

It has all the appeal of a boutique guitar pedal. But what you’re seeing here is a 3D printed box with a milled aluminum on top that steals the show.

In her video, Sophy demonstrates the entire process of creating the template for the top plate, creating the graphics and milling it out. 

If you don’t have a desktop mill like Sophy’s, I imagine you could get some mileage out of toner transfer, creating a stencil, or using something like a desktop vinyl cutter to transfer graphics or mask and etch a design.

On Hackaday, Aspiring Roboticist has this early entry to the Halloween Hackfest contest. It’s a Raspberry Pi-based system for translating audio into servo movement. 

In this case it’s being used to drive the mouth movement of a prop skull. The instructions show how to create the interaction either from a recorded audio file, or using a microphone. 

You can find other guides to give you a similar result using an Arduino, but if Raspberry Pi is your comfort zone — this is a great way to breathe some animatronic life into your Halloween props.

Finally, as some of you know, I have a soft spot for the Big Mouth Billy Bass singing fish. So I couldn’t resist this project from Natasha Dzurny. 

She made her own cardboard version animated with servos controlled by a micro:bit plugged into a Crazy Circuits Bit board. 

For sound, she’s using an inexpensive MP3 player module and a pair of powered speakers. 

You can find the instructions, code, and even a template for cutting out the fish over on Brown Dog Gadgets.com. 

Time for some tools and tips. James Bruton has a great tip for your animatronic Halloween project. His latest video demonstrates how to get a smooth, ramping movement from servos.

This is one of those subtle details that separates beginner animatronic projects from the pro level stuff. Instead of jerky, robotic movements you get a kind of velocity curve that smoothly ramps up and down.

With just a few lines of Arduino code, James shows you how to make this happen with a simple sketch. He also includes the 3D design files if you want to reproduce this same model.

Have you ever considered getting into engraving? Whether it’s for jewelry or knife handles, or enclosure lids for your Bluetooth remote controls, check out my interview with Caleb Kraft on the Cool Tools channel. 

He walks through a great engraving setup for beginners. If you’ve never seen an engraving vise before, you’re in for a treat

For this week’s Digi-Key spotlight, check out this oldie but goodie on wire splicing techniques. Not just splicing but also how to tap one wire into an existing line. 

Tapping is a technique I rarely find myself doing, but it’s a cool trick that people rarely talk about. Be cool. Check out the video.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up or leave a comment. You can get on the Maker Update email list and stay on top of each week’s show. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you soon.