This week on Maker Update, an analog 7-segment display, Pi Compute Module 3+, using veneer for bent wood projects, Pictionary for robots, monochrome in a can, and projection mapping your face.

Show Notes

Project of the Week

7-seg all mechanical display prototype 2 by Peter Lehnér
https://hackaday.io/project/163473-peters-7-seg-all-mechanical-display-prototype-2

News

Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3+ on sale now from $25
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/compute-module-3-on-sale-now-from-25/

More Projects

Bent Wood Lamination and Marquetry Xylophone by Make Something
https://youtu.be/q1N6Cqrzllw

Watch Escapement Desk Toy by LarkysPrints
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3364860

Billiard Ball Arcade Trackball Mouse by Maniacal Labs
https://maniacallabs.com/2019/01/22/billiard-ball-arcade-trackball-mouse/

Project on GitHub
https://github.com/ManiacalLabs/ArcadeTrackballMouse

NORAA by Jessica In
https://www.jessicain.net/pagesnoraa

Tools/Tips

Green Screen a B&W Monitor by Emily Velasco
https://youtu.be/F2CFTH2FWcw

Cable Organizer (breadboard) by boopidoo
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3352900

Face Changer by Naomi Wu
https://youtu.be/D-b23eyyUCo

The Edge Podcast
https://www.bantamtools.com/blogs/theedge

John Park interview on Cool Tools
https://kk.org/cooltools/john-park-professional-maker/

Cool Tool: Dremel Versa Tip Precision Butane Soldering Torch
https://youtu.be/vX6mpdnd8Co

Maker Faires

February 2, 2019 Hattiesburg Mini Maker Faire
February 6 – 9, 2019 Maker Faire Kuwait
February 9, 2019 Palm Bay Mini Maker Faire

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, an analog 7-segment display, Pi Compute Module 3+, using veneer for bent wood projects, Pictionary for robots, monochrome in a can, and projection mapping your face.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell and welcome to another Maker Update. I hope you’re all doing great. I have some big news to share. Next week I’ll be doing a special episode of Maker Update on the Adafruit YouTube channel, so if you want your dose of Maker Update next week, it’ll be over there. If you’re not already on the email list, get on it so you don’t miss out.

But that doesn’t make today’s show any less awesome. So let’s get started, with the project of the week.

I’m a little embarrassed over how much of this show I devote to mechanical displays, but clearly I’m not the only one with this obsession. On Hackaday, Peter Lehnér shows off his unique design for a 3D printed 7-segment display that can be operated without any electronics.

The design uses a combination of indexing gears to push the yellow segments in and out of view, without flipping them. By rotating through the gears, you rotate through the presets for each number.

Now, even though there are no electronics required to drive the display, it probably makes sense to connect this up to a cheap stepper motor at some point. Peter is also hoping to figure out a way to mechanically link multiple units together to display larger numbers.

You can find the project notes and STL design files on Peter’s Hackaday project page.

It’s time for some news. On Monday, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced a new board update for their Compute Module line, which is now on sale starting at $25.

This is the Compute Module 3+. It’s the same form as the previous model, but with a faster chip, twice the RAM, and up to 8 times the Flash storage capacity, with four models to choose from, maxing out at 32GB.

If you’re unfamiliar with the compute module, this is a version of the Raspberry Pi hardware designed for manufacturers to drop in their products. Unless you’re designing something for manufacture, this board isn’t for you. It’s no smaller than a Pi Zero and no faster than a Pi 3B+.

I have more projects to share. On the Make Something channel, David Picciuto shows a cool technique for making your own bent plywood using sheets of wood veneer.

To demonstrate it, David updates an antique kid’s xylophone with a bent wood base and even adds a contact mic and instrument jack so it can be amplified or recorded directly. It’s a neat technique to know about and the results look great.

On Thingiverse, Karl Lee has a downloadable design for this Watch Escapement Desk Toy. If you love the look and sound of mechanical watches, this is something you could fiddle with all day, and probably drive your co-workers crazy.

Aside from a handful of metric nuts and bolts, everything you need to make this is 3D printed using generic PLA filament.

On the Maniacal Labs blog, Adam Haile spotted a billiard ball trackball mouse in the Movie Ocean’s 8, and had to have one for himself.

To make his own, he combined an arcade trackball unit, a Teensy project board, and five arcade buttons, into a 3D printed enclosure he designed himself. The end result is one of a kind. Adam has all his design files and code hosted on GitHub.

Finally, you have to check out NORAA by Jessica In. This is a pair of beautiful drawing robots. One records your movements as you doodle, and the other checks your doodle against Google’s QuickDraw Machine Learning Classifier and mimics what it thinks you drew.

What’s especially neat is that if it can’t guess what it is, it improvises a doodle based on similar strokes and curves. It’s a cool piece of interactive art, but also a fun game I’d like to have at my house.

Alright, it’s time for a roundup of tips and tools I found this week. My absolute favorite is this trick from Emily Velasco showing how to use Krylon stained glass spray paint to make a common black & white TV look like a green monochrome monitor. It takes around 15 coats to get the look right, but it’s a great effect.

Over on Thingiverse I found this cable organizer by BoopiDoo that looks like a quick and easy way to keep your breadboard jumpers handy.

Naomi Wu has a new video up showing how she created a wearable short-throw projector that projects on her face. The prototype in the video is used as a neat costume trick, but the eventual goal is to convert the projector to IR light as a way to spoof face-recognition software. It’s a cool idea and I’m interested in seeing where it goes.

I’m a tough sell when it comes to podcasts, especially maker-related ones, but I gave a listen to the new Bantam Tools podcast, The Edge, and I think it’s great. If you’re into this show (and I hope you are), you’re going to enjoy that podcast.

While you’re at it, check out the latest Cool Tools podcast with maker extraordinaire John Park from Adafruit. He’s got a bunch of great tools to recommend.

And I always like to put one of my own tool recommendations in here. This week, it’s the Dremel Versa Tip Precision Butane Soldering Torch. I use it for soldering connections that need a lot of heat, but more often I reach for it to size up heat shrink or as a hot knife for cutting cable wrap. It’s a really nice kit for under $40.

Maker Faires! This weekend we have Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Next week there’s Maker Faire Kuwait and Palm Bay Florida. To find a Faire near you, check out MakerFaire.com

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up or leave a comment. And remember next week’s show won’t be here, it’s going to be a special episode on the Adafruit channel and I’d love everyone’s support for that episode so please sign up on the Maker Update email list so you can be notified when that goes up. Alright? Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next week.