This week on Maker Update, a dance-activated sampler, MegaBots goes open source, a futuristic bike light, a vertical turntable, 5 ways to upcycle old filament reels, edge banding with Bob, Mitre Saw with Diresta, and controller hacking for a great cause.

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Show Notes

Project of the Week

MIDI Step Interface by KILOMX
https://www.instructables.com/id/MIDI-Step-Interface-1/

LattePanda Board
https://www.dfrobot.com/product-1405.html

News

MegaBots is now Open Source
https://us8.campaign-archive.com/?u=c00f56a9a8546e4db8407d46a&id=03410839ea

More Projects

Neopixel Bike Light by Ruiz Bros.
https://learn.adafruit.com/neopixel-headlight

Custom Design Vertical Turntable by Joppe Spaans
https://www.instructables.com/id/Custom-Design-Vertical-Turntable/

Tools/Tips

Reuse Filament spools to organize holiday lights via Dennis Louton on 3D Printing Facebook group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/makerbot/?fref=nf

SPIROGRAPH – PRUSAMENT SPOOL – reuse idea by cisardom
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3185619

CONTAINERS – PRUSAMENT SPOOL – reuse idea by cisardom
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3185576

CHANDELIER – PRUSAMENT SPOOL – reuse idea by cisardom
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3185585
WINDMILL – PRUSAMENT SPOOL – reuse idea by cisardom
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3187009

Giant Cardboard Fabrication With PolyProjector By Matt Bell
https://makezine.com/projects/giant-cardboard-fabrication-with-polyprojector/
https://youtu.be/iDshWkUkbXk

Edge Banding tips by Bob Clagett
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCFixYE80jI

Mitre Saw tips by Jimmy Diresta
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w3Aa-mfNJA

Tips of the Week by Gareth Branwyn
https://makezine.com/2018/11/09/tips-of-the-week-wider-breadboards-3dp-benchmark-standard-custom-sanding-sticks-and-the-renovating-joys-of-the-makecation/

Controller Project
http://thecontrollerproject.com/

Maker Faires

Rochester, New York USA
Montreal, Quebec Canada
Munich Germany
Kolkata, West Bengal India
Poughkeepsie, New York USA

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, a dance-activated sampler, MegaBots goes open source, a futuristic bike light, a vertical turntable, 5 ways to upcycle old filament reels, edge banding with Bob, Mitre Saw with Diresta, and controller hacking for a great cause.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell and welcome to another Maker Update. I hope everyone’s doing well. I have a great show for you today full of projects and tips, but first, let’s start with the project of the week.

Check out this MIDI step interface by Kilo MX on Instructables. It’s like a giant sampler you control with your feet.

The build uses hexagon cuts of acrylic sheet and PVC, a lot of Neopixels, and an industrial grade limit switch for each pad that senses each press.

The frame underneath each pad uses steel square tubing. They also created a larger frame from steel to hold everything together.

XLR audio cables were used to reliably connect each pad up to a central computer. There are two cables per pad—one that handles Neopixel power and data, and one for the switch.

All the cables feed into one box that has a beefy power supply to drive all the LEDs, and a single board computer. One of the most interesting takeaways for me is that instead of a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino, they used a product called LattePanda.

It’s a $120 Windows 10 computer that has an Arduino Leonardo co-processor built-in and a section for all the usual Arduino I/O. So the computer handles all the audio playback and the Arduino handles the switch input and neopixel code. All on one board. I think that’s a neat idea.

In news this past week, the team behind the MegaBots giant fighting robots have open sourced the design for their robot Iron Glory. The files come as an Autodesk Inventor CAD design. You’ll need to pay $25 to get it, but they’ll also send you a cool looking poster. And honestly, if you ever wanted to build a giant fighting robot, this is a great place to start.

I have some more projects to share. The Ruiz brothers have a new guide up on making a NeoPixel bike light. It’s a neat design that sorta looks like a mini jet engine.

As you’d expect there’s some 3D printing involved, including a frame for the LED rings and a separate battery pack that mounts on your bike frame.

One really nice touch on this project is that they’ve used a color changing mode select button on the battery case and made it so the color of the button matches the color of the light. It’s a great look.

On Instructables, the winner of their recent audio contest is this vertical turntable design by Joppe Spaans. The design uses a stepper motor, an Arduino, a servo, a tone arm, and an internal amplifier.

There’s a lot to it, but it’s a really cool idea, and a great guide for building even just a normal turntable.

It’s time for some tips. For some reason I came across a bunch of ideas on how to reuse old 3D printer filament reels.

On the 3D printing Facebook group, Dennis Louton suggested using them to organize and store holiday lights, which sounds really smart.

And then on Thingiverse, CesarDom from Prusa just published 4 projects for reusing filament reels — though they’re specifically using Prusament filament which has a unique reel design.

He shows you how to make a spirograph, containers, a chandelier, and a windmill.

Over on Makezine, Matt Bell describes a process for cutting designs in cardboard using a video projector to project a series of templates you can cut by hand. He calls it a poor mans laser cutter, but I think it’s a great idea that you can scale up or down for whatever you need. He’s even built a dedicated app for it you can download from Github.

Bob Clagett has a new Bits video up that goes over techniques for adding edge banding to your plywood furniture projects. I had no idea, but apparently you can just iron this stuff right to your wood.

Jimmy Diresta has a new video showing off tips and tricks for using the mitre saw. I feel like it’s been awhile since we’ve seen a tips video from Jimmy focused on just a single tool. This one doesn’t disappoint.

On Makezine, Gareth Branwyn’s Tips of the Week roundup has a tip on keeping wood putty fresh, using heat-activated sandpaper to make little sanding tools, and modifying your breadboard for extra room.

And finally, Caleb Kraft made an update to the Controller Project to make it easier for people to request game controller modifications for someone with unique physical needs and match them up with a maker to take on the project. If this is something you’d be interested in doing, check out the site, along with Caleb’s step-by-step videos on modifying game controllers.

Maker Faires! This weekend we have Rochester, New York; Montreal, Quebec; Munich Germany; Kolkata, India; and Poughkeepsie, New York. If one’s near you, don’t miss it. You can also check MakerFaire.com to find out when your local is happening.

And that does it for this week’s show, be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up or leave a comment. You can also get on the Maker Update email list to have show notes emailed out to you automatically every week. And I volunteer to do this show because I feel it’s important. The only way I make a dime here is through my awesome patrons on Patreon. If this show means something to you, you can get behind it for as little as a $1 a month, and it means a lot. Alright? Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next week.