This week on Maker Update, an open source ornithopter, a self-solving Rubik’s cube, a farting baseball, a Pi piano light show, a Lithophane lamp, and turning wood on a table saw.

++Show Notes++

-=Project of the Week=-

Arduino-powered ornithopter takes to the skies by gabbapeople
https://www.instructables.com/id/Opensource-Ornithopter-Prototype-Arduino-Powered-a/

-=News=-

Adidas Vision for Sustainable Manufacturing
https://www.core77.com/posts/87738/adidas-Unveils-Zero-Waste-Plan-Starting-with-100-Recyclable-Sneakers

https://www.adidas-group.com/en/media/news-archive/press-releases/2019/adidas-unlocks-circular-future-sports-futurecraftloop/

KiCon this weekend in Chicago
https://hackaday.com/2019/04/17/next-week-is-kicon-come-for-the-talks-stay-for-the-parties/

-=More Projects=-

Self-Solving Rubik’s Cube by Takashi Kaburagi
https://media.dmm-make.com/item/4462/

Farting Baseball by Takashi Kaburagi
https://media.dmm-make.com/item/4531/

Rousseau-inspired Raspberry Pi Zero LED piano visualiser by Aleksander Evening
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/rousseau-raspberry-pi-zero-led-piano-visualiser/

https://github.com/onlaj/Piano-LED-Visualizer

DIY Revolving Lithophane Lamp by 3dmakernoob
https://youtu.be/duiAbLsXZSE

An (almost) Entirely 3D Printed Speaker By Mattosx
https://www.instructables.com/id/An-Entirely-3D-Printed-Speaker/

-=Tools/Tips=-

Love Hulten’s Table Saw Lathe Jig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqTTcaFhUG0

Cool Tools Podcast: Donald Bell
https://kk.org/cooltools/donald-bell-maker-update/

Make or Break Podcast #98
https://makeorbreakshow.simplecast.com/episodes/covering-the-world-of-making-with-donal-p0TTe3qA

-=Product Spotlight=-

Micro:Bit (Essentials Kit)
https://www.digikey.com/short/pp2zmz

Micro:Bit (bare board)
https://www.digikey.com/short/pp2z4r

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, an open source ornithopter, a self-solving Rubik’s cube, a farting baseball, a Pi piano lightshow, a Lithophane lamp, and turning wood on a table saw.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell and welcome back to another Maker Update. I hope you’re doing well. I’m excited for summer, the change of weather has been nice, working in the garage with the door open. I can’t complain. It’s another great week for projects, so let’s get started with the project of the week.

On Instructables, Gabba People has a great writeup on how he made this remote controlled ornithopter.

Compared to an RC airplane, an ornithopter is made to fly by flapping its wings like a real bird. As a project, it requires nearly every trick in the modern maker toolbox — laser cutting, 3d printing, gears, motors, Arduino, servos, wireless control.

It’s definitely an advanced project, but what an insane payoff. I’ve never seen anything like it. And if you think a drone draws attention, can you imagine showing up at a park with this thing?

If you’re down to give it a shot, the guide here is incredibly thorough and generous, with every file and item you’d need, plus the thinking behind every detail. It’s incredible, and worth a look

In news, last week Adidas announced a new experimental shoe program called Futurecraft Loop. It’s a shoe made entirely out of Thermoplastic Polyurethane, with a 3D printed sole.

The idea is that you wear them until they look a little ragged, then you turn them in to your local shop for a fresh pair — they grind up the old pair, and reuse the materials to make another pair of sneakers.

It might be “Eco” marketing hype for Adidas, but I’m inspired by this idea, and how makers like us could create closed-loop recycled products like this using local micro factories. I’d be curious to hear your take on it down in the comments.

In other news the first ever KiCad (key cad) conference is happening this weekend in Chicago. KiCad is a free, open source, printed circuit board design software. At KiCon, attendees will be able to take in two days of talks and workshops. It’s exciting to see a community develop around this tool.

Now back to more projects. I’m late to this one, but last September, Takashi Kaburagi published some videos and details on how he created the world’s first motorized, self-solving Rubik’s cube.

If you haven’t seen the teardown photos and videos, it’s an amazing example of tightly packing components together. CAD models show how Takashi nested small hobby motors into an existing Rubik’s cube and a 3D printed frame.

It took two years of development, starting with an oversize design with larger components, and shrinking down version by version until he could fit everything into a standard cube.

His latest project, revealed just a few months ago, packs the same amount of ingenuity into a baseball.

I don’t know if it’s a bad translation or his sense of humor, but he calls it the “farting baseball” and it conceals a small, solenoid-controlled air pressure valve. Using a remote control, you can release a burst of air from the ball after you throw it, creating a wild pitch.

The project has better written documentation than the Rubik’s cube, and enough reference images that if you really wanted to make your own, you could probably figure it out.

On Github, Aleksander Evening has a guide on how to make your own LED visualizer for a piano.

The project uses a Raspberry Pi Zero W board as the brain, and builds it out with a Pi hat that includes a small screen, direction pad, and a few buttons. A 3d printed enclosure ties it all together nicely.

With it, you can trigger LEDs above each piano key while you play, but also record the performance as a MIDI file that you can later feed into music visualizer software. Aleksander is using that combination to create videos of his piano performances in the style of YouTube musician Russaeu. The result is beautiful.

3DMakerNoob has a video detailing how he created this DIY revolving Lithophane lamp. The project combines 3D printing and electronics and it’s a great excuse to try out the Lithophane technique, which lets you create 3D printed images.

Another project combining both electronics and 3D printing is this 3D printed speaker by Mattosx. The small design uses neodymium magnets and a hand-wound coil to create the speaker driver. As you might imagine, they sound isn’t much, but it’s a neat proof of concept.

I have just a few tips and tools to share. First, on his YouTube channel, maker Love Hulten shows his technique for creating round furniture legs from square stock using a table saw and a jig. I’ve never seen someone do this before, but it looks like a great solution and seemingly a lot less fuss than using a lathe.

I made an appearance on this week’s Cool Tools podcast where I talk about 4 new tool recommendations, including flexible Neon LED strip, the Evil Mad Scientist WatercolorBot, TurtleToy.net, and the latest version of the Kai Chan cardboard cutter.

And if you’re curious to hear a little about my backstory as a maker, I talk all about it in the latest episode of the Make or Break Show. From circuit bending to CNET, to Make magazine, it’s all in there.

Finally, for this week’s product spotlight, let’s talk about the BBC Micro:Bit. This is a tiny project board, about the size of a business card, that comes with two buttons and a matrix of LEDs already built in. You program it over USB and either drag and drop Python code, or JavaScript code created in Microsoft’s user-friendly MakeCode online editor.

Now, when the board first came out, I’ll admit that I sorta wrote it off as kid’s stuff — and classrooms are the main market for this thing. But since then I’ve seen some great projects take advantage of it’s small size and relatively low cost. Plus there are a bunch of expansion boards for it now that it can just slot right into, for driving motors or servos or speakers. There’s a whole ecosystem of projects and add-ons, and clearly this board is sticking around.

So if you haven’t already, you can pick one up from Digi-Key using the link in the decription.

That’s it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a comment or leave a thumbs up for old Donald here. Next week you can find the show on the Adafruit channel for our monthly Adafruit edition. Better yet, sign up for the Maker Update email newsletter and get each week’s video and show notes delivered right to your inbox. A huge thanks to my Patrons on Patreon and to Digi-Key for sponsoring the show. Thank you all for watching, and I’ll see you soon.