This week on Maker Update: A shouting pumpkin, Build your own Feather module, be goose do crimes, dripping skills, boiling cauldrons and open source e-readers.

++Show Notes++

-=Project of the Month=-

Talking Bluetooth Pumpkin
https://learn.adafruit.com/pumpkin-with-circuit-playground-bluefruit

-=News=-

Take Flight with Feather contest
https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/11/01/take-flight-with-feather-hackaday-hackadayio-digikey-feathercontest-adafruit/

Adafruit hardware at TensorFlow world:
https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/11/01/tensorflow-lite-solution-for-running-ml-on-device-with-pete-warden-petewarden-tfworld-tensorflow-tflite-dansitu-tensorflowworld-tinyml-oreillymedia-arduino-arm-with-adafruit-hardware-adaf/

Buy One Give One at Adafruit with Black Girls CODE is back! Thank you Digi-Key!
https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/10/29/buy-one-give-one-at-adafruit-with-black-girls-code-is-back-thank-you-digi-key-blackgirlscode-digikey/

-=Adafruit Projects=-

Animatronic Fizzgig monster m4sk
https://learn.adafruit.com/animatronic-fizzgig-monsterm4sk-puppet

Goose Game monster m4sk controller
https://learn.adafruit.com/goose-game-m4sk-controller

Meat Skull Centerpiece
https://learn.adafruit.com/meat-skull-centerpiece

Monster Mask Voice Changer
https://learn.adafruit.com/spruce-up-a-costume-with-monster-m4sk-eyes-and-voice

Monster M4sk is Watching You
https://learn.adafruit.com/monster-m4sk-is-watching-you

Ooze Master 3000
https://learn.adafruit.com/ooze-master-3000-neopixel-simulated-liquid-physics/overview

BLE Glowing Mini Cauldron
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57s-rnjlolg

-=More Projects=-

EZ Make Oven
https://learn.adafruit.com/ez-make-oven

-=Tools/Tips=-

All 35 posts from Open hardware month in one spot
https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/10/31/all-35-posts-from-open-hardware-month-in-one-spot-ohm2019-oshwa-ohsummit-opensource-opensourcehardware-opensourceorg-adafruit/

The Open Book Project – an open eBook reader
https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/11/01/the-open-book-project-an-open-ebook-reader-ebook-circuitpython-feather-samd51-josecastillo-hackaday-microchipmakes/

CircuitPython snakes its way to the SparkFun Qwiic Micro
https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/10/24/circuitpython-snakes-its-way-to-the-sparkfun-qwiic-micro-samd21-development-board-sparkfun-circuitpython-adafruit/

Circuit Python on Sony Spresense
https://circuitpython.org/board/spresense/

Circuit Python on Arduino Nano BLE
https://circuitpython.org/board/arduino_nano_33_ble/

-=Product Spotlight=-

Adafruit STEMMA Non-Latching Mini Relay
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-stemma-non-latching-mini-relay

Transcript

This week on Maker Update: A shouting pumpkin, Build your own Feather module, be goose do crimes, dripping skills, boiling cauldrons and open source e-readers.

Hello everyone, welcome back to another Adafruit Edition of Maker Update! I’m Tyler Winegarner and, I know what you’re thinking. Halloween’s done, you’ve set your clocks back, it’s time to rake some leaves, count down the days until next Halloween and think of the projects you’d like to build for next year. We’ve got you covered, so lets get started with the Project of the Month.

The Ruiz brothers combined the Circuit Playground Bluefruit and the Stemma Speaker Module to make this talking, glowing jack-o-lantern. There’s only a tiny amount of 3d printing in this project, instead they hacked an existing toy pumpkin by gutting all of its existing electronics and replacing it with their own. There’s two parts that provide mounting points for the Circuit Playground and Speaker module, with a 500mah lipo battery tucked between them.

The project is controlled using the Adafruit Bluefruit LE Connect app. The app presents a ton of different modules to create a number of different hardware interactions, but here the controller is being used. Pressing each of the soft keys displays a different color and plays back a different sound file. The code is written entirely in Circuitpython which makes sound playback and neopixel control a breeze.

They’ve also added a toggle switch to the circuit to turn the pumpkin on and off. I love this project, not just because it’s the perfect thing to greet trick or treaters as they come to your house, but it’s a great jumping off point for hacking lots of other halloween decorations. You’re bound to find glowing skulls and dancing skeletons sold cheap at your local craft store or home center now that the holiday has passed, and the Circuit Playground Bluefruit is the perfect board to start turning them into your own spoopy interactive decorations.

Now for the news, beginning November 1 through to the end of the year, Adafruit is hosting their Take Flight with Feather contest, which challenges anyone to design their own board for the feather ecosystem. There’s separate categories for ridiculousness, cutting edge, assistive technology and more, but every single entry will be judged for it’s manufacturability. If your entry is picked, a run of 100 boards will be manufactured and stocked at DigiKey. Super cool.

Last weekend O’Reilly held their Tensorflow World conference, where ARM and Google distributed the official conference badge, an Adafruit PyBadge with Tensorflow Lite Micro preinstalled. With an onboard microphone and running the voice recognition demo. It’s a great place to get started with machine Learning.

Finally, Adafruit hosted a buy one, give one donation campaign for Black Girls Code, a nonprofit that creates learning opportunities for young women of color various in tech disciplines. Within a few hours, Adafruit maxed out their donations of Circuit Playground Expresses. DigiKey offered up another round of hardware, and they ran out again a short time later. Hopefully there will be a third round if you want to contribute to the generosity.

Back to more projects, Last month the Adafruit featured hardware was the Monster M4sk, and everyone went nuts adding this to their costumes and projects for Halloween. Erin St. Blaine used it to create the eyes and control the barking mouth of this furry Fizzgig from the Dark Crystal, while John Park made animated eyes for this weird ‘meat head’ charcuterie centerpiece. Phil Burgess refreshed this old costume mask with new eyes and a microphone to change his voice to something more menacing. Speaking of menace, John Park also used the Monster Mask and microphone as a controller for Untitled Goose Game, triggering the in-game honk by using his own voice. And finally, Timothy Weber paired the Monster M4sk with an IR grid sensor to create a pair of eyes that would follow you as you move around the room.

Phil Burgess created this weird creepy, drippy glowing dragon skull with an Adafruit m0 basic proto feather, several strands of these skinny 4mm peopixel strands, some individual neopixel dots, and a whole lot of patience. The neopixel strands were attached to the outside of the skull to create paths for the drips and then painted over with white paint to hide them, and then the individual neopixels make the ‘splats’ where each drip would land. Its a great example of using neopixels to create animation, and a cool effect if you have the patience to deal with the wiring nightmare.

The Ruiz brothers used the Circuit Playground Bluefruit to create this tiny, glowing, frothing cauldron. The printing design for this one is super clever. The board sits at the bottom of the cauldron beneath a thin, translucent shield. The inside and the brim of the cauldron is lined with a phosphorescent putty called gloflo, and the fog comes from some dry ice melting away in some hot water. The neopixels shine through the shield, lighting the fog and changing colors. It’s a cute project and a ton of fun.

From the Adafruit community we get the EZ-Make Oven from Dan Cogliano. Toaster ovens have long been the darling appliance of DIY reflow setups, but this project turns it into a much more refined tool with the addition of a PyPortal for monitoring temperatures and creating heating profiles. You won’t even need to hack your toaster – the temperature is monitored through this adafruit thermocouple and regulated through this power outlet relay module – perfect if you’re squeamish about working with high voltage devices. The PyPortal lets you define your own temperature curves and then see how close the actual temperature matches. It’s a great build for anyone looking to move beyond through hole soldering.

Time for some tips and tools, Last month was open hardware month and Adafruit made a post every single day about open hardware projects, communities and other related topics. If you missed it, now you can find links to all of those posts on a single page. Head on over and dive right in.

Speaking of Open Hardware, the Open Book Project from Oddly Specific Objects is an open source E-ink E-reader based on the SAMD51 chip in a Feather form factor. Heavily inspired by the PyBadge, one of the coolest things about this project is the silk screen on the custom PCB. There’s tons of documention about the project on here, from pinouts with their functions clearly labeled, tons of info about the components on the board, and more. It’s a great use of the real estate offered by a large board, and ensures you’ll have something to read even before you load it up with books.

There’s a few new boards that you’ll be able to use with CircuitPython, one of them is the SparkFun Quiic Micro. Quick is a relatively new board ecosystem, allowing you to chan numerous components together over i2c. The Quiic Micro itself is a tiny board like it’s name implies, a little larger than a quarter, but with several GPIO pins it might be what you need for your next project. You can also start writing CircuitPython code on the Sony Spresense and the Arduino Nano BLE Edition.

For this month’s Adafruit Product Spotlight we’re checking out the Stemma Non-Latching relay. This is a tiny, versatile relay module that you can use in just about any project. The relay can be triggered by either 3 or 5v logic, and the relay itself can carry current loads of up to 60watts. Not something you want to use to turn your oven on and off, but certainly can be used to turn a lamp on and off, and plenty more. You can easily experiment with higher voltage projects from any development board, and there’s space to attach an additional 3-pin terminal to control more circuits.

And that is going to do it for this week’s show! I hope your post-halloween wind down gives you plenty of time to think of new projects, or time to work on them. If you liked this show give it a thumbs up, r hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next one. Huge thanks to everyone at Adafruit, and to our supporters on Patreon. Thanks so much for watching, we’ll see you soon.