This week on Maker Update, smart dice, a combining of the bits, demonstrating algorithms, a sequin clock, SVG emojis, and the end of Particle Mesh.

++Show Notes [Maker Update #160]++

-=Project of the Week=-

Pixels Dice by Jean Simonet
https://hackaday.io/project/28377-electronic-dice
https://www.pixels-dice.com/

-=News=-

Particle Discontinues Mesh Networking Boards
https://blog.particle.io/2020/01/28/mesh-deprecation/
https://hackaday.com/2020/01/30/this-is-it-for-the-particle-mesh-network/

Sphero littleBits will have a micro:bit bit this spring!
https://blog.adafruit.com/2020/01/27/breaking-news-sphero-littlebits-will-have-a-microbit-bit-this-spring-bett_show-bett2020-littlebits-sphero-microbit_edu-microbit/

-=More Projects=-

The Algorithm Machine By Sam Guyer
https://www.instructables.com/id/The-Algorithm-Machine/

Sequino by ekaggrat singh kalsi
https://hackaday.io/project/169664-sequino

-=Tools/Tips=-

Maker Update #159 *Adafruit Edition*
https://youtu.be/cqdcXvi5GDQ

Adam Savage’s Very First Vacuum Forming Project!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__kZC06KbTU

SVG Emoji files from Twitter
https://twemoji.twitter.com/

Sketch to Functional Prototype by Eric Strebel
https://youtu.be/xnLTS6vjkoY

Best Cordless Circular Saw by Derek “Deek” Diedricksen
https://youtu.be/UE1RhhjBryQ

Gareth’s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales – Issue #33
https://www.getrevue.co/profile/garethbranwyn/issues/gareth-s-tips-tools-and-shop-tales-issue-33-222828

3D printer essential maintenance guide by Teaching Tech
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAafiApJs9A

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

Intro to TensorFlow Lite Part 1: Wake Word Feature Extraction
https://youtu.be/0fn7pj7Dutc

-=Transcript=-

This week on Maker Update, smart dice, a combining of the bits, demonstrating algorithms, a sequin clock, SVG emojis, and the end of Particle Mesh.

Hey I’m Donald Bell, and welcome to another Maker Update. I hope you’re having a great week. I made some progress on my cocktail machine this week and made a dispenser with lights inside that light up different animations when a cup is underneath it. Coding is always frustrating for me, but also feels so good when you push through and get something working.

I have another great show for you, so let’s get started with the project of the week.

Pixels Dice is a project by Jean Simonet. These are electronically augmented dice that light up different colors, know which way they roll, and can connect up to a smart phone app to track what numbers are rolled, configure different light animations or even sound effects for different numbers.

Now because they have a Kickstarter coming up soon, these have been making the rounds in tech media as a cool thing to buy. But what keeps getting missed is that this continues to be an open source, wonderfully documented, maker-made project.

The Hackaday project page for it was created in November of 2017, and is filled with incredible build photos of the flex PCBs, and the ingenious little inductive charging coils and LiPo batteries they fit inside.

The further you dig back, the more inspired you’ll be by this maker to market story, and maybe even inspired to make something like this for yourself. You can find more information down in the show notes.

I think these are going to be a big deal, and I also think it’s important we celebrate and point out that products like this come from our community.

Time for some news. IoT board maker Particle has announced that they will be discontinuing the development of their Mesh networking solution Particle Mesh, as well as their Mesh-only development board, the Particle Xenon. They will continue manufacturing and supporting their Wi-Fi and cellular boards.

In a statement published on their blog, they attribute the decision to both the challenging complexity of Mesh networking, and the reality that many of their customers were better served by Bluetooth or long-range radio for networking between boards.

In other news, Adafruit got a tip from one of their readers that a new Micro:Bit module is showing up in some promotional material for LittleBits. The material mentions that the module will be available in Spring of this year, and should provide a great bridge between these two worlds of educational maker tools.

Now for more projects. On Instructables, Sam Guyer has a guide on how to make this algorithm demonstration machine.

There’s a length of 100 addressable LEDs, all lit with different colors, and you can use the buttons below it to determine which algorithm you’ll use to sort the colors.

The options include linear search, binary search, bubble sort, insertion sort, quicksort, merge sort, heap sort, and bitonic sort. Tough concepts to explain, made much easier with a tool like this that helps you visualize them. It’s no surprise that Sam is a computer science teacher.

One detail I thought was interesting is that initially I figured the circular lights were a strand of WS2811 LEDs, which have a diffused dome built into them. But when I read the guide, I found he’s actually using two flat strips of 2812 with a dense 100 LEDs per meter.

What this does is give him the tight spacing he needs, plus, the second strip is used to light the little triangles on the top that indicate the sort progress. But in order to diffuse it, he made a 3D printed mask that sits over each LED and gives the light some room to bounce around in. Cool idea.

For another project where the display steals the show, check out Sequino by Ekaggrat Singh Kalsi.

This clock uses some of that two-tone sequin fabric you may have seen on kid’s backpacks and shirts. It’s fun stuff, but it also makes a cool display medium. It’s like a low-tech flip-dot.

The tricky part is automating it. What we have here is a sort of CNC roll plotter. The design is 3D printed, and inside you’ll find an Arduino Nano, a CNC motor shield, 3 small stepper motors, a hall effect sensor and two reflective sensors.

It’s beautiful and absurd and I totally want one.

Now for a few tips and tools. First, just a note that instead of pausing the Digi-Key Maker Updates one week out of the month to do our Adafruit edition of the show, we’re now doing both. So this week, Tyler Winegarner published our monthly Adafruit edition on Tuesday, while you’re seeing your usual weekly Digi-Key version here that goes up every Thursday.

The bottom line is that this year, you’re getting even more Maker Update, and if you missed this week’s Adafruit edition, check the link down below.

Also on YouTube, Adam Savage has a great, short video up on his first experiments with vacuforming back in the ‘80s. He outlines a technique where you can take an existing object (like this bike helmet), and then build it up with wet clay to create a unique piece for vacuforming prototypes.

Did you ever wish you had a library of emoji symbols as SVG files? Me neither, but Twitter just posted a zip file full of them that you can download and incorporate into your next project.

Eric Strebel has a new video up showing his process of going from sketch to functional prototype. You heard me swoon over Jen Schachter’s sketch technique last week, and now I get to see Eric’s technique. I think the universe is telling me I need to challenge myself to draw more.

On the Cool Tools channel, I’ve got another interview up with Derek “Deek” Diedricksen. This time, we’re talking about his favorite cordless circular saw. As a guy who makes a living building off-grid tiny homes and tree-houses, Deek knows what he’s talking about.

Gareth Branwyn’s latest Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales newsletter includes a 3D printable bracket from Andrew Lewis that turns aluminum angle stock into shelving. Plus an idea from Jake Hildebrandt on using cheap pencil cases to organize the drawer of tangled of cables we all have somewhere.

Finally, on the Teaching Tech channel, there’s a video overview of some useful rituals to keep your 3D printer running smoothly.

For this week’s Digi-Key spotlight check out the latest video from Shawn Hymel showing you how to use a Raspberry Pi and a USB microphone to start playing around with TensorFlow Lite machine learning. In the 17-minute video, he walks you through the process of creating a neural network model that can listen for a wake word in real time.

It’s a fascinating concept to wrap your head around, even if you don’t have a machine learning project planned yet.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up or leave me a comment. You can get on the Maker Update email list to get shows emailed out to you so you can keep up with each week’s show. A big thanks to my patrons on Patreon and to Digi-Key electronics for believing in this show and making it possible. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next week.
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