This week on Maker Update, a spaceship from earth junk, Google’s Coral board goes micro, a robot altar, and a spoon for obsessive curry disorder.

++Show Notes [Maker Update Ep. 268]++

-=Project of the Week=-

Scratch Built Spaceship Out Of Trash by Bill Making Stuff
https://youtu.be/XbArvY4GYm0

-=News=-

Google Unveils the Coral Dev Board Micro, Its First Microcontroller-Based TinyML Edge AI Board
https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/01/24/coral-dev-board-micro-nxp-i-mx-rt1176-mcu-edge-tpu-raspberry-pi-zero/

-=More Projects=-

Altar-3000 by Vytautas Jankauskas
https://vjnks.com/works/altar-3000-51

I Invented the Spoon for Eating Curry and Rice by Marina Fujiwara
https://youtu.be/bwF-i3sNAIE

-=Tips & Tools=-

Can 3D Printing Improve Your Car? by I Like to Make Stuff
https://youtu.be/SndYymulUe4

Replace Micro-USB Port With Only a Soldering Iron By ErinTheSmall
https://www.instructables.com/Replace-Micro-USB-Port-With-Only-a-Soldering-Iron/

Japanese Finishing Expert Develops Metal Paint Engraving Technique
https://www.rohan-izawa.com/

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

Musical Instrument for Kids – Potentially Genius™
https://youtu.be/1-xh55UuJk4

-=Transcript=-

This week on Maker Update, a spaceship from earth garbage, Google’s Coral board goes micro, a robot altar, and a spoon for obsessive curry disorder.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell, and welcome back to another Maker Update. I wasn’t sure if January was ever going to end, but here we are, and I hope you’re all doing well. I’ve got a fun show for you, so let’s get started with the project of the week.

There’s a new video out by Bill Making Stuff that shows how he made this model spaceship out of trash.

I still can’t get over how he’s able to make these things out of bits of plastic junk and CA glue. But I think we can all relate to the thrill of free-forming a spaceship design in LEGOs. I have to believe this feels like an elevated version of that same process.

Along the way, Bill shares a bunch of useful model making tips. He shows how thin sheets of EVA foam can help add dimension and tie things together.

How a wood burner tool can quickly add realistic damage.

And how you can use a hole punch tool to create an infinite stockpile of rivets and greeblies. To keep them from spilling all over the place, he even shows how to improvise your own tray.

Bill’s sense of humor and his new cat kept me laughing all the way through the video. Check it out.

Now for some news. Google has unveiled a new development board called the Coral Dev Board Micro.

This is a microcontroller board intended for Machine Learning applications. It comes with a built-in color camera and microphone on the board.

For processing, it has a Cortex M4/M7 crossover processor from NXP. To accelerate the Machine Learning potential, it also has a dedicated Coral Edge TPU chip.

No word yet on pricing and availability. It’s expected to run under $100, and the product page says it’s coming soon.

Now for more projects. I got a kick out of this interactive artwork by Vytautas Jankauskas called Altar 3000.

This internet connected sandbox includes a color screen, a robot arm, and an NVIDIA Jetson Nano board for driving it all and process voice commands.

When it’s activated, it presents a random prophecy, rubs a singing bowl, rakes some sand, and then asks if you want to share the random idea on a message board.

It’s all a little cyber hippie, techno-shaman, tongue in cheek, but there’s something about it that I’m kinda curious to recreate.

I think part of it is this permission to have a non-religious, possibly silly, personalized altar in my house.

Also I’ve also always wanted a reason to own a robot arm, but could never justify it. Maybe I’ll never have a good reason, but I like the idea of telling people I have a robot arm for my personal, internet connected smart altar.

Speaking of personalized inventions, I got a kick out of Marina Fujiwara’s split spoon for eating curry and rice.

Bothered by the seemingly inevitable cross-contamination of curry into rice and vice-versa, Marina designed and 3D printed this double spoon, allowing her to scoop out separate portions of rice and curry, and then combine them together into the perfect bite right before it hits your mouth.

The most clever bit here, I thought, was how she included spaces to embed magnets. It’s worth mentioning though, that 3D printing isn’t typically regarded as food safe. Fine for a proof of concept, but I wouldn’t recommend using 3D printed utensils more than once.

Now for some tools and tips. On I Like to Make Stuff, Bob Clagett has a great video on how to use 3D printing to customize or improve your car.

People are always looking for opportunities to create functional, practical 3D printed designs. As Bob points out, why not start with your car as a point of inspiration?

From printing out replacement parts, to modeling custom cup holders, Bob shows off some useful strategies for measuring and modeling your designs, as well as picking a filament that will hold up to the heat.

On Instructables, Erin The Small has a quick and clever solution for desoldering a micro-USB connection from a printed circuit board.

Maybe you want to replace the port, or make your project more difficult to hack after you’ve programmed it. Either way, all those little legs on a USB port make them tricky to heat up at the same time without a hot air rework station.

Erin’s trick is to use some solid core wire, or a clipped lead from a diode, and wrap it around the port. This way, when you apply a little flux and heat it up, the heat will evenly distribute out around all the solder points and hopefully release the thing all in one shot.

And here’s an interesting finishing technique I’d never seen before. It’s developed by a Japanese car customizer called Rohan Izawa Art Design. They have this signature technique where they hand engrave entire cars.

For it to be noticeable from a distance though, the engraving has to be deep – deeper than the metal would allow on most cars. Conventional engraving on steel car panels also opens up issues with rust, and wouldn’t be possible on plastic paneling.

So what they actually do is build up a super thick base coat of paint, engrave into that, and then coat it all with a special metallic paint that they can polish to a shine. It blew my mind, and the result looks awesome.

It made me wonder if a similar effect could be achieved with 3D printed engraving and a chroming process – or some other way to apply this technique to projects or enclosures.

I’d be curious to hear your thoughts in the comments.

For this week’s Digi-Key spotlight, check out the latest episode of Potentially Genius. This time, the crew from Tomorrow Lab are working on a musical instrument for kids.

The idea is to make something that breaks away from traditional instruments but still offers something rhythmic and melodic that kids can improvise with.

From the initial prototypes to the final result, there are a bunch of surprising, inspiring ideas here to get you motivated. Definitely check it out.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up, leave a comment, and leave some clapping hands for the fabrication class of Olympia High School, who are building a Raspberry Pi-based coin-operated Flea Circus. They also watch the show every week with their teacher Mr. Andrew Woodbridge, which makes them awesome.

A big thanks to Digi-Key Electronics for making this show possible. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you soon.