This week on Maker Update, a speech to bubbles interface, making with Cartoon Network, a hovermower, augmented origami, an optical drum machine, and circuit sculptures. 

Show Notes

Project of the Week

Bubble Talk: Turn Your Speech Into Bubbles! by KyungYun
https://www.instructables.com/id/Bubble-Talk-Turn-Your-Speech-Into-Bubbles/

News

Create With Cartoon Network
http://www.createwithcn.com/

Microsoft MakeCode, Cartoon Network and Adafruit team up to inspire a new generation of creators
https://educationblog.microsoft.com/2019/01/microsoft-makecode-cartoon-network-and-adafruit-team-up-to-inspire-a-new-generation-of-creators/

LA Times Writeup
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/herocomplex/la-et-hc-cartoon-network-microsoft-adafruit-coding-20190107-story.html

Scratch 3 is here
https://scratch.mit.edu/

Coming to Pi, soon
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/scratch-3-resource-upgrades/

More Projects

Hoverboard Lawn Mower (Hovermower?) by lmu34
https://www.instructables.com/id/Hoverboard-Lawn-Mower-Hovermower/

Origami Lantern: 3D Printing on Paper by Eammon Littler
https://www.instructables.com/id/Origami-Lantern-3D-Printing-on-Paper/

Origami Printing Web app
https://ealitt.github.io/origami-printing/

Spinning Disc Step Sequencer by John Park
https://learn.adafruit.com/spinning-disc-step-sequencer

Circuit Sculpture Contest Entries
https://hackaday.io/submissions/circuit-sculpture-contest/list

Freeform Atari Punk Console by Emily Velasco
https://hackaday.io/project/162958-freeform-rgb-atari-punk-console

https://blog.hackster.io/this-freeform-atari-punk-console-generates-square-wave-tones-in-style-247f3987b555

Tools/Tips

Cool Tool: Hobby Knives Roundup
https://youtu.be/AtrG0b3tQME

$16 Raspberry Pi Case Features LCD Touchscreen and Stylus
https://blog.hackster.io/16-raspberry-pi-case-features-lcd-touchscreen-and-stylus-ac307ba3498f

Modular Feeders For SMD Component Tape by Stanoba
http://blog.oshpark.com/2019/01/08/modular-feeders-for-smd-component-tape/
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2414955

Jen Schachter, Multimedia Maker
https://kk.org/cooltools/jen-schachter-multimedia-maker/

Popsicle Stick CNC Hack by Anthony Timpanaro

Code on Your Phone With Circuit Python Editor
https://hackaday.com/2019/01/10/code-on-your-phone-with-circuitpython-editor/

Adafruit Grand Central M4 Express featuring the SAMD51
https://www.adafruit.com/product/4064

Grand Central Guide
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-grand-central

Maker Faires

(Find your local Faire)

January 19 + 20, 2019 Bangkok, Thailand
January 26, 2019 Nurnberg, Germany

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, a speech to bubble interface, Making with Cartoon Network, a hovermower, augmented origami, an optical drum machine, and circuit sculptures.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell and welcome to another Maker Update. I don’t even need to ask how you’re doing because I can already tell from all the awesome projects this week. It was painful for me to pick what was going in the show and what to leave out. So here we go, let’s get started with the project of the week.

On Instructables, Kyung Yun Choi from MIT Media Lab published this guide on making a sound-reactive bubble machine. You operate it by holding it up to your face and talking into it, which is kinda weird, and kinda cool.

What’s definitely cool, though, is the mechanical iris design used to group and retract the strings used to create the bubble film. I could watch this all day.

The project uses a mixture of 3D printed and laser cut parts, along with a peristaltic pump, a small computer fan, a microcontroller and a small electret microphone.

The pump keeps the strings wet, and when the mic detects audio, it triggers the system of pulleys to contract and expand to create a soap film while the fan blows behind it. It’s a thing of beauty, and you should go check it out.

It’s time for some news. If you’re a teacher or parent looking for engaging beginner coding and hardware projects — Cartoon Network, Adafruit, and Microsoft have teamed up to create the Create with Cartoon Network site.

It’s a hub that showcases a growing number of quirky projects that all use the same Circuit Playground board, and Microsoft’s browser-based MakeCode editor. For their part, Cartoon Network is letting creators use their popular characters in their project designs. It’s a great hook, it’s free, and the projects look fun and uncomplicated.

On a similar note, version 3 of MIT’s popular Scratch editor has been available for a few weeks now. The new update is now tablet and smartphone friendly, includes a new paint and sound editor, and can be used to interact with Micro:Bit and Lego Mindstorms EV3. Best of all, it’s still completely free.

Now for more projects. On Instructables, LMU34 shows off how he mashed up a hoverboard with a push mower. The result sorta looks like a Segway mower.

As with any project that involves sharp, motorized blades, proceed at your own risk, and maybe even cover the blades up better than this guy — even if it’s just to keep lawn clippings off your pants.

It looks like a fun way to mow the lawn, though. There’s also some useful info in here about using inexpensive BLDC brushless motor drivers.

Also on Instructables Eammon Littler has a guide on how he used 3d printed origami patterns on washi paper to create this small, folding LED lamp.

The lamp design is neat in its own right, but what I think is really cool is that Eammon made his own web app for transferring paper folding patterns to SVG and STL files.

I’ll include a link to his app in the show notes. I think this technique of printing fold patterns on paper could open up a lot of interesting project possibilites.

On Adafruit, John Park shows how to make a drum machine by reading the pattern on a spinning disc.

The project uses 5 reflective sensors mounted on a perma-proto board to detect the white and black pattern on the disc. That info is sent over to a Feather M0 board mounted on a Crickit Featherwing expansion board. That combo is used to both spin the disc, read the input from the sensors, and playback audio through a connected speaker.

John includes blank discs you can print out and color in to make your own beat. You can also adjust the tempo by tapping the capacitive touch sensors on the Crickit.

Over on Hackaday, the Circuit Sculpture contest has gone beyond anyone’s expectations. There are some beautiful, surprising, freeform circuit designs worth checking out — over 80 of them.

One highlight I particularly enjoyed is this freeform RGB Atari Punk Console by Emily Velasco. It’s beautiful, noisy, and blinky, all in one package.

I have some tips to share. Over on the Cool Tools channel I’ve got a roundup looking at 10 different types of hobby knives. There’s a whole world out there beyond X-Acto worth knowing about.

Through a post on Hackster.io I learned about a $16 Raspberry Pi case that has an LCD touch screen built-in. It’s probably too good to be true, but I ordered one anyway and I’ll let you know how it goes.

Through the OSH Park blog I found this 3D printed modular feeder for small surface mount components that come on reels of tape. If you work with SMD and have scraps of component tape shoved in bins, this could be a nice way to organize them.

The excellent Cool Tools podcast has an interview up with maker Jen Schachter. You’ve probably seen Jen’s work on Tested. She has some great tool suggestions.

On the Facebook CNC group, Anthony Timpanaro shows how he was able to shove some popsicle sticks under his work to prevent the router bit from touching his spoilboard.

Through Hackaday found this guide on how to use an Android phone to program Circuit Python compatible project boards on the go. There’s a free app to download, plus you’ll need a USB OTG cable that works with your phone. Other than that, it looks pretty straightforward.

And if you’re in the market for a new Circuit Python project board, there’s a new superstar on the market. This is the Adafruit Grand Central M4 Express. It costs $38, runs a Cortex M4 chip at 120 MHz, and includes a whopping 70 GPIO pins.

It’s a powerhouse, and it will probably be on backorder for awhile, so if you’re interested you should sign up to get notified from Adafruit when it’s available again.

Maker Faires! We’ve got bangkok Thailand this weekend, along with Nurnberg Germany the following week. If you’re curious to know when your local faire is, head over to makerfaire.com and search the map.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up or leave a comment, especially those of you last week who let me know that my Patreon link was busted. Thank you. Also, get on the Maker Update email list to have show notes emailed out to you automatically, plus a few bonus project links, which I’m sure this week will be especially good.

And finally, I volunteer to do this show because it makes me happy but it’s my Patreon support that keeps it running, so if this show does something for you, consider checking out the Patreon link and chipping in. It works this time. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next week.