This week on Maker Update, a laser cut split-flap weather station, a hacker-improved insulin pump, TensorFlow machine learning comes to the Raspberry Pi, Barbie eats sushi, a neon sign from LEDs, an orbital lab shaker, a googly gear monster, velocity painting, wet sanding, braising, SVG tracing and CNC stitching.

Show Notes

Project of the Week

IoT Split-flap Weather Forecast Powered by XOD by gabbapeople
https://www.instructables.com/id/IoT-Split-flap-Weather-Forecast-Powered-by-XOD/

SplitFlap Display by scottbez1
https://blog.hackster.io/split-flap-display-nearly-3-years-in-the-making-a73ed43add2d

Jon-A-Tron’s Split-Flap display
https://www.instructables.com/id/Split-Flap-Display/

News

Homebrew Pancreas
https://hackaday.com/2018/08/09/homebrew-pancreas-gets-30-minutes-of-fame/

https://blog.adafruit.com/2018/08/09/the-250-biohack-thats-revolutionizing-life-with-diabetes/

https://loopkit.github.io/loopdocs/setup/requirements/rileylink/

Google Tensorflow AI can now run directly on Raspberry Pi
https://blog.hackster.io/a-binary-release-for-tensorflow-on-the-raspberry-pi-cf9332c5e448

More Projects

Feed Barbie with the J’ai faim! mechatronic game
https://blog.arduino.cc/2018/08/07/feed-barbie-with-the-jai-faim-mechatronic-game/

https://niklasroy.com/jai_faim/

Neon LED Signs by John Park
https://learn.adafruit.com/led-neon-signs

DIY Orbital Shaker by Progress TH
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2983846

Assembly of prototype
https://youtu.be/FlnDQZjm9aY

Other designs by Progress TH
https://www.thingiverse.com/ProgressTH/designs

Rack and Pinion Bot by Ruiz Bros
https://learn.adafruit.com/rack-and-pinion-bot

Tools/Tips

How to: Velocity Painting! (Tattoo your 3D prints) by Thomas Sanladerer
https://youtu.be/HdKaKKeyz7g

Wet Sanding Gives Your Projects a Scratch-Free Finish by Jordan Bunker
https://makezine.com/2016/05/10/wet-sanding-gives-your-projects-a-scratch-free-finish/

SVG Tracer for vectorizing images of cut + fold templates (packaging designs, crease patterns, etc.). It generates separate score & cut paths for sending to a CNC machine!
https://twitter.com/scientiffic/status/1027528261482491904?s=11
https://svg-tracer.glitch.me/

Brazing tips by Bob Clagett
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSTQNWdvPmA

Inkstitch
https://inkstitch.org/

Bernz-O-Matic Micro Flame Torch kit review on Cool Tools
https://kk.org/cooltools/micro-flame-butane-torch-kit/

Maker Faires

Maker Faire Singapore Singapore
Seattle Mini Maker Faire Seattle, Washington
Grand Rapids Mini Maker Faire Grand Rapids, Michigan

Chimera Arts launches First Annual “Maker Music Festival” Saturday, October 13th, 2018
http://www.chimeraarts.org/mmf

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, a laser cut split flap weather station, a hacker-improved insulin pump, TensorFlow machine learning comes to the Raspberry Pi, Barbie eats sushi, a neon sign from LEDs, an orbital lab shaker, a googly gear monster, velocity painting, wet sanding, braising, SVG tracing and CNC stitching.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell, and welcome to another Maker Update. How’s everybody doing? I’ve got a great show for you with a bunch of projects and tips and even a little news. So let’s get started, with the project of the week.

Check out this custom-built split-flap display by Gabba People on Instructables. The display is set up to show a weather forecast and the current temperature. It’s made from a bunch of laser cut acrylic panels and gears, a NEMA stepper motor and a motor shield.

Driving it all is an Arduino Mega with an ESP8266 Wi-Fi shield and a 12v 3 amp power supply. What’s unique about this particular project is that the code is created using a visual programming tool called XOD. It looks a little over my head, but I’m always interested in seeing other approaches for coding projects like this.

What I particularly love about this project are all the exploded diagrams used to illustrate how the parts fit together. It’s a beautiful design and I don’t see any reason you couldn’t repurpose it for a Raspberry Pi powered display if that’s more familiar to you.

As some of you know, I have a minor obsession with split flap displays. If you’re looking for similar projects, I’ll include links to two other great split flap projects by Jon-A-Tron and ScottBez1.

Now for some news. A huge maker story on Bloomberg Businessweek. It’s about an open source modification to an insulin pump that allows you to inexpensively view and manage blood sugar levels. The modification exploits a Bluetooth security hole on an existing, FDA-approved Medtronic insulin pump.

It’s a great story about hackers changing lives and working together to solve problems. But it’s also a complicated story about medical safety and regulation. So go check that out.

In other news, Google has released a version of their TensorFlow AI software that you can install directly on a Raspberry Pi with no additional hardware.

Google has been creating hardware-accelerated Tensorflow projects, like their AIY Voice and Vision kits, but this is the first time we’re seeing TensorFlow able to run on the Pi locally. With it, you can toy around with Machine Learning and graphing out data in interesting ways.

Now back to more projects! Niklas Roy and Kati Hyyppä created this interactive mechanical game called Feed Barbie. Using a joystick, you tilt the doll’s head around and are awarded points when you get her to taste sushi.

It’s weird and funny and totally my kind of thing. Inside, they’re using an Arduino Uno and a stepper motor to move the head and a solenoid to move the tongue. You can find the build log and Arduino code using the link in the show notes.

On Adafruit, John Park has a guide on making these neon-style LED signs using a new type of 12v LED strip Adafruit is selling.

The effect is closer to the look and brightness of neon than any LED or EL version I’ve seen yet. But because the stip is 12 volts and isn’t addressable, John goes over how to animate the lights with a Darlington transistor connected to an Arduino.

If you ever wanted a neon sign for your workshop, this looks like a practical way to get it.

Progress Thailand has a guide on Thingiverse for creating this 3D printed chemistry lab orbital shaker. The project uses an Arduino Pro Micro, a motor breakout board, a handful of screws nuts and bearings, and a NEMA stepper motor — which has got to be the component of the week at this point.

On the Progress Thailand Thingiverse page you can also find links to bunch of other lab essentials, including a centrifuge and a magnetic stirrer. Check it out.

Back on Adafruit, the Ruiz brothers have a guide on creating this silly rack and pinion robot toy. It’s a 3D printed design with some googly eyes added for maximum cuteness. A Circuit Playground and Cricket board drive a geared DC motor and provide some control over the speed.

The real star of the show, though, is rack and pinion gear, which I could just look at all day. I kinda want to glue a little Lego guy to the disk, though, so the monster has something to chew on.

It’s time for some tips. On YouTube I found this useful video by Thomas Sanladerer about velocity painting your 3D prints. It’s something I’d never heard of, and it turns out not to be painting at all. It’s a way to apply a slight patterned texture to your 3D prints and it’s a cool effect.

Over on Makezine, there’s an oldie-but-goodie on wet sanding by my maker guru Jordan Bunker. I still don’t think I have the patience for it, but it’s useful to understand the technique.

Tiffany Tseng is back with yet another free web app for makers. This one is called SVG Tracer and it can trace bitmap images into vector images you can send to a laser cutter or CNC router, or plotter. More than that, it’s specifically great at tracing packaging and paper folding patterns. It can distinguish between cut lines and score lines and save them as different paths. Definitely bookmark this one.

Bob Clagett has a new Bits video up on brazing aluminum. It looks like a relatively simple process, but until I actually do it, I appreciate seeing how it’s supposed to go.

And through the Evil Mad Scientist blog I learned about Ink/Stitch. This is a free, open source plug-in for the equally free and open source Inkscape image editor. It turns your images into files you can embroider using embroidery machines from Brother and other manufacturers.

This week’s tool recommendation from is my trusty mini butane torch. I’ll include a link to the one I’ve reviewed for Cool Tools. If nothing else, it’s my favorite way to work with heat shrink, but it can also work as a cordless soldering iron. So check that out.

Maker Faires! This weekend we have Singapore, Seattle WA and Grand Rapids Michigan.

I also got an email about a Maker Music Festival happening October 13th in Sebastopol CA. There’s a call out for participation happening now, but I’m sure it will also just be a cool event to check out.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up, or leave a comment. I read all of them. You can also get on the Maker Update email list to get show notes sent out to each week along with bonus stuff I couldn’t fit in the show. And just a reminder, I am not a Make employee, I volunteer to do this show because I love it. If it does something for you and you’re feeling generous, you can buy me a coffee using the link down in the description. Alright? Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next week.