This week, a Kalimba made from teeth, Arduino gives the Yun a second chance, hacking a greeting card sound machine, a giant button for $1, and 5 maker materials you can cut from a trash bike. This week’s Cool Tool is a Greeting Card Sound Player Module.

Show Notes

Project of the Week

Trash Kalimba by Loek Vellekoop
https://www.instructables.com/id/Trash-Kalimba-Musical-Instrument/
https://www.loekvellekoop.com/

Bike Gamelan
https://www.loekvellekoop.com/#/bikegamelan/

News

Arduino Yun Rev 2 Announcement
https://blog.arduino.cc/2018/03/29/arduino-yun-rev-2-is-here/

Analysis by Alasdair Allan
https://blog.hackster.io/introducing-the-new-arduino-y%C3%BAn-rev-2-3b5de45b8cec

Arduino Yun Rev 2 Store Page
https://store.arduino.cc/usa/arduino-yun-rev-2

Maslow CNC Releases Community Garden
http://maslowcommunitygarden.org/

Cool Tools Minute

Programmable Button Control Music Sound Player Module
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B01M35VHY5/ctmakerupdate-20

Also, those 18650 rechargeable batteries, charger, and holders, if you’re interested.

EBL 18650 3.7V 3000mAh Li-ion Rechargeable Batteries
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00DNPT1D6/ctmakerupdate-20

Charger
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B01MR2JJ1W/ctmakerupdate-20

Holders
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B013DUOJV4/ctmakerupdate-20

Tools/Tips

Cheapest Easiest Easy Button Hack EVER by @MakerBlock
http://makerblock.com/2018/02/cheapest-easiest-easy-button-hack-ever/

4-Pack Tap Light
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00S9RPGZU/ctmakerupdate-20

MagPi 68 is out
https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/issues/68/

Dan Porter’s Hummingbird 3D in NC
http://www.hummingbird3d.com/

5 Maker Materials You Can Reclaim from an Old Bike
https://makerprojectlab.com/5-maker-materials-from-an-old-bike-wheel/

Maker Faires

Jacksonville, Florida
Meridian, Mississippi
Miami, Florida
Lakeville, Connecticut
Pennington, New Jersey

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, a Kalimba made from teeth, Arduino gives the Yun a second chance, hacking a greeting card sound machine, a giant button for $1, and 5 maker materials you can cut from an old bike.

I’m Donald Bell, and welcome to another Maker Update. How’s everybody doing? I’ve had a fairly productive week working on my new Power Racer for Maker Faire Bay Area. I’ve got a brake on it now, and the makings of a steering system — both fairly critical elements.

I’m really excited about this week’s episode. A lot of it is about repurposing materials and technology, which is really at the core of how I became a maker.

And as a great example, check out the project of the week.

Over on Instructables, Loek Vellekoop has a great writeup on making what he calls a Trash Kalimba. These are sometimes called thumb pianos, and I’ve seen them done a dozen different ways, but there’s something about Loek’s approach that really has me inspired.

First, there’s an incredible variety of different instruments he’s made using the technique he outlines in the instructable. Bigger, smaller, more notes, different materials — some even have guitar pickups in them.

Second, he lists off a bunch of different materials that make for good tines, including hacksaw blades, rakes, bike spokes, windshield wiper metal, street cleaner bristles. You can tell someone’s been at this a long time when they can reel off all the options.

Best of all, Loek’s guide methodically captures the process of creating the crossbars that hold the tines in place. It’s a relatively simple technique, holding everything together with flexible metal wire and tension.

The result looks great and sounds cool too. And I love all the variations that encourage you to experiment. There’s even one made from fake teeth!

Also, poking around on Loek’s homepage, he has a lot of other great projects, including a motorized Gamelan made from steel bike tubes. How cool is that?

It’s time for some news. Last week, Arduino announced version 2 of their Arduino Yun board. The original Yun was first announced in 2013, but support for it was fumbled with all the Arduino company drama, and there were some real hardware issues that held it back

Version 2 will ship later this month priced at $59, and a whole new hardware design and software update.

The key feature of this board is that it has a dedicated Linux processor (the big metal box on top), in addition to the classic Arduino chip. As I understand it, the Linux aspect of this is really to provide strong and flexible networking capability for IoT projects.

Another unusual feature for this board is that it has a full size USB port that acts as a USB hub. And both the USB port and the Ethernet port are mounted through the board, instead of on the board, to give it a slimmer profile. This way you can stack shields on top without shorting it out, which apparently was a problem with the first generation.

In other news this week, Maslow CNC, the creators of the inexpensive, upright CNC kit, have launched Maslow Community Garden. The site is in beta, but it gives users a place to share projects with each other, like this CNC plywood crutch.

It’s time for another Cool Tool review. This is a greeting card sound module. There are a bunch of dirt cheap ones out there, but this fancy one cost me $9 on Amazon. It’s a straightforward way to add sound to your project. And by picking one up using the link in the description you’re helping to support my videos and the Cool Tools blog.

Sometimes, you’re making a thing, and you want it to make a sound when it’s pressed, or turned or opened. And you’d think that would be an easy thing to do, but it can get surprisingly complicated and expensive to pull off.

One way to keep it simple is this pre-wired sound player module. It comes with a speaker and a button already wired up, plus wires to connect up jack for a 5v power adapter. Or, you can also do what I did and wire up a 3.7 volt rechargeable LiPo battery or 18650 battery to the 3.7v connections here.

Now, there are a lot of cheap, voice recorder modules out there, and I plan on doing a separate video on why those are great, but what I like most about this board is that you have a micro USB connection where you can load up your own MP3 file.

The board shows up on your computer like a thumb drive. Mine came with a little song already loaded on it. Delete the demo file and load up your own, and you now have a button-triggered sound effect that you can fit into your project.

You only get 4MB of room on here, though. So if you want a long sound, like a song, you’ll need to lower the bitrate way down in a program like Audacity. I’ve done it, though, and it works.

Another upshot of the USB port is that you can use it to recharge the battery you have wired up to the 3.7v side. So if you keep this USB port exposed on your project, or extend it to the outside with a panel mount extension cable, you can both recharge your project and reload your sound file.

What I also like about this solution is that it’s easy to hack what’s here. If you want to change the speaker, you just cut the old one off and use the same wires to connect a bigger one. If you want to use an arcade button or tilt switch instead of the included one? Just chop it and replace it. You don’t have to read a schematic or decipher the circuit board labels, just upgrade what’s already wired up.

That said, if you are down for some more intense hacking, a photo on Amazon which I’ll also post on Maker Project Lab, shows all the different modes and options.

You can wire in a photoresistor to make this light sensitive. You can short out some of these resistors over here for different playback modes. You can adjust the volume with this tiny potentiometer. There’s a lot you can do.

My plan is to use this to add a custom horn sound for my go kart, but there are a lot of possibilities here, and I’ll probably order another one up just to have on hand.

That’s a look at this $9 sound module. You can pick one up using the included link. And remember, you can find thousands of reader recommended tools like this at Cool-Tools.org

I have a few more tools and tips to share. If you want a big cheap button to go with your sound module, Makerblock has a guide on how to modify inexpensive tap lights to work as custom, neopixel-lit buttons. I’ll also include an Amazon link to the $4 4-pack of tap lights he’s talking about.

MagPi issue 68 is out and free to download. As you might imagine, this issue is all about the latest Raspberry Pi 3 B+.

A longtime fan of the show Dan Porter has opened up his own 3D printing production facility in Burlington North Carolina. It’s called Hummingbird 3D Solutions. I met Dan at East Bay Maker Faire a few years ago and he gave me this beautiful multicolor print RFID tag. Dan is the man, and so he gets an unsolicited plug for his new Maker business.

Have you ever wondered how many cool parts and materials you could salvage from an old bike? This weekend, I bought this used kids bike for $5 and chopped it up to use the front as a steering assembly for my go kart.

But after seeing Loek Vellekoop’s salvaged music instruments I was inspired to harvest all the little bits I could from this bike that I could use in other projects.

Just from one wheel, I was able to clip out spokes I can use as tines for a kalimba.
The wheel hub can be used as a bearing or make something else spin,
the inner tubes are a very popular material to used for tie-down straps,
the rim has a nice, chime sound, but could also work as a lamp with some LEDs around it,
and the protective rubber lining is like a giant rubber band — though there is a small patchable hole in it for the tube stem.

I was really happy with all the little elements I was able to harvest from this bike, and I’m sure there are more. If you have other ideas or projects that reuse bike parts, I’d love to hear about them, so leave me a comment.

Maker Faires! This weekend we have a bunch, including Jacksonville, Florida; Meridian, Mississippi; Miami, Florida; Lakeville, Connecticut; and Pennington, New Jersey. If you have one near you, get out there and mix it up.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up or leave a comment. Get on the email list. Go get a cheap sound module. And if you really like what I’m doing here, you can buy me a coffee using the Buy Me a Coffee link down here. That directly supports me, and it feels great. Alright? Thanks for watching and I’ll see you next week.