This week on Maker Update, an interactive geodesic dome, wire bending animatronics, an ornament printing ornament, motion machines, an eye tracking eye, a unique wire straightener, and a closer look at different types of E6000.

Show Notes

Project of the Week

Interactive LED Dome With Fadecandy, Processing and Kinect by amygoodchild
https://www.instructables.com/id/Interactive-LED-Dome-With-Fadecandy-Processing-and/

News

Bend-It: Design and Fabrication of Kinetic Wire Characters
https://youtu.be/4X9ORR-z_tY

More Projects

Christmas Ornament That 3D Prints Christmas Ornaments by seanhodgins
https://www.instructables.com/id/Christmas-Ornament-That-3D-Prints-Christmas-Orname/

Motion Machines by wonderfulidea
https://www.instructables.com/id/Motion-Machines/

Eye Motion Tracking Using Infrared Sensor by HomeMadeGarbage
https://www.instructables.com/id/Eye-Motion-Tracking-Using-Infrared-Sensor/

Uncanny Eye by Phil B.
https://learn.adafruit.com/animated-electronic-eyes-using-teensy-3-1/overview

Tools/Tips

Resistor Organizer and Storage by lonesoulsurfer
https://www.instructables.com/id/Resistor-Organizer-and-Storage/

Copper Wire Spool Holder With Straightener by Roger Cheng
https://newscrewdriver.com/2018/12/27/copper-wire-spool-holder-with-straightener/

via Emily Velasco
https://twitter.com/makerprojectlab/status/1079096133689925632

How to create a free Onshape account
https://www.onshape.com/products/free

Making R2-D2 by Bob Clagett
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWgp7VSVJR8

E6000 Adhesive Roundup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnlctRS97nM

Events

Plotter People Meetup 1/14 GitHub SF
https://www.evilmadscientist.com/2018/plotter-people-meetup/

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, an interactive geodesic dome, wire bending animatronics, an ornament printing ornament, motion machines, an eye tracking eye, a unique wire straightener, and a closer look at different types of E6000.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell, and welcome to another Maker Update. I hope 2019 is treating you well so far. I have plenty of projects to catch you up on, so let’s get started with the project of the week.

On Instructables, Amy Goodchild has an outstanding guide on how she made this geodesic dome covered with over 4,000 LEDs that react to a Microsoft Kinect.

This is Amy’s final project for her Masters at the Bartlett School of Architecture. She’s using a BuildWithHubs kit to create the dome from connectors and wooden beams.

For the LEDs, she had to cover 33 plywood triangles with 170 lights per panel using addressable LED strip. A combination of 11 Fadecandy LED controllers, each with their own power supply, were needed to drive all the lights.

Then came the programming. She used the free program Processing to map out and coordinate all the different lights and take input from a first-generation Kinect. The Kinect is mapping the distance and movement of the people in the dome to color hues that are fed into the Processing animation sketch.

The whole thing is awesome and Amy generously includes every little detail, template, and bit of code. Go check it out.

It’s time for some news. Earlier in December, Disney Research published a video and PDF of how to use CNC wire-bending joints to create animatronic or robotic skeletons that bend in predictable ways.

The team developed a program that could analyze a computer animated character and then determine the best placement and types of bends to use in order to recreate the same movement in armature wire.

The software isn’t something you can play with, but the ideas are ripe for reusing in your own project. I also think that CNC wire bending machines still haven’t made the jump into desktop maker tools, mostly because there isn’t a broad demand. But if you could bundle an application like this for making lightweight robotics — that could be something.

More projects! On Christmas Eve, Sean Hodgins released a guide on how he made this 3D printed ornament that 3D prints its own mini ornaments.

He pulls off this seemingly impossible trick by creating a little vat of resin that sits on top of a mini LCD backed by UV light. It works like a tiny SLA printer, curing the resin layer at a time and raising the print out of the liquid.

I know the ornament season is over, but you owe it to yourself to check out all the little hacks and techniques Sean uses to get this working.

For something totally on the other end of the spectrum, Wonderful Idea Co published a guide on how to use a simple system of 3D printed and laser cut parts to create battery powered motion machines.

These basic, inexpensive robotic platforms are a great way to introduce kids to kinetic motion and the effect different shapes of cams have on how the bots move around.

I saw some of these in action at East Bay Mini Maker Faire, and the kids had a lot of fun playing with them and rearranging the wheels.

I also came across this project by HomeMadeGarbage for creating an animated LED eye that you control from the movement with your actual eye.

There are two fun aspects of this project. The first is creating a big eye using strips of addressable LEDs over a kitchen strainer.

The second, and more unique challenge is creating a way to track your eye movements. The technique here is surprisingly simple, using two $5 reflectance sensors mounted on the inside of some glasses and pointed toward your eye.

An Arduino mini reads the sensors. The code detects the whites of your eye moving and adjusts the animation accordingly. This also makes it able to detect blinks. It looks like fun, and I hope somebody mashes this up with the animated eye project by Phil Burgess.

I have some tools and tips to share. On Instructables, LoneSoulSurfer has a guide up on using test tubes and a test tube rack to organize resistors. I’m not sure if I have the patience for it, but I love the way it looks.

By way of Emily Velasco I learned about a collection of wire straightener designs by Roger Cheng.

He has a great post talking about the process of creating them with the goal of making it easier to make freeform circuit designs. Best of all he links to his CAD design on Onshape, which has a free maker tier you can sign up for to play around with.

I’ve been playing with these designs all weekend and I think they’re great. These small ones are a quick print, you can size them up or down a percent for different gauges, and the results look nice.

Bob Clagett from I Like to Make Stuff is making his own full-size R2-D2 and posting video updates on his channel. If you’ve ever wondered about diving into the world of astromech fabrication, Bob does a great job explaining the options.

Finally, just this week I published a new video on the Cool Tools channel looking at 8 different variations of the beloved maker adhesive, E6000. For years, I’ve just been grabbing the standard formula at my local hardware store, but if you love this glue, there are options worth knowing about. So check that out.

Maker Faire season officially kicks off on the 19th in Bangkok Thailand. In the meantime, an interesting event in the San Francisco Bay Area worth checking out is the first ever Plotter People Meetup, January 14th at GitHub. Lenore Edman from Evil Mad Scientist will be one of two speakers, talking about plotter projects and the AxiDraw. The event is free.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up or leave a comment. Get on the Maker Update email list to have show notes emailed out to you each week so you can stay on top of things. And a big thanks to my patrons on Patreon who are the only way I make any money doing this show. Consider joining up if this is something you appreciate. Alright? Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next week.