This week on Maker Update, a Roomba for your whiteboard, a wearable for people who talk too much, a geometric planter, Arduino for Nerf, and mashing up code with Becky Stern.

++Show Notes++

-=Project of the Week=-

Wipy: the Overly Motivated Whiteboard Cleaner By Lasath Siriwardena, Simon Lut & Tim Stark
https://www.instructables.com/id/Wipy-the-Overly-Motivated-Whiteboard-Cleaner/

-=News=-

Maker Faire in San Mateo could be Bay Area’s last
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Next-week-s-Maker-Faire-in-San-Mateo-could-be-13836040.php

-=More Projects=-

The Debatable Deliberator by Ridvan Kahraman, Okan Basnak and Sacha Cutajar
https://www.instructables.com/id/The-Debatable-Deliberator/

3D Printed Geometric Planter With Drainage By bekathwia
https://www.instructables.com/id/3D-Printed-Geometric-Planter-With-Drainage/

Arduino for Nerf: Ballistic Chronograph by MakersBox
https://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-for-Nerf-Ballistic-Chronograph/

-=Tools/Tips=-

Modified Truss Head Screw review by Mike Warren
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbzTUvgvRT4

Switches//Bits by I Like To Make Stuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNvCQVrEpDQ

Jasper Anderson’s Animatronic Raven Kit!
https://www.tested.com/art/makers/874831-jasper-andersons-animatronic-raven-kit/

Mash Up Arduino Code Samples By bekathwia
https://www.instructables.com/id/Mash-Up-Arduino-Code-Samples/

Gareth Branwyn’s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales Newsletter #1
https://www.getrevue.co/profile/garethbranwyn/issues/gareth-s-tips-tools-shop-tales-may-3-2019-175027

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

Particle Photon
https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/p/particle-industries/photon-mcu-wi-fi-modules

 

-=Maker Faire Bay Area 2019 is this weekend=-

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, a Roomba for your whiteboard, a wearable for people who talk too much, a geometric planter, Arduino for Nerf, and mashing up code with Becky Stern.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell, and welcome to another Maker Update. This is my last week prepping for Maker Faire Bay Area. I’ve got both of my Power Racing Series cars all ready to go. I even have stickers for both cars printed up. If you see me at Maker Faire, ask for a sticker, alright? I have a great, quick show for you today, so let’s get started with the project of the week.

Check out this whiteboard erasing robot made by Lasath Siriwardena, Simon Lut & Tim Stark. They call it Wipy, there’s a whole Instructable on how they made it, plus a funny infomercial style video advertising it.

What makes it such a ridiculous project is that it basically erases anything you write on a whiteboard immediately after you’re done writing. Underneath the cute, 3D printed shell is an Arduino-based line-following robot with a sponge for erasing lines as it goes.

They’ve also included a time-of-flight sensor for detecting and avoiding any nearby obstacles, like your hand. And maybe the most unique aspect of this design are the pair of magnets fit to the bottom that allow it to cling to the whiteboard just enough to not fall off, but not so much that it struggles to move.

Because the project was part of the Computational Design and Digital Fabrication seminar for the ITECH masters program, there’s an impressive amount of visual and technical documentation here. You’ve got the code, bill of materials, files for the laser cut frame, and the 3D printed shell. There’s even code for adding an animated face you can put on a small screen. Very cool.

I have some news to share. As many of you know, this weekend is Maker Faire Bay Area, the original and still one of the biggest Maker Faires out there. But it might be the last run for this particular event.

In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Maker Media CEO and founder Dale Dougherty said that they’ve had to tighten down to provide this year’s Faire, and that the future is uncertain for the Bay Area event happening next year.

The article goes on to say that the company, which also publishes Make magazine, laid off 8 employees in late March and is facing financial difficulties. Hopefully, things will turn around.

Time now for more projects! Another one from ITECH, the Debatable Deliberator by Ridvan Kahraman, Okan Basnak and Sacha Cutajar.

This is a wearable headband that slaps a hand over your mouth when it’s not your turn to talk. The idea is to help two or more people have a useful, structured debate. Only the person holding the ball is allowed to talk before passing the ball to the next person. If they go over their time, the little hands slap them in the face. I think it’s a fun, and maybe actually a useful device.

Becky Stern has a new Instructable up on how to make these custom, 3D printed succulent planters. She goes over how to create the planter and a little custom drip tray using Tinkercad.

One of my favorite tips from this project is how she uses water based concrete sealer to give the 3D prints a waterproof and UV resistant surface. I hadn’t heard of that before.

There’s also a great project up from MakersBox on how to create a chronograph for a Nerf gun. It’s basically a little infrared gate you put at the end of your Nerf gun and it counts every dart that passes through and tallys it up on the 7-segment display. This version goes a step further and also calculates the velocity of each dart, taking into account the moment it enters the gate, the moment it leaves, and the length of the dart.

Both readings pop up on the display, but can also be output over the Arduino’s serial monitor if you want to get real scientific about the whole thing.

I have some tips and tools to share. On the Cool Tools channel I’ve got an interview with maker Mike Warren (aka Mikeasaurus on Instructables). We talk about one of his favorite types of screws called a Modified Truss Head, that’s great for making quick prototypes. Check it out.

Bob from I Like to Make Stuff has a new Bits video out providing an introduction to different types of switches for electronics projects and how to understand them. Poles, throws, state, power ratings, it’s a great, quick overview.

On Tested, Jasper Anderson shows off his animatronic raven kit. He reveals how he’s able to get realistic motion from just servos and a microcontroller. It’s definitely got me thinking about Halloween projects.

On Instructables, Becky Stern has an absolutely indispensable guide on how to approach Arduino project code conceptually and making the most of sample code, and online examples that you can mash up. It’s really a way of looking at code of any kind, and approaching it with a logical framework. For me, this kind of content is pure gold.

If you’re like me, you’ve been missing Gareth Branwyn’s Tips of the Week column that used to run on Make. Well, Gareth is back with a weekly email newsletter. Issue #1 covers zip-tie actuators, reusing old sanding belts, and decommissioning old hard drives. I definitely recommend signing up.

Finally, for this week’s Digi-Key product spotlight, check out the Particle Photon project board. This is a small Wi-Fi connected board. It’s beautifully made, with a lot of attention to hardware detail.

But there’s an equal amount of really unique attention paid to how you code and develop projects for this board. There’s a web-based IDE, a desktop IDE, and you send your code updates through the cloud, allowing you to update projects remotely — which for some projects is essential.

Now, Particle has an even newer family of IoT project boards out called the Argon, Boron, and Xenon, but the Photon is still a rock solid choice you can pick up for around $20, and there’s a backlog of great projects already documented for it. You can pick one up using the Digi-key link in the description.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a comment or leave a thumb’s up. Get on the Maker Update email newsletter. And if you’re at Maker Faire Bay Area this weekend, be sure to come say hello. You can probably find me at zone 5 at the Power Racing Series track. Alright? A big thanks to my Patreon patrons and to Digi-Key electronics for sponsoring this show. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you next week.