This week on Maker Update, making bubble wrap sing, telegraphing your lunch date, a mesmerizing headband, and arm wrestling the left-handed.

++Show Notes [Maker Update Ep. 296]++

-=Project of the Week=-

Bubble Wrap Popping Music Machine by Simone Giertz
https://youtu.be/nLGs7auWdgE

-=More Projects=-

2-Way Telegraph with Analog Feedback Servos by Ruiz Brothers, Lady Ada, Liz Clark
https://learn.adafruit.com/two-way-display-with-analog-feedback-servos

LED Matrix Headband by Charlyn Gonda
https://twitter.com/chardane/status/1557966736107847680?t=9kfEMl6xEdaMWKm4PwZpcg&s=03

DIY Arm Wrestling Tool for Left-handed People by Handy Geng

-=Tips & Tools=-

Flying Faders by John Park, Kattni Rembor
https://learn.adafruit.com/flying-faders

ConstructLab’s Universal Connector
https://www.core77.com/posts/116549/ConstructLabs-Universal-Connector-to-Combat-Single-Use-Wood

Deciphering Strange Arduino Code By Phillip Burgess
https://learn.adafruit.com/deciphering-strange-arduino-code

Use 3D Scanning to Make Low Poly 3D Models By Andrew Sink, Phil Torrone
https://learn.adafruit.com/use-3d-scanning-to-make-low-poly-3d-models

3D Scans for Low Poly Statues By Ruiz Brothers
https://learn.adafruit.com/low-poly-3d-scans-for-3d-printing

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

My NYC Workshop Tour (200 ft²) by Becky Stern
https://beckystern.com/2022/08/14/my-nyc-workshop-tour-200-sq-ft/

-=Transcript=-

This week on Maker Update, making bubble wrap sing, telegraphing your lunch date, a mesmerizing headband, and arm wrestling the left-handed.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell, and welcome back to another Maker Update. I hope you’re all doing well. Some of you are already heading back to school. Some of you are still in summer mode. And some of you are already planning out your Halloween decorations. Whatever mode you’re in, I’m glad you’re here. Let’s get started with the project of the week.

It’s always a treat when Simone Giertz drops a new project video. Her latest is this manually operated bubble wrap-popping music machine.

Following through on silly ideas, no matter how impractical, has always been Simone’s thing. This one though, really throws curveball after curveball.

She has to figure out: the perfect way to mechanically pop the bubble wrap; how to CNC machine a pattern of holes across a cylinder; how to cut threads on each of those holes without going insane; how to mount everything; how to gear everything; how to keep the wrap from getting stuck in the gears; and of course, how to translate those pops into musically useful sounds.

Simone puts on a brave face and sticks the landing with an impressive build. I can’t imagine any of us would sign up to repeat this tortured process, but I have to raise a beverage in salute to Simone’s perserverence and how open she is about the messy process of making things.

She could have edited out half of the setbacks and phone-a-friend moments that went into this, and still had a successful, characteristically Simone Giertz project.

But by including all of the highly-relatable struggles and self-doubt and setbacks, she’s pushing back at the YouTube fantasy that projects are just a flow state of successful, clever solutions. It may be for some people – but it’s never been that way for me.

Everybody struggles, but it’s usually worth it, especially if what you end up with is something so completely unique that only you could have popped it into existence.

More projects. On Adafruit, the Ruiz Brothers, Lady Ada, and Liz Clark, created this guide on building a 2-way IoT telegraph using analog feedback servos.

Inspired by ship engine telegraphs, these wirelessly connected handles transmit their selection to one another over the internet.

This way, you and your bestie have a way to anachronistically signal to one another your interest in getting tacos for lunch, or grabbing a cup of coffee.

It’s a fun idea, and a clever execution with the 3D printed design. But the real star of the show here is this special servo called an analog feedback servo.

This is a standard servo where the internal potentiometer is wired so that you can connect to a microcontroller and read the servo’s position.

So in this example, when you move the handle to a new selection, the attached servo acts as a passive analog potentiometer and reports the new position to the QT Py Wifi board it’s attached to. This new location is then transmitted over the internet to the matching telegraph and the servo does its normal servo thing, moving the handle to the new location.

It’s a neat trick and a great design that you can customize with whatever labels work for you.

I also got a real kick out of this LED matrix headband by Charlyn Gonda. This one also uses an Adafruit QT Py board, this time with a LiPo BFF add-on board for charging and switching the connected battery pack.

The LED matrix is made with 8 strips of Neopixels wrapped in layers of scrunched-up black tulle cloth to both hide and diffuse the lights.

It looks like a great wearable LED fashion project to try and recreate. All the elements are relatively inexpensive and easy to get and the end result looks super cool.

Finally, for a project that is somehow both ridiculous and practical, check out Handy Geng’s custom arm wrestling adapter for left-handed people.

Through gearing and some welding and grinding techniques that certainly wouldn’t meet any known safety standards, he’s able to translate left-handed force into right-handed direction.

Now, he and his left-handed brother can arm wrestle without either of them having to compromise and use their non-dominant hand.

I can’t imagine it’s a situation that comes up too frequently, but part of me wants to make a project like this just to hang it on a wall and have people guess what it is.

Now for some tips and tools. If you thought those analog feedback servos were cool, John Park has a guide on how to incorporate flying faders into your next project.

These are the motorized slide potentiometers typically reserved for fancy music studio mixers. Like the feedback servos, not only can these report their position as an analog value, but the internal motors can also automatically move to any value you send over.

There are some great, well established uses for these for interacting with music software, but they’re also ripe for adapting to game controls, or any interactive project.

On Core 77 I learned about this Universal Construction Connector plate designed by ConstructLab.

Unlike typical construction plates that are meant to join wood into common, permanent configurations, this combination of hole patterns and perforated metal hinges are meant for temporary structures. It’s more like a scaffolding system.

This particular design is made to be used with the scandinavian lumber standard, but with some experimentation, I expect something similar could be done with 2x4s or some other standard of dimensional lumber.

Back on Adafruit, Phillip Burgess has a guide on understanding the stranger extremes of Arduino code you may have come across.

Anyone who’s dug through enough Arduino code will eventually come across some advanced C++ code that flies in the face of the typical Arduino formulas most of us are taught.

Not only does this guide demystify many of these coding quirks, but it’s also funny and approachable.

I also found a pair of guides for creating low poly 3D printed designs from a 3D scanning technique you can do with your phone.

The first guide, from Andrew Sink and Phil Torrone, details some best practices on creating low poly digital models from 3D scans.

The second guide, by the Ruiz Brothers, covers some of the same material but goes into further detail on 3D printing the models after you’ve created them, and even adding some LED lighting.

For this week’s Digi-Key spotlight, Becky Stern has a new video out providing a detailed tour of her 200 square foot New York City workshop.

You’ll learn some useful tips for making the most from a small workshop space, such as using a deep drawer tool chest instead of pegboard system, or the benefits of using a small jewelry bench for working with electronics. Tons of great ideas here.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up or leave a comment. As always, a big thanks to Digi-Key electronics for making this show possible. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you soon.