This week on Maker Update, an encouragement machine, New York’s call for makers, wearable sanitizer from MIT, mini burning man, and tracking stats with a matte black PCB stack.

++Show Notes [Maker Update #194]++

-=Project of the Week=-

The Encouragement Machine by JBV Creative
https://hackaday.com/2020/08/18/encouragement-machine-battles-your-inner-bully/

-=News=-

Empire State Maker Faire 2020 Call For Makers Is Open
https://makerfaire.com/empire-maker-faire-2020/

Hackaday Circuit Sculpture Challenge
https://hackaday.io/contest/174093-2020-circuit-sculpture-challenge

Hackspace Issue #34
https://hackspace.raspberrypi.org/issues/34

-=More projects=-

Hyper Light Drifter Stat Tracker by Albert Phan
https://hackaday.io/project/174090-hyper-light-drifter-stat-tracker

Wearable Sanitizer by MIT Media Lab
https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/wearable-sanitizer/overview/
https://github.com/mitmedialab/Wearable-Sanitizer

Mini Burning Man Home Burn Kit by Bryan Serinese
https://www.instructables.com/id/Mini-Burning-Man-Home-Burn-Kit/

Balsa Man by Trammell Hudson
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3078950

-=Tips & Tools=-

Hand-Stitched Keycaps by Billie Ruben
https://hackaday.com/2020/08/21/hand-stitched-keycaps-for-truly-luxurious-typing/

Punch Drunk Part 3: Transfer Punches by Sean Michael Ragan
https://kk.org/cooltools/punch-drunk-part-3-transfer-punches/

SmartLED Shield for Teensy 4 by Pixelmatix
https://www.crowdsupply.com/pixelmatix/smartled-shield-for-teensy-4/

3D Printed Pneumatic Actuators by Suzimori Endo Lab
https://youtu.be/HS893g-pH1M

Peopoly Phenom L SLA 3D Printer Review
https://www.tested.com/tech/3d-printing/911256-tested-peopoly-phenom-l-sla-3d-printer-review/

Top 10 Ways to Cut Metal – Without an Angle Grinder! By Yonatan24
https://www.instructables.com/id/Top-10-Ways-to-Cut-Metal-Without-an-Angle-Grinder/

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

The Great Search: Common Through-Hole Resistors
https://blog.adafruit.com/2020/08/20/the-great-search-common-through-hole-resistors-adafruit-digikey-deskofladyada-thegreatsearch/

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, an encouragement machine, New York’s call for makers, wearable sanitizer from MIT, mini burning man, and tracking stats with a matte black PCB stack.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell and welcome back to another Maker Update. I hope you’re all hanging in there and staying safe, especially with all the fires. The world is clearly telling me to stay inside these days. If you’re in a similar situation, and could use a little encouragement, check out the project of the week.

On his YouTube channel, Jay from JBV Creative shows how he created this Encouragement Machine. 

It’s a mechanical, 3D printed and laser cut design that presses a stamp down on a reel of paper that is guided through to a pair of scissors and sliced. 

The extra clever bit here that, for me, makes this a work of art, is that the stamp says “You can’t do it”, but machine is calibrated so that the scissors first cut off “can’t” and then cut off the edited, encouraging note.

I also love that the machine itself —  the process and challenges involved in creating it, coding the microcontroller, timing the motors — the machine is really the testament that you can do crazy, impossible things. The fact that it prints it out for you is just icing on the cake.

Jay hasn’t shared the code or design files for this, but considering it’s more of a one-off mechanical sculpture, I don’t blame him. 

Check out the whole video, and give him a sub if you’re feeling generous. Jay’s channel is brand new and I’m excited to see more projects from him.

Now for some news. The Empire State Maker Faire has opened their call for makers. This is an unprecedented new online Maker Faire from New York. Basically, all of the regional Maker Faires throughout New York are banding together to create what will hopefully be a massive online event. 

The online faire takes place across two days, October 16th and 17th. Makers from all over the world are encouraged to apply. You could showcase a project, give a talk, give a demonstration, or teach a skill. The application deadline is September 20th. 

Hackaday as announced their second Circuit Sculpture contest. If you’ve been looking for an excuse to try your hand at circuit sculpture or freeform circuit design, this is your chance. 

Awards will be given in 4 categories: most functional, most beautiful, best video, and the best use of a jig. 

Issue #34 of Hackspace magazine is now available. This issue focuses on the Adafruit Feather boards and programming with Circuit Python. The big treat for me, though, is that they included a writeup on my VK-01 cocktail machine! If you can’t get your hands on a physical copy, I have a link in the description where you can download a PDF.

Now for more projects! On Hackaday, check out how Albert Phan made this battery-powered device for manually keeping track of stats during tabletop role playing games.

This design was specifically made for the game Hyper Light Drifter, but there’s no reason it can’t be repurposed for other games too. By squeezing the edges of the device you can advance the LED lights up and down. 

What makes it so unique is that the top section is made from three printed circuit boards stacked on top of each other. There’s the top layer with all the graphics and masked-off squares for the LEDs to shine through. 

Then there’s a middle board that just acts as a spacer, with areas carved out for the LEDs and circuitry of the bottom boar, which has all the components. 

This bottom board also has six momentary switches on the left and right side, which are what actually get triggered when you squeeze the marked areas on the top board.

It’s all super clever, and I think it’s great to see some of these badge life techniques make their way into other projects.

For those who dare to venture out of their house, the MIT Media Lab has an official guide on how to make this wrist mounted sanitizer. 

You can fill this up with either isopropyl alcohol or hand sanitizer. It works in two modes. The first will just dispense sanitizer into your hands when you press the first button. 

The second button activates a proactive mode, which will spray out sanitizer automatically when it detects that you’re about to place you hand on something, like a doorknob. 

You can find the code, STL files, and bill of materials on the MIT Media Lab github page.

And while it doesn’t seem like we really need anything else burning at the moment, perhaps you’d like your own personal backyard mini burning man. I mean like, the actual guy, not the hallucinating in your underwear bit. I feel like I’ve been doing that since March.

On Instructables Bryan Serinese demonstrates how to assemble this laser-cut burning man kit by Trammell Hudson. There are dozens of little pieces to fit and glue together, but the result looks pretty great. Hopefully it looks too good to burn, because seriously, no more fires.

Now for some tips and tools. Do you want the ultimate, one-of-a-kind, truly tactile keyboard? In her quest for the customization, Billie Ruben designed these embroiderable 3D printed keycaps. Now you can custom stitch your own letters and characters for the pinnacle of luxury keyboard feel.

On the Cool Tools channel, Sean Michael Ragan demonstrates his favorite set of transfer punches. I honestly had never seen transfer punches used before or understood their purpose. Now I get it. If you need to duplicate the exact size and position of one hole to another surface, these are the way to go.

When it comes to bang for your Neopixel buck, the HUB75 type of LED matrix are an unbeatable value compared to making and wiring the same grid from LED strip. The problem is that they’re hard to drive and they use an uncommon data connector. 

The Smart LED Shield for Teensy 4 solves this problem. The $25 shield is made specifically for driving these type of panels and leveraging the speed and power of the Teensy microcontroller. It’s on Crowdsupply now, and ships in January. 

On YouTube, I was inspired to see these 3D printed pneumatic actuator designs by the Suzumori Endo Lab at Tokyo Tech. 

These designs all flap around by quickly switching the path the air takes inside of it. Each pathway shuts off and redirects the path before it. There are some cool ideas here that you could use with a simple, low voltage air pump.

On Tested, Darrell reviews the new $2,000 Peopoly Phenom L SLA resin 3D printer. Resin 3D printers have become very popular this year now that small ones have become more affordable. They’re especially appealing to anyone making small parts that can benefit from the extra detail you can get from SLA. 

The Phenom is the first large-format consumer-priced SLA printer I’ve seen. Darrell shows off some incredible cosplay prints, including full masks and helmets. It’s still a lot of fussing with cleaning and soaking and cleanup, but it’s very interesting to know this is another option out there for people who want to print large pieces at a high resolution. Check out Darrell’s full review.

In my workshop, though, I’ve been finding myself working with a lot of metal stock recently. One of the hardest parts of working with metal is finding safe and reliable ways to cut it. An angle grinder is the most common solution, but they can be scary. For alternatives, Yonatan24 has an instructable that details 10 ways to cut metal without an angle grinder. Some are compromises, some are hacks, but all of them are worth knowing about.

For this week’s Digi-Key spotlight, checkout this video by Lady Ada showing how to search for something as a through-hole resistor. 

While these are common, they also come in a disorienting amount of options. Lady Ada shows how to use the filters and checkboxes to whittle things down. 

She also offers up a cool trick for when you’ve found the part you want, say a 10k resistor with part number 10KQBK-ND. You’ll notice that the part number in this case has the value within it. 

So if you want a similarly spec’d resistor at 47k, you can type in the 10k part number and replace the 10 with 47, and chances are you’ll find the 47k version of the same resistor. 

It’s a small thing, but it sure beats drilling down search filters for dozens of different resistor values.

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, so you never miss a show. A big thanks to my patrons, and a big, big thanks to Digi-Key Electronics for making this show happen, and for having all the stuff to make these projects happen. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next week.