This week on Maker Update, a LEGO egg opener, Morph grows up, Panasonic’s robot pet, an infinity collar, and a spin with Darth Vader.

++Show Notes [Maker Update #220]++

-=Project of the Week=-

Custom LEGO Machine Cracks & Separates Eggs by Astonishing Studios
https://youtu.be/o91D0Oiw5n4

-=News=-

A Look at Morph v2 by Augmentl
https://twitter.com/nburdy/status/1360220925820604419

Panasonic Nicobo Robot
https://robotstart.info/2021/02/01/nicobo-robot-panasonic.html

-=More Projects=-

Infinity Mirror Collar By Debra Ansell
https://learn.adafruit.com/infinity-mirror-collar

Darth 2: a 3D Printed Animated Darth Vader Helmet. by Greg Zumwalt
https://www.instructables.com/Darth-2-a-3D-Printed-Animated-Darth-Vader-Helmet/

-=Tips & Tools=-

Scandy Pro for iOS review by Sophy Wong
https://kk.org/cooltools/scan-objects-in-3d-using-your-phone/

The Wondercutter S: A Handheld Ultrasonic Cutter
https://www.core77.com/posts/105391/The-Wondercutter-S-A-Handheld-Ultrasonic-Cutter-Thats-Like-a-Power-X-Acto-Knife

Visual Studio Code comes to Raspberry Pi
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/visual-studio-code-comes-to-raspberry-pi/

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

Prototyping with Solder Stencils
https://youtu.be/xY6lShPbi4A

Transcript

Hey, I’m Donald Bell, and welcome back to another Maker Update. I hope everyone’s doing alright. I’ve been keeping busy working on a drum machine — but one that actually plays real drums. I can already tell it’s going to be a big project, but it’s keeping me entertained.

We have a lot to talk about. So let’s get started with the project of the week.

Sometimes I come across a YouTube channel and I have to wonder how I’ve never seen it before. Astonishing Studios is a channel where Marcel makes functional, fast food dispensing machines out of Legos.

I’ve been having a lot of fun catching up on some of his most popular videos, including this 3-in-1 Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell machine. 15m views? How did I miss this guy?

His latest obsession is one I can relate to. He wants to make a fully automated egg McMuffin machine… out of Legos.

Step 1 is creating a module that cracks open the eggs and separates the yolks from the white. But it turns out to be one of those actions that seems so easy to do as a human, but doesn’t translate easily into the world of Lego desktop robotic automation.

Marcel’s approach is to create a press that splits the egg against a plastic blade made from two panels that are then pulled apart. This opens the egg and drops the contents down to the next level.

At the very end he has two removable plastic bins — one that gets the eggs and one that moves in to collect the ejected shell. Many of us would have stopped there and called the experiment done. Marcel, however, as a true devotee to the McMuffin in all its forms, needed to make an all-egg white option.

So this crazy son of a gun created a whole intermediary platform that separates the yolk from the whites, dropping them into distinct sections of the bin.

It’s outstanding. The fact that it’s all made from Lego and Mindstorm modules takes it up a whole other level. And whether he’s aware of it or not, Marcel’s worship and recreation of fast food branding takes this into artistic, Tom Sachs bricolage territory.

I am here for this, and I’m excited to see where it goes.

Speaking of which, back in 2019 I told you about Morph, a project by a design studio called Mindbuffer. Back then, it was a sphere of hexagon light pads mounted to the ends of linear actuators — all about the size of an exercise ball.

Well, two years later, it’s all grown up. On Twitter, a preview of Morph version 2 has been making the rounds, and it looks incredible. Much bigger, more tiles, all fully illuminated, and the movements are so smooth it looks unreal.

Now, I need to be smug for just a minute here while the internet understandably loses its mind over this thing and point out that Maker Update viewers got hip to this years in advance. It’s part of why I love doing this show — finding cool stuff for us to geek out on before the world catches up.

I don’t know if this next one is going to be a Morph level discovery but in Japan, Panasonic is teasing a new consumer companion robot called Nicobo.

Something might be lost in translation here, but it’s described as a “weak robot, like a housemate who speaks sleepy and flatulences.”

If Aibo is the energetic robot dog companion, this looks more like the Garfield-level lazy talking robot cat.

And as silly as it all sounds, god knows we’re all struggling with loneliness these days. If a cuddly robot companion provides any kind of relief, I’m all for it.

From a maker perspective, I think it’s interesting to pull apart some of the design choices here. In some ways it reminds me of a Keepon — both the look of the face and how it’s ultimately a stationary robot where all the mechanics are animatronics for conveying attitudes and emotions.

If you’re into the idea of building a robot familiar, like Alex Glow’s Archimedes owl, or Jorvon Moss’ Dexter Monkey, the Nicobo shows another mechanic to explore.

Now for a few more projects. On Adafruit, Debra Ansell shows how she created this infinity mirror collar.

Check out how crazy this looks. It’s like her head is floating above her body.

Part of the trick seems to be getting it as thin as possible. To make this happen, she’s using Neopixel strip that mounts the LEDs sideways on the edge. This way you don’t have to account for the width of the tape, just the LEDs.

There’s a little EVA foam that separates two layers of semi-opaque holographic vinyl, with the LED strip sandwiched in between.

For the controller, she’s using an Adafruit ItsyBitsy with Bluetooth built-in. This allows her to control the LED animations from the Bluefruit app on her phone. Super cool.

Greg Zumwalt has a new mechanical 3D printed project. It’s a Darth Vader helmet that’s sliced into sections that rotate around in a kind of wave pattern.

It’s trick that was made famous by the artist David Černý and his Metalmorphosis sculpture. In Greg’s Vader version, each section rotates on its own bearing and includes a catch and a cutout that links each piece to each other.

In the stack of gears, some only have teeth on one side, pausing the action while the other gear catches up.

It’s a great design, and one you could adapt to all kinds of objects.

Now for some tips and tools. On the Cool Tools channel, I’ve got an interview with Sophy Wong talking about Scandy Pro. This is a 3D scanning app for iOS that works with the latest generation of iPhone.

The results look impressive. She scanned her husband’s head and polished it up in Meshmixer. Maybe it’ll get the spinning Zumwalt treatment next. Check out the video for some of Sophy’s tips on getting good scans.

Ultrasonic cutters have been an expensive but rare tool for awhile now. They’re like a motorized hobby knife that can cut through a wide variety of materials like butter.

Through the Core77 blog I found out about a new option called the Wondercutter S from a Korean manufacturer called Cutra. Still super pricey at around $400, but unlike other options I’ve seen, this one’s portable. If you cut a lot of EVA foam or acrylic or thin plywood — maybe even circuit boards — this looks like an interesting option.

The Raspberry Pi OS can now run a version of Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code software also known as VS Code. It’s a free, open source code editor, that’s arguably one of the best editors out there on any platform.

If you want your Pi-based cyberdeck to actually function as a serious tool for multiple coding languages, this is going to be hard to beat.

For this week’s Digi-Key spotlight, check out their latest video on how to prototype your own printed circuit boards using a solder stencil.

These thin sheets allow you to put down solder paste in just the right place for your components. You’ll typically come across them if you order a custom circuit boards that need to be assembled by hand.

If you’re ever looking to do small batch board production, this is a technique you’ll want to understand. This video is a great, short introduction.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up, or leave a comment. Thinking back on that McMuffin egg splitter, what kind of food vending machine would you want in your home?

You can get on the Maker Update email list, so you never miss a show. A big thanks to my patrons on Patreon and to Digi-Key electronics for making this show possible. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you next week.