Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Maker Update: Alexa Grows a Finger”.
This week on maker update alexa grows a finger. Google gets a laser robot fish, robot dogs, robot things, one-dimensional pong drill, bits, speed, squares, an unholy union of dewalt and ryobi, and a resistor kit, roundup, hey i’m donald bell and welcome to another maker update, hope. You’Re. All doing well, i’m glad to know the show’s working out for you guys thank you for leaving comments and a thumbs up on last week’s episode.
That said, if you guys have ideas for how to make the show better, let me know leave me a comment. All right, i have a big show for you this week with lots of projects. So, let’s get started with the project of the week. Bob claggett from i like to make stuff made this alexa controlled finger to start his laser cutter. This project has so many levels of maker nerd, it’s a masterpiece.
It has resin casting iot arduino code and a laser cutter bob is using a cheap, arduino, compatible node mcu board to mimic a belkin wemo device on his home network. He then set up an alexa routine so that when he says alexa push the button, it triggers a servo connected to the node mcu board to rotate 90 degrees. Pressing the button alexa push the button. Okay i’ll push it i’ll push it real good.
Well, actually, a casting of bob’s finger presses the button just to add an extra level of ridiculous to this project. What i love most about this project is that when you back up a little bit, you realize it’s an alexa, controlled servo project that you can make for around twenty dollars. That servo could press a button turn a wheel, flip a switch move, a gear. It’S really open to your own interpretation.
It’S time for some news. I found a lot of robot stuff again this week, but i swear this: isn’t a robot show? How can i not talk about this robotic cuttlefish made by the german industrial automation, firm festo? It’S called the bionic fin wave and it uses two flexible silicone fins to propel itself through water 3d printed crankshafts attached to the fin create the wave pattern motion needed to push it around. The fins are independent from one another, allowing it to turn by using different motions on each side in a robotics expo called parametric move at the university of tokyo. There were a bunch of these small experimental 3d printed robots on display.
Most of them were interesting because they were driven by just a single motor, but there was also this intricate only slightly creepy animatronic head that was clearly packed full of little motors and servos, but the most adorable robot news comes from the university of pennsylvania, avicd and Daniel ecoticek created this video collecting feedback, stabilized quadrupedal, bounding, pacing, pronking and trotting or, as i like, to think of it. Every single motion you’d want from the cutest robot pet, ever made it’s time for more projects. If bob’s alexa controlled finger, isn’t your cup of iot check out this google controlled laser display by tucker, shannon using a raspberry pi zero, w two inexpensive stepper motors, a uv laser and some glow-in-the-dark sticker material? This project will temporarily write out the current temperature. When you ask for the laser report, because the code uses a mix of adafruit io, and if this than that it seems, you could easily set this up to use alexa instead of google or pull data other than the weather from all kinds of other places.
I also really like this 1d tabletop pong game by great scot lab. The project uses two giant buttons, an arduino nano and a length of neopixels. You compete against an opponent to battle a little pixel back and forth, which gets increasingly faster a little led cluster near each player’s. Button keeps the score.
I have a bunch of tips to share this week, i’ll go over them quickly, but remember you can find links for everything in this article down in the show notes over on youtube. Scott wadsworth from essential craftsman has a 17 minute long, video on drilling holes. He goes over bits, materials techniques, tools, it’s more fascinating than it sounds. Bob claggett has a quick video on how to use a speed square. The video is part of his new series called bits over on my channel maker project lab i’ve got a project review of this 3d printed battery adapter, designed by jay rugland with it. You can run 18 volt ryobi tools from 20 volt dewalt batteries. I’Ve also got a video over on the cool tools channel, comparing five different resistor assortment kits available on amazon, comparing price quality and organization maker fares only two fares this weekend, including vallejo, california and holla germany. But if one of those is near, you don’t miss it and that’s it, for this week’s show be sure to subscribe.
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Alright, thanks for watching and i’ll see you next week, you .