Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Maker Update: Dodecahedron Dance Party”.
This week on maker update a jedi worthy lightsaber, kickstarter’s test print, an ifixit giveaway, a musical dodecahedron, sound bending disc shooting midi motors and stringy plotters. Hey i’m donald bell and welcome to the 100th episode of maker update. It’S an extra great show today with all the usual projects and tips, but i also have three ifixit toolkits to give away. At the very end, some of my favorite makers will share a tip or their favorite moment from the past 100 shows. But first, let’s get started with the project of the week.
Few makers have topped my project list more consistently than the ruiz brothers, so it seems only fitting to feature them on the 100th show this time they have. This awesome lightsaber build with interactive lights and sounds the project takes advantage of adafruit’s prop maker add-on board for their arduino compatible line of feather project boards. The rest of the electronics include a few buttons for power and mode select, a hefty rechargeable battery, some densely packed neopixel leds and a small, but not too small speaker all in along with the fancy jedi grade, polycarbonate tube for the blade you’re looking at around 150. In parts, so this is not a cheap project plus, if you ever want to battle someone you’ll either need to build two of these or find someone as nerdy as you are willing to build their own now, no shade on the lightsabers we’ve seen from bob claggett And john park, but this now looks like the one to beat in terms of style, design and features. I also hope that by saying this we’ll see a maker faire duel between bob john and the ruiz brothers. In news this week, i learned that autodesk and kickstarter have worked together to develop a new test print design for 3d.
Printers i’ll include a link to the file on github. The idea behind it is that, because there are so many 3d printers launched on kickstarter, they needed a common benchmark for manufacturers to use so that consumers could more easily evaluate the relative quality of each printer. It’S a tough test and appropriately enough, the finished print sort of looks like a torture device. I have a lot of other projects to share with you, but first, let’s give away some cool stuff.
The people at ifixit have provided me with these three toolkits to give away they’re, especially great for cracking, open and hacking or repairing your gadgets. All you have to do is sign up for my maker update, email newsletter. If you’re not already and email me about something cool, you’d like to do with one of the kits a repair or a project, i’ll use my best judgment to pick three winners who each get one of the three kits i’m paying for shipping, though so you need To be within the us, because i’m cheap and lazy – and you also need to hurry up, because i don’t want to be thinking about this next week. Alright, now for more projects, jonathan bumstead has made a paired down version of his giant musical geodesic dome this one’s a touch, sensitive, dodecahedron that lights up. It works as a midi controller for triggering sounds from your computer or can be switched into a standalone mode where it plays its own sounds through a mini jack output. The brain of the whole thing is a single arduino mini.
The enclosure is made from laser cut mdf board, plus the plexiglas panels. What’S especially cool about this build? Is that he’s using thin strips of conductive tin oxide coated plastic on the inside of each panel to detect when they get touched? The material is new to me, but you can pick up a sheet of it for ten dollars on adafruit, lone soul. Surfer has a bunch of guys on instructables for making funky circuit bent lo-fi synthesizers. His latest is especially cool, though he’s mashed together a greeting card.
Sampler, an audio reverb board and a little amp module to create this echo sample looper that looks like a lot of fun. What’S really great about his builds is that he finds these dirt cheap, ebay boards to play with. In this case, each of the three boards are only about three to four dollars each. He lays out exactly how to wire them all together, adding little buttons and dials here and there for extra control with this circuit and a retro enclosure to fit it all in you’ve got a completely unique, sound toy.
Finally, on thingiverse, i found this simple toy motor powered disc shooter by kanino, the 3d printed design uses a common geared plastic tt motor paired up with two rack and pinion gears to pull back and release a section that knocks into this hopper full of plastic discs. He also shows off how the design can be mounted onto an rc car and triggered from a remote control. It looks like a fun way to weaponize an rc toy or maybe an arduino bot. I have a few tips to share with you from makey makey’s colleen graves. I saw this tip on using magnetic knife racks as a way to hold your alligator clips.
I imagine this is especially great for classrooms that use a ton of alligator clips for clip friendly boards like the micro bit or circuit playground, or making makey. Bob claggett has a new bits: video up on going over the basics of finishing techniques for 3d prints from vapor, smoothing to spot putty to filler primer. Over on the tindy blog, i learned about a new version of the midi switcher board.
This is a 60 dollar board that takes midi, note, input from a computer or a drum machine and uses those note signals to switch something on and off like motors or solenoids or lights. You get eight channels of output and the option of linking multiple boards together. For controlling more stuff on thingiverse potent printables has a guide for creating a diy linear, servo actuator using 3d printed parts and a continuous rotation servo. He includes a version for smaller and bigger servo types on gareth, branway’s tips of the week column on make scene.
There’S a good looking tin can wire spool organizer from andrew lewis, and a look at how jimmy deresta handles knocking the rust off his table saw and through the evil, mad scientist blog. I found this python script called stringyplotter made by thomas winningham. You feed it a black and white image and it spits out a plotter ready, svg that redraws the image as a single, unbroken black line, it’s kind of a cool effect maker faires. This weekend we have jerusalem, israel, hyderabad, india, bella horizonta, brazil, orlando florida, sindelfingen, germany and salzburg, austria with ones near you, go check it out or head over to makerfaire.com to find out when your local, fair is coming up. Also we’re now one week into mcvembe. It’S not too late to give it a shot. A bunch of us are trying to post little projects or experiments every day with the hashtag makevember. I find it to be a useful challenge to find little ways to be creative every day, even if they don’t work out.
I encourage you to give it a shot alright, and that does it, for this week’s show be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up. Leave a comment you can also get on the maker update email list and hit me up for a chance to win one of these ifixit toolkits and a big thanks to my patrons on patreon, who make it now possible for me to do the show as more Than just a labor of love, if you want to be one of these awesome people, you can check out the patreon link down in the description, all right and now for something a little special for the 100th episode. I’Ve asked some of my favorite makers to contribute a little something: here’s what they had to say: hi everyone, i’m sophie wong and my project pick – has to be the sick unicorn by britt michelson.
The only way i could love my automatic soap dispenser, even more is if it looked like a soap vomiting unicorn. So this project is definitely on my to-do list. Thanks donald for showcasing this, and so many other awesome projects on maker update every week and congratulations on getting to 100 episodes. Ah, what’s up donald’s maker update love the show what i love about maker update? Well, aside from the too short cat, it’s got to be the canary cardboard knife and i loved it so much that i got two thanks for what you do and can’t wait to see the next episode. Oh hey, i didn’t see you there.
This is john park and i wanted to congratulate donald bell on the 100th episode of maker update. That is fantastic. I love the show, and one of my favorite parts are the tool tips, so here’s one that has really been a terrific tool. It’S this scrape right.
Plastic razor blade and little holder, and i use the thing constantly to scrape stuff, especially sticky things and labels off of things that i buy at the thrift store. They’Ve got the worst labels on those use, a little goo gone and your scraper and you’re good to go. So. Thank you, donald for the great tool tips bye, hi donald, it’s dominic morrow in the uk. Congratulations on 100 make a project updates. My favorite update from you was number 10 when you told us about the alexa, enabled billy bass, fish and encouraged your subscribers to reverse engineer the project.
I later learned that you bought a lot of billy bass fish online, only to find that when they arrived, they all spoke russian i’d love to hear an update on that project. Good luck with the next hundred episodes donald and thank you for all the things you do. Hi, i’m sarai cohen from ant atelier and co-author of the new electronics book, make it wear it.
Wearable, electronics, for makers, crafters and cosplayers. I’Ve been inspired by the recent episode with penelope bolnik, who makes beautiful projects that combine 3d printing on fabric with jewelry design, the materials she uses have an ethereal quality that really works well for delicate accessories. I was particularly interested in her experimentation process for developing the 3d printed earrings and how she incorporated thread into the print. I look forward to experimenting with that technique and trying to figure out how i can add leds and electronics to make the jewelry light up hey. This is mark frowned folder from cooldashtools.org, and the thing i want to recommend from maker update is the tinkercad components area where you can actually do a simulated, arduino and connect things to it and see what happens? I thought that was a really cool addition to a 3d modeling program that i already love: hey, donald, noet and pedro here from adafruit congrats on a hundred maker updates, our tip to all the makers out. There is to try making something or someone else yeah. It’S always very noble to use your maker skills to help others, especially the special ones, so get out there and remember to make a great day bye. Alright, thanks for watching i’ll, see you next week, you .