Just like the garage computer explosion of the 70’s through the 80’s, which brought us such things as Apple, pong, Bill Gate’s hair, and the proliferation of personal computers, the maker movement is the new garage hardware explosion. Today, 135 million adults in the United States alone are involved in the maker movement.
Enthusiasts who want to build the products they want, from shortwave radios to personal computers, and to tweak products they’ve bought to make them even better, have long been a part of the electronics industry. By all measures, garage-style innovation remains alive and well today, as “makers” as they are called continue to turn out contemporary gadgets, including 3D printers, drones, and embedded electronics devices.
Making is about individual Do-It-Yourselfers being able to design and create with tools that were, as of a decade or two ago, only available to large, cash-rich corporations: CAD tools, CNC mills, 3D printers, low-quantity PCB manufacturing, open hardware such as Arduinos and similar inexpensive development boards – all items that have made it easier and relatively cheap to make whatever we imagine. For individuals, maker tools can change how someone views their home or their hobbies. The world is ours to make. Humans are genetically wired to be makers. The maker movement is simply the result of making powerful building and communication tools accessible to the masses. There are plenty of projects from makers that show good engineering: Take this Arduino board with tremendous potential, developed by a young maker, as example.
The maker movement is a catalyst to democratize entrepreneurship as these do-it-yourself electronics are proving to be hot sellers: In the past year, unit sales for 3D printing related products; Arduino units, parts and supplies; Raspberry Pi boards; drones and quadcopters; and robotics goods are all on a growth curve in terms of eBay sales. There are many Kickstarter maker projects going on. The Pebble E-Paper Watch raises $10 million. The LIFX smartphone-controlled LED bulb raises $1.3 million. What do these products have in common? They both secured funding through Kickstarter, a crowd-funding website that is changing the game for entrepreneurs. Both products were created by makers who seek to commercialize their inventions. These “startup makers” iterate on prototypes with high-end tools at professional makerspaces.
For companies to remain competitive, they need to embrace the maker movement or leave themselves open for disruption. Researchers found that 96 percent of business leaders believe new technologies have forever changed the rules of business by democratizing information and rewiring customer expectations. - You’ve got to figure out agile innovation. Maybe history is repeating itself as the types of products being sold reminded us of the computer tinkering that used to be happening in the 1970s to 1990s – similar in terms of demographics, tending to be young people, and low budget. Now the do-it-yourself category is deeply intertwined with the electronics industry. Open hardware is in the center in maker movement – we need open hardware designs! How can you publish your designs and still do business with it? Open source ecosystem markets behave differently and therefore require a very different playbook than traditional tech company: the differentiation is not in the technology you build; it is in the process and expertise that you slowly amass over an extended period of time.
By democratizing the product development process, helping these developments get to market, and transforming the way we educate the next generation of innovators, we will usher in the next industrial revolution. The world is ours to make. Earlier the PC created a new generation of software developers who could innovate in the digital world without the limitations of the physical world (virtually no marginal cost, software has become the great equalizer for innovation. Now advances in 3D printing and low-cost microcontrollers as well as the ubiquity of advanced sensors are enabling makers to bridge software with the physical world. Furthermore, the proliferation of wireless connectivity and cloud computing is helping makers contribute to the Internet of Things (IoT). We’re even beginning to see maker designs and devices entering those markets once thought to be off-limits, like medical.
Image source: The world is ours to make: The impact of the maker movement – EDN Magazine
In fact, many parents have engaged in the maker movement with their kids because they know that the education system is not adequately preparing their children for the 21st century. There is a strong movement to spread this DIY idea widely. The Maker Faire, which launched in the Bay Area in California in 2006, underlined the popularity of the movement by drawing a record 215,000 people combined in the Bay Area and New York events in 2014. There’s Maker Media, MakerCon, MakerShed, Make: magazine and 131 Maker Faire events that take place throughout the world. Now the founders of all these Makers want a way to connect what they refer to as the “maker movement” online. So Maker Media created a social network called MakerSpace, a Facebook-like social network that connects participants of Maker Faire in one online community. The new site will allow participants of the event to display their work online. There are many other similar sites that allow yout to present yout work fron Hackaday to your own blog. Today, 135 million adults in the United States alone are involved in the maker movement—although makers can be found everywhere in the world.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
VegeTerrium
A decorative indoor garden/greenhouse
https://hackaday.io/project/10086-vegeterrium
This is a small (30cm * 30cm * 40cm) terrarium I am building to have an appealing place to grow small plants, the end goal would be to have automatic lighting, watering and heating. The frame will be made of a nice clear acrylic.
Currently the Vegeterrium (a combination of vegetation and terrerium) is only capable of simulating a day and night cycle hardware-wise. This is accomplished through a control board involving an ATMEGA328, RTC and self built current drivers to power red and blue 15W LED chains (30W total). It is powered by a simple 24V power supply over an ATX cable.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Homemade EDM Can Cut Through Difficult Materials Like Magnets With Ease
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/07/homemade-edm-can-cut-through-difficult-materials-like-magnets-with-eease/
Many years ago [ScorchWorks] built an electrical-discharge machining tool (EDM) and recently decided to write about it.
The build is based on the designs described in the book “Build an EDM” by Robert Langolois. An EDM works by creating lots of little electrical discharges between an electrode in the desired shape and a material underneath a dielectric solvent bath. This dissolves the material exactly where the operator would like it dissolved. It is one of the most precise and gentle machining operations possible.
His EDM is built mostly out of found parts.
The linear motion element are two square brass tubes, one sliding inside the other. A stepper motor slowly drives the electrode into the part.
Homemade EDM (Electric Discharge Machining) Machine
http://www.scorchworks.com/Blog/homemade-edm-electric-discharge-machining-machine/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yak Shaving: Hacker Mode vs Maker Mode
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/09/yak-shaving-hacker-mode-vs-maker-mode/
When I start up a new project, one that’s going to be worth writing up later on, I find it’s useful to get myself into the right mindset. I’m not a big planner like some people are — sometimes I like to let the project find its own way. But there’s also the real risk of getting lost in the details unless I rein myself in a little bit. I’m not alone in this tendency, of course. In the geek world, this is known as “yak shaving“.
Yak shaving has been interpreted by many folks as being always a distraction from the main task — necessarily a bad thing — and something to be avoided at all costs. Others have interpreted yak shaving as an annoyance that must be nevertheless be dealt with.
But yak shaving can also be an enjoyable diversion that contributes to the end goal
One thing that helps me to navigate these treacherous waters is to classify a project into one of a couple modalities before starting: is it a Hacker-mode project, or a Maker-mode project, or somewhere in between? Hacker and Maker projects require different tools, different degrees of certainty in planning the outcome, different working methods, and different approaches to yak shaving. Sorting this all out beforehand is at least worth the few minutes it takes to think it all through.
Maker Mode
Some projects are started purely to get the project done.
the prototypical Maker-mode project can be planned out in detail from the start, accomplished with “normal” tools using skills that you’ve already got, and not a place for yak shaving. For these projects, the biggest obstacle to success is just doing it.
This is where tools like pre-canned software libraries and off-the-shelf parts or modules are great. The point of a Maker project is to get the thing made, and there’s no sense in reinventing (or even refining) the wheel. Maker mode projects are great to ship out to PCB houses as well. Plans can be made, parts ordered, and the relatively slow turnaround in external board fabrication just adds a delay rather than lengthening the amount of time it takes to get the project done. You might as well get started on the next project while waiting for delivery, because the board will “just work”.
The extreme Maker stance on yak shaving is that it’s always a waste of time. Spending too much time on tiny or inconsequential parts of the project risks delaying the whole
(Contrary to the “Cult of Done” folks’ assertions) Maker mode is not an excuse to be sloppy or avoid detail work
Hacker Mode
Hacker-mode projects are a lot fuzzier from the start. A hacker mode project often starts out with a new piece of gear, and a vague idea that it can be made to do something interesting.
The planning phase is often more about assembling a list of possibilities than making a list of sequential steps; hacking is dealing with uncertainties. Where planning a Maker-mode project answers “how do I make this?”, planning a hacker-mode project runs more along the lines of “I wonder if I can make it do this?”.
The tools needed for a Hacker project are lower-level. A scope, a logic analyser, and other gear that can be programmed to inject signals into the system under study are all handy. In Hacker mode, it’s good to have a well-stuffed toolbox, because you don’t know what you’re going to need, and what you’re not. Still, you don’t always have all the tools on hand that you’re going to need, and some of them will need to be custom-built. In the context of a Maker project, tool-building exercises are often undesirable yak shaving. In a Hacker project, the right (low-level) tool or insight can often be the key to success.
If you know that you’re going to have to repeat a step over and over again, it makes sense to spend some time optimizing that step. If it’s re-running a test a million times, you’re going to be happier if it’s scripted than if it involves pull-down menus.
The Real World
Any real project is going to share aspects of these two extremes, of course. Some “purely” Maker projects will involve jig-making and tool-building to get the job done efficiently or beautifully. Those are yaks that need to be shaved. Conversely, unless you need very specific timings for some esoteric timing attack, there’s very little to be gained by writing your own bit-banged JTAG library; almost any Hacker-mode project can get by using an off-the-shelf tool.
The Hacker/Maker distinction is further blurred when you’re building a concrete project, but your actual goal is learning a new programming language or SDK or chip family. Learning projects are basically Maker projects, but the goal is picking up some new skills rather than a physical artifact. In learning projects, there’s little uncertainty — you can probably learn anything — but diving deep into the tools may be part of the goal rather than a step along the way.
The point here is to be explicit about the goal upfront, because it should influence the amount of planning, choice of tools, and even what constitutes positive or negative yak shaving along the way.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook Opens EE Honeypot
New hardware lab aims to attract EEs
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1330259&
Facebook, of all companies, is becoming one of the hot new hardware spots in Silicon Valley. How do you like that?
I’ve been following Facebook for a while now thanks to its Open Compute Project which creates multi-vendor specs for everything from servers to switches to 100 Gbit/second optical interconnects and a GPU server.
Then along came Oculus and a smattering of moonshot research programs such as Aquila and OpenCellular, often related to its corporate initiative to spread Internet access (and thus Facebook advertising opportunities) to every end of the planet.
A Facebook blog on the new lab said it includes an EE lab and a prototyping lab. It described in lavish detail the cool gear the prototyping lab will contain including:
A 9-axis mill-turn lathe, used for making its custom two-axis gimbal for air-to-air and air-to-ground laser communications.
A 5-axis vertical milling machine, used to create parts associated with Terragraph, the companies 60 GHz system
A 5-axis water jet, capable of cutting full 10′ x 5′ sheets several inches thick of material, including aluminum, steel, granite, stone, etc.
Two sheet metal shear and CNC folder machines
A CNC fabric cutter
A coordinate measuring machine capable of reverse-engineering a part and turning it into a 3D computer model
An electron microscope – this is at Facebook! — and a CT scanner, used for examining components for failure analysis
Clearly, the company wants to make EEs around the world drool and scramble for their resumes. Strategically, I expect it hopes many of them leave GoogleX labs just a few miles away.
Meanwhile, welcome to the new Silicon Valley and electronics industry where work that used to get done at Bell Labs and Xerox PARC is now funded by advertising around cute cat videos and pictures of dinners people are about to eat.
Inside Facebook’s hardware labs: Moving faster with more collaboration
https://code.facebook.com/posts/561611824036387/inside-facebook-s-hardware-labs-moving-faster-with-more-collaboration/
Hardware engineering traditionally happens behind closed doors, in isolated labs. We fell into this pattern ourselves early on at Facebook, as we opened individual hardware labs to support new teams. Some of our first labs — including one in a repurposed mail room, in our old Palo Alto headquarters — were built for our Infrastructure teams to prototype custom racks, servers, storage systems, and network switches for our data centers. As new, hardware-oriented teams like Connectivity Lab and Oculus started to form, we built additional labs for those teams to design, prototype, and test. Today we have hardware labs all over the world — from our Oculus facilities in the Seattle area to our Aquila hangar in the U.K. to our laser communications lab in Southern California — as well as a number of custom labs in our Menlo Park office that are used by the Oculus, Connectivity Lab, and Infrastructure teams.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Slideshow
Top 10 Universal Projects Every Engineer Dreams Up
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1330121&
Before engineering projects (DIY or professional) were celebrated on the Internet, before exciting new ideas could go “viral,” an engineer could dream—in isolation. Exceptional makers building exceptional projects have always been the norm. But even in isolation, certain universal themes—certain common problems—captured the imagination of engineers everywhere.
In this slideshow, I focus on the problems that every engineer thinks about solving, the projects we’ve all dreamed of making. Projects like these have often sat on engineers’ DIY backburners. Quite honestly, I have never met an engineer that hasn’t mentioned something in this list, so much so that they qualify as cliché projects.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Star Track: A Lesson in Positional Astronomy With Lasers
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/10/star-track-a-lesson-in-positional-astronomy-with-lasers/
[gocivici] threatened us with a tutorial on positional astronomy when we started reading his tutorial on a Arduino Powered Star Pointer and he delivered
The star pointer itself is a high powered green laser pointer (battery powered), 3D printed parts, and an amalgam of fourteen dollars of Chinese tech cruft. The project uses two Arduino clones to process serial commands and manage two 28byj-48 stepper motors.
import arduinos have gotten so cheap they probably are more affordable than an I2C breakout board or stepper driver these days
Once it’s all assembled and tested the only thing left to do is go outside with your contraption. After making sure that you’ve followed all the local regulations for not pointing lasers at airplanes, point the laser at the north star. After that you can plug in any star coordinate and the laser will swing towards it and track its location in the sky. Pretty cool.
The body was designed with a mixture of Tinkercad and something we’d not heard of, OpenJsCAD.
Star Track – Arduino Powered Star Pointer and Tracker
http://www.instructables.com/id/Star-Track-Arduino-Powered-Star-Pointer-and-Tracke/
Star track is an Arduino based, GoTo-mount inspired star tracking system. It can point and track any object in the sky(Celestial coordinates of the object as input) with 2 Arduinos, a gyro,RTC module,two low-cost stepper motors and a 3D printed structure.
IMPORTANT!:
This project includes laser pointers thus needs safety measures before use. In many countries, it is illegal to point lasers to an Aircraft and to use them near airports.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Building Lab Instruments One Block at a Time
https://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/38752
3D-printed, Lego-like system developed at UCR can be used by researchers, students and clinicians to build lab tools easily and affordably
Tomi Engdahl says:
Remote-Operated Gate On A Budget
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/09/remote-operated-gate-on-a-budget/
Sometimes, a simple fix is the best solution. Lacking extra funds for a proper remote-controlled gate-opener after the recent purchase of their farm, redditor [amaurer3210] built one as a birthday gift for his wife.
Supported on pillow block housings, a 10″ wheel is connected to the motor by via a 3D printed pulley and a timing belt turned inside-out to allow for slippage — in case of obstacles or manual opening of the gate.
The motor is a a cordless SKIL drill motor, perfectly suited to the purpose with its low-rpm, high-torque planetary drive. Making heavy use of his 3D printer, the motor, a homemade wire-wound resistor (to step down the 12V power supply to 3V for the motor), and an eMylo 12V wireless wireless relay cheaply acquired online are all mounted with printed parts
Supported on pillow block housings, a 10″ wheel is connected to the motor by via a 3D printed pulley and a timing belt turned inside-out to allow for slippage — in case of obstacles or manual opening of the gate.
Inexpensive Remote Controlled Gate Opener
http://imgur.com/a/UIP9M
Fancypants gates and fences are a looong way off, but I wanted to make this a little easier on my wife for her birthday, so I made a simple remote controlled gate opener.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bluetooth HID gamepad using HC-05 module
https://mitxela.com/projects/bluetooth_hid_gamepad
Tomi Engdahl says:
Automated LED/Laser Diode Analysis and Modeling
https://hackaday.io/project/12874-automated-ledlaser-diode-analysis-and-modeling
Analyze LEDs and LDs to create electrical (SPICE) and optical models.
In this project, I’m building a system to automatically characterize LEDs and Laser Diodes. Datasheets often don’t have the all the figures a designer might need, especially when using parts for “off-label” applications, and SPICE models are rarely included. In other cases (surplus, scavenged, or ebay’ed parts), datasheets may not be available at all. This system will automatically measure the I/V curves, corresponding optical output, and angular beam characteristics. Additionally it can create a simple SPICE model for simulation (DC analysis).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Schlieren-Videography
https://hackaday.io/project/9034-schlieren-videography
With this project I want to show you how you can make Schlieren-Videography at home. To do so we will use the Moiré-effect.
schlieren (German for streaks) are optical turbulence in transparent materials which are not necessarily visible to the human eye. There are multiple ways to record/see them, we want to see and film these using a camera and a moiré pattern.
We can change the density of air very simple by heating/colling it, for example: your Hands, igniter, torch, cold drink, soldering iron, heat gun…
The Moiré-raster is just an image of black and white lines with a ratio of 50% and in my case with a spacing of 0.33 mm
You have to try different spacing out, to find the perfect one, its kind of try and error to get the best results, but it is worth it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: An Open Source Retina Scanner
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/10/hackaday-prize-entry-an-open-source-retina-scanner/
An ophthalmoscope is a device used to examine the back of the eye. This is useful for diagnosing everything from glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, to detecting brain tumors. As you would expect from anything related to medicine, these devices cost a lot, making them inaccessible for most of the world’s population. This project for the Hackaday Prize is for an ophthalmoscope that can be built for under $400.
An ophthalmoscope is a relatively simple device, that really only requires a clinician to wear a head-mounted lamp and hold a condensing lens in front of the patient’s eye. Light is reflected off the retina and into the clinician’s view.
Of course, the simplest ophthalmoscope requires a bit of training to get right, and there’s’ no chance of being able to take a picture of a patient’s retina to share with other clinicians.
The Open Indirect Ophthalmoscope gets around these problems by using a digital camera in the form of a Raspberry Pi camera module. This camera, with the help of a 3 W LED, is able to image the back of the eye, snap a picture, and send that image anywhere in the world.
Open Indirect Ophthalmoscope
https://hackaday.io/project/11943-open-indirect-ophthalmoscope
An open-source, ultra-low cost, portable screening device
for retinal diseases
Key Features:
Ultra Low Cost: Under $400, compared to its contemporaries
Open Source and Design: Expands the scope of the device worldwide
High Portability: Weighs less than a laptop
Intuitive interface: No specialized training needed to operate the device, making it perfect for use in rural areas
How it works?
Ophthalmoscopy is a technique by which optometrist analyze and view the retina and its features by either directly looking or imaging, the retinal features through the pupil. OIO captures the images of the retina using the same technique, through a camera.
The OIO uses a 20D lens, mirrors, light source and camera, a raspberry pi and a touch interface to achieve this. The lens and mirror system are used to compress the optical path and focus the light from retina onto the camera. The camera and pi act as the processing unit and display live images on the display allowing the clinician to easily image the retina.
Tomi Engdahl says:
EPA Crowdsources Pollution Sensing
$4.5M pollution-solution grants
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1330294&
$4.5 million in grants from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) aim to engage local communities in the quest for ever lower levels of air pollution. By crowdsourcing its efforts the Advanced Air Monitoring Technology grants, funded by the EPA’s Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program, will develop, test and deploy new portable, low-cost, easy-to-use technologies for measuring air pollution.
“These grants offer a joint learning experience as air quality experts and communities are learning from each other,” James Johnson, Director of the National Center for Environmental Research in EPA’s Office of Research and Development told EE Times. “Communities will explain what they want from the sensors, how they will use the tools, and how well the tools are working, while experienced researchers will explain the considerations and limitations of the tools, and how to use and interpret the data.”
As any EE Times reader knows, advanced low-power wireless gas sensors has been revolutionized by ultra-small microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). And while the predictions for trillions of sensors by 2050 has been made, very few of these new technological resources have actually been deployed, according to the EPA. The purpose of the Advanced Air Monitoring Technology grants is to get the ball rolling by connecting the technologists with the people breathing the air in hopes of crowdsourcing success.
Not only will the grants fund projects to educate the public about the why, what and how-to-use advanced air quality sensor technology, but will also aim to quantify the accuracy and efficacy for air monitoring technologies and how to get high-quality data and actionable analytics from them.
“Managing air pollution is a big job, but it can be made easier when the whole community gets involved. We call it ‘citizen science’—where people without a background in research can use scientific tools to address problems in their environment,”
The Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh) will concentrate on using the accuracy of air pollution sensors to enhance the usefulness of the data to consumers. By developing maps and interactive tools for deploying air quality parameters, the researchers will collaborate with community groups to enhance methods of reducing their carbon footprint.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fun Audio Waveform Generator Is More Than The Sum Of Its Parts
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/10/fun-audio-waveform-generator-is-more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts/
[Joekutz] wanted to re-build an audio-rate function generator project that he found over on Instructables. By itself, the project is very simple: it’s an 8-bit resistor-ladder DAC, a nice enclosure, and the rest is firmware.
[Joekutz] decided this wasn’t enough. He needed an LCD display, a speaker, and one-hertz precision. The LCD display alone is an insane hack. He reverse-engineers a calculator simply to use the display.
The meat of the project is the Arduino-based waveform generator, though.
He also makes custom detents for his potentiometers so that he can enter precise numerical values.
So even if you don’t need an R-2R DAC based waveform generator, go check this project out. There’s good ideas at every turn.
A feature-rich Arduino Waveform generator
https://hackaday.io/project/12756-a-feature-rich-arduino-waveform-generator
When it is worth doing, it is worth overdoing. Based on an idea from Instructables.com, but better, shinier and with more features.
Arduino Waveform Generator
http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Waveform-Generator/
Embed with Elliot: Audio Playback with Direct Digital Synthesis
https://hackaday.com/2016/02/12/embed-with-elliot-audio-playback-with-direct-digital-synthesis/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Technically A Hack. Still Questionable. Remote Control Food.
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/12/technically-a-hack-still-questionable-remote-control-food/
We thought we were going to read an article about, perhaps, a quadcopter that could fetch beer, or donuts. What we got was more along the lines of a donut dragging itself across the floor, rendering it pitiful and advisibly indigestible.
Sometimes people joke about not wanting to get in mind of a crazy person. We understand. While we could certainly follow [Michael Kohn]’s logic, the motivation was alien. Either way, in a rare turn of events there was not a single Arduino to be seen; just reverse engineering, unique solutions, and even a custom board. This is what some of you have been asking for… we think.
Remote Control Food
http://www.mikekohn.net/micro/remote_control_food.php
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: A Good Electronics Learning Toolkit
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/12/hackaday-prize-entry-a-good-electronics-learning-toolkit/
The Maker movement is a wildly popular thing, even if we can’t define what it is. The push towards STEM education is absolutely, without a doubt, completely unlike a generation of brogrammers getting a CS degree because of the money. This means there’s a market for kits to get kids interested in electronics, and there are certainly a lot of options. Most of these ‘electronic learning platforms’ don’t actually look that good, and the pedagogical usefulness is very questionable. Evive is not one of these toolkits. It looks good, and might be actually useful.
The heart of the Evive is basically an Arduino Mega, with the handy dandy Arduino shield compatibility that comes with that. Not all of the Mega pins are available for plugging in Dupont cables, though – a lot of the logic is taken up by breakouts, displays, buttons, and analog inputs.
evive: a prototyping platform for makers
https://hackaday.io/project/13091-evive-a-prototyping-platform-for-makers
An open-source Arduino based toolkit to learn, build & debug electronics and robotics projects
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hedberg is a Bionic Hand Made From a Single Keurig
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/12/hedberg-is-a-bionic-hand-made-from-a-single-keurig/
No stranger to scavenging from Keurig coffee machines (he long since discovered that they’re a goldmine for parts), [Evan] set out to create a bionic hand called Hedberg using only parts from a Keurig K350. He built the hand over the course of 200 hours, with no plans and using only adhesive and the K350, and filmed the whole process.
Hedberg — The Bionic Hand Made from One Keurig Coffee Maker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uem9YfT63ys&feature=youtu.be
Tomi Engdahl says:
DIY Smartwatch Based On ESP8266 Needs Classification
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/12/diy-smartwatch-based-on-esp8266-needs-classification/
Building your own smartwatch is a fun challenge for the DIY hobbyist. You need to downsize your electronics, work with SMD components, etch your own PCBs and eventually squeeze it all into a cool enclosure. [Igor] has built his own ESP8266-based smartwatch, and even though he calls it a wrist display – we think the result totally sells as a smartwatch.
http://morethanuser.blogspot.fi/2016/03/esp12e-oled-smartwatch-honestly-its.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hacker Builds New Single Board Computer Out of Old Single Board Computer
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/13/hacker-builds-new-single-board-computer-out-of-old-single-board-computer/
[Ncrmnt] had a busted tablet PC with an Allwinner A23 SoC inside. He combined two of our favorite past-times, Linux hacking and 3D printing, to make a rather sweet little single-board-computer out of it, giving the tablet a second life.
Step one was to make sure that the thing works. Normally, you’d hook up a wired serial terminal and start hacking. [Ncrmnt] took it one step further and wired in a HC-05 Bluetooth serial module, so he can pull up the debug terminal wirelessly.
Tablet guts necromancered into a fancy SBC
https://ncrmnt.org/2016/08/07/tablet-guts-necromancered-into-a-fancy-sbc/
Tomi Engdahl says:
A VNA On A 200 Euro Budget
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/13/a-vna-on-a-200-euro-budget/
If you were to ask someone who works with RF a lot and isn’t lucky enough to do it for a commercial entity with deep pockets what their test instrument of desire would be, the chances are their response would mention a vector network analyser. A VNA is an instrument that measures the S-parameters of an RF circuit, that rather useful set of things to know whose maths in those lectures as an electronic engineering student are something of a painful memory for some of us.
The reason your RF engineer respondent won’t have a VNA on their bench already will be fairly straightforward. VNAs are eye-wateringly expensive. Second-hand ones are in the multi-thousands, new ones can require the keys to Fort Knox. All this is no obstacle to [Henrik Forstén] though, he’s built himself a 30MHz to 6 GHz VNA on the cheap, with the astoundingly low budget of 200 Euros.
On paper, the operation of a VNA is surprisingly simple. RF at a known power level is passed through the device under test into a load, and the forward and reverse RF is sampled on both its input and output with a set of directional couplers.
[Henrik] admits that his VNA isn’t as accurate an instrument as its commercial cousins, but for his tiny budget the quality of his work is evident in that it is a functional VNA.
Cheap homemade 30 MHz – 6 GHz vector network analyzer
http://hforsten.com/cheap-homemade-30-mhz-6-ghz-vector-network-analyzer.html
Since I can’t afford even a used VNA I decided to make one myself with a budget of 200€, tenth of what they cost used and about 1/100 of what they cost new. Of course it isn’t going to be as accurate as commercial VNAs, but I don’t need that high accuracy and it’s a good learning experience anyway.
Source is implemented using a phase locked loop and often frequency multipliers are used to reach the higher frequencies. To keep the output power level constant as a function of frequency, output power after the output amplifier is measured and attenuator before the amplifier is adjusted until the sensed power is correct.
Power coupled into the directional couplers is high frequency and it needs to be mixed down before it can be detected. Super heterodyne receiver with one intermediate frequency is often used receiver architecture that avoids complications with mixing straight to the DC.
Analog mixers add noise, phases of the LO signals of two mixers aren’t perfectly equal, performance varies as a function of temperature and operating voltage and so on. None of these errors exist with digital mixing and measured result is much more accurate.
While this is a good architecture for making a VNA, it has a drawback of needing many expensive components. 30 MHz – 6 GHz mixer costs about 10€, high accuracy ADCs about 10 – 20 €, fast microcontroller, or better, FPGA is needed to interface to the ADCs, control switches, toggle other signals and communicate with computer. Just these components cost at least 100 € and many more components are still needed such as PLLs, oscillators, filters, PCBs, power converters and so on. Whole board would be way too expensive so something has to be removed to save money.
Most radical way to simplify the block diagram is replacing the receivers with single receiver and SP4T switch. This removes three ADCs, mixers and filters while adding a single switch. Signal processing is also simplified since now we must only measure one ADC instead of four.
Local oscillator can also be simplified as harmonics and exact power level doesn’t matter that much as long as it is withing the specifications of the mixer.
In practice leakage from the SP4T switch is going to be a problem with calibration. Normal VNAs use high quality components and crosstalk between the ports can be assumed to be non-existent.
Conclusion
Looking at the uncalibrated values internal errors of the VNA seem to be quite big at higher frequencies. Sweet spot for minimum errors and good coupling seems to be around 2 – 3 GHz and at this range VNA gives the best accuracy. With correct calibration procedure the errors can be calibrated out and resulting measurement are quite high quality when cost of the board is considered. Performance seems to be good enough for non-professional use. Simple measurements such as antenna return loss measurements can be performed with high accuracy.
I’m not selling these, but if you are interested in making your own VNA or are just interested in looking at the design files all hardware, firmware and processing software is available at GitHub.
https://github.com/Ttl/vna
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Quest for Mice With Frickin’ Laser Beams (Pointed At Their Brains), Building A Laser Controller
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/13/the-quest-for-mice-with-frickin-laser-beams-pointed-at-their-brains-building-a-laser-controller/
From what we were able to piece together optogenetics is like this: someone genetically modifies a mouse to have cell behaviors which can activated by light sensitive proteins
[Scott] had a laser and he had a driver, but he didn’t have a controller to fire the pulses.
The expensive laser driver had a bizarre output of maybe positive 28 volts or, perhaps, negative 28 volts… at eight amps. It was an industry standard in a very small industry.
He didn’t have a really good way to measure or verify this without either destroying his measuring equipment or the laser driver. So he decided to just build a voltage-agnostic input on his controller.
The output is handled by an ATtiny85. He admits that a 555 circuit could generate the signal he needed, but to get a precision pulse it was easier to just hook up a microcontroller
Opto-Isolated Laser Controller Build
http://www.swharden.com/wp/2016-07-28-opto-isolated-laser-controller-build/
I just finished building a device to interface a modern fiber-coupled laser used for optogenetic experiments with 15 year old scientific hardware.
Naturally, to make any guesses about the resulting output behavior from the mouse the input light has to be very controlled and exact.
The hardware I needed to interface is made by Coulbourn Instruments and is essentially just a large multi-channel computer-controlled DAC/ADC and it does its job well (turning lights on and off, recording button presses, etc.), but this new task requires millisecond resolution and modulation patterns which [most likely] lie outside the specs of this system and software.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackerspacing: Making A Temperature Logger
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/13/making-a-makerspace-temperature-logger/
A small part of the new space is a temperature logger, and it’s one whose construction they’ve detailed on their website. It’s a simple piece of hardware based around a Dallas DS18B20 1-wire temperature sensor and an ESP8266 module, powered by 3 AA batteries and passing its data to data.sparkfun.com. The PCB was created using the space’s CNC router, and the surface-mount components were hand-soldered. The whole thing is dwarfed by its battery box, and will eventually be housed in its own 3D printed case.
Making a Makerspace Temperature Logger
https://www.swindon-makerspace.org/2016/07/07/making-makerspace-temperature-logger/
First, use the Makerspace PCB milling machine to cut a circuit board.
Next, soldering. Even the finest of soldering iron tips looks massive next to some of those components, so a good magnifying lamp helps.
After testing the boards for shorts and checking that all the resistors were correctly soldered, an initial power-on with the ESP8266 board in place proved that everything actually worked.
Using SMD components meant that the circuit board wasn’t all that much larger than the ESP8266
Finally connection to a 3xAA batter holder and the project is ready to deploy. The code is written to connect to wifi, read the temperature sensor and send the data to data.sparkfun.com, then go back to sleep to conserve power.
Tomi Engdahl says:
We’re Fans of Dave’s Fans
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/13/were-fans-of-daves-fans/
Hackaday.io contributor extraordinaire [davedarko] gets hot in the summer. We all do. But what separates him from the casual hacker is that he beat the heat by ordering four 120 mm case fans. He then 3D printed a minimalistic tower frame for the fans, and tied them all together with a ULN2004 and an ESP8266. The whole thing is controlled over the network via MQTT. That’s dedication to staying cool.
We really like the aesthetics of this design. A fan made up of fans!
these large case fans can push a lot of air fairly quietly
I’m a fan of your fan
it’s warm so I ordered some pc-case fans to stack them
https://hackaday.io/project/7075-im-a-fan-of-your-fan
A lot of potential hacks here. First prepare the PWM setup with L293D or ULM2803A, then decide how to generate the pwm. 555? attiny85? ESP8266? Make it spin?
I recently played around with mqtt again and used one of my #Ignore this ESP8266 board -s to internet-of-thingify this fan construct. Searching for reasons why the uln2004 wouldn’t work with 3.3V I tried pnps and npns until I found that I haven’t declared the pins I was using as an output.
But now it runs and I can control it via MQTT.fx – winning.
The ESP arduino soft PWM runs at 1kHz and I can hear it, that is kind of annoying.
Don’t forget to set different clientIDs
also works as a fume fan
Tomi Engdahl says:
Aspirin for everyone
Synthesis of acetyl-salicylic acid, using a lab-on-a-chip system or a chem printer
https://hackaday.io/project/5460-aspirin-for-everyone
Acetyl-salicylic acid is on the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines, the most important medications needed in a basic health system. But still a very large part of the world’s population has inadequate or no access to such essential and life-saving medicines like acetyl-salicylic acid. In the following I will research a chemical synthesis route for acetyl-salicylic acid, which is feasible by everyone, everywhere, using a lab-on-a-chip system or a chem printer.
Using Waste Coffee As A Biodiesel Source
https://hackaday.io/project/7319-using-waste-coffee-as-a-biodiesel-source
This experiment investigates the production of bio-oil from Coffee waste. Bio-Oil can be used to make biodiesel.
Tomi Engdahl says:
DrinkyPoo2
Yet another drink maker, just not as fancy. But fancer then drinky poo 1.
https://hackaday.io/project/2188-drinkypoo2
Its a drink maker with 5 pumps (so 5 different fluids can be mixed) with minimum features and all the functionality you need to make some drinks. I’ve seen a bunch online and thought their price tags were just astronomical for the job they do and way to fancy.
So I set out to make a five pump drink maker for under $150.
Features of it:
- You can store a library of 20 drinks (an 18 character name for the drink and then a percent for each pump (like I want pump 1 to be 20% of the drink, and pump 5 to be 80% )
- You can create/edit/delete the drinks right on the machine
- You can calibrate the pumps on your setup with the simple calibration routine I wrote.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Tyndall Effect
https://hackaday.io/project/4736-the-tyndall-effect
You can use a simple cat toy (laser pointer) to demonstrate the Tyndall effect.
Tomi Engdahl says:
OpenSurgery Explores the Possibility of DIY Surgery Robots
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/14/opensurgery-explores-the-possibility-of-diy-surgery-robots/
As the many many warnings at the base of the Open Surgery website clearly state, doing your own surgery is a very bad idea. However, trying to build a surgery robot like Da Vinci to see if it can be done cheaply, is a great one.
For purely academic reasons, [Frank Kolkman] decided to see if one could build a surgery robot for less than an Arab prince spends on their daily commuter vehicle. The answer is, more-or-less, yes. Now, would anyone want to trust their precious insides to a 3D printed robot with dubious precision? Definitely not.
OpenSurgery: DIY surgical robots as a critical alternative to costly healthcare
http://www.creativeapplications.net/arduino-2/opensurgery-diy-surgical-robots-as-a-critical-alternative-to-costly-healthcare/
Created by Frank Kolkman at the Design Interactions/RCA, the OpenSurgery project investigates whether building DIY surgical robots, outside the scope of medical regulations, could plausibly provide an accessible alternative to costly professional healthcare services worldwide. The project aims to provoke alternative thinking about medical innovation by challenging the socioeconomic frameworks healthcare currently operates within.
Over the past decade Robots have transformed surgery as they allow even long and complicated procedures to be performed with super human precision and dexterity, reducing the risk of complications and readmissions and speeding up the recovery process in general. However surgery robots are also a good example of market driven healthcare innovations that indirectly increase the cost of healthcare as a whole.
Central to this concept is the ideological development of collective knowledge and expertise fuelled by other than purely economic motives. Enabled by easily accessible software and decentralized making facilities there is the idea that you can make almost anything from home on a near professional level, without being obstructed by conservative politics. Returning power and responsibility to the individual and attesting to a sense of self-determination.
http://opensurgery.net/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Laser Sequencer uses Arduino to Enable Super-Microscope!
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/15/laser-sequencer-uses-arduino-to-enable-super-microscope/
[Philip Nicovich] has been building laser sequencers over at the University of New South Wales. His platform is used to sequence laser excitation on his fluorescence microscopy systems. In [Philip]’s case, these systems are used for super-resolution microscopy, that is breaking the diffraction limit allowing the imaging of structures of only a few nanometers (1 millionth of a millimeter) in size.
Using an Arduino shield he designed in Eagle, [Philip] was able to build the system for less than half the cost of a commercial platform.
The Arduino runs code which allows laser firing sequences to be programmed and executed.
NicoLase
https://github.com/PRNicovich/NicoLase
An open-source diode laser combiner, fiber launch, and sequencing controller for fluorescence microscopy
Tomi Engdahl says:
HardWino Takes The Effort Out of Happy Hour
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/15/hardwino-takes-the-effort-out-of-happy-hour/
A personal bartender is hard to come by these days. What has the world come to when a maker has to build their own? [Pierre Charlier] can lend you a helping hand vis-à-vis with HardWino, an open-source cocktail maker.
The auto-bar is housed on a six-slot, rotating beverage holder, controlled by an Arduino Mega and accepts drink orders via a TFT screen. Stepper motors and L298 driver boards are supported on 3D printed parts and powered by a standard 12V DC jack.
HardWino, an open source cocktail maker
This project is a open source cocktail maker, based on an Arduino
https://hackaday.io/project/12937-hardwino-an-open-source-cocktail-maker
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ask Hackaday: What Are Magnetic Gears (Good For)?
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/15/ask-hackaday-what-are-magnetic-gears-good-for/
Magnetic gears are surprisingly unknown and used only in a few niche applications. Yet, their popularity is on the rise, and they are one of the slickest solutions for transmitting mechanical energy, converting rotational torque and RPM. Sooner or later, you’re bound to stumble upon them somewhere, so let’s check them out to see what they are and what they are good for.
Where conventional gears use mating surfaces of mechanical interlocking teeth, magnetic gears employ alternating magnetic fields to transmit torque. For a long time, magnetic gears have only played a minor role in engineering. Their comparably high price, directly reflecting their dependence on rare earths like Neodymium, complex assemblies,and their tendency to slip at high torques hasn’t exactly pushed them into the spotlight.
Because magnetic gears aren’t mechanically interlocking, with no physical contact between any of the rotors, they are not subject to mechanical wear. Most regular gear types, such as cogwheels and even worm gears, can be replicated as magnetic gears, simply by replacing the cut teeth with alternating magnetic poles of permanent magnets. The 3D printed, magnetic “cog wheel” assembly to the right is a great example of this.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: Polling The Polling Places
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/15/hackaday-prize-entry-polling-the-polling-places/
A decade and a half ago, a developer testified that he was contracted to make code that would swing an election using electronic voting machines. In this year’s presidential primaries, exit polling significantly differed from official results, but only in precincts using unverifiable electronic voting machines. A democracy can only exist if the integrity of the voting process can be assured, and there is no international electoral oversight committee that would verify the elections in every precinct of the United States.
Your vote may not count, but that doesn’t mean you should wait for hours to cast it. This Hackaday Prize aims to end excessive waiting times at polling places, by giving voters a handy app to check the wait times they’re about to face.
The Qubie is a device that simply keeps track of how long voters are waiting in line at their polling place. The tech behind this is extremely simple – just a Raspberry Pi, WiFi adapter, and a battery. The device keeps track of how long voters have been waiting in line by looking at WiFi coming from smartphones.
Qubie
https://hackaday.io/project/11047-qubie
Qubie is a small wireless device that measures waiting time at a polling place for the benefit of both election jurisdictions and citizens.
Qubie uses public wireless signals from smartphones and wearables to measure how long voters wait in line at a polling place. Throughout the day, Qubie can build a detailed picture of waiting time, delays, and smooth stretches by time of day. The data Qubie produces is 100% anonymous and can help election officials better understand the needs of polling places by providing straightforward queue data. The data can then be used in conjunction with other information to better allocate resources and poll workers, in order to ensure election days go smoothly.
Qubie goes one step further, and makes waiting time data available to voters through mobile and web apps. Voters can check what the wait times currently are at their respective polling place, and can time their visits accordingly.
Qubie is built on open hardware and its software is open source. It is available for jurisdictions to implement themselves at no cost.
Qubie is distributed under a 3-clause BSD license, and is available on GitHub at
https://github.com/FreeAndFair/Qubie
Tomi Engdahl says:
Filling The Automation Gap In Garment Manufacturing
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/16/filling-the-automation-gap-in-garment-manufacturing/
Even in this age of wearable technology, the actual fabric in our t-shirts and clothes may still be the most high-tech product we wear. From the genetically engineered cotton seed, though an autonomous machine world, this product is manufactured in one of the world’s largest automation bubbles. Self-driving cotton pickers harvest and preprocess the cotton. More machines blend the raw material, comb it, twist and spin it into yarn, and finally, a weaving machine outputs sheets of spotless cotton jersey. The degree of automation could not be higher. Except for the laboratories, where seeds, cotton fibers, and yarns are tested to meet tight specifications, woven fabrics originate from a mostly human-free zone that is governed by technology and economics.
The Automation Gap
After the fabric is woven, however, the automation ends abruptly — clothes are still a mostly handmade product. Precisely where all the pieces finally come together, a big automation gap has grown. To make a batch of a piece of garment, a shirt for example, hundreds of layers of fabric are stacked with a printed paper template of the cutting pattern on top. A technician then uses a special tool (the electric straight-knife cutting machine) to trace the contours of the template, simultaneously cutting hundreds of parts. A fleet of sewing machines run by diligent sewers then buzzes those pieces together to make shirts, tees or pants. Assembling garment is a laborious process, and RMG-factories (Ready-Made-Garment) are naturally found where labor is cheap.
Filling the gap
Unfortunately, no other material is as cheap, abundant and comfortable as the soft and flexible cotton jersey from the automation bubble, because it’s not by itself amenable to further automation. It can’t be practically glued or welded, it’s kind of a stubborn material to feed into an automated process, and it makes redesigning garments for automated manufacturing a huge challenge. However, this redesign process is happening now, and it’s following patterns that we have seen before in other areas of manufacturing. From the development of desktop machines that virtually print garment on the fly to entirely new manufacturing methods that leave the paved way of cheap, subsided cotton, everything seems possible.
Tomi Engdahl says:
16-channel Sampler Tests Arcade Buttons with Style
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/16/16-channel-sampler-tests-arcade-buttons-with-style/
The goal is simple: test a bunch of arcade buttons from different manufacturers to get the one with the best function and feel. The resulting build is anything but simple: this wonderfully over-designed 16-channel WAV sampler and mixer.
Button Factory: Action buttons test kit
https://imgur.com/gallery/HwXSs#FbuDb1m
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: Grasshopper Neurons
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/16/hackaday-prize-entry-grasshopper-neurons/
Grasshoppers are nature’s perfect collision avoidance system, and this is due to a unique visual system that includes neurons extending directly from the eye to the animal’s legs. For this Hackaday Prize entry – and as a research project for this summer at Backyard Brains, [Dieu My Nguyen] is studying the neuroscience of grasshopper vision with stabs and shocks.
Neuroscience of Grasshopper Jumps
https://hackaday.io/project/12342-neuroscience-of-grasshopper-jumps
Why are grasshoppers so hard to catch? Let’s explore the visual neurons behind the grasshopper’s escape mechanism!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bone Conduction Skull Radio
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/17/bone-conduction-skull-radio/
There are many ways to take an electrical audio signal and turn it into something you can hear. Moving coil speakers, plasma domes, electrostatic speakers, piezo horns, the list goes on. Last week at the Electromagnetic Field festival in the UK, we encountered another we hadn’t experienced directly before. Bite on a brass rod (sheathed in a drinking straw for hygiene), hear music.
This was Skull Radio, a bone conduction speaker courtesy of [Tdr], one of our friends from TOG hackerspace in Dublin, and its simplicity hid a rather surprising performance. A small DC motor has its shaft connected to a piece of rod, and a small audio power amplifier drives the motor. Nothing is audible until you bite on the rod, and then you can hear the music. The bones of your skull are conducting it directly to your inner ear, without an airborne sound wave in sight.
Skull Radio Workshop
https://wiki.emfcamp.org/wiki/User:Tdr/Skull_Radio_Workshop
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nerd-Bait: ESP8266 + ILI9341 Screen
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/17/nerd-bait-esp8266-ili9341-screen/
And so it is with [Johan Kanflo]’s latest bit of work: a PCB that mounts an ESP8266 module onto the back of an ILI9341 color display, with user button, power supply, and an auxiliary MOSFET. Four bucks for the screen, four bucks for the ESP8266 module, and a few bucks here and there on parts and PCB, and you’ve got an Internet-enabled, full-color, 320×240 graphical display. That’s pretty awesome, and it’s entirely consistent with Elliot’s Law.
The Commadorable 64
http://johan.kanflo.com/the-commadorable-64/
The ILI9341 based QVGA displays found on eBay for €4 are well suited for making small screenlets telling the current temperature, weather forecasts, traffic situation to work and spreading them over the house. As PCB design is both fun, cheap and rewarding I did a custom PCB for these tiny displays. Actually, I made three, one for each of the 2.2″, 2.4″ and 2.8″ screens. The 2.8″ version has not been produced but the smaller variant have and work well. From 2.4″ and onwards there is (untested) touch support on the screen modules.
The “Hello World” application for this project also named the PCBs. I call them Commadorable 64. Here is why
The PCB is soldered directly to the pins of the ILI9341 module.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lego-Like Chemistry and Biology Erector Set
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/17/lego-like-chemistry-and-biology-erector-set/
A team of researchers and students at the University of California, Riverside has created a Lego-like system of blocks that enables users to custom build chemical and biological research instruments. The system of 3D-printed blocks can create a variety of scientific tools.
The blocks, which are called Multifluidic Evolutionary Components (MECs) appeared in the journal PLOS ONE. Each block in the system performs a basic lab instrument task (pumping fluids, making measurements or interfacing with a user, for example). Since the blocks are designed to work together, users can build apparatus — like bioreactors for making alternative fuels or acid-base titration tools for high school chemistry classes — rapidly and efficiently.
Building Lab Instruments One Block at a Time
https://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/38752
3D-printed, Lego-like system developed at UCR can be used by researchers, students and clinicians to build lab tools easily and affordably
Tomi Engdahl says:
Infrared Targeting On a Small Scale
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/18/infrared-targeting-on-a-small-scale/
Sometimes, a person has a reason to track a target. A popular way to do this these days is with a camera, a computer, and software to analyze the video. But, that lends itself more to automated systems, like sentries. What if you want to be able to target something by “painting” it with a laser?
That’s exactly what [Jeremy Leaf] wanted to do, and the results are pretty impressive. He was able to track a .06 milliwatt laser at 2 meters. His design does this using three photodiodes in order to determine the position of a laser spot using triangulation.
ThreeSeek
http://www.leafmakes.com/threeseek/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Capacitive Imaging With A Raspberry Pi Touch Screen
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/18/capacitive-imaging-with-a-raspberry-pi-touch-screen/
We use touch screens all the time these days, and though we all know they support multiple touch events it is easy for us to take them for granted and forget that they are a rather accomplished sensor array in their own right.
[Optismon] has long held an interest in capacitive touch screen sensors, and has recently turned his attention to the official Raspberry Pi 7-inch touchscreen display. He set out to read its raw capacitance values, and ended up with a fully functional 2D capacitive imaging device able to sense hidden nails and woodwork in his drywall.
Raspberry Pi 7 inch touchscreen display hacking
http://optisimon.com/raspberrypi/touch/ft5406/2016/07/13/raspberry-pi-7-inch-touchscreen-hacking/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Arc Lighter become Plasma Pyrography Pen
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/18/arc-lighter-become-plasma-pyrography-pen/
Wood burning can be quite a striking art form, but who wants to be stuck using an old-fashioned resistive heating element to char wood? You could go with laser engraving, of course, but that seems to take too much of the human touch out of it. So why not try a mini plasma pen and blow torch powered by a fancy cigarette lighter?
How To Make a Plasma Pen & Micro Torch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGKt_jiyM8c
This engraver/micro torch works on a variety of materials, though I only demonstrate it with wood and to cut rope in this video. Some materials like certain plastics may give off noxious fumes if heated so be careful with what is engraved, and use adiquate ventilation.
Make a Mini Plasma Cutter From an Arc Lighter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKmGVNs_y7o
In this video I demonstrate how I turned an arc lighter into a mini hand held plasma cutter!
Tomi Engdahl says:
One Man, A Raspberry Pi, and a Formerly Hand Powered Loom
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/20/one-man-a-raspberry-pi-and-a-formerly-hand-powered-loom/
[Fred Hoefler] was challenged to finally do something with that Raspberry Pi he wouldn’t keep quiet about. So he built a machine assist loom for the hand weaver. Many older weavers simply can’t enjoy their art anymore due to the physical strain caused by the repetitive task. Since he had a Pi looking for a purpose, he also had his project.
His biggest requirement was cost. There are lots of assistive looms on the market, but the starting price for those is around ten thousand dollars.
The motive parts are simple cheap 12V geared motors off Amazon. He powered them using his own motor driver circuits. They get their commands from the Pi, running Python. To control the loom one can either type in commands into the shell or use the keyboard.
https://www.photographic-perspectives.com/tag/powered-loom/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bachelor Builds Enormous Laser Cutter, Nobody Complains
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/20/bachelor-builds-enormous-laser-cutter-nobody-complains/
Nothing says swinging 21st-century bachelor pad better than a laser cutter. To really make a statement, you want a custom-built, 100 Watt, 1200mm x 900mm laser cutter.
The bachelor in question, [drandolph], rightly points out that a $6,000 build that takes up a significant fraction of the floor space in one’s apartment is better attempted without the benefit of spousal oversight.
I build my own laser cutter
http://imgur.com/gallery/GnFge
Tomi Engdahl says:
An Organ Made from Back-Driven Steppers
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/20/an-organ-made-from-back-driven-steppers/
[Josh] wrote in to tell us about an experimental instrument he’s been working on for a couple of months. We’re glad he did, because it’s a really cool project. It’s an organ that uses the principle of back-drive—applying torque to the output shaft of a motor—to create sounds. [Josh] is back-driving four octaves worth of stepper motors with spinning wooden disks, and this generates alternating current. At the right speeds, the resulting sinusoidal waveform falls within the range of human hearing and can be amplified for maximum musical enjoyment.
Stepper Organ
http://dothings.weebly.com/things/stepper-organ
Tomi Engdahl says:
Add Robotic Farming to Your Backyard with Farmbot Genesis
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/19/add-robotic-farming-to-your-backyard-with-farmbot-genesis/
Growing your own food is a fun hobby and generally as rewarding as people say it is. However, it does have its quirks and it definitely equires quite the time input. That’s why it was so satisfying to watch Farmbot push a weed underground. Take that!
Farmbot is a project that has been going on for a few years now, it was a semifinalist in the Hackaday Prize 2014, and that development time shows in the project documented on their website.
Intro to FarmBot Genesis
DIY open-source hardware platform optimized for small-scale soil-based food production
https://farmbot-genesis.readme.io/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Laser-Cut ArcSin Dress Is Wearable Math
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/19/laser-cut-arcsin-dress-is-wearable-math/
Using sewing simulation, 3D modeling and laser-cutting [Nancy Yi Liang] makes custom dresses that fit like a glove. Her project documentation walks us through all the steps from the first sketch to the final garment.
I made a dress using 3D modeling, math, and lasers!
http://blog.nyl.io/laser-cut-arcsin-dress/
This project plays with perspective and digital manufacturing techniques (sewing simulation, 3D modeling, laser cutting).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Turntable Turns Waveform Generator
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/19/turntable-turns-waveform-generator/
In need of a waveform generator for another project, [David Cook] crammed out the old turntable to modify it for a handy hack: By adding a simple reflectance sensor to the pickup he turned it into a waveform generator that optically plays back arbitrary waveforms from printed paper discs.
For his hack, [Dave] created a 3D printed mount, which attaches a LED and a photodiode to the pickup of the turntable
Printed Discs Generate Waveforms
http://robotroom.com/Waveform-Generator-1.html
This is my long-winded way of saying that you can build your own waveform generator from the old record player in your basement and a simple light-sensor circuit on a breadboard. But, instead of playing a record, the turntable spins a disc with a pattern printed on paper by an ordinary computer printer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hacklet 121 – Tea Hacks
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/20/hacklet-121-tea-hacks/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Building A DIY Heat Pipe
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/21/building-a-diy-heat-pipe/
Once the secret design tool for aerospace designers, the heat pipe is a common fixture now thanks to the demands of PC CPU cooling. Heat pipes can transfer lots of energy from a hot side to a cold side and is useful when you need to cool something where having a fan near the hot part isn’t feasible for some reason. Unlike active cooling, a heat pipe doesn’t require any external power or pumps, either.
[James Biggar] builds his own heat pipes using copper tubing. You can see a video of one being made
DIY Evacuated Solar Heat Pipe
http://www.resystech.com/evacuated-solar-heat-pipe.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: A CNC Plasma Table
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/20/hackaday-prize-entry-a-cnc-plasma-table/
CNC routers and 3D printers are cool, but the last time I checked, cars and heavy machinery aren’t made out of wood and plastic. If you want a machine that will build other machines, you want a CNC plasma cutter. That’s [willbaden]’s entry for the Hackaday prize. It’s big, massive, and it’s already cutting.
A plasma CNC machine isn’t that much different from a simple CNC router. [will]’s table controller is just a GRBL shield attached to an Arduino, the bearings were stolen from many copy machines, and your motors and drivers are fairly standard, barring the fact they’re excessively huge for a simple 3D printer.
CNC Plasma Table
https://hackaday.io/project/12864-cnc-plasma-table
Plasma Cutter + CNC Table + Auto Load/Unload = Tool to build other projects faster
Tomi Engdahl says:
DIY Coil Gun Redux: Life Really is Easier with Arduino
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/22/diy-coil-gun-redux-life-really-is-easier-with-arduino/
A common complaint in the comments of many a Hackaday project is: Why did they use a microcontroller? It’s easy to Monday morning quarterback someone else’s design, but it’s rare to see the OP come back and actually prove that a microcontroller was the best choice. So when [GreatScott] rebuilt his recent DIY coil gun with discrete logic, we just had to get the word out.
You’ll recall from the original build that [GreatScott] was not attempting to build a brick-wall blasting electromagnetic rifle. His build was more about exploring the concepts and working up a viable control mechanism for a small coil gun, and as such he chose an Arduino to rapidly prototype his control circuit. But when taken to task for that design choice, he rose to the challenge and designed a controller using discrete NAND and NOR gates, some RS latches, and a couple of comparators.
Not every project deserves an Arduino, and sometimes it’s pretty clear the builder either took the easy way out or was using the only trick in his or her book.