Table of contents for #74 in HackSpace

What do you need to be a maker? If we’re honest, nothing except a fertile imagination and a willingness to get stuck in. However, life isn’t always about need, so this month we’re looking at the stuff we want. We’ve got all the latest shiny gizmos and gadgets that a maker could want, from dev boards to CNC machines. Behind the scenes, a lot has happened in the industrial world this year, but the short version is that it’s now much easier for manufacturers to get the parts they need to make things, and we’ve seen a flurry of new hardware because of this. Everything from 3D printers to dev boards seem to have taken a leap forwards in the last twelve months. Will they make you a better maker?…

Alexander Kirillov wanted a robot that he could use as a teaching platform at SigmaCamp, a science-based summer camp in the USA. He looked at Poll’s Zumo robot, DF Robots’ Maqueen Plus, and Pimoroni’s Trilobite – all fine platforms, but none of them satisfied all of Alexander’s requirements. He wanted something compact, extendable, with a decent number and variety of sensors, and programmable in Python. Unable to find a device that matched these requirements, he decided to build his own. He’s used silicone tracks and 6V, 75-gear ratio micro metal gear motors, both by Pololu, an ESP32-S3 Feather board by Adafruit as the main controller, and designed a custom board to handle low-level operations such as maintaining consistent motor speed. The sensors are where things get really interesting: among other…

Choosing exactly what to use to power projects and be creative is a conundrum for any maker. To make it a little easier, we’ve rounded up the best recently released maker tech. From microcontrollers and single-board computers to breakout boards, accessories, 3D printers, laser cutters, and CNC routers, we’ve got it all covered. MICROCONTROLLERS & SINGLE-BOARD COMPUTERS Base your projects around these general-purpose and specialist boards Arduino Uno R4 The long-awaited new addition to the popular Uno range of Arduino boards, the R4 – available in WiFi and Minima versions – has a few surprises up its sleeve. Possibly the biggest is the switch from an AVR-based ATmega 328P microcontroller to an Arm-based Renesas RA4M1 chip, which is superior in every respect: faster, more RAM, more storage, and extra on-board…

Technologist, prototyping expert, engineer, life hacker, product designer – Jude Pullen’s CV is pretty jolly impressive. He’s worked on medical devices, he’s worked at LEGO, and Dyson, and he’s sent Superman into space for RS Components. So you’d think that he’d have no trouble changing a battery, right? Wrong. Thanks to a combination of business models and poor design decisions, repairability is in trouble. Where we could once prolong the lifespan of our devices by making simple fixes ourselves, manufacturers are now making things more difficult – at huge cost to the environment. Jude’s been exploring this issue, and the efforts he’s had to go to just to change a battery have been extraordinary. As soon as you have an hour or so spare, we’d strongly recommend you go to…

PART 02 Last month, we introduced our project to make a Pico-based modular synthesizer and built our first module: a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO). The problem with this is that we need voltages to go into it to make noise. We’ll experiment with different inputs in the future, but let’s start with the simplest way of getting music into a system: MIDI. MIDI is a very simple protocol for controlling musical instruments. It does have its own style of cables and connections, but to get started, we’re going to use MIDI over USB, which will let us control our synthesizer from software on a computer. Fortunately, MIDI is well supported on CircuitPython, which runs on Pico, so getting the messages in is fairly straightforward. MIDI has a series of channels,…

So far in this KiCad series, we have designed our PCBs and had them manufactured using the common PCB material known as FR4. On FR4, our copper traces sit on top of fibreglass, and this is what most people think of when they hear the phrase ‘PCB’. However, it’s not the only option, and most of the PCB fabrication houses have a variety of different materials that they can make a PCB from. The circuit is typically still copper, but these traces sit on top of other materials. Let’s take a look at the alternatives. FR4 is a standard of material for the dielectric, the insulating non-conducting part of a PCB. FR4 is a type of composite fibreglass material, made up from fine glass reinforcing fibres and epoxy resin, and…

Vias, the small plated through-holes that connect different layers of the PCB, have different ways of being finished. For many projects, the PCB fabrication house default will be fine, but it’s worth looking at the common options offered. ‘Tented vias’ are covered with the solder mask, so no solder would stick to them. The hole may or may not be filled, depending on the size of the via. Other benefits of tenting are that you reduce the risk of unintended shorts when boards are being assembled into products or being handled etc. ‘Un-tented vias’ have no covering, so are finished in the selected surface finish in the same way as exposed pads and other copper features. Whilst this may well be fine, there is a risk of accidentally soldering to…

The lenses of the Yashica TLR camera are glued together using a blend of tree sap and turpentine called Canada balsam. Over time, variations in temperature and pressure can cause these lenses to separate and leave flecks or mist between the lens elements that will affect the quality of the photographs you take. Fixing this problem isn’t as difficult as you might imagine, and there are a few different ways you can do it depending on the tools you have access to and your confidence level. CLEAN. LUBE. ADJUST One method is to use heat to remelt the balsam and then apply pressure to the lens while it cools. This can be done by hand with gloves, a heat-resistant foam pad, and a wooden stick with a felt end. Separate…

This writer cycles to the workshop every day. At around the start of November every year it takes a dramatic turn for the dark. Gone are the glorious summer days of cycling home while the sun is still high in the sky. Gone, too, are the glorious early autumn days of the sun gently setting and lighting up the sky in hues of orange and pink. Now it’s time for the dark winter days, and if there are going to be some glorious lights, we have to provide them ourselves. And provide them we will. Regular readers will be familiar with our yearly quest to bring some blinkenlights to the Bristol to Bath cycle path. Here’s the basic problem we’re trying to solve. Bike lights are great. They let cyclists…

Having just made the plunge and bought our first mechanical keyboard, we’re amazed by the scope and variety of what are essentially identical objects. To our previously unenlightened minds, a keyboard was a keyboard was a keyboard. The idea that people would obsess over layout, or switches, or back-lighting, or programmability was a little bit weird. Why bother? But that was then: this is now. Using a mechanical keyboard makes writing more fun. In the same way Jude Pullen talks about loving a drill in our interview on page 36, we’ve come to love our keyboard. It brought us some joy to discover the work of Joe Scotto who, under the nom-de-making ScottoKeebs, is making some gorgeous mechanical keyboards. This latest, the ScottoWing, is a fully customisable ortholinear keyboard (that…

Just because you’re experimenting with stepper motors, perfboard, and a whole nest of wires, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try your best to make your creations beautiful. Take this thoroughly modern musical instrument by Instructables user thisisnomine: in the back it’s your typical maker project, with PCBs, breakout boards, and wiring. From the front, though, it’s a feast of mid-century hardwood, with mother of pearl detailing and a combination of two African hardwoods (Anigre, the light coloured wood, is used here as a veneer, with the rest of the housing made from sapele, which is similar to mahogany). The music comes from the four stepper motors. These are usually found in robotics projects, as the degree, speed, and direction of rotation can all be controlled in software. The rotation creates noise;…

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In the old days (not so old days actually), every affordable FDM printer had a sheet of sandpaper next to it. This essential tool would enable the user to take the rough edges off printed objects that had to fit together. Fail to sand the surfaces you’re joining, and you risked cracking, jamming, or otherwise ruining the print you’d just waited hours for. We could not then have imagined how easy it would be, just a few years later, to print mechanically accurate, smooth-rolling gears. It’s even more amazing that those gears are accurate enough to build a computer. Charles Babbage’s original Difference Engine was never completed, as the metalworking techniques of the time were too complicated to allow him to realise his vision; brilliantly, the UK government of the…

Cameras deliver sequences of images and we can control certain aspects of how they are delivered, like the exposure time or frame rate. However, the limits of these parameters are all governed by the mode in which the camera is operating. For example, the current camera mode may have a maximum frame rate that it will allow, and therefore any attempt to ask for a higher frame rate will fail unless a new camera mode is selected beforehand. Selecting a new camera mode is a relatively expensive operation. It requires reprogramming much of the sensor’s internal configuration. Therefore, it cannot happen while the camera is running and delivering images. Instead, the camera must be stopped completely, reconfigured into the chosen mode, and finally restarted. This whole process can easily take…

There are lots of other choices that can be made when getting a PCB fabricated. One choice is the type of surface finish applied to any exposed copper pads. These take the form of differing types of covering or plating, which act to both allow the easy fitting of components, solder, or solder paste, whilst stopping bare copper pads from oxidising if left uncovered. ‘Hot Air Solder Levelling’ (HASL) is a common option where the board is dipped fully into molten solder, removed, and excess solder driven off. This results in all copper areas being covered in a flat, thin layer of solder. It’s an older technology and has been used in PCB fabrication for multiple decades and, as such, it’s usually an affordable option. It is easy to solder…

There are a few websites that hold 3D models designed for 3D printing. The quality of the models on them varies from the excellent to the, well, less excellent. Despite the varying quality, they are typically all intended for 3D printing. However, this month, we’ve eschewed models designed for fabrication and taken a look at models created to be self-replicating. In other words, biological models. Many museums around the world scan their artefacts and upload them to the web. We scoured the web for scans to print and examine. It’s a great way of getting hands-on with objects that are usually locked away behind glass screens. What really struck us was the complexity of the objects. It’s quite common to come across recreations of skeletons (especially around the end of…

There are a few things that can go wrong with the Yashica TLR camera shutter. General poor maintenance can lead to the shutter getting stuck or running at the wrong speed, and that’s easy enough to fix with a little bit of solvent and some TLC. The question is, how do you check that your camera is firing accurately? A quick and easy way is to make a simple light detector with a Raspberry Pi Pico, and use it to check how long the shutter lets light into the camera. BEWARE OF THE SELF DESTRUCT There’s an innocuous-looking lever on Yashica TLR cameras, with an X and an M mode. This lever can break your camera so badly that you’ll need to disassemble the shutter mechanism to get it working…

@devinck I must admit, I have not been an active member of the model rocketry scene for a very long time. Not to say that I haven’t launched my fair share of hobby store rockets in my life, because I have. But it’s been a very long time since I’ve counted down and screamed LIFT-OFF! Maybe too long? Recently, with all the advances in full-size rocket research, it has sparked my interest in model rocketry once again, and I’m sure a lot of other people, too. I’ve seen a lot of amazing projects from university engineering programs and even a lot of backyard builders. It’s incredible to see some of these amateur-built rockets take off. And even more incredible are the ones that can land just like the full-size rockets on…

What do you do when you can’t shovel snow off your drive because of medical reasons? You build your own snowplough, that’s what! There are other solutions on the market, but none of them were quite right for the maker of this brilliant, versatile robot. At around 0.4 horsepower, it’s powerful enough to shift a decent amount of the white stuff, and as it’s not designed to go far, it’s suitable for mains power (the files are open-source, so if you want to make your own, do be aware that it’s speced to run on 120V – your mains power may vary). The maker has also designed 3D-printable files for converting the SnowByte to other tasks, such as mowing the lawn and, thanks to the magic of open source, you’re…

We’re used to the creepy, cam-driven walking action of Theo Jansen’s Strandbeests. It seems like wherever there’s a 3D printer and a human with an interest in mechanical movement, a design will pop up that turns rotation movement into walking. In one sense this robot is no different; it uses two servos to turn a crank-shaft, which enables the robot to move around. What grabbed us about this project is that, as well as 3D printing, there’s an older and more primitive technology at use here: a bit of bent metal. Rather than 3D printing the crank-shaft, maker Moononournation used a bit of 1mm steel rod, bent so as to allow movement to transfer to the legs. In a triumph to progress, the maker recommends 3D-printing a crank-shaft for reference,…

ARDUINO COCKTAIL MACHINE Automated, not stirred! Around a year ago, I bought an Arduino Uno after fiddling around with them at college for a few weeks. I already owned a 3D printer, so this seemed like a great addition to the hobby. After completing a couple of simple projects, it was time to try something more complex. On the weekends, I enjoy making cocktails for myself and my friends. A Long Island iced tea has always been our favourite, but with six ingredients, it’s quite a hassle to make. So I thought, why spend a few minutes making a drink when you can spend a few months automating it? So I did. THE MACHINE In essence, the cocktail maker is simply seven peristaltic pumps controlled by an Arduino Nano, on…

RING RING I love the idea of a cheap, hackable modular synth, so thanks for building this. I have just one request – can you make a ring modulator? I want to create my own take on the Doctor Who effects. I’ll be able to terrify the local youths into thinking that the Cybermen are taking over. Do kids still know who Cybermen are? Paul Sunderland Ben Says: Ring modulators are an absolute staple of modular synths, and you’re not the only person to ask for one, so of course we’ll have to create one. We’ve got a few things we need to get through first, not least getting our setup in tune. I’ve got no idea if kids these days know who Cybermen are. I just found out that…

GET YOUR RASPBERRY PI 5 now! Want to get Raspberry Pi 5 sent to you right now, without waiting for stock? With Priority Boarding, you can order your Raspberry Pi 5 (4GB or 8GB) and it’ll be sent out right away. Raspberry Pi has set aside thousands of Raspberry Pi 5 computers for The MagPi and HackSpace magazine print subscribers to buy. Enough to guarantee every subscriber can get one without going out of stock. How it works! If you take out a print subscription to HackSpace magazine or The MagPi, we’ll send you a unique code in the next few days. Along with the code, you’ll get details of how to use it through our partners (Pi Shop in USA and Canada and the Pi Hut everywhere else). Get…

Copper weight describes the thickness of copper at any given point on a PCB. It’s often expressed as ounces per square foot, so a 1 oz/ft2 copper weight will be thinner than 2oz/ft2. Copper weight can be important in terms of designing PCB traces, as the weight affects the depth of the trace. Different trace widths and weights may need to be used when considering the amount of current particular parts of a circuit may be passing. Similarly, track impedance and RF qualities of tracks may well come into play, as well as track sizes, when trying to match lengths of track in more complex PCB designs. Most common copper weightings are 1 oz or 2 oz, and many PCB houses will offer these as a choice. If you require…

Vintage cameras are a bit like vintage cars. The older they are, the fewer things there are to go wrong. When they do go wrong, the easier they are to fix. In this article, you’ll take a look at a classic twin-lens reflex (TLR) camera, see the common problems they acquire over time, and hopefully see why it’s worth the effort of getting them back into good working order. You’ll also see how modern technology, like Raspberry Pi Pico, can be used to help with the repair process, and learn a few old-school tips that will help you take good photographs. GRAIN NOT PIXELS The TLR style of camera is a design classic. It’s simple, easy to maintain and, in the case of cameras like the Yashica TLR, practically modular.…

Find out how to create a little robot you can program from your PC browser. Along the way, we’ll dig into the deepest recesses of computer interrupts, build a programming language that has angry and happy commands, and use a web based robot development environment. The Hull Pixelbot is a little robot with a pixel on the top. Figure 1 shows the very first one. The author wanted to find out just how much you could do with a robot powered by an Arduino Uno, a very popular (if somewhat limited) microcontroller. Version 1 just moved around the desk. Version 2 had a pixel and distance sensor and became the Hull Pixelbot. At first the robot was controlled by C++ compiled on a PC and loaded into the robot. But…

FISHY FILAMENTS → €54.98/750G hsmag.cc/fishyfil Nylon is one of those filaments that usually get lumped under the term ‘engineering’. We’re not completely sure what makes a filament ‘engineering’, but we suspect it’s a euphemism for expensive and bloody hard to print. This particular nylon filament, though, is explicitly not for engineering (Fishy Filaments does an engineering version called Orca which contains carbon fibre). Porthcurno is, according to the website, designed for homewares, wearables, fashion, and other aesthetic products. Before we dive into this filament in depth, let’s take a step back through the life of the plastic and see where it comes from. Fishy Filaments works with the Cornish Fish Producers’ Organisation (CFPO), and takes old and damaged nets that have mostly been used for catching hake. These nets are…