Table of contents for #60 in HackSpace

The Internet of Things is, in theory, full of promise. It can mean our devices talking to each other and creating a seamless user experience – your alarm clock and coffee maker working together, your heating and car’s navigation system making sure your house is warm when you arrive home, your washing-machine and solar panels making sure you clean your clothes when there’s free electricity. However, somehow it never quite ends up like this. At least, not with off-the-shelf equipment. In this issue, we’re taking a look at some of the best, most useful, and most innovative DIY smart home gadgets and gizmos Never fear, though. We are makers, and if we can’t buy what we want, we’ll make it. In this issue, we’re taking a look at some of…

twitter.com/CannonFodder Before we invented television, humans were grasping at moving images for a while. One forerunner to the idiot box, which uses persistence of vision and a series of slightly different images to create the illusion of movement, is the zoetrope. Prolific maker Brian Corteil has made this beautiful digital zoetrope, which uses 20 Pimoroni Badger E Ink® screens to display the images, a Raspberry Pi 4, and a beautiful body fabricated from laser-cut 3mm and 5mm plywood.…

hsmag.cc/WindTunnel Designer extraordinaire Jude Pullen has designed this desktop wind tunnel to be built cheaply: it’s made of card, wood offcuts, PVC piping, and some clear acrylic sheets for the sides, plus a set of digital scales. And it’s cheap on purpose; this project was commissioned by The Design And Technology Association, which supports schools teaching design and technology. This subject has, in England and Wales, had its funding cut by over 70% since it was first introduced to the curriculum, so teachers need cheap ways to demonstrate the principles of design. This is a minimal setup; all it measures is the force applied to the scales, from which the user can compare the lift generated by different wing designs. If you wanted to go deeper into engineering, you could…

ATTENTION ALL MAKERS! If you have something you’d like to get off your chest (or even throw a word of praise in our direction), let us know at hsmag.cc/hello PIXELS WITH PURPOSE Thanks for the interview with Alpenglow’s Carrie Sundra; I was aware that citizens in Washington DC can’t vote for president, but I had no idea that US citizens in the overseas territories can’t, and I like to think I’m pretty clued up when it comes to politics. Thanks to her for highlighting this. David Boston Ben says: One of the many things we like about Alpenglow is that it has come out of one person’s desire to make things, and if other people like them too, then fair enough. There’s no market research team that would have come…

@RosieHattersley Rosie Hattersley writes tech, craft, and life hacks and tweets @RosieHattersley. IMPROVISER’S TOOLBOX Ever since we’ve been throwing up walls, we’ve been coming up with ways to cover them up or enhance them. Paint, plaster, wallpaper, and pictures all have their place, but tiles quite often outshine – and outlast – them all. Tiles can, in theory, be made to cover almost anything. For proof, look no further than the Sagrada Família church or Parc Güell in Barcelona, both dreamt up by Antoni Gaudí. Tiles and mosaics are also favourites of Spanish ‘starchitect’ Santiago Calatrava, whose soaring concrete structures are given beauty by their pristine white, light-reflective glazed coverings. Tiled structures in ancient Egypt, Samarkand in Uzbekistan, Mexico, and Morocco all have distinctive designs that mark out their origins.…

@ben_everard Ben’s house is slowly being taken over by 3D printers. He plans to solve this by printing an extension, once he gets enough printers.P Plastic pollution is a scourge on the planet. It’s clogging our rivers, oceans, and almost every bit of land. These plastics will stay in the ecosystem for a few millennia and are almost impossible to clean up. Anyone creating things out of plastic needs to think carefully about how they are doing so responsibly. Obviously, people who 3D-print tend to use quite a bit of plastic. The most common plastic used in 3D printing – Polylactic acid (PLA) – is a bioplastic that is compostable. At least, it’s theoretically compostable. In order to compost, it needs to be held over 60°C for an extended length…

@concreted0g Jo Hinchliffe is a constant tinkerer and is passionate about all things DIY space. He loves designing and scratch-building both model and high-power rockets, and releases the designs and components as open-source. He also has a shed full of lathes and milling machines and CNC kit! Working on the EXO-S swing-wing rocket glider project, which was featured in issue 56, saw me working with balsa wood, and I started thinking more about building rockets with sheet materials rather than tubes. Mainly an interesting challenge for fun and learning, but it struck me that there are advantages to using sheet material, as well as a fair number of problems to solve! Lightweight tubes are delicate in one axis – they stand up well in compression along the length of them,…

@devinck Just about a year ago, we covered the topic of keys and keyboards. The topic was getting popular, as components like microcontrollers were getting harder to source. And to be quite honest, we thought some things, like the supply chain, would have gotten better a year later, but they haven’t. Trying to source components for your next project is still difficult. Trying to find a microcontroller? In many instances, it can be nearly impossible to find, or at least find one at a reasonable price. However, one small niche of the DIY electronics community seems to be thriving during these times: the custom keyboard scene. Some of the reasons might just be because it’s a fun and interesting hobby. But we think there are other factors for its increased…

NILLTRONIC £26 etsy.com @concreted0g The Game Boy Camera (GBC) cartridge was a classic Game Boy add-on that allowed people to take photos and print lo-fi images. It also featured a random assortment of games, a chiptune classic application ‘Trippy-H’, and some of the most bonkers background music. The add-on has remained popular and is very collectable. There was always the issue that, apart from buying the official Nintendo thermal printer accessory, you couldn’t get your images off the GBC cartridge in a straightforward manner. We remember a long time ago writing a blog post about kludging a solution with an incredibly rare aftermarket cable, some software, and Windows XP, but it was clunky and prone to failure. So when this print-to-Wi-Fi solution crossed our path, we were intrigued. Available on…

github.com/tomverbeure In our interview with Debra Ansell, on page 50, we briefly discuss some of the challenges of making an LED sphere. Debra solved this by arranging surfacemount LEDs on a flat plane, then diffusing the light through curved 3D-printed parts. Tom Verbeure has gone down a different route with this creation, using larger through-hole components placed into a 20-segment, 3D-printed sphere. There’s always more than one way to do it, and no one way is better than any other, as this build shows.…

youtube.com/c/PlasmaChannel Ion thrusters are fascinating things, producing tiny amounts of thrust that are pretty much useless on Earth (with our inconvenient gravity). They’re far more useful in space however, as they’re smaller than rocket engines, and they don’t need atmospheric oxygen like a jet engine. Ion thrusters are old technology, having been used since the 1950s, and now Jay Bowles, of the fascinating YouTube channel Plasma Channel, has demonstrated a way to make it better: multiple stages. By varying the input voltages and spacing between stages, Jay’s been able to experiment and produce a claimed exhaust velocity of 2.3m per second.…

From $2729 hsmag.cc/Raven Delivery: May 2023 CNC routers are great bits of kit – they can cut out parts from wood with an accuracy that (we, at least) can only dream of. Simply load up your wood, press a button, and drink your coffee while your robot assistant carves out your work. Then, when it’s finished, remove the work and take credit for it. Perfect. However, it’s not quite perfect because CNCs come with one big caveat – they’re huge. Unless you have a workshop like a YouTube wood influencer, you’re probably going to struggle to fit in a CNC large enough to do serious woodwork (or if you do, it might end up being the entirety of the workshop). Raven is an interesting solution to this problem. It’s a…

MAKER PJ is a writer, software engineer and tinkerer. His robots bring all the geeks to the yard. twitter.com/mrpjevans You’ll Need CamJamEdukit3- Robotics Printer Rollofpaperoptional) If you followed last month’s tutorial, you should now have a working robot that you can control with Python. Hopefully, you’ve played with the code and had the little ‘bot’ zooming around the place. Now it’s time to add some sensors, so our new pal can start to sense the world around it. With the ultrasonic and light sensors included with the CamJam EduKit #3, we can add some autonomous capabilities and make our robot a little smarter. Finally, we can look at what you can do to improve the robot even more with custom chassis and additional sensors. 01 Get sensitive Included with your CamJam…

Dr Andrew Lewis is a specialist fabricator and maker, and is the owner of the Andrew Lewis Workshop.I It’s easy to fall into the maker trap, where your projects are driven by the availability of tools and parts rather than the desire to create something that serves your particular aesthetic. It might be more complicated, but choosing the path less travelled is a great way to build your skills and think outside the project box. In this article, you’ll see how you can provide feedback about soil moisture and temperature with servos rather than the now ubiquitous LCD or TFT displays. You’ll also get to play with recycled junk and build a model to house your project. When anyone mentions a servo motor, makers tend to think of remote-control aeroplanes,…

PETOI $299.00 petoi.com @ben_everard The vast majority of robot kits that you see are wheeled robots. Of those that have legs, the majority have six or more legs. This is because walking on four or fewer legs is hard – you have to balance in real time, since the robot isn’t stable throughout the movement. You have to be able to move quickly and precisely to avoid falling over, and this means that you need quality parts and lightweight construction. Petoi’s Bittle Robot Dog promises just this, and we put it to the test to find out more. Out of the box, it’s a fun curiosity. The build isn’t completely straightforward, but shouldn’t be particularly challenging for the average HackSpace mag reader. Once all together, it can connect to an…

bhoite.com Individually cut brass rods must be a pain to work with. Unlike copper sandwiched between layers of PCB substrate, copper wires aren’t obliged to stay where you put them; just a single wobble, a single component out of place makes the whole thing look wrong. Knowing that, and how hard it is to produce a freeform circuit sculpture, makes us appreciate Mohit Bhoite’s work all the more. This tiny model lunar lander does nothing but display the temperature, but it does it with such panache that we’ve got to include it here. Components, as well as function, are minimal: he’s used an ATtiny861A microcontroller and a BME280 sensor, powered by a CR2032 coin cell.…

hsmag.cc/SawtoothOrgan Electronic music is a fascinating hobby. You learn an awful lot, you spend a fortune on components and, in the end, you get a small box that makes a wobbly noise that’s barely different from all the other circuits you’ve spent hours putting together. Jokes aside, the learning curve for homemade analogue synths can be incredibly intimidating. So this circuit, which is priced at $9.99 on Tindie, is an inviting breath of fresh air. It’s a sawtooth organ, which uses just a handful of components to make notes when the user presses a stylus onto a keyboard. That’s it, and the simplicity means that anyone with a soldering iron will be able to put it together and bash out simple tunes.…

Magic Mirror Building a magic mirror is one of the most satisfying and achievable IoT projects for new makers. The basic build comprises a display, such as an old monitor or TV, and a sheet of special two-way mirror acrylic mounted together in a frame. Your magic mirror doesn’t have to be full-size either: you could make a mini version using a small screen, such as this one: hsmag.cc/MiniMirror. Magic mirrors are often powered by a Raspberry Pi, in which case you can use the ready-made MagicMirror2 software (linked below) by Michael Teeuw, which offers all sorts of modules to show you the latest weather, sports, news, and much more. You can also embed video feeds, such as from YouTube, and connect your mirror to your own calendar. You can…

You may have seen Debra Ansell’s sound-reactive LED embroidered party dress. Or her internetconnected, intelligent edge-lit acrylic light paintings. Or you may have recreated one of her builds yourself – following the instructions she generously puts up on her site geekmomprojects.com. Alternatively, you may recognise the name because almost everyone we speak to nowadays cites her as an influence on their work. We spent an hour with her talking about everything from manufacturing, creativity, and how you get from a physics PhD program to teaching kids electronics. HackSpace magazine Morning Debra! Let’s kick off with what is simultaneously the easiest and yet also the hardest question of all: who are you? Debra Ansell That’s existential! I’m a maker. I was a stay-at-home mom, with a tech background, who’s always loved science…

@ben_everard Ben’s house is slowly being taken over by 3D printers. He plans to solve this by printing an extension, once he gets enough printers. Most 3D printers (like most plotters, laser cutters, and CNC mills) understand a language called G-code. This is a text-based language that describes what they should do. Each line relates to a command, such as a movement or the setting of a particular parameter. Slicing is the process of taking a 3D design and converting it into a series of G-code instructions. It’s called slicing because, usually, 3D printers print a series of layers (aka slices), one on top of the other. There’s nothing inherent about the hardware of 3D printers that requires them to print like this, but doing it this way simplifies the…

@ben_everard Ben’s house is slowly being taken over by 3D printers. He plans to solve this by printing an extension, once he gets enough printers. Raspberry Pi Pico W is a fantastically powerful development board, but, like many, it’s limited to a puny 3.3 V, and the GPIOs can only handle a smattering of microamps. This is fine for blinking LEDs, but if you want to run motors, or interact with more powerful components, you’re going to need extra circuits. There’s a whole host of options for this, including relays, motor drivers, and power MOSFETs, and you could add them to Pico W yourself. Fortunately however, the good folks at Pimoroni have already done this for you. In this article, we’ll look at working with the bare Pico 2040 W…

Despite loving all things digital, Mike admits to being a bit of a Luddite, vinyl records and all. Back in 1816, French inventor Nicéphore Niépce captured an image on light-sensitive material. Images didn’t last long – they blackened very quickly – but this was the birth of photography. Niépce’s magic built on a much earlier development. Its origins are lost in the mists of time, but Leonardo da Vinci wrote about a device called a camera obscura and it became popular from the 17th century onwards. A camera obscura (from the Latin for dark chamber) is a darkened room with a lens in one wall looking out over the surrounding area, and a white screen on the opposite wall. It allowed observers in the room to see an image of…