Table of contents for #53 in HackSpace

We, as humanity, are using too many raw materials. It is simply unsustainable for us to keep producing, using, and disposing of things at the rate we currently do. We, as makers, have to be aware of our place in the wider world, and our responsibilities to the generations that follow. While it’s true that the most significant part of this consumption comes from factory-made goods, we makers have to choose whether we want to be part of the problem or part of the solution. Here at HackSpace mag, we want to be part of the solution. This doesn’t mean not making cool stuff, but it does mean being mindful of the amount of virgin material we use. It means making stuff that will stand the test of time, and…

hsmag.cc/ChirpingBirdPendant This tiny free-form soldering circuit by Jack Spiggle (aka NanoRobotGeek) is a masterpiece of miniaturisation. The key to this build is the KXOB25-02X8F-TB solar panel, which generates 5.5 volts in the bright Australian sunshine. As with Jack’s other builds, the solar panel charges a capacitor, which, when it’s full, activates the circuit – in this case, that’s four oscillators making a ‘chirp’ sound via a piezo speaker. We can only imagine how hard it must be to perform free-form soldering on a circuit this small and get it so neat (Jack says that working with brass is a headache, as it conducts heat away from solder so quickly).…

hsmag.cc/GlassShuttle Before it became a venue for billionaire show offs, space used to be very, very cool. The US Space Shuttle was, along with the ISS, the crowning achievement of that golden age of space hardware. Fatter than an aeroplane, it always looked to this writer as though it shouldn’t be able to fly at all. It took a series of rockets to get it into space, delivered its payload, and would then fall back to Earth, gliding down to the runway through the atmosphere, covered in heat-resistant tiles that I told myself were exactly the same as the ones in our kitchen. It’s an amazing thing, and worth recreating any way we can. This glass version of the Space Shuttle is no less awesome; it started life as a papercraft…

Some of the most popular repurposing upcycling uses we’ve seen are converting things into lamps and transforming them into clocks. In both of these cases, the conversion can be as simple or complex as you like. The main reason to upcycle in this way is that it lets you take something that has a beautiful design but is no longer needed (either because it’s broken or obsolete) and keep it on display as a useful object. The range of objects that can be converted into one of these two things is almost limitless. From a circuit point of view, making a lamp is simple. There’s power, a switch, and a bulb holder. However, when you’re working with mains voltages, you have to be careful – not just about how it’s…

@RosieHattersley Rosie Hattersley writes tech, craft, and life hacks and tweets @RosieHattersley. Every impoverished driver has probably contemplated retread tyres. They’re a good budget option if you want to save on the cost of replacing worn-out ones, but there’s a limit to how long you can spin things out in a bid to keep motoring costs manageable. Eventually, the depth of tread will no longer suffice, posing an issue of how best to dispose of your expired tyres. Some might say this is where the fun really starts! A small proportion of tyres end up being recycled as artificial turf, playground surfaces and, of course, bumper zones around go-kart and other racetracks. Should you wish to make your own ‘tyre mulch’, you’ll need an industrial shredder and a fair bit…

MAKER Long-time contributor to The MagPi, Phil is a freelance writer and editor with a focus on technology. @philkingeditor You’ll Need > Moisture sensor magpi.cc/moisturesensor > Liquid level sensor magpi.cc/liquidlevel > MCP3008 ADC magpi.cc/mcp3008 > Jumper wires In this series, we are exploring some of the most commonly available sensors and their use cases. Previously, we have built a couple of alarms – one for fire and gas safety, the other for detecting intruders – and a basic weather station. In the latter, we made use of an ADC to read the analogue output of a UV sensor. This time we’ll be using an ADC to check the value from a moisture sensor placed in a plant pot. We’ll also add a liquid level sensor to check the water level in…

PRUSA PRINTERS £375 prusa3d.com @concreted0g Prusa 3D printers are both extremely well-known and well regarded in the 3D community. The Prusa i3 design is an absolute classic open-source design that led to many clones and versions based on it. For many though, the flagship Prusa i3 is perhaps at a price point that makes it less likely to be a choice for a first printer, and therefore, many will go with a more budget option. Many of these machines are extremely capable, but are perhaps are less refined than the Prusa, requiring more work to set up and calibrate, and often requiring modification to get good results. The Prusa MINI+, at £375 (semi-assembled version), sits in the middle of these two tiers. It’s a lot more affordable than the larger…

hsmag.cc/TeakSpeakers This beautiful object by SimranWasu would be nice enough to have in your home even if it didn’t do anything. It’s a Bluetooth speaker/amplifier, made of CNC teak hardwood and CNCed aluminium. Upgrading an obsolete piece of hardware, such as a radio, by adding Bluetooth capability to it is nothing new – and it’s produced some lovely builds that we’ve featured in these pages – but the thing that sets this build apart is that it’s been done from scratch so, so beautifully.…

hsmag.cc/HappyHardwear We found these PCB charms on Tindie, and we liked the look of them, so we asked the creator to tell us about them. Here’s what they said: “Happy Hardwear is a new company making original, tech-inspired wearables out of circuit boards. We were looking for another creative outlet and started making pixel art, inspired by our nostalgia for early internet culture. “We tried placing our art on circuit boards in KiCad and quickly realised it was a perfect fit for jewellery and accessories. We’ve been thrilled with the results so far, and are very excited to keep growing!”…

We see loads of great-looking projects every week at HackSpace Towers. One of the most intuitive, literally hands-on builds we’ve seen, and something that has stayed with us since we first saw it, was the capacitive touch globe by Caroline Buttet. You touch a spot on the globe to pick an image gallery, then turn it to activate a rotary switch, and flick through the images in that album. If you haven’t seen it, have a look: hsmag.cc/GlobeTrotter. We’ve been working on a map of the United Kingdom, with a capacitive touch interface that you can touch to trigger an output that’s relevant to the point on the map that you’re touching. It’s still in its prototype phase, as we’re waiting for the price of hardwood to come down so…

@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. We love the bare circuit board aesthetic. There’s probably a word for it, but we’re not quite sure what it is. It’s not quite cyberpunk, but it’s along those lines. It appeals to the part of us that instantly wants to pull something open to see what’s inside because you can already see the insides – there’s no need to unscrew the back and invariably lose a screw. It’s also a practical way of building things. Circuit boards are probably the cheapest material to get CNCed to your desired shape (as long as your desired shape is 2D), and if you need some electronics anyway,…

@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! In one section of the FreeCAD tutorial series, we looked at a brilliant FreeCAD add-on: the Sheet Metal workbench. You might recall from issue 50 that it enables the dedicated ‘CADista’ to create a basic sheet of metal and then build a design by adding attached folded sections. Whilst amazing in itself, the real secret sauce of this workbench is that after you have designed something, you can then flatten the design. From this, you can then create CAM toolpaths, laser cutting files,…

hsmag.cc/PicoCalc It’s a cliché that the team that landed the first spacecraft on the moon did so using no more computing power than you can get in a modern calculator. One of the first things students do when they’re learning to program is to build calculator applications, so why not take that one step further and build an actual, physical calculator, like Anil has done, here? The bill of materials is small: just a Raspberry Pi Pico, some surface-mount buttons, an OLED display, a LiPo battery and charge circuitry, and a custom, single-layer PCB. Wrap it all up in a 3D-printed case and you’ve got a great physical computing build.…

hsmag.cc/CyberpunkWatch Cyberpunk 2077 had a mixed reception when it was released to an eager gaming public in late 2020. One thing that united opinion though was the game’s incredible aesthetics. In the best traditions of Blade Runner, Alien, and Red Dwarf, the world it portrayed was simultaneously futuristic and rundown, grubby and seedy, and neon-lit. And that’s why fans loved it. One such fan is Bennett Warner, who made this watch crafted in the style of the game’s Arasaka Corporation. We love it because it looks so original: who would have thought that by arranging the digits in a square, rather than a line, you’d end up with something that looks so unfamiliar?…

Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of Michael Bretti, the man behind Applied Ion Systems. His continuing mission: to develop low-cost, low-power thrusters to control the movements of satellites. They have to be small, to fit on a 5 cm cube. They have to be affordable, because Michael works out of his home in Upstate New York, not for NASA or SpaceX or any of the big boys. And more pertinent to us at HackSpace magazine, they’re open-source hardware, being developed completely in the open. Every test, every failure, every success is documented and shared, so anyone can learn a little something about space thrusters. We spoke to Michael and learned the difference between a plasma thruster and a rocket, plus other mindbending space physics. HackSpace Let’s get…

@robmiles Rob Miles has been playing with hardware and software since almost before there was hardware and software. You can find out more about his so-called life at robmiles.com and follow him on Twitter at @robmiles If you’ve ever wanted to be able to type without looking at the keyboard, this project is for you. We’re going to make a USB keyboard you can use to enter text quickly and unobtrusively, even in the dark. The keyboard has a key for each finger, and you type by pressing down ’chords’ – combinations of different keys. There are lights in the keys to help you learn the combinations for each letter and a teaching game you can use to practice your typing skills. You can plug it into a USB port…

Despite loving all things digital, Mike admits to being a bit of a Luddite, vinyl records and all. Back in the 1960s and early 1970s, computers had processors made from thousands of small logic chips. Then, in 1971, the microprocessor made its appearance and all that had changed. However, the microprocessor hasn't replaced these chips entirely – they are still alive and well and are very useful building blocks. First, they can help us learn about logic theory. Second, they’re useful for interfacing single-board computers (SBCs) to external devices. And third, a couple of logic chips can often provide a viable alternative to an SBC for simple projects. Here, we’ll look at all these three themes and suggest practical ways of learning. The 74 series was the first mainstream family…

@devinck It has been a while since we originally looked at the micro:bit ecosystem – a lot has happened since then, including a new V2 micro:bit with upgraded features, such as a faster processor and a much-needed microphone and speaker, among other things. Last year, we looked at making music with the micro:bit (hsmag.cc/issue46), but this capable little board can do a lot more than just make music. This capable little board can do a lot more than just make music In this Best of Breed, I’ll be looking at an eclectic mix of useful accessories for your micro:bit. You have a micro:bit right? If not, don’t despair. Although they are much harder to find – which I assume is because of the ongoing supply chain issues that we are…

SOLDER PARTY $12 solder.party @ben_everard We live in a world with a dizzying array of different development boards. For almost any microcontroller and form factor, there are several to choose from, with only minor differences. In such a crowded marketplace, it’s rare for a board to stand out as unusual or unique, but the RP2040 Stamp does. It’s got the core of what you’d expect on a development board – a microcontroller, memory (8MB), and the various external components needed to make everything work – it’s even got a few bonus bits such as a reset button, LiPo charger, and WS2812B RGB LED. The most obvious thing that’s missing, though, is a USB port. Instead, the USB – like all the GPIOs and power connections – are broken out to header…