This week on Maker Update, a Google calendar for your wall, real pinball over the internet, a laser crown, snoozing skeleton, and upgrading a vintage vending machine.

++Show Notes++

-=Project of the Week=-

Making a Digital Dashboard! (w/ Google Calendar integration) by Thomas Sanladerer
https://youtu.be/BR_yko0gr-Y

Software Guide
https://toms3d.org/2019/09/19/building-a-digital-dashboard-software-setup/

-=More Projects=-

Hooking a REAL pinball machine ONLINE together with DeadFlip! by SurrogateTV
https://youtu.be/R3I_Z7_2K7s

Laser Crown By p3nguin
https://www.instructables.com/id/Laser-Crown/

RIP Skeleton By gzumwalt
https://www.instructables.com/id/RIP-Skeleton/

-=Tools/Tips=-

Upgrading old vending machine for Credit Card Paymentby Ryoko Matsumoto
https://www.exploratorium.edu/tinkering/blogs/upgrading-tinkering-vending-machine

A little app on @glitch to make creating sprites in @MSMakeCode Arcade easier by Tiffany Tseng 🍡 (@scientiffic)
https://glitch.com/~makecode-pixelart-maker
https://twitter.com/scientiffic/status/1174925565817548800

Allway “Helix” paint mixer – Cool Tool
https://youtu.be/VbEiiBM441U

Machine shop channels pitched in for #tipblitz19
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%23tipblitz19

Gareth’s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales – Issue #18
https://www.getrevue.co/profile/garethbranwyn/issues/gareth-s-tips-tools-and-shop-tales-issue-18-198891

Hakko Soldering Tip Caddy by stickyfox
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3806519

-=Product Spotlight=-

How to Control H-Bridges – Maker.io Tutorial
https://youtu.be/Rko36h4NdbM

-=Transcript=-

This week on Maker Update, a Google Calendar for your wall, real pinball over the internet, a laser crown, snoozing skeleton, and upgrading a vintage vending machine.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell, and I’m back with another Maker Update. I hope you’re doing great and I hope you’re ready to get inspired with some new projects I found this week from the maker community. Let’s start things off with the project of the week.

On his YouTube channel, Thomas Sanladerer shows how he made this Google Calendar-compatible digital dashboard with a 4K TV and a $50 Raspberry Pi 4 computer.

I’ve seen a good amount of Magic Mirror Pi projects that use screens and two-way mirrors to do stealth weather and calendar dashboards. But the reality of those systems is that setting them up and updating them is kind of a pain.

Tom’s system is much more straightforward, skips the mirror to help keep the brightness and energy use low, and uses web-based software called DAKboard that integrates with Google Calendar and can be customized easily over any web browser.

It’s also nice to see the new 4k resolution of the Pi put to a practical use. According to Tom, it makes the small text on the calendar easier to see. He’s also doing this interesting thing where he’s using the HDMI-CEC protocol so that the Raspberry Pi turns the TV on and off over the HDMI connection to save power.

Tom also has about a dozen other tips and customizations that you can read on his software setup guide. All-in-all, it’s a great project and you can tell that he’s put a lot of thought into making something that’s easy to use and relatively painless to reproduce.

I have some other cool projects to share. Last week I showed you how the Surrogate TV team created RC cars that anyone can race over the internet. This week, they’ve taken the formula in a direction closer to my heart and made an internet-controlled Batman pinball machine.

Inside they have a Raspberry Pi connected to a relay hat with four relays, two for flippers, one for start and one for the middle button which acts as a ball launch for this particular game. This is convenient, because otherwise they were going to need to rig up an actuator to pull the plunger.

Wired like this, online players can use their computer keyboard to trigger all the functions on the pinball machine. What’s even crazier is how they’re using computer vision to translate the scoreboard online. Definitely check out this video.

On Instructables P3nguin shows how they made this laser cut LED crown or tiara with animated lights.

The heart of this project is a large 60-led Neopixel ring that ships in 4 segments you have to solder together. A small Adafruit Trinket board handles the animation code and a rechargeable Lithium Ion pack powers both the board and the lights.

The laser cut acrylic ring is sized so that the LEDs sit perfectly under each of the vanes of the crown, carrying the light all the way through. It’s a very cool effect.

And Greg Zumwalt is back with another 3D printed contraption. This one is a skeleton and coffin themed useless box. You hit the button and a skeleton pops out and hits the button again to close it.

The whole thing is self contained and battery powered. There’s actually more going on here than you think. The button outside the box triggers the sequence, but a clever system of gears and cams and roller switches makes the rest of the magic happen.

Now for a few tips and tools. On the Exploratorium blog, Ryoko Matsumoto shows how they were able to take a very old cash-only vending machine and upgrade it to take card payments. They use theirs as a vending machine for little tinkering kits that people can take home when they leave the museum.

On Glitch, Tiffany Tseng released a free, web-based app that converts images into pixel art that you can copy and paste into MakeCode arcade projects. It’s a great way to quickly customize your games or someone else’s.

On the Cool Tools channel, I talk to Becky Stern about a $7 drill attachment that’s great for mixing resin or stirring paint.

Last week a bunch of machinists and fabricators on YouTube shared tips using the tipblitz19 hashtag. I’ve got a link in the description that points to a playlist.

On Gareth’s Tips, Tools and Shop Tales newsletter, he shares a great one from Bob Commack about this router bit storage rack where each bit has an example of how its profile cuts.

And if you use a Hakko 888 soldering iron, over on Thingiverse, there’s a 3D printed caddy designed by Stickyfox you can make that fits on the base and holds different soldering iron tips.

For this week’s Digi-Key spotlight take a look at a new video they have up on understanding and controlling H-bridges. This is a common circuit design for controlling motors. If you use motor controller shields or hats for your Arduino or Raspberry Pi projects, you’re probably using a circuit like this whether you know it or not. This video provides a little extra insight on what’s going on.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up or leave a comment so I know you’re out there. You can also get on the Maker Update email list to get show notes emailed out to you automatically each week. A big thanks to my Patrons on Patreon and to Digi-Key electronics for making this show possible. Next week’s show will be the monthly edition on the Adafruit channel, but I’ll be back. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you soon.