This week on Maker Update, a candy-spewing pumpkin, making a wig from foam, a ghost in the circuit, and cow costumes for robots.

++Show Notes [Maker Update #205]++

-=Project of the Week=-

Gigantic pumpkin dispenses candy at the push of a button by Brankly
https://blog.arduino.cc/2020/10/21/gigantic-pumpkin-dispenses-candy-at-the-push-of-a-button/

-=More projects=-

Making an EVA Foam Wig for Cosplay and Halloween! by Jen Schachter
https://youtu.be/wInlwbGet5A

Project Wrap-up Discussion With Adam and Norm
https://youtu.be/EEgc5m5LWPk

Little Halloween Glowing Ghost by Jiri Praus
https://youtu.be/xe5E9Fbc9vo

NoodleFeet is Cow Udders for Halloween 2020 by Sarah Petkus
https://youtu.be/PnQaRgP7BLc

How to Make Creepy Plaster Hand Casts for Halloween! by Kayte Sabicer
https://youtu.be/12RwfqvTMZk

-=Tips & Tools=-

Tsugite, a software system for fabricating complex wooden joints
https://hackaday.com/2020/10/23/complex-wood-joints-thanks-to-new-softwares-interactive-features/

Inside My Prototype Developer Tool Bag by Zack Freedman
https://youtu.be/Okl5-KfSZ4w

LED Programming with Arduino and FastLED by Mirabelle Jones
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_tws4AXg7atkI8qUCpRBAhtGpEbTg3TA

Meshmixer | How to fix holes in 3D models by Billie Ruben
https://youtu.be/_NBm2GQqybk

Adam Savage’s Favorite Tools: Wire Twisting Pliers!
https://www.tested.com/making/916705-adam-savages-favorite-tools-wire-twisting-pliers/

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

How to Connect Batteries in Series and Parallel Configurations
https://youtu.be/fCC0OXCapvY

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, a candy-spewing pumpkin, making a wig from foam, a ghost in the circuit, and cow costumes for robots.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell and welcome back to another Maker Update — the Halloween edition! Why not? I hope you’re finding a way to have fun with Halloween, whatever it looks like for you this year. This week, we’ll see how a lot of different makers are creating projects that are outside of the usual gore and scare variety. Let’s kick it off with the project of the week.

Check out how Brankly retrofitted this store-bought foam pumpkin with a candy dispensing turntable.

This is an Arduino project with some 3D printing. The idea is that the pumpkin will regurgitate candy down the little mouth ramp when a trick or treater presses or stomps on the big red button.

For the electronics, you’ve got an inexpensive Arduino Nano, some LEDs that light up and blink, a voltage regulator, and a driver board for the stepper motor that makes the platform spin.

There’s also a pair of IR sensors mounted under the dispenser ramp that detect when some candy falls out. Once this happens, the turntable stops and reverses a little to loosen up the next batch of candy.

The whole mechanism is pretty smart. It’s all 3D printed and fastened together with a few screws. It’s made to fit inside a standard 5 gallon bucket. That bucket can then be placed inside of whatever prop enclosure you happen to have.

What’s really cool about the way this is configured is that there’s a platform that can be placed over the dispenser section, so that you can really fill up the entire bucket with candy. This way you don’t have to go out and refill it over and over.

The video linked in the show notes goes through the entire build, step-y-step, with links to everything you need. Brankly here goes the extra step to make a PCB for his project, but you could just as easily get it done with a perfboard.

More projects! On Tested, Jen Schachter has a new video up showing how she made this insane Marie Antoinette wig using cosplay EVA foam.

If you’re not used to seeing EVA foam cosplay projects from Jen before, it’s because this is her first one, and she knocks it out of the park.

The first half of the video is just about the custom-fit cap she made. Because it’s the foundation of the entire piece and holds it to her head without extra support, it was critical for her to get it right.

From there, she creates the internal support frame, also out of foam, and then starts to layer and sculpt the outside of the hairpiece.

It’s an inspiring video with a lot of great tips to share on working with EVA foam. She also has a separate video sitting down with Adam Savage and Norm Chan, talking about the process. Check it out.

Also, Jiri Praus has a new video up on how he made this little circuit sculpture ghost.

Jiri is using a 3D printed jig, just to get the wire bends to be uniform and be able to drop the tiny surface mount LEDs right where he needs them.

It’s so great to see him work on this in real-time. My favorite part though is at the end, where you see that he made another 3D printed tool, just for removing the ghost from the jig. When it pops it out and puts the battery in, it’s like magic.

In her latest video, Robohemian Sarah Petkus shows how she created a new costume for her robo-baby, NoodleFeet.

In past years, she’s dressed noodle up as a Minecraft Creeper, Deadpool, the 5th Element, and a scarecrow. This year, her robot is getting dressed up as cow udders.

I don’t know why this is so insanely perfect, but it just works. I can imagine that when you ask a cold, angular, metal robot what it wants to pretend to be for a day, a grossly warm, soft, leaky cow udder would be the top of the list. It kinda makes sense.

To make her robot kid’s dream come true, Sarah went to great lengths, knitting this double-walled pink fleece udder suit.

Making a seamless udder onesie for your robot is harder than you’d think. Sarah explains some of the challenges in her video. I also love that she added the extra touch of putting wet sponges at the end of each leg, so that the udders would leave a little squishy trail behind. It just makes me happy.

Speaking of squishy, Kate from Tested has a great video on creating plaster casts of your hands for Halloween. What she’s showing is a kit you can get for under $20. To take it further, though, she shows how to add bolts to the hand so that you can mount them on a wall. Plus, a great tip on using up the extra plaster to make greeblies and other model making extras.

Now for some tips and tools. Through Hackaday I learned about this new tool that allows you to CNC carve Japanese style Tsugite joints.

These are a type of impossible seeming 3-way corner joint that fits together like a puzzle. They’re very difficult to make with hand tools, but with this software available on Github, you can adapt several styles of this technique to your CNC router.

Zack Freedman keeps cranking out useful videos. One of his latest is a “what’s-in-my-bag” style video where he gives you a tour of the tools and supplies he keeps in his hardware hacker tool bag. One of my favorite bits is how his backpack includes a tool roll that flips down, filled with everything he needs to get to work on testing and soldering a new project.

Last week I shared with you a new series by Scott Marley on programming LEDs using the Fast LED library. He’s already added a few new excellent videos to that series. But there’s also a whole other series by Mirabelle Jones out on the Hackaday channel. This one is also good, and a little more beginner-friendly, starting things out with a Circuit Playground.

Another follow-up to last week, Billie Ruben has another quick video on Meshmixer. This time she shows how to use this free tool to fix holes on your 3D model, especially if it’s hollowed out from the bottom. If you’re prepping a scanned 3D model for 3D printing, this is something you’ll probably have to do.

And finally, Adam Savage has a great video on safety wire pliers. These are commonly used in military or aircraft applications for wiring bolts in place so that they can’t come loose.

After watching this, I went down a rabbit hole of safety wiring videos where these elaborate bolt-to-bolt wiring harnesses are made on jet engines. It’s fascinating.

But, you don’t need to be an aircraft engineer to get a thrill or a use out of these twisting pliers. As Adam explains, they’re great for making armature wire for models, or twisting electrical wires together. For around $20, they’re hard to resist.

For this week’s Digi-Key spotlight, check out their video on wiring batteries together in series or parallel, or a little of both.

Depending on your project, you may need to beef up your capacity or increase your voltage. Understanding how to arrange and wire multiple batteries is a fundamental skill worth taking the time to understand. If you need a place to start, this video is perfect.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up, and leave me a comment. Let me know if you have any cool projects you’re unveiling for Halloween. You can get on the Maker Update email list to stay up to date. Be sure to vote next week, thanks for watching, and I’ll see you soon.