This week on Maker Update, Gmail gets a mailbox, Arduino goes command line, a tiny FPV rover, a complaint button, perk-up ears, a pocket hacker kit, pixel painting, working with styrene, the new Pi PoE hat, and Tinkercad gets a new look.

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Show Notes

Project of the Week

Gmail Box by Brent Rubell Dano Wall and Ruiz Bros.
https://learn.adafruit.com/gmailbox

3D Hangouts Overview
https://youtu.be/XzZ0uf1ZRUU

News

Announcing the Arduino Command Line Interface (CLI)
https://blog.arduino.cc/2018/08/24/announcing-the-arduino-command-line-interface-cli/

More Projects

Tiny Trak – Various Parts by SnappyFPV
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2896083

Complaint Button II: Hammer Time by gzumwalt
https://www.instructables.com/id/Complaint-Button-II-Hammer-Time/

Original Complaint Button
https://www.instructables.com/id/Complaint-Button/

Circuit Playground Express Perk-up Ears by Dave Astels
https://learn.adafruit.com/perk-up-ears

El Kentaro’s 3DPrinted Hacker Pass Case RPi0
https://blog.adafruit.com/2018/08/24/el-kentaros-3dprinted-hacker-pass-case-rpi0-holds-lockpicks-usb-adapter-and-a-pi-zero/
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2956003

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Different version of the Hacker Pass Case . (Still sorting out some details, but you get the idea)…#hackerlife #geeklife #raspberrypi

A post shared by El Kentaro (@elkentaro) on Jun 11, 2018 at 3:39am PDT

HalloWing Light Paintstick by John Park
https://learn.adafruit.com/hallowing-light-paintstick

Tools/Tips

Make Anything in STYRENE Plastic by Giaco Whatever
https://youtu.be/ktbOI5pJZN0

All About Tapping for Screws and Bolts by clickclackclunk
https://www.instructables.com/id/All-About-Tapping-for-Screws-and-Bolts/

Pi POE Hat Now Available
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/introducing-power-over-ethernet-poe-hat/

New in the Tool Box
https://kk.org/cooltools/whats-new-in-my-tool-box/

Blinkenlights for Burning Man & Beyond by Alex Glow
https://www.hackster.io/glowascii/blinkenlights-for-burning-man-beyond-1642c5

Tinkercad site refresh
https://www.tinkercad.com/

Maker Faires

Porto Alegre, Brazil
Des Moines, Iowa

Find your local faire:
http://makerfaire.com/map/

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, Gmail gets a mailbox, Arduino goes command line, a tiny FPV rover, a complaint button, perk-up ears, a pocket hacker kit, pixel painting, working with styrene, the new Pi PoE hat, and Tinkercad gets a new look.

Hey, I’m Donald Bell, and welcome to another Maker Update. Thanks for tuning in. I hope everyone’s doing well. I have a fun show for you today, so let’s get started with the project of the week.

The Ruiz Brothers made this mini internet-connected mailbox that raises and lowers its flag whenever you get a new email.

It’s a 3D printed design, and inside you have an Adafruit Feather Huzzah board, and teeny tiny sub-micro servo that the flag screws into.

The project can be left plugged-in to a wall using a USB connection on the back. If you want to make it portable, you can plug a LiPo battery into the included socket on the board.

It looks like a fun, simple project, and a great way to get started with IoT projects.

In news this week, Arduino has announced an official command line interface for programming and work with Arduino projects. You get most of the features of the Arduino IDE, but running on command line. It works on Mac, PC, and Linux. You can read the full announcement on the Arduino blog.

It’s time for more projects. This Tiny Trak R/C crawler by Snappy FPV was published back in May, but it’s new to me.

It’s a tiny, palm-sized, tank track design that uses two servos, Lego wheels and tracks, a Lipo battery and a drone FPV camera. There’s a 3D printed chassis that it all fits on.

It’s a cute, scrappy little build, with a bunch of remixes on Thingiverse. I like that the camera gives you a little hamster-sized view of the world.

On Instructables, Greg Zumwalt has a new version of his complaint button project. This one was inspired by my comment on his original design, suggesting a hammer instead of a woodpecker.

It looks great, and Greg went all out with a mini workbench design that includes little tools, and stenciled text on the side. Every element you need to make this is 3D printed. It’s a fun design and the way he’s used spring tension and a gear is very cool.

Over on Adafruit, Dave Astels has a guide on making these sound reactive costume ears. A Circuit Playground board listens for loud noises, then triggers servos in each ear to perk up and down. Could be a fun accessory for halloween.

Also, I saw this 3D printed hacker pass case created by El Kentaro. It includes a slot for your ID card, plus little cutouts for a Pi Zero, USB OTG adapter, a handcuff key, and a lock pick set. But, you could easily customize the cutouts to fit your needs.

And John Park has the first project guide up for the Adafruit Hallowing board. It’s for this animated LED light painstick. Using long exposure photography you can draw bitmapped images in midair.

The project is coded in Circuit Python and there’s a guide for making your own bitmap images for it and the best ways to capture long-exposure photos.

Some quick tips to share. Giaco Whatever has a cool video up on working with styrene plastic sheets and a syringe of plastic weld. It’s a cool technique that lets you mock up practical designs faster than you could with 3D printing.

ClickClackClunk has a useful Instructable up on tapping for screws and bolts that goes over taps and dies and tapping fluids. It doesn’t dive too deep, but gives you just enough to be useful.

Raspberry Pi has announced the official PoE or Power over Internet hat compatible with the Pi 3 B+. The hat is $20 and allows you to power your board over a PoE compatible Ethernet line, so you get internet and power over a single connection. Seems a little pricey for what it is, but I’m sure it’s useful for the right project.

Over on Cool Tools, I’ve got a video up that quickly goes over 8 new tools I’m reviewing, most of them under $10.

Alex Glow has a new guide up on Hackster that’s a nice, comprehensive look at working with addressable LEDs, or Neopixels. It goes over options, how to power them, and how to control them. In the guide there’s a 40 minute video that goes into all kinds of detail and advice.

And Tinkercad.com just did a site refresh. The tool itself is unchanged, but the surrounding pages look cooler now, there are new lessons, and I think it’s a little easier to get to the electronics and Codeblocks content now. Worth a look.

Maker Faires! We’ve got two this weekend, including Porto Alegre in Brazil and Des Moines Iowa. If those aren’t near you, check out makerfaire.com to find your local faire.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up or leave a comment. You can also get on the Maker Update email list to have show notes sent out to you automatically each week, along with a few bonus links. And I volunteer to put this show together because I enjoy it, but if you’d like to do something nice for me in return, you can buy me a coffee using the link down here. Alright? No show next week, but I’ll see you soon.