This week on Maker Update, a morphing orb, a Pi TV wall, Apollo 11 projects, 3D printed lock picking, and an Arduino irrigator.

++Show Notes++

-=Project of the Week=-

Morph by Mindbuffer
https://mindbuffer.net/morph
https://www.core77.com/projects/89402/MORPH-Exploring-the-boundary-between-Art-and-Robotics

-=News=-

Announcing Make Community
https://makezine.com/2019/07/23/announcing-make-community/

-=More Projects=-

Johanna Tano’s wall of TV screens
https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/tv-wall-controlled-raspberry-pi/

3D Printed Bowl By gzumwalt
https://www.instructables.com/id/3D-Printed-Bowl-1/

Apollo 11 Live on the ESP32 by Andrew
https://www.pointandy.com/pointandymake/2019/7/15/apollo-11-live-on-the-esp32

Apollo 11 mission radio logs on GitHub
https://github.com/clausd/Moon

Apollo In Real Time web site
https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/

Snoopy Cap by Monk Aboo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAx4CYQLE2I

-=Tools/Tips=-

How to Quickly Kerf Bend Plywood and Solid Wood by Make Something
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngC5S5vWQ4g

3D Printed Lock Picking Tool by Peterthinks
https://pinshape.com/items/53889-3d-printed-3d-printed-mini-snap-pick-gun-lockpick

Electrician’s Scissors by Dominic Morrow (Cool Tools)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCv6HeGbWoI

Gareth’s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales – Issue #10
https://www.getrevue.co/profile/garethbranwyn/issues/gareth-s-tips-tools-and-shop-tales-issue-10-187496

Technology is Not Magic – bunnie Huang, Bitmark Ambassador #2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFrTJPfM58s

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

Plant Watering System – Another Geek Moment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8xuvKA4wBw

Bonus

Cocktail Robotics Grand Challenge 2019

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, a morphing orb, a Pi TV wall, Apollo 11 projects, 3D printed lock picking, and an Arduino irrigator.

Hey everyone, I’m Donald Bell, and welcome back to another MakerUpdate. I hope everyone’s doing great. It’s been a fun week for me. I got to bring a robot out to the Cocktail Robotics Grand Challenge this past Sunday. We shot a video while we were out there that you can find up on the Digi-Key YouTube channel, so look out for that. But for now, let’s get started with the project of the week.

The project that’s blowing my mind this week is this interactive orb called Morph, made by a German design studio called Morph. 

The sculpture uses 155 linear actuators that are lit up and have capacitive touch sensors on the ends. Little tiles of felt fill in the gaps between each module to create a flexible skin.

If it just ran through an animation routine, it would be cool enough, but what’s really great is that the touch sensors provide a degree of feedback to make it an interactive experience. 

There’s no build documentation on this one, unfortunately, but check out the full video and photos. It’s great inspiration to play with actuators and LEDs and interaction design software like Processing.

Now for more projects! Over one The MagPi Johanna Tano talks about how she was able to connect up and manipulate this wall of different CRT TVs. 

To get what she wanted to this music video, each TV is connected to its own Raspberry Pi with its own IP address. Using a web-based interface, she’s able to select and stream video clips to the TVs over a Node.js server. This way, she can decide what clips will playback on a single TV, and which will scale out over multiple screens. 

This is another one where I love the idea, I wish the code was shared, but there’s enough here to get inspired and find a solution.

On Instructables, Greg Zumwalt shows off these simple bowls he made by 3D printing a flat pattern that can be pulled apart, stacked, and then glued together to form a new shape. It’s a neat idea that I’m excited to see explored to make other kinds of forms and projects.

And in the aftermath of the Apollo 11 50th anniversary, two projects that caught my eye. The first is this ESP32-powered e-ink display that replays the communication of the Apollo 11 mission synchronized to the original timing.

Within this project I learned that there’s a Github repo with the original Apollo 11 transcript formatted as a spreadsheet and marked with timing info. Kind of a cool, unique undertaking. 

Bigger than that, there’s a site called Apollo in Real Time.org that takes it all up a notch with audio recordings, photos, and timelines. It’s the kind of thing I would just have a Raspberry Pi automatically load on boot and play in the background on an old monitor. 

The other astro-project I enjoyed seeing this week was this replica Snoopy cap from Monk Aboo. The Snoopy caps carried the communications headset on Apollo 11 astronauts. They’re a real hallmark of these early missions, and Monk Aboo just had to have one for herself. She walks through her process of copying the pattern, sewing the fabric elements and 3D modeling and printing the headset elements. It’s a fun ride.

I have a few tools and tips to share with you. First, after raving about David Piciutto’s plywood kerfing technique in last week’s show, he’s now got a video up that dives even deeper into his technique. He makes this ben wood coat rack, and gives advice on glue choice, clamping, and applying veneer. 

I also found this video and design by Peterthinks, on how to make your own snap-style lockpick tool. For educational purposes only, of course, or aspiring locksmiths. 

With this, instead of having a whole suite of different picks to hold and probe each pin in a lock, you just provide a light twisting tension and rake the pins with this while snapping the button as you go. 

You have to provide your own pick, but the whole mechanism can be downloaded from Peter’s Pinshape page for a few bucks and 3D printed at home.

Another tool I was happy to learn about were these Electrician scissors, recommended by my friend Dominic Morrow. They’re these sturdy, stubby scissors that are great for cutting cables and ties.

On Garth Branwyn’s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales newsletter, I learned this tip from Becky Stern on using wide rubber bands to hold things in your third hand tool that are too large to fit in the clip. Also, a tip from maker Sean Ragan on using finger ratchets, and one from Sophy Wong on laser cutting templates to create storyboard boxes in her notebooks. 

And one of the most inspiring maker videos I saw this week wasn’t a project video, but this profile on Bunnie Huang, his life as an engineer, and his philosophy around hacking and open source hardware and software. Highly recommended.

For this week’s Digi-Key spotlight, check out this project video by Cody from the Another Geek Moment video series. He goes over how to setup an automatic plant watering system using an Arduino Uno, sensors, a peristaltic pump, and a handful of components. The code, instructions, and downloadable 3D printed parts can be found over on Maker.io.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up or leave a comment. You can get on the Maker Update email list to get show notes sent out to you automatically. A huge thanks to my patrons on Patreon and to Digi-Key electronics for sponsoring this show. You can catch me next week over on the Adafruit channel for my monthly edition over there. I’ll be back, though, so thanks for watching, and I’ll see you soon.