This week on Maker Update: a swamp gas powered bicycle, a game boy with its own nuclear reactor, DIY digital SLR cameras, broken gears, mixing cups, and making music crypto.

++Show Notes [Maker Update Ep. 242]++

-=Project of the Week=-

Methane-powered Moped by Gjis Schalkx
https://uitsloot.nl/

-=More Projects=-

Nuclear Gameboy by Ian Charnas
https://youtu.be/6byi-RFrgtU

Turn an old 35mm camera into a digital camera by befinitiv
https://petapixel.com/2021/07/16/3d-printed-cartridge-turns-any-35mm-film-camera-into-a-digital-camera/

Arduino powered PECS board by awall99
https://www.instructables.com/PECS-Communication-Board/

Making Music with Crypto by Esteffanie and Look Mum No Computer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OubZbNV3NLo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn7Gqv9vIgQ

-=Tips & Tools=-

Jigsaw Puzzle Generator
https://draradech.github.io/jigsaw/jigsaw.html

The best 3d printed gear by Maker’s Muse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtRJ4lnNAXY

Silicone Measuring Cups
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAmkjS2jg3s

Extension Cord Tips with the Essential Craftsman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwaGcPmtTsQ

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

i2c on Raspberry Pi Pico by Shawn Hymel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS4q9VljmGQ

-=Transcript=-

This Week on Maker Update: a swamp gas powered bicycle, a game boy with its own nuclear reactor, DIY Digital SLR cameras, broken gears, mixing cups, and making music with crypto.

Hello and welcome back to Maker update! I’m Tyler Winegarner, and I hope you’re doing great! I just had a huge breakthrough with my motion control camera slider project – It turns out, the stepper driver I’ve been looking for all this time is the TMC2208 which all the 3d printer builders have been raving about. It’s super easy to use and incredibly quiet. Hopefully I’ll be finishing this project soon. In the meantime we’ve got a great show for you, so let’s check out the project of the week.

As the global petroleum resources begin to dwindle, it’s wise to look to other fuel sources so we can still easily get from point A to point B. And while there’s been a ton of exciting developments in electric vehicles, it’s nice to keep a couple other options in your back pocket. Which is why Gijs (Haase) Schalkx developed the Slootmotor: A modified Honda GX160 Moped, that runs on methane gas.

The modifications aren’t even that extensive – he drilled a hole into the airbox which is where the methane gas is introduced to the engine. The gas itself is contained in this large cylinder on the back of the bike. It’s stored and pressurized in a 200 liter balloon which is protected from punctures the large clear cylinder. When the engine is cold, he still needs a tiny little bit of gasoline to help the engine start and develop a steady idle. But from there, he can close the fuel petcock, open the methane gas valve, and hit the road.

What is extensive is his method for harvesting the methane gas. He’s developed what he calls the Plompstation, which is a plastic vessel attached to an inner tube for buoyancy while it gathers the methane gas from ponds and swamps. It looks like it can gather the gas passively, but if he’s in a hurry he can agitate the mud underneath the plompstation to release more gas to be harvested. He then hauls it back to dry land and uses a modified bicycle pump to transfer the gas to the moped.

I’ll be honest, this looks like a lot of work just to get a few miles worth of fuel, but it’s cool to explore what’s possible, especially when you simplify the problem you’re trying to solve. The engine only devops 1.7 horsepower, but that’s plenty for quick trips around town – and the motor has been in service for over 60 years and is also popular in generators, so there’s plenty of service parts and tools available in case of a breakdown. I think this video is a great expression of sustainability, and a fun way to get around town.

More Projects! Speaking of alternative power sources, Ian Charnas is asking the hard questions no one else will – like “can you power a handheld video game with nuclear power?” I mean, ok, sure, if you live in a place where electricity is generated from nuclear power, this one is easy. But what if the nuclear power souce is part of the handheld gaming system? He uses these glowing tritium rods, which mostly give off their radioactive power as light, and then places them in an array sandwiched between a pair of solar cells.

Even then, pocket sized nuclear reactor only generates 1.5 microwatts – nowhere near enough power for a handheld gaming system. His solution is to store the electricity over time – using thin film batteries to harvest and store the electricity created by the tritium vials. After two months of charging, he’s stored enough electricity to play Tetris for nearly a full hour – so it’s not exactly a practical solution for gaming on the go – but the project looks great, and it’s a really fun story. I also love that Ian is turning into an explorer of all the weird stuff you can just buy on the internet: from jet engines to uranium, I can’t wait to see what’s next.

Over on the Petapixel blog, I found this project from befinitive on using a raspberry pi to breathe new life into his vintage 35mm SLR camera. He’s fit a raspberry pi zero into an enclosure that’s the same size and shape as a 35mm film cartridge. The image is exposed on a raspberry pi camera module with the lens removed, so it’s just a bare sensor. Of course, because the sensor is so much smaller than a 35mm frame, there’s a lot of image cropping going on, so the 50mm lens you see here is now an extreme telephoto. But because the raspberry pi is a computer, that means this analog camera can do all kinds of cool computery things – like record videos, or post images directly to twitter, or live stream stuff. I wonder if its worth building a custom camera back, just to make use of the Raspberry Pi High Quality camera module.

Over on instructables, I found this guide by awall99 on building an arduino powered PECS board. A PECS, or Picture Exchange Communication System is Augmented or alternative Communication device to help autistic or other nonverbal people initiate communication. Its basically a button panel full of pictures, and each picture corresponds to a prerecorded sound. You can buy these, but they’re pretty expensive – but the bill of materials for this project look to be well under $100 – plus you can repair it pretty easily since these devices tend to see a lot of wear.

And On youtube I also found this collaboration between Estefannie Explains it All and Look Mum No Computer to build a machine that makes music out of cryptocurrency. Esteffanie took over the coding portion, and built a raspberry pi web scraper that would get the data on current cryptocurrency prices, and turn them into voltages. While Sam did what he does best and built an analog synth out of ten oscillators that would change pitch depending on the change in currency values. This is not exactly chart-topping stuff, but the music it produces does have a lovely, ambient drone quality to it.

I’ve got a few tips for you before we go, while working on the thumbnail for last week’s show I found this web-based jigsaw puzzle generator. It features tons of options for how large you want your puzzle to be, how many pieces are in it, and how much randomness is applied to make each piece unique. And there’s a separate generator for making hexagonal or circular puzzles. When you’re done twiddling knobs, you can download an SVG file and send it straight to your laser cutter – or adapt the vectors for the kerf of the bit in your cnc router.

On youtube, Angus from Maker’s Muse is trying to find the best filament for 3d printed gears. He’s printed up a whole lot of different gears in various materials – a few samples of PLA, ABS, PETG and Nylon, and then set up a Project Farm-style torture test to see which material makes the strongest gear. There’s some stuff that makes sense right away – like how filament that’s absorbed a bunch of moisture has some real problems – but there’s some stuff that will really surprise you too. Check it out.

Over on the Cool Tools channel I’ve got a video up about these silicone mixing cups. If you enjoy working with resins but hate all the consumables it uses, these are perfect for you. These are mixing cups that the resin can’t bond to, so instead of trying to get every last bit of waste out before it cures, you can just let it set in the cup, and then pop out the excess once it dries. I also loved these silicone stirring sticks – no more wasting popsicle sticks either.

And finally I found this older tip from The Essential Craftsman about how to chain your extension cords for easy and tangle-free storage. Even if you think you’ve mastered the proper over-under cable coiling technique, sometimes you unwind a cable and its still a mess of tangles. This method makes your cord take up a bit more space, but it looks pretty impossible to tangle like this. You might need to try this technique a few times to get it right, and keep it in your head. But this seems like a good skill to have.

For this week’s DigiKey Spotlight, we’re taking a look at the latest entry in Shawn Hymel’s ongoing series about the Raspberry Pi Pico. This one dives into using the i2c interface with the pico. That might sound superfluous, since i2c is a largely plug and play protocol on any device – but this video also demystifies the entire protocol, and gives you a much stronger fundamental understanding about how it works so seamlessly across multiple devices. If you appreciate the ease i2c has introduced to your projects, you owe this video a watch.

Alright, and that is going to do it for this week’s show. Thank you so much for watching! I hope you enjoyed it or got something out of it – if you did, leave us a comment, and while you’re there, hit subscribe and give us a thumbs up. Big thanks, as always to the hard working, fun loving, parts slinging folks at Digikey who make this whole show possible. Take care, and I’ll see you soon.