HackSpace #63

Taking flight seems to be one of the universal dreams of people. To soar in the sky like the birds. For millennia, this dream had to remain just that, but with modern tools and techniques, we can actually fly. In the last couple of decades, flying has become so commonplace that we sometimes forget just how magical it is that it’s possible. Building a flying machine doesn’t have to be complicated. Generations of schoolchildren have perfected the art of folding paper so that it flies. The board that distracts the teacher while they do this might have changed – from blackboard to whiteboard to interactive screen – but the folded paper remains the same. Of course, just because it doesn’t have to be complicated, that doesn’t mean it can’t be.…

kevsrobots.com We’re used to the concept of open-source hardware, but it’s very often more seen in theory than in practice. This Robo-Bunny, by Kevin McAleer, is based on PicoCat v2, which was itself based on OpenCat. It’s had a new head, new legs, and a fluffy tail added, and it’s controlled by the Pimoroni Servo 2040, which powers up to 18 servos. Turn to our interview with Kevin on page 38 for more on kevsrobots.com and the brilliant things he’s doing.…

hsmag.cc/OnlyFansCase “Every time I’ve made a new case for my Raspberry Pi, there are always a few comments suggesting I add another fan or make improvements to the cooling.” So says Michael Klements in the introduction to his latest build video. Michael’s taken this idea and ran with it, creating a case with every surface (except the bottom – there’s no point trying to blow air into your desktop) covered in a total of 24 5V fans. The case itself is made of two pieces of laser-cut acrylic, bent into two U-shaped pieces and connected with brass inserts. It works, yielding a noticeable but undramatic 4 degrees cooling compared with one of Michael’s single-fan designs. More importantly, it’s very, very silly.…

hsmag.cc/DesertEye If you like awesome stuff, you’ll love this: it’s a tracked robot, controlled from anywhere via the internet, featuring a camera, built on a Raspberry Pi and a custom PCB. It’s also 3D-printed, and designed from scratch by maker Aviv Butvinik. This is the second version of his Desert Eye robot; the first iteration used bicycle chains connected with 3D-printed parts as the tracks. This proved fiddly and time-consuming to assemble, so Aviv switched to using belts printed in one piece out of flexible filament. If you’re interested in high-performance 3D-printed robots, check out his videos.…

Instagram.com/ta6urkin Squint at this sculpture and you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s come off the bed of a 3D printer… not a bit of it. This low-poly gorilla sculpture is actually a big old chunk of metal – over 70kg of sheet metal to be precise, welded together by Vladimir Kuznets, implementing a design by sculptor and automotive engineer Gleb Taburkin. Sheet metal is a different beast to hot plastic, so even though the design looks similar to the sort of design you’d send to a printer, the process is completely different. It takes Gleb about a week at the computer to create a design, including the instructions for the welder – you can read his process here: hsmag.cc/DesigningForSheetMetal.…

hackaday.io/stecman We suspect most readers will recognise this: it’s the middle section of the DeLorean’s time circuits clock, from the film Back to the Future. The internet is awash with implementations of this movie prop, but Stephen’s version is so lovely that we chose it to grace these pages. By stripping it down to only one section, he’s made it seen more accessible to anyone out there who wants to have a go themselves, and by pointlessly but brilliantly adorning the back of the PCB with the DeLorean’s ‘OUTATIME’ number plate, he’s added a touch of love.…