Table of contents for #47 in HackSpace

Like many people who get a 3D printer, I first got very excited to test it out and print things. The usual novelty things – and some were useful, (I still have some custom-made knobs on my oven that I’m very pleased with). I made some Christmas decorations that year, and had great fun with flat-pack ‘card’-style gifts. For a while, it was one of my go-to tools, whether I needed a jig to help me hold things in place while fixing them, or for creating new designs to solve a problem. However, recently I’ve not used my 3D printer much. That’s partly because I got so exhausted trying to print face masks 24 hours a day, seven days a week during the early months of the pandemic, while also…

hsmag.cc/Teasmade Robot servants are still a long way off – sadly, all the R&D money is going into Boston Dynamics’ creepy parkour bots. We do, however, have a robot that will make you a cup of coffee when you awake, thanks to Malcolm Splendiff. This build is based on a Goblin Teasmade, a contraption from the 1970s that combined an alarm clock with a kettle. With a relay to bypass the alarm, a Raspberry Pi and a Python script, as well as a device called a Clever Dripper that combines water with coffee, Malcolm’s made a smart IoT device that polls a Google Calendar once a minute for a configurable trigger word. When it detects the word, it waits until there’s an eight-minute window in your schedule (that’s how long…

FINISH YOUR PROJECT I had a swath of mixed emotions reading your guidance on finishing off projects. I have a load of half-finished stuff cluttering up my workbench, and none of it is getting done any time soon unless I take some of your advice on board. So, instead of waiting for a day off so I can go to the timber merchants, buy wood, cut all the dovetails, join it, glue it, plane it, oil it, then fit the electronics, I’m putting them in an ice cream tub. No, it doesn’t look as good as if I’d handmade the enclosure myself, but it does have the benefit that it’s finished. And as you said, a finished project is a good project. Maybe I can go back and do things…

The biggest benefit of 3D-printing tools is that if you don’t have the right tool for a job, you can simply pull down the files and get printing. This is great for things like spanners, wrenches, and even hammers, but where 3D printers really shine is in the ability to print things that are a little more specialised. Fractal vice Web:thingiverse.com/thing:4904044 Designer: Michael Laws (Teaching Tech) Effort: 5/5 A fractal is a pattern that repeats itself infinitely. You can see examples in nature in leaf patterns, sea-shells, even in the alveoli of the lungs. The fractal element of this design is the four layers of increasingly smaller semicircles, eventually finishing in small gripper pieces. The result is a clamp which can grip onto objects of virtually any shape with several…

You might have seen (and/or heard) the wares of Oskitone over the last couple of years. Oskitone synths are small, brightly coloured, lovingly made analogue synths that make people smile. Oskitone fits a very HackSpace-shaped niche. It’s music (which is maths), opensource electronics, 3D printing. We sat down with Mr Oskitone, Tommy Marshall, to chat about (among other things) his new synth, the Arduino-compatible Oskitone Scout, how he got here, and why music isn’t just for sensitive young men with guitars and lumberjack shirts. HackSpace magazine Hi Tommy! These synths are absolutely beautiful. You must have some sort of background in music, industrial design or electronics, right?  Tommy Marshall I don’t have a background in anything! I basically have some kind of film degree. It’s technically called telecommunications. I don’t…

@concreted0g Jo Hinchliffe is a constant tinkerer and is passionate about all things DIY. He loves designing and scratch building both model and high-power rockets, and releases the designs and components as opensource. He also has a shed full of lathes and milling machines and CNC kit! YOU’LL NEED A computer and a copy of the 0.19 stable version of FreeCAD and a copy of the current stable version of KiCad KiCad is an excellent open-source PCB design package that can render populated 3D images of circuit board designs. In combination with FreeCAD, we can create custom component models for KiCad or import KiCad PCBs whole, allowing us to design enclosures or other surrounding systems. Let’s check out some FreeCAD tools that simplify these processes. We’ve looked at KiCad before…

@robmiles Rob Miles has been playing with hardware and software since almost before there was hardware and software. You can find out more about his so-called life at robmiles.com. E Every great band needs a good solid drummer. But if none of you can actually play the drums, you may have a problem. So why not make an electronic version powered by a Raspberry Pi or your computer? In this article, we are going to find out how to do just that, using something you may not have seen before, the Pure Data visual programming language. Our drum will have two sounds: a kick drum and a tom-tom. WHAT IS PURE DATA? There are lots of ways of telling a computer what to do. Programs written in Python, JavaScript, or…

SQFMI $59  sqfmi.com @ben_everard The last couple of years has seen a plethora of hackable smartwatches designed to be programmed through open frameworks, such as Arduino. For what is quite a bit of technology, there aren’t many parts to Watchy. It comes as a PCB, an e-ink screen (which plugs in via a ribbon cable), a watch-case, and a battery. Assembly is surprisingly easy: pop the ribbon cable on, plug in the battery, snap on the case, and insert the watch-strap. If you opted for the aluminium case, there are an additional four screws that hold everything in place. There’s also a bit of adhesive that you can use to hold the screen in place, and a screen protector that can also be added. It took us longer to find…

hsmag.cc/CyberDeck We’ve only just finished printing a series on building a games cabinet using the RetroPie games emulator on a Raspberry Pi… and now something comes along that makes our plywood, full-size arcade machine look old hat. This mostly 3D-printed cyberdeck features a 5-inch 800 × 480 touchscreen display, as well as the usual ports available through the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ that powers it. Quite how useful the screen’s portrait orientation will be for Sonic The Hedgehog is anyone’s guess, but if you’re playing any sort of top-down shooter, you’re laughing. The maker describes this project as a “video game emulator with some edge” – we think it’s pretty impressive for a project that began as an excuse to learn 3D design.…

hsmag.cc/MiG-29K This tiny soldering kit, with only five components (the PCB, battery holder, switch, and two 3 mm LEDs), is available on Tindie, at the bargain price of just $3.25. It’s your way of getting your hands on a MiG-29 fighter jet – which was introduced in the USSR in 1982 and is still in service around the world – at pocket money price. The kit is 6cm long when assembled. The instructions on the PCB are in Dutch, as it’s designed in Belgium for use in Flemish speaking schools.…

@RosieHattersley Rosie Hattersley writes tech, craft, and life hacks and tweets @RosieHattersley. You may have used the last of the loo roll, wrapping paper, or cling film, but there’s no need to chuck out the cardboard cylinders they came on. Cardboard is hard to come by right now, and there are plenty of ways to make use of it. As with many easily recycled household products, gardeners have been quick to adopt no longer needed kitchen or bathroom cardboard tubes to use as makeshift pods. They are ideal containers in which to start off for your seedlings, or for separating them when thinning them out. They can also be planted out directly into the soil when the plants have hardened off without the need to repot. “The cylindrical shaft provides…

hsmag.cc/HoloClock Analogue-display clocks have been around in one form or another for centuries. Now, with 3D printing, it’s possible to design things that just wouldn’t have been possible even 20 years ago. With this circular design (the maker describes it as a halo clock), maker saulemmetquinn has turned clock design upside down. It’s still recognisable as a clock, with a round face, a big hand, and a little hand, but there’s something refreshingly different about this design that we like. The gear shafts are brass rods, cut to size using a Dremel, and the current design has a few exposed jumper wires. The whole thing is driven by an Arduino Uno and a stepper motor, with the frame and gears printed in white and black PLA.…

hsmag.cc/IV3TubeClock This clock is an updated version of an older kit by Cambridgeshire-based Neon Things. The update isn’t to the VFD tubes, which are ancient bits of Soviet display kit now found on internet auction sites. The update is instead to the software that runs the clock. Whereas the previous version of this clock ran on an Arduino, this uses CircuitPython, making it considerably more user-friendly for anyone with Python as a first language. Even better, thanks to I2C, you can connect this clock to anything you want, turn it into a temperature readout, stock price monitor, or anything else that uses four seven-segment displays.…

Agnes Jones is a sculptor and a blacksmith. Put away the image you have of a villager making horseshoes: she makes a combination of useful and purely decorative things, but the thing they have in common is they are designed to look good. We spoke to Agnes to find out what’s it like being a blacksmith now, rather than in the 18th century; what it’s like making things beautiful rather than utilitarian; and how do you go about making hard stuff look soft? “There’s a lot of talk right now of robots and things taking over people’s jobs. My job was sort of taken over by the Industrial Revolution! It’s freeing – I don’t really have to do it for any particular reason; I’m doing it because it’s a really…

3D-printed objects can make great gifts, be it as a small token 2–3 hour ‘flat pack’ print, or something a bit more special in the form of a multi-day, multipart print that you’ve lovingly sanded down and hand-painted. If nothing else, the novelty of it being 3D-printed is an added bonus, particularly to those who don’t own their own 3D printer, or are still very new to the concept. Flexi animals Web:thingiverse.com/thing:2738211 Designer: DrLex (remix of design by Kirbs) Effort: 2.5/5 Forget fidget spinners; there’s something strangely addictive about the satisfying way flexible prints flop around when you’re interacting with them. We picked this T. rex designed by DrLex as it was the most popular, but we’d highly recommend checking out the other flexi prints on Thingiverse. We put the…

@ben_everard Ben’s house is slowly being taken over by 3D printers. He plans to solve this by printing an extension, once he gets enough printers. Games controllers come in many forms. Joysticks, joypads, keyboards, mice, and more can all be pressed into service. Regular readers will know that I’ve long been interested in how we control games. I’m actually not a huge gamer, but I find games a really fascinating area of human-computer interaction. Thanks to CircuitPython, it’s easy to create a circuit that acts like a USB device such as a keyboard, mouse, or games controller. You can add whatever inputs you like to make all sorts of strange and curious controllers. However, a problem is getting things in the right form-factor. No one likes to hold a breadboard,…

MAKER Veteran magazine author from the old days, writer of the Body Build series, plus co-author of Raspberry Pi for Dummies, Raspberry Pi Projects, and Raspberry Pi Projects for Dummies. magpi.cc/mikecook You’ll Need > Stripboard magpi.cc/stripboard > 102 tack switches 4‑pin 6×6×5 mm magpi.cc/ tackswitch > Hex Keys CAD diagrams magpi.cc/pibakery > Access to laser cutter One alternative layout to a conventional piano keyboard is an isomorphic keyboard. Here, the notes are laid out so that adjacent keys differ by only a semitone. It is said that such a keyboard is easier to learn to play in any key. This month, we show you how to make a USB interfaced MIDI keyboard with an isomorphic layout. 01 Isomorphic keyboards While the principle of adjacent keys differing only by a semitone…

@ben_everard Ben’s house is slowly being taken over by 3D printers. He plans to solve this by printing an extension, once he gets enough printers. When most people learn to solder, they learn to work with through-hole components. These are the sort with legs that poke through holes in PCBs or breadboards. However, peek at any modern electronics and you’ll see that very few components are through-hole. Almost all are surface-mount. This means that they don’t poke through a PCB, but are soldered to pads on one side of it. These sorts of components are far easier to work with in factory assembly lines, but can seem scary for hobbyist makers. However, surface-mount soldering shouldn’t be much more difficult than through-hole soldering. We got a whole bunch of surface-mount practice…

@devinck If you know a programmer or gamer, and you ask about their setup, you most likely will hear about the type of keyboard they use. And I don’t mean wireless, corded, standard, or extended. I mean the details, all the way down to the type of switches used, and profiles of the keycaps. Do they like light pressure, high pressure, silent, or super-clicky? It’s a popular topic amongst many of us. I admittedly am typing away on an Apple keyboard right now (Gasp! I know). But when I switch over to my PC, which I do regularly for some VFX work, or product modelling, I do admit I like my Cherry MX Brown switches, and the feel of a definitive press of the button. And maybe a little RGB…

@concreted0g As part of the CNC 3018-PRO series of tutorials, we played a little with a laser module that could be attached to the machine for engraving, and we were keen to experiment with something larger. We picked up a cheap kit for a 40 × 50cm working area CNC laser engraver for £135. This item is available online and is sold under a few different names – searching ‘500MW desktop 4050 laser engraver’ returns a few similar results. We ordered what we believed would be branded ‘ChronosMaker’, but actually, on arrival, the controller board was labelled ‘Vigotec’, but apart from that, it was identical to what was pictured. It arrived well-packed, with a decent set of build instructions. Assembling the frame and running gear was straightforward and took a…