Table of contents for #63 in HackSpace

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.…

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.…

The object shown here is a world first: a print-in-place articulated model, printed in sweet, sweet chocolate. It’s the work of Ellie Weinstein, creator of the Cocoa Press 3D Chocolate Printer, and the file (a charming goldfish named Pepito) was cleverly designed by MakeitMichael (hsmag.cc/ArticulatedGoldfish). We spoke to Ellie a few months ago while she was working on the current iteration of her printer; the clever thing about it is that it’s food-safe, and it gives the user extremely fine control over the temperature of the chocolate. We’re amazed at this print, and apparently it tasted good too.…

HOT SPOTTER hsmag.cc/HotSpotter Drones are fun to fly, but they also have their uses. Based on off-the-shelf hardware controlled by a Raspberry Pi 3A+, Jason McDonald’s autonomous drone can detect and report smouldering wildfires. “I wanted to create something practical with the [NXP HoverGames drone] kit that filled a niche not already being targeted by the commercial drone industry, and/or lower the cost of a current application,” he says. Equipped with a thermal sensor, GPS, and a lidar system to measure the distance to the ground, the Hot Spotter can survey an area to create a heat map. “As the drone flies over an area, it records average temperatures of spots on the ground,” explains Jason. During a ten-minute flight, the drone can survey a 1600m2 area twice. Once the…

In my work, I call myself an artist who works with technology, or a creative technologist, and a lot of my work is about the relationships that humans and living creatures share with machines. This project is to build a very simple vision system inspired by a snail’s eye. The exploration of organically inspired vision has led me to build versions of a clam’s eye, a fly’s eye, and a crab’s eye. The key takeaway for me: simple is good. In a sense, vision starts with plants, and it all begins with the question, ‘what are you trying to see?’ It began when I needed a vision system for a project, and the more obvious AI approach wasn’t working well enough. I realised the problem was the camera acting as…

@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 we were testing out active foaming PLA (a filament that swells up as it comes out of the nozzle), we found an interesting failure mode. This filament can print in layers thicker than the nozzle is wide, but if you push it too far, you get a spaghetti-like effect that just about holds together enough to make something resembling the desired object, while still looking like a tangle of spaghetti. Other people have compared it to dehydrated noodles, or a loofah. There are a few tricks to make this work, and honestly, we’ve no idea how well this will work on other printers –…

@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. Having looked at a lot of ‘learn to’ solder tutorials recently, we actually think that there’s a bit of a problem with them. It’s not that they have incorrect information (though some do), it’s that they’re so keen to tell you how quick and easy soldering is, they miss out some of the key information you need to know and, in doing so, actually make it much harder for you to get consistent results. Here’s our no holds barred guide to how to actually solder. First, before you do anything else, inspect your iron. The soldering iron is the key to good soldering. The better…

@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. Magnets are almost magical. They apply a force across space. You can use them to move things without touching them. You can also use them to interact with your electronics projects. In this article, we’ll look at a couple of electronics components that are affected by magnets and learn how to use them in our projects. We’ll use MicroPython for the examples, but they should be trivial to port to other languages. The reed switch is a type of switch that is controlled by magnets. It works in almost exactly the same way as a momentary push-button, except that instead of a finger pressing a switch,…

SUNLU → £35 | sunlu.com @concreted0g If you’ve been 3D printing for a while, you’ve likely experienced the problems that can occur if your filament absorbs moisture. To a certain degree, all filaments are prone to absorbing moisture, which can create problems in your 3D prints. One of our early experiences of this was with a moist reel of cheap PLA that printed with a poor surface finish and, when left loaded in the machine, would simply snap between the reel and the machine. Another issue we often have is when printing PETG. Sometimes you can hear the slight bubbling and sizzling sound of moist PETG, and that burning off of the inherent moisture can lead to tiny bubbles and imperfections in your print. Whilst returning filament to sealed storage…

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.…

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.…

ATTENTION ALL MAKERS! If you have something you’d like to get off your chest (or even throw a word of praise in our direction), let us know at hsmag.cc/hello STAY WARM Your heated seat came at just the right time – I didn’t think I needed to make my workshop any warmer, but then the polar vortex forgot where it was supposed to be, and I found I had to put through-hole components into PCBs with fingers that would hardly move. Unfortunately, it’s warmed up now and I can move around fine, so I’m going to forget all about it until the next time, when, alas, it will be too late. Paul Gateshead Ben says: Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but even better than that is foresight. You know it’s…

RC HOT AIR BALLOON hsmag.cc/RCHotAirBalloon A collaboration between Matt Barr and real-life hot air balloon pilot Josh Thurman, this remote-controlled, propane-fuelled hot air balloon can reach heights of 100 ft (30m) or more – although a tether line is used to prevent it floating away in the wind. “We thought this balloon might have a practical application for balloon demonstrations (local schools, for example),” says Matt, “Setup of a normal balloon requires a team of people and fuel cost is an issue. One person can set up and fly our RC balloon. It’s large enough that it draws lots of attention when it is in the air and is still able to demonstrate adequately the physics of balloon flight.” Matt opted to use two Arduino Uno boards for the project:…

Kevin McAleer is a great example of someone who wanted to do something, and so he went ahead and did it. His secret? Start small, fix your mistakes, and do it again. Starting with an obsession with modular printed robots, then MicroPython, then livestreaming, he has built up kevsrobots.com into a great resource for anyone who wants to get started with robotics, the intersection of mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, and programming. Since then, he’s also built up a course to get beginners working with MicroPython, and even more impressively, he built a working PKE meter to detect psychokinetic energy in your neighbourhood with only a Raspberry Pi Pico and a 3D printer. We spoke to Kevin, cooed over his lovely collection of 3D-printed robots, and made plans for an automated…

@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. Binary is the key concept in how computers operate. If you drill down far enough on any operation, transmission, or storage, you’ll find 1s and 0s, on or off, positive or negative. This ability to build up to complex behaviours from a simple distinction between, and manipulation of two states, is what computing is all about. Yet, despite this being absolutely fundamental to the way computers work, it can be a bit alien to us humans. We’re brought up in a world of ten digits, not just two, so it can be hard to get an intuitive sense of binary, especially if you don’t use…

@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 and follow him on Twitter at @robmiles. Trombone Champ is an excellent music game (hsmag.cc/TromboneChamp). Figure 1 shows the game in action. You toot your way through tunes old and new, trying to get a perfect pitch from your trusty trombone. It is one of those rare games where playing badly is at least as amusing as playing well. The game is controlled using the mouse. But what if you want some real trombone action? In this article, we are going to build a Raspberry Pi Pico-owered trombone controller programmed with CircuitPython that uses a laser rangefinder and an air pressure…

@devinck Robots have been around for a long time and can be found everywhere. They have infiltrated our homes, in the form of oversized hockey pucks randomly patrolling empty rooms for dust bunnies. There are even drones that can drive around, or even fly, looking for nefarious visitors when you aren’t home. And there are bots that can keep an eye on your pet, and dispense some treats when you feel guilty for working late. And although some of those bots have practical jobs, many of the affordable bots, especially robotic arms, are more akin to toys than reliable and useful tools. Many robots are fun to play with, but don’t really do too much other than demos. That’s not to say that $100 robotic arms are bad. They can…

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.…

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.…

There’s no fear of flying here: we’re showcasing some of the best airborne creations we’ve found floating around the makersphere. We start off down the runway with some incredible aircraft, including an insane model VTOL jet and a flapping winged dinosaur. Taking off, in vertical fashion, we explore the world of drones and copters, from a tiny Pico-based flight system to a wildfire-spotting drone, a spinning UFO, and a crazy contraption that looks more like a combine harvester, but somehow flies! Next, we soar skywards in more graceful fashion with some buoyant balloons and dirigibles, including a remote-control hot air balloon, a robotic airship that can fly autonomously, and a rigid-frame Zeppelin-style craft. Finally, we boost ourselves even higher with a range of rockets. There’s even one that can land…

UNITY hsmag.cc/UnityRocket A rocket maker keen to make use of thrust vector control (TVC), Cole Purtzer heads up Delta Space Systems. Improving on his previous Frontier rocket, the one-metre-tall Unity is constructed from carbon fibre. It stabilises itself in flight with the use of a servo-actuated TVC mount – made with machined shoulder screws pivoting on ball bearings, this has a range of ±12°. To ensure a gentle return to earth, a parachute is automatically deployed by a servo-driven mechanical ejection system – which can also be tested on the ground, pre-launch. In addition, Unity features a new avionics unit that incorporates a high-res gyroscope and accelerometer package, along with a BMP280 barometer to determine vehicle state. A 4K camera can be mounted on the back of the PCB for…

MAKER Long-time contributor to The MagPi, Phil is a freelance writer and editor with a focus on technology. @philkingeditor A nvil’s Pico W IoT toolkit enables you to connect easily, and securely, to web apps you create. Using the Anvil UF2 firmware image, you can code programs on Pico W in MicroPython, with a few extra lines to connect to Anvil, then create a web app on the Anvil site which can send and receive data to and from your Pico W program. Last issue, we made an RGB LED mood lamp whose colour was controllable by moving sliders in an Anvil web app. That involved sending data to Pico W; this time we’ll explore how to send data from Pico W to a web app dashboard to show temperature and…

@holtonhandmade Nicola King is a freelance writer and sub-editor. Crafting and making stuff generally helps to keep her grounded and semi-sane…just ask her long-suffering family. The increasingly popular craft of needle felting, also known as dry felting, is the art of transforming wool fibres into, usually, 2D or 3D shapes, with the aid of some barbed needles, and this author is happy to announce that needle felting is her new obsession. She’d read that it was an addictive hobby, but little did she realise just how captivated she’d become. At the end of her first project, she was already looking for potential needle felting accessories that her family could gift her for Christmas… we’re just pre-warning you that if you try this craft once, you’ll likely be back for more.…

Eric Schlaepfer & Windell H. Oskay → £27.95 | opencircuitsbook.com @ben_everard Though it’s fallen out of favour now, there was a time when the term ‘micro’ was an adjective almost synonymous with electronics. It wasn’t really used in its scientific meaning, but more generally. It was used to describe circuits too small to easily see what was going on, whether they were packed inside a chip or crammed into a circuit board and hidden inside a box. From this ‘micro’ era of the 1980s onwards, electronics have been mostly hidden from view. Sometimes this is by design – to allow designers to make fancy-looking cases – and sometimes it’s just because they’re too small to make sense of. Open Circuits fights back against this gradual trend towards invisibility. It takes…