Table of contents for #67 in HackSpace

Got a comment, question, or thought about HackSpace magazine? get in touch at hsmag.cc/hello GET IN TOUCH hackspace@raspberrypi.com hackspacemag hackspacemag ONLINE hsmag.cc https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hackspace-magazine/id1315673274?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hackspace-magazine/id1315673274?mt=8 Does open source matter in 3D printers and, if it does, what should we do to defend it? It’s a question that Josef Průša posed to the community alongside the launch of the MK4. Hobbyist 3D printers started with the RepRap movement, where open source was key to a worldwide community being able to rapidly modify and improve designs. We’re now in a post-RepRap era when most 3D printer designs aren’t open-source (though they might run open-source software). At HackSpace magazine, we’re not open-source purists, and we recognise that commercial reality can make opening your design difficult. However, we view open source as a significant and…

hsmag.cc/PicoRobotDog We’ve seen a few robot dogs over the years, most notably James Bruton’s openDog and Boston Dynamics’ terrifying Spot hunter killer. Here’s one with a twist, created by computer engineering student Halid Yildirim. Halid’s big breakthrough has been to separate the electronics from the robot chassis, enabling different electronics modules to be swapped in and out. Because it’s modular, there are key features, and non-key features that can be added or removed to keep the cost down. Core features include the computing unit, battery and power management units, remote control, GPS, gyroscope, and pressure sensors on the legs. Swappable capabilities include Lidar and gas detection modules.…

Occasionally we come across a 3D print that’s so well done that we can’t tell whether it’s 3D-printed or not. That’s what happened the first time we saw this 7.4:1 scale model of a Mitsubishi Pajero, modelled, printed, and assembled by Casadio Design. They’ve taken their own family car for inspiration, and turned it into a fully functioning radio-controlled, four-wheel-drive model, with results so impressive that, at first glance, we thought those small boulders were the size of large boulders. Casadio has produced an unbelievably detailed 350-page assembly guide, and you can grab the design files from cults3D.com – see the video at hsmag.cc/Pajero for more instructions.…

At first glance, the MK4 looks much the same as the MK3. It’s got the now familiar arch of black aluminium alloy as a frame over the top of a bed that moves in the Y-axis. At the front, an angled screen provides user feedback, and the whole lot is controlled by a single knob and button. However, while things on the surface may look similar, almost every aspect of this machine has been reworked. In some cases, this is to make it faster, in some cases more reliable and, in some cases, more user-friendly. Let’s take a look at what these changes are, and whether they’ve worked. When it comes to speed with 3D printers, weight is a huge issue. Not the total weight of the printer, but the…

We’ve been having an awful lot of fun playing with/thoroughly testing the latest offering from Prusa Printers, the Mk 4. As part of that, we got the chance to pick the brains of Mr Průša himself, on the development process behind the XL and the new Mk 4, on 3D printing 3D printers, and why his suppliers hate their new X-ray machines. HackSpace Take us back to the beginning: how did Prusa Printers start? Josef Průša I found out about 3D printing and I found out about the RepRap project, which was wonderful. But… I’m not going to say that I’m lazy, but I like to do things urgently. So when I saw the original Mendel model, and I tried to build it, it was just so, so complex. Sourcing…

@holtonhandmade Nicola King is a freelance writer and sub-editor. She vows to spend less time searching for makery paraphernalia, and more time creating useful items from her (substantial) stash. There are lots of fun ways of using near-field communication (NFC) in our day-to-day lives. In this tutorial, we will be taking a humble greetings card and hiding an NFC tag inside it in order to gift an unconventional digital surprise. The best part is that you need very little in terms of ‘equipment’ to get going, it takes next to no time to set up, and you really don’t need to be a tech whizz either, so let’s jump right in. STEP 1 ASSEMBLE YOUR SUPPLIES Let’s firstly gather together what we need for this project. In the interests of…

Dr Andrew Lewis is a specialist fabricator and maker, and is the owner of the Andrew Lewis Workshop. It isn’t always easy to turn a light on and off in the workshop. Your hands are covered in oil, the switch is too far away, and speech control only works if you can remember the name of the light you want to control. With a Raspberry Pi Pico, a strip of NeoPixel lights, and some ultrasonic sensors, you can create a dimmable strip light that only ” shines where you want it to. In this project, you’ll learn how to control NeoPixel LEDs from a Raspberry Pi Pico running MicroPython, and how to use multiple ultrasonic sensors to detect the position of your hands. To paraphrase Adam Savage, we all need…

@devinck I’ve covered gardening-related electronics a few times, including wireless sensors, and a host of outdoor-related devices. And since spring is here, it made me think it’s time to look at the possibilities of remote sensing again. I have always wanted to bring a little IoT to my own garden, and hopefully this is the year I do implement some kind of electronics. The past few years have been difficult to tackle that project since components, especially microcontrollers, have been difficult to come by, but that’s finally changing. You can source microcontrollers and some single-board computers of various flavours at most of the online shops, and even a few brick-and-mortar retail shops. And I’m seeing new sensors being made available every week that would be perfect for remote monitoring. Even…

hsmag.cc/ESP32-PlantMonitor We’ve seen plant monitors many times before now, but this one, by self-taught electronics tinkerer Ovidiu, is worth a closer look. First of all because its creator is self-taught: if you can imagine it, you can build it; the only downside of being self-taught is that it’ll probably take you longer than it would if you knew what to do/where to look. Ovidiu’s used an ESP32 and an e-ink display to create a plant monitor with an impressive eleven days battery life (longer if you run it without the display), and kept electronic components off the soil probes so that they are cheap to replace should they break/get stolen by foxes. The machine monitors temperature, soil moisture levels, humidity, light levels and more, and shares data via Wi-Fi or…

hsmag.cc/FurbyBorges In 2018, Roni Bandini hacked a Furby to turn it into a Jorge Luis Borges-quoting animatronic. He left as many components in situ as possible, only bypassing the audio, to create an effect that worked, but wasn’t as good as it could have been. Five years later, the JL Borges Furby is reborn. Roni has removed the original electronics that controlled the Furby’s mouth and eyes, opting to replace them with an Arduino Nano and an H-bridge. He’s got rid of the original sound effects equipment, replacing it with a DFRobot DFPlayer Mini MP3 player. He’s also used a passive infrared sensor, so that whenever someone walks past the furry they’re treated to a snippet of the great Argentinian writer’s work.…

HAXAPHONE Every so often, an electronic musical instrument comes along that is unique and comes to define a sound. Sometimes these instruments endure to provide an interesting and unique sound through the decades – the theremin springs to mind. Other times they turn out to be a brief spark that illuminates a genre and then dies out – for example, the keytar. The haxaphone (HackSpace issue 66 page 8) surely fits into one of these two camps – I have absolutely no idea which camp history will place it in. All I know is that I want one! Brian Cambridge Ben says: I am no musician, but I also want to try a haxaphone. I doubt I can get a sensible noise out of the thing, but I’d love to…

So far, we’ve looked at the printer hardware, but the MK4 does have one more trick up its sleeve: wireless connectivity. While network connectivity was an optional bolt-on for the MK3, it’s built right into the MK4. Internet access on devices can be a bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can be a useful tool to make the machine more accessible. On the other hand, it can be a way for companies to try to lock users into closed ecosystems. How these two factors play out depends entirely on how the company behind the product decides to develop the software. Prusa has two different systems for accessing the MK4 over the network: PrusaLink is a way of accessing your printer from the local network. This allows…

MAKER Also known as Penguin Tutor, Stewart is a maker and YouTuber who loves all things Raspberry Pi and Pico. Author of Learn Electronics with Raspberry Pi. twitter.com/  stewartwatkiss In this project, you will learn how to create circuits on a breadboard, along with basic information you need to know when starting out with electronics. Find out how to work out which way the LED goes and follow the easy guide to find the right-value resistor. Add the switch and you have the basics of a first circuit. 01 Using a breadboard A prototyping breadboard is a way of creating electronic circuits by pushing components into the board. Using a breadboard is a great way to learn about electronics. You can use it to create a circuit, swap out some components,…

Dr Andrew Lewis is a specialist fabricator and maker, and is the owner of the Andrew Lewis Workshop. In the first part of this series, you discovered how motor controllers and throttle controllers can be used by a Raspberry Pi Pico to control an electric motor on a scooter. In this article, you will find out how to make custom battery packs for your scooter and add some features that will keep you safe while you ride. Electric motors have high torque, but without adequate power to supply the motor you will have a very disappointing ride. Twenty years ago, a lead-acid or nickel-cadmium battery would have been the most appropriate choice for powering an electric bike. Now, lithium polymer (LiPo) batteries are a much better alternative. As you probably…

FHDM TECH $33.50 hsmag.cc/dso-500k @ben_everard Oscilloscopes are, at heart, very simple tools. They take a voltage and use that to display a point on a screen, usually, in a time-based graph. That’s really all it takes to be an oscilloscope. However, underneath this is a huge web of complexity. The first bit of complexity is the limits on the signal that it can display – the two main limits being voltage and frequency. For many users, voltage isn’t particularly limiting. Many modern circuits only use fairly low voltages, and almost any oscilloscope can handle these. Frequency, though, is more of a problem. If you’re trying to debug a waveform, you need a sample frequency higher than the waveform because you need to see how the waveform is structured, so you…

hsmag.cc/LegoSewingMachine We take our collective hat off to anyone who can sew: by hand, it’s fiddly, slow, and frustratingly difficult; with a sewing machine it’s even harder, as the mechanisation element only means that we can go wrong more quickly. So, we’re extremely impressed by The Brick Wall’s sewing machine build, which uses Lego (plus one small rotating handmade part to hook and release the thread) to assemble a working, hand-powered sewing machine. And yes, it produces a perfect chain stitch.…

hsmag.cc/Persist-o-meter Practice makes perfect. But real life gets in the way of practice. To solve the problem of pesky reality intruding onto his valuable ukulele playing time, Yurko Tymchuk has developed a progress tracker using 3D printing and magnets to record his daily goals. It looks a lot like a calendar, and every time you fulfil your goal for that day, you add a magnetised cross to the board indicating success. The text describing the goals is printed on detachable labels, so if you were to get bored with the ukulele and want to learn the piano instead, you’d just print a new label. This is a 3D-printed model, but with some special instructions: first, it uses 0.2mm layer heights, to get the best fit with the magnets he’s used.…

The Prusa i3 line of printers has its origins at the very start of the hobbyist 3D printer movement. The Prusa Mendel (the first printer to bear the ‘Prusa’ name), released in 2010 with a blog post that started: “Hello, I’m new here so I guess I should introduce myself first. My name is Josef Prusa, I’m a 20-year-old student from Prague, Czech Republic and I’m in [the] RepRap world for about a year now. You can follow me on twitter.com/prusajr. Two months ago, I started [the] process of simplifying Mendel design. So far, I was able to reduce parts count, assembly time, use of vitamins, and also price.” The Prusa Mendel evolved to become the Prusa Mendel iteration 2, then the iteration 3 (known as the i3), MK2, MK3,…

Modern digital cameras use image processing technology to produce high-quality results. But this makes everyone’s pictures look perfectly identical, and it takes a lot of the satisfaction out of getting a good picture (at least for the author). In this article, you’ll discover how to use retro technology and 3D printing to create a super high-quality film camera that gives your photographs a real sense of occasion. HAVE CAMERA, WILL TRAVEL Figure 1 shows the completed camera. The body is 3D-printed from designs at hsmag.cc/WillTravel. The body was printed in white PLA, which turned out not to be the most lightproof of colours. You should use a darker colour. The camera has since been sprayed with multiple coats of matt black paint – both inside and out, to make it…

@concreted0g Jo Hinchliffe is a constant tinkerer and is passionate about all things DIY space. He loves designing and scratch-building both model and high-power rockets, and releases the designs and components as open-source. He also has a shed full of lathes and milling machines and CNC kit! In the last issue, we got our schematic for our Pico add-on board created, and we assigned each schematic symbol a footprint which represents the individual component we are adding for each part of the design. In this issue, we will finish this starter project by laying out the PCB design ready for manufacture. If you haven’t opened KiCad, do so now. Open the previous project and select the PCB Editor icon from the available applications (Figure 1). If you have opened 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. One of the most fascinating features of 3D printers is the shapes they can make that wouldn’t easily be possible with other manufacturing technologies, and nothing shows this off quite like print-in-place mechanisms. Perhaps the most obvious example of what’s going on is the caged ball. As the cage and ball are printed at the same time, the ball can be entirely in the cage. The same principle can apply to mechanisms, the simplest of which are hinges, such as in bag clips. One cylinder is printed inside the other and you end up with a joint that can hinge, but not come apart. 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. ChatGPT is the current darling of the AI world. It can produce impressively useful responses to many questions, and some people are finding it useful for writing programming code. Using the OpenSCAD 3D modeller, 3D designs are just code, so we decided to put it to the test and try to get it to design something for us. We wanted something not entirely trivial, but also not something so complex that it had no chance of understanding it. We decided on a simple buggy: four wheels, two axles, and a body. To give it the best possible chance, we decided to get it to design…

From $1698 hsmag.cc/skysurfer Delivery: April 2024 It’s 2023, where’s my hoverboard? Here. It’s here. Hunter Kowald is crowdfunding the next phase of what he calls a SkySurfer. It’s basically an octocopter that you can stand on. Now admittedly, it takes a special kind of person to try and stand on what is essentially an upturned blender (OK, eight upturned blenders). It takes an even special-er person to stand on a first-generation crowdfunded version. And an even more special person to buy the first version as a DIY kit and try to build it themselves. Is it safe? Maybe. We have no idea, and we don’t have a spare $54,000 to find out ($10,000 of this is a down payment during the crowdfunding campaign, and the rest is due on delivery).…