Table of contents for #81 in HackSpace

In the past five years or so, both the price and ease of use of microcontrollers have plummeted. It’s now at a point where popping a small programmable board into a build is something you can do almost without thinking about it. A few quid on parts and a couple of dozen lines of code can turn something static into something interactive. In this issue, we’re looking at 50 different ways you can do this. Some might be familiar to you, and hopefully some will encourage you to try something new. Let’s get electric. It’s easier and cheaper than you might think. ben.everard@raspberrypi.com Got a comment, question, or thought about HackSpace magazine? get in touch at hsmag.cc/hello GET IN TOUCH hackspace@raspberrypi.com hackspacemag ONLINE hsmag.cc https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hackspace-magazine/id1315673274?mt=8…

hsmag.cc/SolarWaterBottle According to the World Health Organization, there are at least 1.7 billion people in the world today who drink water contaminated with faeces, putting them at risk of diseases including diarrhoea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, and polio, with diarrhoea alone causing around a million deaths per year. If you live in a country where this isn’t a problem, it means that the generations before you invested massive amounts of time and money into building sewers, wells, water treatment plants, reservoirs, and all the rest of the infrastructure that we should be grateful for every time we turn on the tap. Where this infrastructure doesn’t exist, there are other solutions. One of these is to treat water using UV light to kill harmful bacteria. This solar water bottle by Aarav Garg…

LED When building your first electronics circuit on a breadboard, the easiest output device to use is a standard single-colour LED (light-emitting diode). As with other diodes, current only flows in one direction, so you need to get the polarity right: connect the positive (long) leg to an I/O pin on your microcontroller, and the negative (short) leg to ground. Remember to add a resistor to either connection to limit the amount of current to a safe level. hsmag.cc/LEDFirefly HALL EFFECT SENSOR Named after the American physicist Edwin Hall, this type of sensor detects changes in a magnetic field: its output voltage is directly proportional to the strength of the field. This enables it to detect the position and movement of magnetic objects. Hall effect sensors have many uses, such…

Toby gets to play with things all day long. The only constraint on him is that he has to “make something cool”. Toby gets to hang out in his own personal maker space all day, where he jealously guards the equipment like the dragon Smaug sitting atop his hoard of trinkets. Not only does he make cool things, but he’s also responsible for making sure that nobody who ventures down to the Raspberry Pi maker space accidentally slices their finger off. He makes big things, small things, shiny things, things that fly, things that roll, things that flash… pretty much all the things you can do with a microcontroller and a load of 3D printers. We got to hang out with him downstairs in the Raspberry Pi maker space, where…

A long-time Raspberry Pi user and tinkerer, Phil is a freelance writer and editor with a focus on technology. Once you’ve mastered controlling the brightness of a single-colour LED by altering the duty cycle of a PWM (pulse-width modulation) signal, switching up to an RGB LED is the next logical step. In essence, it’s three LEDs in one: red, green, and blue. By combining varying brightnesses of each, you can create any shade in the RGB colour space. You can get your RGB LED to follow a preset pattern of colours, or control it using an input device. Here, we’re using the temperature reading from a basic DHT11 sensor. First, let’s wire up the RGB LED to our microcontroller – we’re using a Raspberry Pi Pico here, but the principle…

In Chapter 10 of her book, Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes, Daina Taimina talks about how hyperbolic crochet seemingly went viral after she had published her ideas and her work on the subject. Margaret and Christine Wertheim, who were interested in creating their own hyperbolic crocheted planes, were hugely inspired by Daina’s work, and in 2006 the ‘Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef’ project began, and is still running today. They describe it on their website as an “ever-evolving nature-culture hybrid”, and it is truly a beautiful and very colourful piece of work made up of a ‘core’ collection of crocheted reefs that travel around the world on display, along with the ‘satellite’ reef program. Their website states that, as of 2023, 50 satellite reefs had been constructed around the world in…

Dr Andrew Lewis is a specialist fabricator and maker, and is the owner of the Andrew Lewis Workshop. The mantra of Repair, Reuse, Recycle is burned into the mind of most environmentally conscious people. We all know that the throwaway society is unsustainable, and we can do our part by keeping things out of landfill. There’s a problem with this mantra, though. The first word of it pushes our thinking towards things we have that can be repaired, like clothes or high-value electronic items that we all agree deserve to be shown some care. It doesn’t feel like we can move backwards and repurpose things that are supposed to be thrown away. We take common household items for granted, and dispose of them without a second thought because they are…

Dr Andrew Lewis is a specialist fabricator and maker, and is the owner of the Andrew Lewis Workshop. Looking through a hardware store catalogue, you’ll find all sorts of commercially made jigs. Jointing jigs, pocket jigs, and routing templates are used by tradespeople to complete common tasks because time is money, and jigs typically save time. They can also reduce the chance of making a mistake while you’re working with a tool, which can cut down on waste materials. If you’re a hobbyist used to working on one-off projects or an independent maker working on small batches, you might dismiss the idea of a jig as ‘something professionals use’, and be happy to push through the project relying on the old mantra of ‘measure twice, cut once’. This is sometimes…

I’ve always loved radio-controlled planes, cars, and boats. I’ve had so many different types of RC toys as a kid, including my earliest memory of an R2-D2. It was so much fun to tank-steer it around and make its head spin while my dog barked frantically at it. I think it was that toy that eventually led to me building my own radio-controlled planes, and even large-scale helicopters once I was a bit older and had the skills and willpower to tame those early non-gyros-enabled ‘copters. You name it and I probably built it, and crashed it, at some point. And, as advanced as hobby remote controls have become over the years, including the ability to do extensive customisation and programming, they aren’t always the perfect solution for your DIY…

From £512 hsmag.cc/flovv Delivery: Nov 2024 There’s a long history of manufacturers trying to jam other machines into 3D printers. We’ve seen 3D printers that convert into laser cutters, and 3D printers that convert into CNC machines, but this is a new one on us – a 3D printer that converts into an injection moulding machine. Before you rack your brains trying to figure out how it works, we’ll spoil the surprise that is well hidden in the Kickstarter page – it’s not an injection moulding machine. At least, not in the sense you’re probably expecting. It’s basically a resin pump that automatically mixes two-part resins. There’s then a hose that lets you deposit this premixed resin into your 3D-printed mould. This is known as Reaction Injection Moulding (RIM), and…

hsmag.cc/ArcReactorAlarmClock We are – or at least, we used to be – huge fans of the Marvel cinematic universe and all the props and cosplay that it has given us over the years. One classic of the genre is Iron Man’s arc reactor — the glowing power source that sits in Tony Stark’s chest and powers his special suit. It’s almost a cosplay rite of passage to build your own arc reactor, so here’s our favourite implementation: an arc reactor that’s also an alarm clock. As an arc reactor is basically a round, glowing thing, it should come as no surprise that Jéjé starts with an off-the-shelf NeoPixel ring, powered by a Mini ESP32. The structure that holds the electronics is printed out of black and transparent PLA, and there…

hsmag.cc/UselessRobot You’ve probably already seen some incarnation of the ‘useless box’ mechanism: it’s a machine that turns itself off. More than that, it’s a machine that mechanically, deliberately turns itself off: you flick a switch, then an arm appears from out of the box to flick the switch back and turn the machine off. This version, by Toby Chui, has a couple of added features to the basic machine that turns itself off. First of all, there’s that gorgeous little face, which is inspired by the Japanese ‘Kawaii’ aesthetic (Kawaii means ‘cute’). Second, every time the user turns the machine on, the face gets a little more annoyed, until it’s had enough, and the machine will run away. If it were up to us we’d implement this with a Raspberry…

Nicola King is a freelance writer and sub-editor. This subject area fits neatly with her yarn obsession, so finding something to make some shapes with was really not a stretch! Did you know that the skills of crochet, and indeed knitting, can be very helpful in creating, and therefore accurately visualising, certain shapes? There are a number of mathematical shapes that are enormously difficult to create in any other way, since they are based on non-Euclidean geometry. This is a key reason why a growing number of mathematicians have turned to the skills of crocheting and knitting with yarn as a way of turning those theoretical shapes into something three-dimensional and tangible that you can touch, hold, and basically understand more effectively. In this article, we will be delving into…

Jo Hinchliffe (aka Concretedog) 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! Throughout this series, we have occasionally converted EasyEDA footprints into KiCad footprints by downloading the EasyEDA footprint supplied by JLCPCB and using a brilliant online website to perform the conversion. Due to changes in the version of EasyEDA JLCPCB now uses, this route is no longer possible. However, thanks to updates in KiCad at version 8, it’s even simpler to import both EasyEDA footprints and EasyEDA schematic symbols. If we select a component in the JLCPCB parts library and click to view…

A portable power pack is a useful tool to have, but most of the commercial offerings are USB only, so don’t give you access to the full power of the battery pack. With a few panel-mount fittings, some batteries, and a tin can, you can make a rugged power pack to suit your own specifications. 18650 batteries need a controller to make sure that they charge and discharge safely. You must use a battery welder to connect the individual cells to the controller and make a battery pack. Soldering 18650 batteries directly will damage them permanently. Once you have a soldered battery pack, it’s very easy to connect the individual panel-mount sockets and indicators to the pack via a fuse and a power switch. Be aware that 18650 batteries can…

MAKER Long-time contributor to The MagPi, Phil is a freelance writer and editor with a focus on technology. @philkingeditor Last issue, we showed you how to use the CDP Studio software development tool and its Kinematics framework to record movements for a Raspberry Pi-based robotic arm – the myCobot 280 Pi from Elephant Robotics – that could then be played back to perform a ‘pick and place’ routine using the Adaptive Gripper add-on. This time we’ll be using the same setup, but controlling the arm manually using a Nintendo Wii Remote and Nunchuk. If you don’t have the robot arm, you can still run the project by deploying it to a Raspberry Pi and viewing the movements in the on-screen arm visualiser. 01 Install the software If you haven’t already…

SPARKFUN $43.95 sparkfun.com TINDIE $24.95 tindie.com The SparkFun Wireless Joystick Kit makes adding reliable and robust remote control to your project easy. What makes it so robust? Well, it’s built to be used in conjunction with an XBee radio. And anyone who’s been doing electronics long enough knows how reliable the XB radios are when building remote control systems. You’ll have to solder this kit together, but once done and you add your XBee module, you’ll have precision dual joystick control with the circuitry for a light PO battery and charger. SparkFun has a comprehensive set of assembly instructions and example projects on its website, along with different XBee modules and accessories. I like the RPi-Spark pHAT for Raspberry Pi designed by MobiNRG. Why? Because it encompasses most of the…

hsmag.cc/EPiPod The more things change, the more they stay the same, as the French say. We’ve seen the return of vinyl as an audiophile way of consuming music; now it looks like digital files are making a comeback over streaming services. At least, they are in one small corner of the internet. Inspired by maker Bram Rausch’s PiPod, the ePiPod by drhatch takes a homegrown iPodlike music player, based on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, and adds an e-paper screen, rather than the PiPod’s 2.2-inch TFT screen. The screen drhatch chose is a $6.99 display from Waveshare; the maker had to change the power supply from the original PiPod using Waveshare’s reference design; the software also had to change, to incorporate the Waveshare driver library and the Pillow Python…

hsmag.cc/VintageSmartRadio There are loads of upcycling projects that involve taking a cool old enclosure, ripping out the original electronics, and replacing them with a microcontroller – and don’t get us wrong, we love that sort of thing. What makes this build different is that Tsuryx has kept all the original features of the Sony TFM-9450W radio, and added new ones without taking anything away. The magic ingredient in this build is the audio signal mixer, an example of which is currently available on AliExpress for the princely sum of £1.19. This is what enabled the maker to retain the functionality of the radio – you simply unsolder the wires connecting the original radio to the speaker and route them via the mixer. Adding the Amazon Echo Dot requires some disassembly…

A seminal book on this subject is Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes, (hsmag.cc/CrochetingAdventures) written by Daina Taimina, a Latvian mathematician (who is also a retired associate professor of mathematics at Cornell University). She has been a trailblazer in developing a way of modelling hyperbolic geometry with crochet since the late 1990s, holding workshops for university professors where her crocheted models gained much interest. In 2001, a crocheted hyperbolic plane appeared in the New Scientist, and Daina’s work then started to receive even greater interest. Her book was first published in 2009 to much acclaim because, until Daina had crocheted her first hyperbolic plane which gave a fantastic tactile insight, no really good physical models of hyperbolic shapes existed (apart from more fragile paper versions), despite the concept of hyperbolic planes…

Dr Andrew Lewis is a specialist fabricator and maker, and is the owner of the Andrew Lewis Workshop. Jewellery making is a rich source of unusual and beautiful tools. Most of the tools are quite familiar and intuitive to use, but there are other tools that are less easy to identify at first sight. These are tools that serve a very specific purpose that might not be well known outside of the field, or they have a strange name that doesn’t immediately explain what they are used for. One of these oddly named tools is the dapping block, which is also (more sensibly) called a doming block. In this article, you’ll learn the basics of making domed metal pieces with this beautiful tool. Some metalworking tools are easy to use…

A laser microscope is a great project for people who want to explore the tiniest parts of the world around us. It’s a quick project that you can make in about half an hour. A laser microscope works by shining a laser beam into a droplet of water that’s suspended from a fine needle or dropper of some sort. The droplet acts as a lens, scattering the light from the laser so that a silhouette of anything in the water droplet is projected onto the nearest wall or perpendicular surface. Begin by drilling a hole in the bottom of your tin can, as close to dead centre as you can. The hole should be the same diameter as your laser emitter, and ideally you want it to be a push…

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. LED effects are a great way to light up any occasion. Here in the UK, Christmas is the most famous holiday for decorating rooms with lights, but many other cultures have other events that include unnecessarily elaborate lighting displays. Besides, there’s no need to limit yourself to traditional holidays – you’re an independent person who can light up the night whenever you feel like it. In this article, we’re going to look at one way of getting started with LED effects quickly and cheaply that you can use for any occasion. OK, we’ll own up right at the start. We said zero code in the title…