Table of contents for Vol 91 - Winter 2024 in Make:

Krizia Medero Minneapolis, Minnesota (3D-Printed Mirror Fabric) Baymax from Big Hero 6: kind-hearted, helpful, and as soft as a marshmallow. Kate Hartman Toronto, Ontario, Canada (Guide to Boards: Wearables) Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. His deadpan doom-and-gloom persona makes him so relatable! Shawn Hymel Lafayette, Colorado (“Hey Robot!” Local LLMs) Johnny 5 for his curiosity, humor, and courageous pursuit of empathy and independence.…

MADE ON EARTH Amazing builds from around the globe Know a project that would be perfect for Made on Earth? Let us know: editor@makezine.com THE NATURE OF FOUND OBJECTS AIRTIGHTARTWORK.COM All his life, Matt Wilson has known he wanted to be an artist, a maker whose work reflects the natural world we live in but is unlike anything seen before. His stunning metalwork pieces, with their intricate details and polished sheen, fit these lofty criteria. On the surface, Wilson's sculptures appear molded out of a single piece of metal. Taking a closer look, though, you'll glimpse familiar materials — silverware, wires, springs, sewing machine wheels, and other reclaimed and recycled pieces of scrap metal. This effect is achieved by design, as Wilson creates his sculptures to inspire others to appreciate…

Want to build electronic gadgets fast and learn programming too? With the Oxocard Connect mini computer and cartridges, you can easily try out your own ideas, build prototypes for projects, or just play with ready-made gadgets and learn to code in a playful way. Together with our Innovators Kit you can take your first steps into the world of electronic components and learn how to combine them with a microcontroller to make all kinds of smart projects. In this short project we'll introduce you to programming the Oxocard Connect using the scripting language NanoPy and a full-fledged, browser-based programming platform (IDE) to quickly build an IoT thermostat with alarm and servomotor. You'll connect the temperature sensor, alarm buzzer, and servo on a mini breadboard cartridge that plugs right into the…

PROJECTS: Walk-in Camera Obscura NICK SAYERS is an international science-artist, maker, graphic designer, planetarium presenter, bike activist, and urbanist based in Brighton, U.K. Read more about him and his work on page 16. A camera obscura (“darkened chamber” in Latin) is a room that has been blacked out, with a lens or small aperture in the wall being the only window on the exterior scene. Light rays from outside pass through the aperture and are projected onto a white wall inside, casting a direct image of the view outside, but reversed — upside-down and back-to-front — onto the wall. We get our modern word camera (photograph-making device) from the contraction of this term. Camera obscuras (walk-in camera rooms) have been around for centuries. There are theories that prehistoric cave paintings…

Can a budget bug detector really work? When you see a gadget selling for as low as $18 (eBay) that claims to detect hidden cameras and wireless transmission devices between 1MHz and 6.5GHz, can it really do what it says? Surprisingly, with a few caveats, the answer is … Yes! Sold under a variety of names, this detector, which combines radio frequency (RF) detection, magnetic field detection, and hidden camera detection, is generally known as the K18. While clearly mass-produced with the cheapest possible parts, this device can successfully detect most of the commonly available wireless listening devices and hidden cameras, if used properly. But using the K18 properly relies on understanding how the devices that it can detect work and how it tries to find them. In this article,…

1 Raspberry PI 5 CPU: Broadcom BCM2712 quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76 @ 2.4GHz GPU: VideoCore VII @ 1GHz RAM: 2, 4, or 8GB Flash: Your own SD card or SSD An accessible, low-cost single-board computer ideal for edge AI applications. Its powerful CPU can run full machine learning frameworks like PyTorch and TensorFlow, and supports GPU acceleration for inference (not training). Object detection (YOLOv8n) for images with 640×640 resolution runs about 5 FPS, and small LLMs (Llama8:3B) can generate responses at about 2 tokens per second. USB and PCIe slots allow for add-on AI acceleration hardware, which can dramatically increase speeds 2 NVIDIA JETSON ORIN NANO CPU: 6-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A78AE @ 1.5GHz GPU: 512-core (16 tensor core) or 1024-core (32 tensor core) Nvidia Ampere @ 625MHz RAM: 4 or 8GB Flash: Your own SD card…

A specialized control board can really expedite your addressable LED project. Features like signal level shifting and reverse polarity protection reduce your component count, while pattern-managing software makes animations easy. Which board's best? Depends on how many LEDs you're driving, their power requirements, and sensor integration. These boards offer many features to streamline your illuminated marvel. For more detail and a comparison matrix, go to makezine.com/go/boards-leds. PRE-PROGRAMMED BOARDS 1 BEYOND THE MATRIX: The ESP32-based Pixelblaze V3 Standard ($39) and smaller V3 Pico ($35) run proprietary browser-based software with a JavaScript pattern editor that updates LED animations in real time. Patterns from a library can arranged into playlists, and because pixel-mapping is separate from pattern code, the same animations display consistently on any arbitrary arrangement of pixels in 3D space. The…

SURPRISE MAKER BADGE I purchased books from Maker Shed and they arrived with this nifty “Here There Be Makers” badge, which needed some LEDs and a battery installed. It took me three whole goes, but I got there (youtu.be/sgs-xxL1-8Q). Thanks again, that was a fun surprise to find in the package. —John Elliot V, Sydney, Australia CIRCUIT DIAGRAMS SORELY MISSED I found your magazine a couple of years ago and currently subscribe. There are several small electronics projects I'd be interested in doing except there is no circuit schematic diagram to show how all the elements are connected. Many people would breadboard the project first, modify and test, and only solder everything together when they are finally happy with it. There is no easier way to do this than the…

Last year, all-purpose boards graced our cover in the form of the 32-bit Arduino Uno R4 and the Raspberry Pi 5. Given the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and other RP2350-based boards' spotlight on this year's cover, I'll take the opportunity here to highlight some lesser-known or -appreciated offerings in the Basic Boards category. SBCs While Raspberry Pi dominates this category, I've been really impressed with Shenzhen-based Khadas' latest offerings. Their VIM1S represents a great Pi alternative, with a quad-core 2.0GHz Arm Cortex-A35, 2GB of RAM, and built-in Arm Mali-G31 graphics. And with 16GB eMMC and full-size ports, you don't end up spending a ton on dongles and accessories. What wows me about this board is the Oowow service, which allows you to audition and flash a plethora of operating systems…

If you've ever seen giant, bright lighting systems on stage, at concerts, or on big outdoor art installations, you've been looking at DMX lighting. DMX512 is a control protocol used by the pros but it's easy to use in your own projects with just an Arduino! DMX stands for Digital Multiplex. It was invented in 1986 as an easy way to control lots of theater lights. DMX is really useful because it's a very simple protocol that lets you command a large number of elements with a single controller. Lots of off-the-shelf DMX lights are really made to light big things: like a stage, building, or sculpture. Using devices that are controlled through DMX can really make your work feel more professional. DMX fixtures are often available in waterproof enclosures…

When devices such as radio transmitters or light bulbs emit energy, the intensity decreases as you get farther away. This decrease happens in a very predictable way known as the inverse-square law, which states that the intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. “Inversely proportional” means that the bigger the distance, the lower the intensity. The “square of the distance” means the farther away you are from the source, the more area you have to cover. This can be written as: intensity = 1/distance2 Imagine you're chewing bubble gum and blowing a bubble. The bigger the bubble, the thinner the wall becomes as it stretches to cover more area. Similarly, radio signals expand as they radiate from an antenna. That's why the signal gets weaker as you…

OVER THE TOP In August, Make: Editor-in-Chief Keith Hammond and I went down to Silicon Valley and met with Christoph Kohstall, founder of the humanoid robotics startup Kind Humanoid. I came away from the meeting with the idea that we are entering a new wave of robotics, you might say, robots with AI for brains. Kohstall had brought their first prototype, called Mona, to Maker Faire Bay Area last year, and it was a spectacular sight: a 6-foot tall robot without skin protected in a glass case. Mona was all wires and motors wrapped around orange 3D-printed body parts. I almost didn't care if it worked; it was a work of art! Kind Humanoid says the robot is “combining the power to reason with the ability to act.” It moves…

Need boards for classroom use? In the past you'd choose an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi, and your students' (in)ability to solder would constrain your choice of projects. Those are still good options — but now there are boards that pack a lot more functionality with a lot less wiring required. Two of the most common boards in K-12 classrooms are the Adafruit Circuit Playground Express, aka “CPX” (learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-circuit-playground-express), and the BBC micro:bit v2 (microbit.org), both available in $30 starter kits including the board, USB cable, battery pack, and batteries. Let's compare. CODING Both boards are programmed via web browser in Microsoft MakeCode, a block-based environment similar to Scratch. Python and JavaScript are options, with drag-and-drop code blocks to ease the transition to text coding. In micro:bit's version (makecode.microbit.org) code…

I wasn't sure if there would be an IoT category this year. Connectivity is so ubiquitous since the rise in popularity of system-on-chips like the ESP32 (and the ESP8266 SoC before it) that Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) almost feel like table stakes. But thanks to the continued innovation of industry leaders like Particle, Blues, and SparkFun, we have a lot to talk about! One of the first “IoT” companies I remember, Particle (or Spark as they were known when I backed their previous Kickstarter campaign) is also one of the ones I'm most excited about in 2024. I'm going to skip right past their current crowdfunding campaign for the Particle Tachyon (see page 5), and instead focus on their Muon dev board and M-SoM module. Particle's fourth-gen system-on-module…

I once explained to a friend that I was most proud that Make: magazine and Maker Faire had created a community of makers - how makers found each other through the magazine and events and how an even larger public could now find them. Giving makers opportunities to share their work in public became the mission of the magazine and Maker Faire but it also proved the best way to grow the whole community. Next year in February, we will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first issue of Make: magazine. I could not have imagined the impact that Make: combined with Maker Faire would have on so many people — some of you have been subscribers since the first issue! — but I am grateful for it. I am…

The Anywear Academy project, based at University of California Santa Cruz uses live action role playing (LARPing) to motivate students, particularly girls, to get excited about electronics. Several different scenarios for creating and using student-friendly props (and the impact of this approach) are linked on their site anywear-academy.ucsc.edu. Their work inspired our lesson plans for “Designing Role Play Props with Micro:bit,” linked at nonscriptum.com/projects. This article was adapted from some of those lesson plans, which are freely available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 International License. We have additional materials there on adding LEDs instead of a servo, other fabrication options, and links to references. Anywear Academy is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2005816, “Social Wearables: Enhancing Girls' Computational Learning and Motivation.” We owe special…

Electrolyte solutions can even complete an electrical circuit that's plugged into a wall! Here we can see a light bulb with two wires that are not connected. When we place the wires into distilled water, which has no electrolytes in it, the bulb cannot light up. There are no ions to move charge and complete the circuit! In the electrolyte-rich Powerade, the ions are able to move from one wire to the other, completing the circuit and allowing the bulb to glow brightly! The more electrolytes that are present in the solution, the more current can be passed and the brighter the bulb can glow. For comparison, in a test with hard tap water, containing electrolytes like calcium and magnesium, the bulb glows, but nowhere near as brightly as with…

Need to do yard work during pollen season? Clean up that dusty shop? Survive the next zombie outbreak? This might be the project for you! Open Source Medical Supplies (OSMS) is excited to present the Fernando & de Souza powered air-purifying respirator (FDSPAPR), an open source PAPR developed by the Australian team of Dr. Shiranth Fernando, a registered dentist, and Nathan de Souza, a mechatronic engineer. Innovated for healthcare worker protection during the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDSPAPR has emerged as a lighter, quieter, and more affordable alternative to traditional commercial PAPRs. It provides filtered air, face and eye protection, and skin surface cooling — without masking or requiring a large fan unit and air exchange tube, like most commercial PAPRs. The FDSPAPR has undergone airflow velocity testing, and basic fogging…

PROJECTS: Toy Inventor's Notebook Here's a fun and easy update to the classic skill and action game Barrel of Monkeys. This version adds an easy skill level and other options for making and playing. And the monkeys are now long-armed versions of Makey, the robot mascot of Make: and Maker Faire. Simple to play: Dump the Makey bots in a pile. Then, holding one bot by the arm, link arms with another Makey bot and lift it up. Keep adding to your chain: How many bots can you link up before one falls? Whoever makes the longest chain of Makeys wins! MEET THE MONKEY Independent toy inventors Leonard Marks and Milton Dinhofer created the first version of this game, called “Chimp to Chimp.” It sold modestly at first but it…

$36–$55 amazon.com/dp/B07NVDSJZ7 Elenco is an established brand with quality stuff like Snap Circuits. Their Zivko hexapod was the cheapest decent-looking robot kit out there, and I wanted to discover what the low end is. Zivko's parts snap out of plastic frames, model airplane style. The gears are all plastic, but at this price I'm not surprised. In fact, I'm always impressed by the ingenuity of toy designers: Zivko moves six legs with just two motors. The printed instructions are clear, and aside from one major confusion, assembly went smoothly. Less than 10 seconds after I turned it on, it stopped walking and made a grinding noise. Was it repairable? Thankfully yes. After hearing back from Elenco, it turns out I'd failed to tighten some screws in the walking assembly all…

1 LILYPAD ARDUINO USB LilyPad Arduino is the original flavor of sewable circuit boards, developed by Dr. Leah Buechley and SparkFun Electronics. Since 2008, the original LilyPad design has inspired many other circular, hand-sewable boards. LilyPad Arduino USB is the latest version, featuring an ATmega32U4 microcontroller chip with built-in USB support, an on/off switch, and a JST connector for LiPo batteries. 2 ADAFRUIT FLORA Flora V3 is Adafruit's dedicated wearable electronics board, and the smallest full-featured one around. Flora has the same ATmega32U4 chip with USB support, plus beginner-proof power management that accepts versatile range of 3.5V to 16V DC. A full-color NeoPixel LED is perfect for providing visual feedback when you're debugging your wearable on the go. 3 ADAFRUIT CIRCUIT PLAYGROUND EXPRESS CPX is the PCB equivalent of a…