Table of contents for Vol 95 - Winter 2025 in Make:

What's on your maker wish list this holiday season? Alanna Okun Brooklyn, New York (Threadboard) All the best pieces of leftover ribbon, wrapping paper, and boxes I can get my hands on! Ramona Sharples San Francisco, California (Pocket Video Synthesizer) I hope Santa brings me a hot air rework station so I can fix my mistakes! Christopher “Kit” Biggs Brisbane, Australia (My Voice-Controlled Workbench) I want to assemble a mechanical wristwatch with parts from AliExpress. Then add an e-ink dial.…

Know a project that would be perfect for Made on Earth? Let us know: editor@makezine.com MASCOT MADNESS INSTAGRAM.COM/HAND.SEWN.HEADS Oversized, plush mascot characters are a common feature at entertainment venues like theme parks and sports arenas. Ian Langohr takes this concept to a new level, bringing characters and creatures of all sorts to life through his unique hand-sewn, mascot-style heads. Based in Montreal, Quebec, Langohr's skill is built upon many years of sculpting education. He gained experience in stone and wood carving, bronze casting, and plasma cutting during high school and later majored in sculpture and installation at Toronto's Ontario College of Art and Design. He then spent time working with foam, fabric, and plastics at a mascot fabrication company and now uses all his skills to help companies and artists…

Normally I prefer to avoid mentioning product names, but in this case I am going to break my own rule, because I cannot remain diplomatically neutral. First, I need to provide some orientation. There was a time when microcontrollers were not remotely “user-friendly.” Back in the 1980s, when they were first introduced, you had to program them in assembly language to move bytes around in a very laborious fashion. Compilers for C language were introduced about a decade later, but they tended to be expensive (yes, you had to buy them) and they were still quite troublesome and time-consuming. Let's suppose you had a PIC microcontroller, and you wanted it to process an analog input from a temperature sensor. When the voltage from the sensor increased beyond a certain level, you…

I like to photograph the things I build, and I think many makers feel a similar impulse to keep a visual record. The challenge is to make a picture look reasonably professional. Photographing objects is certainly a lot easier than photographing people, but even an object that just sits there and waits for me will entail three challenges: highlights, shadows, and background. Here I'll describe my ongoing struggle to keep these variables under control. THE UNSATISFACTORY TENT I'm fussy about lighting. I want a soft gradation of tones from bright to dark, but I also want highlights that are clearly defined. As for shadows, I like to eliminate them completely. Many people don't seem to mind if a photograph shows an object sitting on a flat surface and casting a…

1 Raspberry Pi 5 Released in 2023, Raspberry Pi's flagship single-board computer (SBC) is still capable of crunching the numbers required for many AI applications, including lightweight large language models (LLMs). Add a Raspberry Pi Camera Module or USB webcam for image classification or object detection. You also have the option of adding an official AI HAT+, which offers up to 13 (Hailo-8 variant) or 26 (Hailo-8L) tera operations per second (TOPS), allowing you to process larger machine learning (ML) models faster. 2 Nvidia Jetson Orin Nano Super The Jetson Orin Nano Super is an update to the Jetson Orin Nano, and cheaper, too! Boasting an Nvidia Ampere GPU with 1024 CUDA cores and 32 Tensor cores, the Super variant can achieve up to 67 TOPS. Much like the Raspberry…

Beginner-Friendly Boards 1 Adafruit Circuit Playground Express This board is packed with features: 10 onboard NeoPixels, capacitive touch inputs, and sensors for motion, sound, light, and temperature. It's ideal for newcomers, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. The large, sewable pads make it easy to integrate into fabric-based builds. There's also a Bluetooth version (Circuit Playground Bluefruit) for wireless interaction. • Try it in: reactive fairy wings, glowing hat decor, necklaces, motion-triggered lights. 2 Adafruit Sparkle Motion Stick This board was designed with cosplay in mind. It runs WLED and plugs directly into a USB battery (no cords required). It includes a screw terminal block for LEDs, a mic, and an IR sensor, and fits inside a custom enclosure that allows for button control. Power your lights right through…

In 1975, Steve Wozniak had a design for the Apple I PC board. He was hanging out with Steve Jobs, who was keen to manufacture and sell the boards, but neither of them had any money. Woz was more interested in showing off his design to other engineers at the Homebrew Computer Club. On stage at Maker Faire Bay Area at Mare Island in September, Woz recounted the story of designing the Apple I computer 50 years ago. When I asked him what he was doing in 1975, he talked non-stop for 30 minutes. His father introduced him to electronics, but Woz was mostly self-taught. “I was already skilled at building computers by 1975,” he said. “Five years before, I built the little ‘cream soda' computer,” named after his favorite…

THE 8 OLSK MACHINES AT A GLANCE. An Italian living in Germany, DANIELE INGRASSIA is a Fab Lab guru, a machine builder, and the owner of InMachines Ingrassia GmbH, a small company located in a small town close to Hamburg. In 2016, I was a fresh graduate of Fab Academy. Just after moving to Germany, I started teaching as a Fab Academy instructor at the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences. Since they were so kind as to give me the key to their massive Fab Lab, I also started building machines. I began making LaserDuo, a massive dual laser cutter, that year, and the machine building activity continues 9 years later at my company InMachines, with the Open Lab Starter Kit (OLSK) — a set of open source designs for…

When I first began designing simple analog computers as a high school senior in 1962, very few light-sensitive electronic components were available. One was a miniature solar cell — technically a photodiode — that I used to detect the position of a meter needle in my homemade language translating analog computer. The Smithsonian Institution describes that computer, which I donated 35 years ago, as an early example of a hobbyist computer. By 1966, the desktop in my Texas A&M dorm room included a dozen surplus silicon solar cells left over from government satellite projects; also present were several phototransistors and cadmium sulfide (CdS) photoresistors. Semiconductor light sensors were making progress! Today my electronics shop includes hundreds of semiconductor light sensors. Light-sensitive semiconductors either produce an electrical current or alter their…

You've been hired to work on a large humanoid robot along with a dozen other engineers. Your job is to develop the arms and hands: moving them to specific locations, picking up objects, shaking human hands, and so on. You do not have direct sensor input, as that's another engineer's job. You also need to work with the locomotion team, as the arms need to move to help balance the robot. Everyone meets one day to figure out how all this will work together. In the conference room, on a giant whiteboard, you map out all the components and how they'll interact. You need the cameras and motion sensors in the head to send raw data to the main processing core, which computes motions for the arms and legs. But…

Pairing addressable LEDs with a programmable LED controller simplifies hardware and animations. Many controllers run on the ESP32, using Wi-Fi to host browser-based software that customizes patterns and organizes playlists, no coding required. Anyone can flash open-source control software like WLED to an off-the-shelf board, but a prefab controller provides power management and built-in sensor integration to optimize space and simplify wiring. From plug-and-play to completely customizable, the right LED controller will perk up any project! 1 Pixelblaze V3 Standard Expandable Innovation: Pixelblaze V3 Standard's proprietary browser-accessible software makes it easy to assemble a pattern playlist. Its unique JavaScript pattern editor creates and modifies animations while instantly propagating changes to the display. A 3D pixel map feature keeps animations looking consistent on any possible LED configuration. Multiple Pixelblaze controllers can…

VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF LIFE Thank you for your outstanding Make: Volume 94. While some of us are no doubt interested in Arduinos and LEDs to the exclusion of all else, many readers see the Make: world much more broadly. This issue includes prop and model making, painting, DIY drones, puzzle rooms, alternative soldering techniques, workshop design and safety, robot costumes, cinematographer techniques, simple rockets, and even squirt bottles! The articles seem extensive and complete, and span a broad range of abilities and skills so we can all get in on the act. Bravo! —Randall Smith, via email Production Manager Craig Couden responds: Thanks Randall! We try to strike a balance of interests and skills — even in this electronics-heavy issue. We hope you find something to like! MACGYVER-IN-A-BOX CONTEST…

The creator of Ponytrap, Quentin Thomas-Oliver, is an American living in the Netherlands. Ponytrap is a band with a 13-foot-tall drum machine called Max, built to be the collaborator Quentin always wanted - reliable and predictable. Quentin and Max play a strange blend of heavy metal and classical strings. Ponytrap is traveling the world from the Netherlands to France, Germany, Prague, and the United States; they came to Maker Faire Bay Area in 2024 and back to the Exploratorium in San Francisco in 2025. Quentin has become a touring musician in part because, along the long and winding way, he became a maker by building a robotic bandmate. I caught up with Quentin at Maker Faire Lille, where we talked about Ponytrap's history and how he became a Maker. My…

The solderless breadboard is a cornerstone of electronics education and prototyping — a rectangular waffle that conducts electricity in configurations of columns and rows, for testing and determining where wires and components should connect to one another in a circuit, before more permanent measures like soldering. They're grids, the bare canvas of so many kinds of patterns. Generally they're made of plastic, but I wanted to see if I, a lifelong knitter, could make a functional one out of my personal favorite material: yarn. Textiles-as-electronics have a rich history in their own right. As I've learned more about programming and circuitry, what made it all start to gel was when I began to see technical schematics as patterns, like in knitting or needlepoint. Row by row, stitch by stitch, the…

ROBOTICS BASICS HOW A 3D PRINTER WORKS Skill Seeker: Young Maker Edition by Steph Piper is an activity and guide book that gamifies the learning process of key maker skills, putting beginner makers on a STEAM path where they'll want to level up! Designed for makers ages 8–12, special “skill trees” provide a structured path of skills to learn, leading young makers from one interconnected accomplishment to the next, gently challenging without overwhelming. Twelve foundational skill trees are included, covering such subjects as 3D printing, vinyl cutting, electronics, crafting, and robotics. To start readers down their paths, special “Learn & Do” activities explain how seemingly complex things work, like simple guidelines to successfully design 3D models for printing; using layers to efficiently create drawings, paintings, and digital art; and even…

With no flagships to grace our cover last year, our focus was on the many and varied RP2350-based boards being released. After a deluge of SKUs last year, the Pi people had been fairly quiet, and it was with great relief that my final “anything before the cut-off?” email to Raspberry Pi's Eben Upton got an eager late-night response that something special was indeed brewing (and in time for Maker Faire Bay Area in September!). Arduino had been similarly quiet, releasing a smaller R4 in their Nano form factor, and some kits and accessories, but not much else of note since our last guide. So it was again with relief that I received some extremely cryptic news that “Project Imola” was coming soon, and would be “revolutionary” and “unlike anything…

1 OpenTheremin The OpenTheremin is a modern version of the legendary instrument invented by Lev Theremin back in 1920. The theremin is played with two antennas, one to control pitch and one for volume. This kit features two heterodyne oscillators, a built-in Arduino-compatible microcontroller, auto-calibration, a high-quality digital to analog audio converter, and two control voltage (CV) outputs for using the antennas to control other devices. The deluxe bundle comes with a stand, or you can get the kit and make your own enclosure like I did. 2 Adafruit NeoTrellis M4 Adafruit's NeoTrellis M4 is a delightful device with satisfyingly squishy buttons and many uses. It comes with a tranche of excellent resources and materials, including several example projects with step-by-step instructions. The device comes fully assembled so you don't…