Table of contents for #62 in HackSpace

The fact that it seems ordinary now is a testament to how effective Raspberry Pi has been in making the technology accessible to so many people Raspberry Pi computers have changed the landscape of making in many ways. They were the first widely available, cheap, small computers with accessible GPIO pins. This meant that for a relatively small amount of money, you could embed a Linux computer in your builds, and get it to control the electronics. This might seem like an ordinary thing now, but it wasn’t until Raspberry Pi did it. It was revolutionary. The fact that it seems ordinary now is a testament to how effective Raspberry Pi has been in making the technology accessible to so many people. This issue, we’re celebrating this seismic shift in…

hsmag.cc/BulbasaurMiniMod There are many benefits to using open-source hardware: one is the knowledge that even if the company you bought it from ceases production, there will always (as long as someone is willing) be repairs available. You can take your open-source hardware to bits and learn how it works without voiding the warranty, you’ll never have interoperability issues, you know you’re buying quality rather than a branding ‘experience’… and, if you want, you can always modify your device to look like a Pokémon character. That’s what Neil Hengist has done with his Prusa MINI. The modifications are entirely aesthetic, so the operation of the printer is unchanged. There’s no need to move switches or any electronics, but Neil does recommend having a couple of spools of Pistachio Green PETG on…

If you’ve ever dropped and smashed a phone that had a train ticket on it, forcing you to pay for a new ticket, as well as the price of a phone repair, you’ll be well aware of how broken tech isn’t as good as working tech. For a standard-sized bit of kit, you can mitigate your risk by buying a case; if you’re working with a more unusual shape, the best thing to do is print your own protection, as the Ruiz brothers have done with this 3D-printed number for the Adafruit NeoTrellis M4. It’s designed for flexible filaments, and adds a bit of protection and a grip to the NeoTrellis’s acrylic case. Like it? Get the design files here hsmag.cc/FlexibleFilamentBumper, and see if you can work out how to…

Long-time contributor to The MagPi, Phil is a freelance writer and editor with a focus on technology. @philkingeditor You’ll Need RaspberryPiPicoW Anvilaccountfreetier) RGBLED 3330 Ω resistors 4male-male jumper wires With built-in wireless connectivity, Pico W is ideal for creating Internet of Things (IoT) projects. To make it even simpler, Anvil has released a Pico W IoT toolkit to enable you to connect easily, and securely, to web apps you create on the Anvil platform. There’s a drag-and-drop web UI builder, built-in database, user authentication, email integration, HTTP APIs, and more – and it all talks to your Pico W. By using Anvil’s special UF2 firmware image, you can code programs on Pico W in MicroPython as normal, with a few extra lines to connect to Anvil, then create a web…

hsmag.cc/Rota This thing is unbelievably beautiful. What does it do? The best answer is that we don’t care; truth is beauty, beauty truth, nothing else matters. But if you must insist on more information, it’s a device for counting. The maker built the first one as a gift for a duck hunting lodge, but since then, he’s had interest from many more people, and has improved the design up to the current iteration, version 3. The device uses a few esoteric parts: at its heart is an AVR64DD28 microcontroller; it also uses three IN-12B Nixie tubes, an NCH8200HV Nixie power supply, and an Automatic Electric Type 24 rotary dial. There are a range of kits with varying amounts of components included, and they’re selling like hot cakes.…

hsmag.cc/ServoWordClock This word clock is different to others. Where the traditional approach is to light up the words in order to spell out a phrase that tells the time, this version has all the letters lit at the same time – but not in focus. Each letter is lit from behind by an RGB LED mounted onto a linear actuator. To display the letter, the actuator brings that letter into focus; to stop displaying it, it moves the LED so that it’s not in focus. So it’s simple in theory, but in practice, it uses 114 servos, 320 3D-printed parts, a custom PCB for the main electronics, a laser-cut acrylic case, and a whole lot of engineering precision.…

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 IT’S ALIVE! Coding: it genuinely is a superpower. I’m working on a very small project that lights up a blue LED if it’s too cold, a red LED if it’s too hot, and a white LED if it’s about right. As an object, it’s useless, because everyone in the house has a different idea of what constitutes ‘too cold’ and ‘too hot’. All it does is give me heart palpitations as I visualise the money I’m spending on heating. Despite that, it works, and I made it, and it gives me great pleasure when I think of the light bulb moment…

Winter is coming. It’s cold, it’s wet, and it can be the most difficult season to find the literal and figurative energy to keep making things. The cost of heating is getting higher for everyone, and a dedicated workshop can quickly turn into a money-eating monster in the winter months. For all of the advantages of having a workshop, there are some pretty big disadvantages, too. A permanent workspace is exactly that. It continues to exist in space even when you’re not using it. Some tools, consumables, and machinery can be ruined by cold temperatures, and in winter, a workshop becomes an extra place to heat. In this article, you’ll find out how to heat a workshop more effectively, and how to stay warm yourself without relying on power-hungry heaters.…

There’s a project that’s been rattling around my brain for quite a few years now – mount a load of LEDs inside a bike wheel so that, as it spins, the wheel lights up. With a bit of mathematics, it should be possible to turn them on and off at the right time to display an image. This is by no means my idea. In fact, there used to be a commercial product that did it, though, as far as I can see, this is no longer available. The basic idea of a persistence of vision (POV) display is relatively simple. You just need some LEDs that you can control, a microcontroller to control them, and something to sense the current position of the wheel. All of this is eminently…

@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 YOU’LL NEED It is a truth universally acknowledged that someone in possession of a bit of tech will want some cases and covers for it. If only to hide what you’ve bought from the rest of the household. But some things don’t come with cases or covers, especially if they are things you have made from scratch. In this article, we’ll explore how we can use 3D-printed components as stiffening and connecting elements for cases and covers. NON-SEW SEWING Sewing is great. It is one of…

Despite loving all things digital, Mike admits to being a bit of a Luddite, vinyl records and all. With streaming services gradually replacing broadcast radio and TV, it might seem that radio is yesterday’s technology, but the reality is quite different. Although the word radio isn’t usually used in the same breath, so many of the technologies on which today’s world relies depend on radio communication. Included here are mobile/cellular phones, WiFi access points and the numerous devices that connect to them, cordless home phones, car keys, and remote control units for garage doors, central heating and more. What’s more, it’s quite feasible for you to incorporate radio remote control in your projects, and achieve a greater range than you’d manage with infrared. Here, we introduce radio technology, explain how…

@ben_everard ARDUINO € 55 | arduino.cc We’ve tested out a lot of soldering kits over the years, and there’s a very diverse range available. Some are simple and fun, to give people their first taste of soldering. Some are complex and designed to push your skills. Some are a way of getting short-run hardware without the added expense of someone assembling it for you. Where does the Arduino Make Your UNO Kit fit into all this? There’s no particularly complex soldering – it’s all through-hole, with no small components or parts too close to each other. The one bit that could be difficult (the USB-to-serial adaptor) comes as a presoldered module. However, there is quite a lot of it. An experienced solderer can probably do everything in an hour or…

hsmag.cc/VFDClockKit lf, like us, you have a box of Soviet-era VFD tubes that you bought on a whim from a man in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, you could spend ages deciphering the pinouts, assemble the right power supply, and work out the logic of making data appear on the gorgeous glowing seven-segment displays. Or, you could buy a kit such as this one by Bolt Industries. It’s sold as a kit, and looks to us like it’s not for beginners. Which is fine, because we’re not. The display technology may be of the Cold War era, but you get a choice of control options: the kit comes in a TTL (Transistor–transistor logic) edition that uses only 7400 and 4000 series integrated circuits, or a Raspberry Pi Pico-based version that runs on software.…

hsmag.cc/PneumaticEngine As countless dads around the world will tell you on Christmas morning, LEGO Technic™ is not just for kids. This device is a seriously grown-up pneumatic engine, which converts a two-bar air supply into rotation motion via a single pneumatic cylinder and some ingenious switching techniques. Rather than spark plugs or valves, the maker has chosen to control the flow of air within the engine by using adjustable cams that press on flexible rubber pipes, closing and opening the air supply to affect the engine’s air supply and timing. The video by Nico71 is a mesmerising watch, and he’s made full build instructions available for a very reasonable €10.…

Depending on which side of the Atlantic Ocean you live, you’re probably familiar with the work of either Rube Goldberg or Heath Robinson. These two cartoonists drew elaborate machines for doing everyday tasks. Although these artists probably never thought that their machines would be – or could be – built, there are people who have dedicated countless hours to building machines inspired by them. Joseph Herscher has spent the past 14 years of his life building and videoing some of the most elaborate machines around. The results are on YouTube (hsmag.cc/JosephsMachinesYT). We caught up with Joseph to find out what he’s been up to, and how to make our own elaborate machines. HackSpace: Your first YouTube video is of a machine that squashes a Creme Egg. How did that come…

Mike Carroll is an author, teacher, and co-creator of a whole system of building electronic circuits using commonly found items. He’s bringing up the next generation of engineers in his school district just north of Philadelphia, and if you have some pocket change and a bit of cardboard, you too can put together the building blocks of an electronic engineering system. Check out scrappycircuits.com, buy the book, Scrappy Circuits, and be amazed by how much you can do with some paper clips, aluminium foil, and cardboard, and rethink that expensive Christmas present you were going to get your nieces and nephews. HackSpace Hi Mike! First of all, tell us a bit about Scrappy Circuits. Mike Carroll Scrappy Circuits is an innovative and scrappy way to learn about electrical circuits for…

@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. Who doesn’t like a wildly unnecessary number of LEDs? Actually, it turned out that one person in Bristol Hackspace – where we’ve been testing out this technology – doesn’t. Matt Glasspole, we send our apologies. For the rest of us, let’s dive in to how to control a mind-bending quantity of dots of light in near-perfect synchronisation. When it comes to hacker-friendly colourful LEDs, it’s almost always WS2812Bs and their cousins WS2811s. These are cheap, widely available, and easy to use. The only difference between WS2812Bs and WS2811s is that the former have the control IC and LED in the same package, while the latter…

@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. The Raspberry Pi Pico W microcontroller has just got support for CircuitPython. Let’s take a really quick look around. For the most part, using Pico W is exactly the same as using Pico. The pinout is the same, and you’ll have exactly the same features available. However, you also have added network connectivity. First, you need to get the software. You can download a UF2 file of CircuitPython for Pico W from hsmag.cc/PicoWCircuitP. At the time of writing, the latest version was 8.0.0-beta.4. There wasn’t yet a stable version for Pico W. This should be fine for most cases, but obviously, a beta version might…

@devinck Custom arcade builds have been a popular project for many DIY electronic enthusiasts. Personally, I have built over 15 different arcade machines over the years. Yes, I counted! From full-size cabinets to tabletop versions, and even a few that can fit in your pocket. It’s a fun project for beginners and advanced builders alike. You can easily build one that does not require any soldering from a complete kit, or you can go all out and design a 100% custom build, including designing your own PCBs. It’s one of those topics that has a robust marketplace and community, making it easy to jump in, no matter what your skill level. In this round-up, I’ll be looking at a wide variety of kits and components, all focused on building your…