Table of contents for #58 in HackSpace

hsmag.cc/KeplerCasio The Casio F-91W is a design classic. It’s inspired a few remixes since its release in 1989 (or more accurately, since hardware became cheap and small enough that home tinkerers could replace its innards with something more useful). The latest maker to turn this classic timepiece into something with more functionality is Pegor, who has replaced the watch’s innards with a load of modern equipment, including a Texas Instruments CC2640 Arm Cortex-M3 chip. Pegor’s watch is Bluetooth-capable, has a notification bar, lets the user know when they’ve got a text, and has a battery life of roughly 15 days. It’s by no means finished – we came across this project because Pegor is burned out from working on it, and is looking for collaborators. If you think you can…

hsmag.cc/BerlinUhrNano There’s a clock in Berlin, on Budapester Strasse near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, that’s unlike any we’ve seen anywhere else. Its display shows no numerals, and there are no hands going round; instead there are rows of lights. Each of the red lights in the first row represents five hours. Each red light in the second row represents one hour. It’s a 24-hr clock so, to show 2 o’clock, you’d light up two red lights from the top row and four from the second row, making 14 hours. Each of the lights in the third row represents five minutes, and each of the lights in the fourth row represents one minute. It’s odd and unintuitive to those of us used to thinking of time in multiples of twelve,…

From $449 hsmag.cc/pixelpump Delivery: Jan 2023 There was a time when building circuit boards involved poking leads through holes and then using a soldering iron to secure these components in place. While some people still do it this way, many modern boards are ‘surface mount’, which means placing teeny packages on even tinier blobs of paste, then popping the whole board in an oven to reflow the solder paste and secure the components. Putting all these tiny components in the right place is, frankly, a right pain. The Pixel Pump is designed to make this process slightly less annoying. It has a small handheld part that holds a needle that you can use to pick up tiny components with a vacuum. You place the component, then a foot pedal releases…

Sourdough Chamber When maker, and keen baker, Trent Fehl first started making sourdough bread, he realised that keeping the starter at the correct, steady temperature wasn’t so easy. He also found there was no commercial kitchen countertop device that can maintain temperatures above and below room temperature. So, using his loaf, he built his own. By reversing the voltage on a Peltier cooler (a solid-state heat transfer device), controlled by a Raspberry Pi Zero and H-bridge, his Chamber can either pump heat from inside to the outside to cool the interior, or vice versa to heat it. This enables it to maintain a set temperature over long periods of time – perfect for sourdough starters and also pickling, mushrooms, and yogurt. hsmag.cc/SourdoughChamber Cupcake Machine If you have a sweet tooth,…

OK, so you’ve got a 3D printer. You’ve got some spools with a little filament left on them. What do you do? It’s obvious, isn’t it? You deck your kitchen out with the finest bag clips known to humanity. Yes, there are commercially available alternatives that can cost very little, but are they long enough to properly seal your flatbread? Do they let you get crisps without unclipping the bag? Do they have anatomically accurate human teeth? Thought not. It’s time to print your own. 1 THE PRACTICAL ONE hsmag.cc/PracticalClip This author has been using versions of this for about three years, printed in a variety of filaments, including some that are not particularly strong such as MetalFil. It’s dependable, easy to print, and a great way to finish off the…

The Silhouette cutters, as standard, have an ‘auto blade’ function where the Silhouette blade is twisted in a series of clicks to extend or retract the blade. These work well, but they are quite expensive and, if you become addicted to vinyl cutting, you might want to use a more affordable blade setup as you will blunt blades reasonably often. The most popular after-market option is the CB09 blade holder and blades. This blade holder works directly with the Silhouette Mk1 but needs a small adapter to fit the Cameo Mk4. There is a commercial one available, or indeed, there are lots of examples of 3D-printed adapters to download and print. The CB09 has lots of support and users, so there are heaps of discussions and tutorials to be found…

@concreted0g 3 COIL £19.95 heinnie.com/3-coil-crane I can’t imagine many days where I don’t use a craft knife or scalpel as a maker, from weeding vinyl cuts to cutting card and balsa, not forgetting box opening; it’s the everyday go-to tool. Craft knives and scalpels come in a wide range of shapes and sizes in both handle sections and blade choice – it’s handy to have a selection set up for different tasks. I’m a big fan of craft knives that can hide their blade. The X-ACTO knife is a classic design that doesn’t stow its blade, but has a lid. They are excellent tools; however, one flaw is that the lids often get removed if they’re jostled around during transit. Another personal favourite is the Swann-Morton Retractaway, which takes a…

hsmag.cc/DSKY We’ll admit, we first liked this project because of how gloriously retro it looks. Then we delved a little deeper, and now we love it even more. Bill Glasford has built a functioning replica of the display keyboard (DSKY) used on the Apollo Guidance Computer, the space-age avionics system used by NASA on its moon-landing equipment between 1966 and 1975. It’s a beautiful build, comprising two LCD screens, a Raspberry Pi, and three Arduinos, and featuring an array of 3D-printed parts. What’s more impressive is that it runs the assembly code that the original computer ran all those decades ago.…

This custom PC was designed in Blender using its Mesh editing and Icosphere functions – that’s impressive enough in itself, as we’re amazed by anyone who can take on the enormous complexity of Blender. Its split sphere design lends it to efficient cooling; that and the big fan on the front. The builder of this work of art is Jean Roberto De Iacovo, who printed it on his Creality Ender-3 Pro, modified with a quieter mainboard and more efficient fans. The motherboard is fitted to the chassis using M3 bolts screwed into brass insets, and the copper highlights are printed in GIANTARM Silk Copper Filament. It’s a fascinating build and, what’s more, it houses a fully functional gaming PC; for full details, check out the write-up in Custom PC magazine,…

The realms of making and amateur cookery have much in common. Chefs/makers mix up ingredients/components at home to concoct a creation that they hope others will admire and enjoy. So, combining the two hobbies is surely a recipe for success? In this feature, we’ll be sampling a wide range of culinary-related projects, so there’s sure to be something to pique anyone’s appetite to remake one, adapt an idea, or be inspired to create a unique invention of their own. While many of the projects are based on electronic ingredients such as single-board computers and microcontrollers, they vary greatly in maker skill level. So don’t worry if you’re a novice in the kitchen/workshop. For our hors d'œuvre, we present some handy cookery gadgets, including a robotic sous-chef that uses machine learning…

Smart Bartender If you enjoy sipping a cocktail but don’t want the hassle of making them, a robotic bartender is an option. It’s a popular project in the maker world with many variations – we’ve even seen one housed in a grandfather clock – but Hacker Shack’s Smart Bartender is one of the slickest. With a Raspberry Pi 3 as a brain, it’s pretty smart too. Able to mix up to six ingredients together at the same time, it can serve you anything from a rum and coke to a Long Island iced tea. You can easily change the ingredients by placing the pump tubes at the rear into different bottles. You could also customise the device to add more ingredients to make a wider range of drinks, or even…

What I used ≥ Raspberry Pi Pico ≥ I2C 20×4 LCD display ≥ 2 × DC 5 A buck converters ≥ 12 V 4L/min water pump ≥ Hall effect flow sensor ≥ DC385 Motor ≥ 2 × 10 kΩ linear potentiometers ≥ 2.2 kΩ ¼ watt resistor ≥ Bicycle bell ≥ SPST rocker switch ≥ 2 × brass quick hose connector with ¾˝ to ½˝ adapters ≥ Brass G½˝ BSP externally threaded to 8mm barb ≥ Brass ½ BSP internally threaded to 8mm barb ≥ 8 mm ID medical tubing or hose (approx 300mm) ≥ 3D-printed and laser-cut case parts Rainwater harvesting is nothing new, and water butts have been popular with gardeners for hundreds of years. If your house is on a water meter, watering from butts is an…

Wobbly scenery, suspiciously easy-to-shift boulders, incredible space-age outfits – polystyrene has been a stand-in for much heavier items for decades in the worlds of film and theatre. With its tolerance for being carved, painted, and knocked about, it’s an obvious choice of material when called upon to conjure up a fancy dress or cosplay outfit. YouTube is your friend when it comes to design ideas too. Grant (aka The King of Random) shows how to accurately slice sections of polystyrene using his Styro-Slicer ‘hotwire’ foam cutter: hsmag.cc/StyrofoamCutter. It’s ideal for precision tasks such as his Mini Master Sword and homemade planes, for which he provides downloadable templates, and can even add bevelled edges. Having cut out, glued together, and sanded out imperfections on your sword, you just need to spray or…

CROWD SUPPLY $71 - $138 crowdsupply.com CROWD SUPPLY $399 crowdsupply.com Yes, our beloved Raspberry Pi Zero has a HAT to convert it into an affordable dual-channel SDR. The CaribouLite was specifically designed for the DIY community to allow full control of the FPGA hardware, software, and firmware. The HAT features a dual-channel radio that spans frequency from 30MHz to 6GHz on Channel 1 and Sub 1GHz on Channel 2. There is a lot more specific information on the website about the frequency ranges as tested, so be sure to head over and look at the details to see if this board will fit into your workflow. And, as with all the boards in this roundup, be sure to understand all the legalities of the way you use your SDR in…

CROWD SUPPLY $699 crowdsupply.com With the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) over the past few years, there is a need for new ways to develop, test, and deploy high-complexity wireless frameworks. The iotSDR platform allows SDR developers and enthusiasts to design innovative algorithms in multiband and multimode environments of all the current IoT standards. LoRa, Sigfox, Weightless-P, NB-IoT, Zigbee, and of course, Bluetooth are all compatible. And if none of those ecosystems work for you, the iotSDR can be used to develop your own custom modulation. It works as a development environment, or as a deployable gateway, and looks to be extremely expandable and versatile. You can use a variety of popular open-source software packages in conjunction with the iotSDR, like Xilinx PYNQ Python, Jupyter Notebook, GNU Radio, and…

hsmag.cc/PKE-Meter This project really combines a few of our favourite things, with MicroPython, 3D-printed parts, and a load of electronic goodies from Pimoroni: a LiPo Amigo Pro charger, a DS-959MG servo, a Display Pack 2.0 for Pico, a 400mAh battery, and a Pico Proto prototyping board. Oh, and a Raspberry Pi Pico W. Just like in the film Ghostbusters, the PKE meter raises and lowers its arms as a response to the strength of a nearby signal, though in the case of this build, it’s looking for WiFi signal rather than ectoplasmic activity.…

hsmag.cc/TableTopArcade This head-to-head tabletop arcade machine is perfect for those occasions when you need to win at Street Fighter 2 and see the defeat in your opponent’s eyes. It’s also how mw33212 used up a load of walnut offcuts that he had after working on other projects. We’d love to say that the plans are available for all to see, but to quote the maker, “sadly I think you would be a little disappointed by my ‘plans’, which were basically just lots of Post-it notes with triangles and scribbles on them. I generally have an idea about an overall design, and then just get started.”…

hsmag.cc/TedToaster Ted the Talking Toaster Of course, what you really need in the kitchen is an appliance with personality. Created by Dane and Nicole of the 8 Bits and a Byte YouTube channel, Ted is a toaster with an attitude. With a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B brain assisted by a Google AIY Voice Kit and the Dialogflow chatbot API, he can listen and talk back to you. The addition of a pair of eyebrows moved by mini servos enables Ted to convey a range of emotions, including angry, sad, and frisky! OnionBot Robot Sous-Chef Sometimes when you’re busy in the kitchen, preparing various ingredients while managing cooking timings, you may feel like you need an extra pair of hands. Maybe a robotic sous-chef could help? That’s just what design…

Smart Indoor Herb Garden With the advent of low-cost LED lighting, along with hydroponics, growing food indoors is now a serious business; there are even large subterranean farms producing lettuces and other crops. Advantages include a reduction in the required growing time, higher yields, and lower water use. You can do much the same on a smaller scale at home by creating a smart garden, as lots of makers have done. One example is this smart indoor herb garden made by Sunyecz22. Based around an Arduino Mega, it features a waterproof RGB LED strip, TFT touchscreen, real-time clock, and four soil moisture sensors – one per planter pot. The smart-looking enclosure is made from 3D-printed parts, including an adjustable shaft for the LED lighting. hsmag.cc/HerbGarden Urban Kitchen Garden If you’ve…

Sticking with the idea of one material standing in for another, this low-cost waterfall makes use of lots of unwanted polystyrene sheets and blocks, with paint used to disguise what it’s really-made from. DIY Joy saw a similar idea at a friend’s house and was fooled, in any case. Start by marking out a wall of bricks with a craft knife and then etching out the blocks. Paint your walls a brick-ish shade and leave to dry, before gluing together at right angles (or a design of your choosing). Carve out a bowl from another piece of polystyrene and paint to look like a stone well, including a hole for a pipe to pump water back up into the waterfall mechanism. Add corrugated plastic or aluminium sheeting to form a…

Tear-out is annoying, but not inevitable. It’s a consequence of the way wood is formed, and happens when, instead of cutting through the grain of wood, bits are splintered off at the end of a cut. There’s a simple way to avoid this, and that’s to support the back of the workpiece so that it all stays where it should be, rather than getting obliterated by sharp bits of spinning carbide. To show how this is going to work in practice, we measured the clearance gap in the base of our mitre saw and found it to be about 13 mm. The kerf of the saw-blade measured 3mm, so there’s 5mm unsupported on either side of the saw-blade as you cut. This is fine for rough work, but for anything…

If you read HackSpace magazine regularly, you’ll know that we’ve been experimenting with colour printing onto PCBs. After running through quite a few tests, we’ve now got a bit of an idea what works and what doesn’t. This is still an experimental process, so good results aren’t guaranteed, but this works for us. Sublimation printing is a process where you use a desktop printer that looks a bit like a regular inkjet printer (but is in fact a dedicated sublimation printer), to print onto a special type of paper. You can then put this paper on top of a different material and heat the whole to up to about 190°C, and the ink from the paper ‘sublimates’ into a gas and transfers onto whatever it’s pressed against. It allows you…