How To Build Your Own Google AIY Without The Kit

May 30, 2017 by Inderpreet Singh 52 Comments

Google’s voice assistant has been around for a while now and when Amazon released its Alexa API and ported the PaaS Cloud code to the Raspberry Pi 2 it was just a matter of time before everyone else jumped on the fast train to maker kingdom. Google just did it in style.

Few know that the Google Assistant API for the Raspberry Pi 3 has been out there for some time now but when they decided to give away a free kit with the May 2017 issues of MagPi magazine, they made an impression on everyone. Unfortunately the world has more makers and hackers and the number of copies of the magazine are limited.

In this writeup, I layout the DIY version of the AIY kit for everyone else who wants to talk to a cardboard box. I take a closer look at the free kit, take it apart, put it together and replace it with DIY magic. To make things more convenient, I also designed an enclosure that you can 3D print to complete the kit. Lets get started.

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Trademarking Makerspace (Again)

April 11, 2017 by Brian Benchoff 31 Comments

A British company has filed a trademark application for the word ‘MakerSpace’. While we’ve seen companies attempt to latch on to popular Maker phrases before, Gratnells Limited, the company in question, is a manufacturer of plastic containers, carts, and other various storage solutions. These products apparently provide a space to store all the stuff you make. Something along those lines.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen someone try to glom onto the immense amount of marketing Make: has put into the term ‘makerspace’. In 2015, UnternehmerTUM MakerSpaceGmbH, an obviously German tech accelerator based in Munich, filed an application to trademark the word ‘Makerspace’. A few days later, we got word this makerspace wasn’t trying to enforce anything, they were just trying to keep the rug from being pulled out from under them. It was a defensive trademark, if something like that could ever exist (and it can’t under US trademark law). Swift and efficient German bureaucracy prevailed, and the trademark was rejected.

The trademark in question here covers goods including, ‘metal hardware and building materials’, ‘trolleys, trolleys with trays’, ‘guide rails of non-metallic materials’, and ‘lids for containers’, among other storage-related items. While this is far outside the usual meaning for a ‘makerspace’ – a building or club with a whole bunch of tools – if this trademark is approved, there is always the possibility of overzealous solicitors.

Fortunately, Gratnells released a statement today saying they would not defend or continue this trademark. This is in light of the recent, limited reaction to the trademark application. The word Makerspace is safe again another day.

Thanks [Tom] for the tip.

Embed With Elliot: Microcontroller Makefiles

March 15, 2016 by Elliot Williams 10 Comments

Last time on Embed with Elliot, I began my celebration of the make command’s 40th birthday next month. We discussed using the default rules and how to augment them with your own variables defined in a makefile. Next, I’ll walk you through some makefiles that can be used for real-world microcontroller code development. This week, we’ll focus on one for the AVR platform, and later on, I’ll run through a slightly more complicated version for the ST32M series of ARM Cortex micros.

Along the way, we’ll pick up a couple of tricks, but the aim is to keep the makefiles minimal, readable, and easily extensible. Once you get a little taste of the power of writing your own makefiles, you probably won’t be able to stop adding bells and whistles — custom routines for flashing, checking the size of binaries, generating assembly listings, etc. I’ll leave the extras up to you, but you’ll eventually find that anything you do can be automated with a makefile.

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Embed With Elliot: March Makefile Madness

March 11, 2016 by Elliot Williams 36 Comments

The make tool turns the big 4-0 next month, and we thought we’d start up the festivities early. In a two-part series, I’ll cover some of the make background that I think is particularly useful, and then focus on microcontroller-specific applications. If you’re still cut-and-pasting a general purpose makefile to run your toolchain, hopefully you’ll get enough insight here to start rolling your own. It can be a lot simpler than it appears!

Just as soon as the C programming language was invented, and projects started to get a little bit bigger than a “hello world”, it became obvious that some tool was needed to organize and automate compilation. After all, if you’ve got a program that’s spread over a number of files, modules, or libraries, it’s a hassle to have to re-compile them all any time you make a change to just a single section of code. If some parts haven’t changed, you’re just wasting time by re-compiling them. But who can keep track of all of this? Make can!

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Mad Max Inspired Flamethrower Ukulele

June 7, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 21 Comments

The new Mad Max movie is getting a lot of buzz, and a few people are calling it a modern classic. There’s a flamethrower guitar in the movie, which means it’s time for cosplay accouterments. Our ‘ol buddy [Caleb] loves flamethrowers and poofers, so hacking together a Doof Warrior inspired flamethrowing ukulele was natural for him.

The fuel for this uke is a can of butane actuated with a caulking gun. This setup is actually pretty clever; by removing the locking tab on the caulking gun, butane is released when the gun’s trigger is squeezed, but stops when the trigger is released. The igniter is a simple grill igniter is used to light the gas.

[Caleb] is rather famous for his flamethrowing creations. His life-size fire-breathing piranha plant uses a similar setup to shoot fire.

Video below.

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Hackaday Reader [David] Wins A Camera From Make And Nikon

July 5, 2014 by Adam Fabio 11 Comments

Make the shot fixed [David Schwarz] whipped up this moving time-lapse camera rig and won himself a sweet Nikon setup. You might remember our post about the Nikon Make:The Shot Challenge. [David] saw our post, and started thinking about what he wanted to enter. Like a true engineer, he finally came up with his idea with just 3 days left in the contest.

[David] wanted to build a moving time-lapse rig, but he didn’t have the aluminum extrusion rails typically used to build one. He did have some strong rope though, as well as a beefy DC motor with a built-in encoder. [David] mounted a very wide gear on the shaft of the motor, then looped the rope around the gear and two idler pulleys to ensure the gear would have a good bite on the rope. The motor is controlled by an Arduino, which also monitors the encoder to make sure the carriage doesn’t move too far between shots.

[ 6__pulley_system David] built and tested his rig over a weekend. On Monday morning, he gave the rig its first run. The video came out pretty good, but he knew he could get a better shot. That’s when Murphy struck. The motor and controller on his rig decided to give up the ghost. With the contest deadline less than 24 hours away, [David] burned the midnight oil and replaced his motor and controller.

Tuesday morning, [David] pulled out his trump card – a trip to Tally Lake in Montana, USA. The equipment worked perfectly, and nature was cooperating too. The trees, lake, and the shadows on the mountains in the background made for an incredible shot. Once the time-lapse photos were in the can, [David] rushed home, stitched and stabilized the resulting video. He submitted his winning entry with just 2 hours to spare.

Click past the break for more on [David’s] time-lapse rig, and to see his final video.

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Hack A Camera, Win A Nikon

May 2, 2014 by Mike Szczys 36 Comments

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Several juicy prizes from Nikon are ripe for the plucking. Our friends at MAKE are hosting a Nikon sponsored challenge. Grand prize is an Nikon 1 V3 with three extra lenses, and there are two runner-up prizes which offer the same without the extras. They’re basically asking for your best camera hack. Now the submission process is a one-shot deal (no posting and iterating) which may explain why the contest — which started 4/15 and ends 5/13 — only has two entries. Still, we’d love to see a Hackaday reader waltz in and claim the loot.

Need some examples to get you rolling? Connectivity is a fun topic; try interfacing your camera with something like a Nintendo DS. Everyone needs to make at least one motion rig like this Ikea slider. We can’t stop listing examples without at least one shutter trigger. Here’s a sound activated one to capture things that happen extremely quickly.

If you end up winning make sure to tell us so we can share in your delight.