Woodworking is the fine art of turning dead tree carcasses into precision instruments. That means breaking out the saws and chisels and making many, many precise cuts over and over. If you have a table saw, every problem becomes a piece of wood, or something like that, and we’ve seen some fantastic jigs that make these precision cuts even easier. We’ve never seen something like this, though. It’s a box joint jig for a table saw, it’s automated, and it puts barcodes on boxes.
[Ben] built this box joint jig a few years ago as a computer-controlled device that slowly advances a piece of wood on a sled, allowing him to create precise, programmable box joints. The design is heavily influenced from [Matthias Wandel]’s screw advance box joint jig, but instead of wood gears (heh), [Ben] is using the Internet of Things. Or a Raspberry Pi, stepper motor, and a few LEDs. Same difference.
Although [Ben]’s previous box joints were all the same size, a programmable box joint jig can do some weird-looking joints. That’s where [Ben] got the idea to encode a barcode in walnut. After using a web app to create a barcode that encodes the number 255 — this is important for later — [Ben] programmed his jig to cut a few slots.
The box was finished as you would expect, but there’s a neat addition to the top. It’s a combination lock that opens when the combination is set to 255. It’s brilliant, and something that could be done with some handsaws and chisels, but this jig makes it so easy it’s hard to think the jig wasn’t explicitly designed for this project.
Just ignoring the pure geeky awesomeness of a barcode box joint.
The video is fantastic.
The timing to music is fantastic.
And I didn’t see it coming either because didn’t read all the article that spoiled the surprise.
Talented guy.
Off to watch the rest of his vids.
If I dare to offer a modicum of advice.
I see the RPi being accessed on a PC by DNS name but on the android phone by IP.
When a android gets its DNS servers by DHCP they ignore them and use the google servers anyway as a priority so internal resolution doesn’t work.
If you hole those servers on your network, via your router so they cannot be reached, then the android will use your internal DNS and you can access everything internal by name.
It also stops google looking/caching every DNS lookup you make.
Glad you mentioned the music. Video editing is a bonus piece of art with this one.
Great feedback on the Android! iOS work the same?
No. IOS follows the rules, and uses the dhcp provided DNS addresses.
I love this!
And for the next challenge … QR Codes
Intarsia!
This one did Morse Code.
Article: “…but this jig makes it so easy it’s hard to think the jig wasn’t explicitly designed for this project.”
Barcode Box Video Description: “This was the crazy idea that drove me to build my Programmable Box Joint Jig.”
That is just Brian’s way of checking to see who actually follows the link!
B^)
On these box projects I always get anxious when they go to cut the box open and do other work on it. One wrong move on that cut or while mortising and you’ve got a mess on your hands.
That’s the nature of woodworking. There’s no Undo on a table saw.
Brilliant!!!
Hiding the code in plain sight!! Cool!