Break Time Is Calling On The Rainbow Connection

May 4, 2020 by Kristina Panos 6 Comments

Like some of us, [Mister M] is prone to staying glued to his seat too long in this new era of working from home. And you know what they say about a body at desk — it tends to stay at desk until it absolutely must rise up to find food or use the restroom.

Thanks to this nifty new break time reminder, [Mister M] has a third call to answer that demands he get up. Every hour, the NeoPixel ring in this old dial-deficient phone fills up completely and switches over to an attention-getting rainbow animation. If [Mister M] stays seated, playtime is over. All the lights start flashing red, and the phone starts beeping incessantly until he walks across the room and either pushes the momentary button or lifts the handset to reset the timer.

We love that [Mister M] incorporated all of the phone’s original inputs and outputs into this project, because it’s such a cool old dog and bone. No need to drop a dime, just whistle at the break button to check out the build video.

This grille-faced phone was probably part of an intercom system. Incidentally, you can make an intercom system with two standard-style phones of this vintage.

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DIY Ribbon Controller For A DIY Synth

May 3, 2020 by Kristina Panos 13 Comments

There’s kind of a special joy in making instruments, no matter how simple or complex they are. Even if it’s a straight-up noisemaker, that’s noise you can be proud of. And besides, noise plus rhythm equals music.

Whenever you’re ready to have some next-level fun, try making controllers for your DIY instruments. Synthesizers of all stripes are often controlled with various types of potentiometers. While it would definitely be an interesting exercise to make your own standard twist-style potentiometer, [lonesoulsurfer] shows that making a ribbon controller is relatively easy.

A ribbon controller is essentially a deconstructed potentiometer that uses your finger to actuate the wiper. Here the wiper is made from Velostat, a fun, low-cost conductive material that’s also pressure-sensitive. The rest of the ribbon controller is a sandwich of thin copper plates and non-conductive plastic mounted on a wood base.

But what’s a fun controller without a fun instrument to control? As a special bonus, [lonesoulsurfer] made a little square wave-squirting synth based on the 4046 hex inverter and included the schematic for it. Slide your finger past the break to check ’em both out.

Depending on what you have lying around, it may be easier to make analog instruments like this rubber band boinger or its country cousin, the wheelbarrow bass.

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Chat Cat Waves On Slack @

May 2, 2020 by Kristina Panos 2 Comments

Isolated as we are by national lockdowns and statewide stay-at-home orders, many coworkers are more connected than ever before through oddly-named productivity/chat programs such as Slack. But those notifications flying in from the sidebar all the time are are oh-so-annoying and anti-productive. Ignoring requests for your attention will only make them multiply. So how do you make the notifications bearable?

[Mr. Tom] wrote in to tell us about his solution, which involves a maneki-neko — one of those good luck cats that wave slowly and constantly thanks to a solar-powered electromagnetic pendulum. Now whenever [Mr. Tom] has an incoming message, the cat starts waving gently over on the corner of his desk. It’s enough movement to be noticeable, but not annoying.

An ESP32 inside the kitty looks at incoming messages and watches for [Mr. Tom]’s user ID, prioritizing messages where he has been mentioned directly. This kitty is smart, too. As soon as the message is dealt with, the data pin goes low again, and the cat can take a nap for a while.

The natural state of the maneki-neko is pretty interesting, as we saw in this teardown a few years back.

Mass Mask-Making Masterclass

May 2, 2020 by Kristina Panos 7 Comments

Just as 3D printers around the world have been churning out face shields, the thread injectors of home sewists have been stitching up fabric masks. Over the past several weeks, [Becky Stern] has made them for friends, family, neighbors, and anyone in her community who happens upon the box of free masks she’s left at a nearby bus stop. This is in addition the scores she has made and donated to health care workers so they can extend the life of their N95 masks.

If you’re going to make more than a few of anything, it just makes sense to make multiples at the same time and adjust the process for batch production. [Becky Stern] has some great ideas for ramping up assembly even further that include cutting out multiple main mask pieces at the same time, and ironing the pleats of several masks round robin style so you don’t waste time while they cool.

Even if you don’t dabble in the fabric arts, her method of kitting out the process of mask making is an interesting look into small-scale production.

Our favorite idea concerns the side bindings and the straps, which are the last part of the build and take the longest to do. [Becky] makes several miles of straps ahead of time with a 3D printed bias tape folder and then sews them all into a continuous strip. She can add the short side bindings to a bunch of masks at once, feeding them in one after the other so they end up strung together like sausages. Then she can just snip them apart and keep going, having saved both time and thread. Watch [Becky] make a single mask after the break and see how easy it is.

If sewing is a no-go for you, there are plenty of ways to help the PPE effort by firing up that printer.

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A Flag-Waving Hat For All Occasions

April 28, 2020 by Kristina Panos 5 Comments

When [Taste the Code] saw that his YouTube channel was approaching 1,000 subscribers, it was time to do something special. But celebration is no reason to be wasteful. This flag-waving celebratory hat has endless possibilities for the future.

The build is simple, which is just right for these strange times of scarcity. An Arduino Uno hot-glued to the back of the hat is directly driving a pair of 9g servos on the front. [Taste the Code] made the flags by sticking two stickers back to back with a bamboo skewer in between. The code is flavored such that the flags will wave in one of three randomly-chosen patterns — swing around, swing in reverse, and wild gesticulations.

After the novelty of the whole 1k subs thing wears off, [Taste the Code] can change the flags over to Jolly Rogers to help with social distancing. And someday in the future when things are really looking up, they can be changed over to SARS-CoV-2 victory flags, or fly the colors of a local sports team. We think it would be way cool to program some kind of real semaphore message into the flags, though the mobility might be too limited for that. Check out the build video after the break, which happens picture-in-picture as [Taste the Code] dishes out a channel retrospective and lays out a course for the future.

Even though YouTube messed with subscriber counts, we think it’s still worth making a cool counter. Here’s one with a Tetris twist.

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Greatest Keycaps And Where To Find Them

April 28, 2020 by Kristina Panos 25 Comments

Look at your keyboard. Do the keycaps excite you? That’s what we thought. You pound on that thing day in and day out. Shouldn’t it at least be attractive? Or even happiness-inducing? You don’t necessarily have to replace every single keycap to spark joy. When it comes to artisan keycaps, the point is to have something that stands out.

How about an Escape key that looks like a tall stack of flapjacks or a tiny, intricate cream puff? From a practical standpoint, how about a spiky Escape key that makes you think twice about rage quitting?

If you’re into games or anime, chances are good that there are more than enough artisan keycaps out there to keep you cash-poor for a while. The same goes for scrumptious foodstuffs with Cherry MX-compatible stems.

In this day and age, you can get just about any type of keycap you want, especially those encapsulating pop culture phenomena and fads. Yes there’s a fidget spinner keycap, and it’s adorable.

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Watch The Day Inch Along With A Tape Measure Clock

April 27, 2020 by Kristina Panos 24 Comments

If we asked you to rattle off all the tools at your own personal disposal, you’d probably leave your timepieces off the list. But we say clocks are definitely tools — cool tools that come in countless forms and give meaning to endless days.

A clock form we hadn’t considered was that of an actual tool. So we were immeasurably delighted to see [scealux]’s clock made from a measuring tape. At least, the time-telling part of the clock is made from a measuring tape. The case isn’t really from a tape measure — it’s entirely printed, Bondo’d, sanded, and painted so well that it’s quite easy to mistake it for the real thing.

Tightly packed inside this piece of functional art is an Arduino Nano and a DS3231 precision RTC module, which we think is fitting for a tool-based clock. The Nano fetches the time and drives a stepper motor that just barely fits inside. There’s just enough tape wound around the printed hub to measure out the time in increments of one hour per inch. Take 1/16″ or so and watch the demo and brief walk-through video after the break.

Not all tools are sharp, and not all clocks are meant to be precise. Here’s a clock for the times that gives you the gist.

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