Inside the making of a cylindrical keyboard that doubles as a tea cup.

Can’t Spill Coffee On Your Keyboard If It’s Already Inside

October 11, 2021 by Kristina Panos 7 Comments

No matter where you live in the world or what beverage you enjoy, it’s too easy to spill it on the keyboard. Obviously, the solution is to combine the two. That’s exactly what Google Japan did this past April Fool’s Day when they released the Gboard — a cylindrical keyboard wrapped around a removable cup. But is it still a joke once you’ve open-sourced it and made a build guide, more or less?

Here’s where it gets weird: each kanji on the keyboard represents a different kind of fish, and they’re laid out in Japanese phonetic order. You’re not stuck with the fish, though — one of the 60 keys switches between fish input and regular Hiragana (the basic Japanese phonetic alphabet). Underneath all those fish are low-profile Kailh chocs hooked up to an ATMega32u4. We only wish it were wireless.

We love that they open-sourced this keyboard, and it even makes sense in a way. In order to produce a good April Fool’s video, you actually have to make the fake product. The better it is (i.e. weird but plausible), the more people will like it and probably want one. So if you’re going to go to all that trouble, why not set it free on GitHub? Note that the second line of the readme is “this is not an officially-supported Google product”, which we suppose goes without saying.

Be sure to check out the short video after the break. If you don’t understand Japanese, you’ll want to turn on the closed captions.

You know, now that Raspberry Pi have made their answer to the Arduino, it’s about time that Apple made their answer to the Raspberry Pi.

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A French Minitel terminal becomes a Raspberry Pi-powered mini laptop.

Minitel Terminal Becomes Mini Laptop

October 8, 2021 by Kristina Panos 17 Comments

In 1980, France took a step into the future when the telecom companies introduced the Minitel system — a precursor to the Web where users could shop, buy train tickets, check stocks, and send and receive electronic mail through a small terminal. Minitel still had 10 million monthly connections in 2009, but the service was discontinued in 2012.

So, you can imagine how many Minitel terminals must be floating around at this point. [Gautchh] picked one up at a garage sale a while back and converted it into a battery-powered laptop for taking notes in class. Luckily for us, [Gautchh] recently open-sourced this project and has given us a wiring diagram, STLs, BOM, and a good look into the build process.

[Gautchh] started by gutting the Minitel, but saved the power button and the très chic power indicator that looks like a AA cell. The new 10.4″ LCD screen is held in place with four 3D-printed corner blocks and a bit of hot glue, and the original keyboard (which we’d love to clack on) is now wired up to an Arduino Pro Micro. The main brain — a Raspberry Pi 3B — is easily accessible through a handy little hatch in the back. Well, it looks like we’ve got a new ebay alert to set up.

In the mood for more AZERTY goodness? Check out this gallery of French computers, or a more traditional take on a Minitel with a Raspberry Pi.

Dave went from a passive decoy to a high-speed boating machine.

Dave The Drive-able Duck Does Donuts

October 6, 2021 by Kristina Panos 9 Comments

[Hey Jude] is tired of the machismo dripping from most modern electronic toys, especially stuff like monster trucks and police/military sets. He grew up on weird stuff, not aggression, and wanted to share the experience of kit-bashing a new toy together alongside his son.

This is essentially an R/C boat stuffed into a decoy duck, but there’s more to it than that. After removing the ballast that made him stay upright, [Hey Jude] performed plastic surgery on both sides of Dave the duck, creating a boat-shaped hole in the bottom, and a hinged bonnet out of the top which serves as an access panel for the boat’s innards. Everything is sealed up with Sugru, though you could probably use caulk or even hot glue (if you wanted something more temporary and less expensive).

The smartest bit has to be the loop on Dave’s back — this makes it easy to lower him into a pond from a footbridge, or rescue him if he stalls in the middle of the water. Check out the footage of Dave’s maiden voyage after the break.

Remote control of things will never get old. Do you have an old Nintendo Zapper lying around? Why not make it do your home automation bidding?

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A 3D-printed mini laser engraver made from DVD-RW drive motors.

Mini Laser Engraver Could Carve Out A Place On Your Desk

October 2, 2021 by Kristina Panos 11 Comments

Got a couple of old DVD-RW drives lying around, just collecting dust? Of course you do. If not, you likely know where to find a pair so you can build this totally adorable and fully dangerous laser engraver for your desk. Check out the complete build video after the break.

[Smart Tronix] doesn’t just tell you to salvage the stepper motors out of the drives — they show you how it’s done and even take the time to explain in writing what stepper motors are and why you would want to use them in this project, which is a remix of [maggie_shah]’s design over on Thingiverse. As you might expect, the two steppers are wired up to an Arduino Uno through a CNC shield with a pair of A4988 motor drivers. These form the two axes of movement — the 250mW laser is attached to x, and the platform moves back and forth on the y axis. We’d love to have one of these to mess around with. Nothing that fits on that platform would be safe! Just don’t forget the proper laser blocking safety glasses!

Need something much bigger that won’t take up a lot of space? Roll up your sleeves and build a SCARA arm to hold your laser.

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Giant Working NERF Gun Runs On Tiny Arduino

October 1, 2021 by Kristina Panos 8 Comments

Well, here it is: a shoe-in for the new world’s largest NERF gun. (Video, embedded below.) The Guinness people haven’t shown up yet to award [Michael Pick], but at 12.5 feet, this baby is over twice as long as the current record holder, which belongs to former NASA mechanical engineer Mark Rober and his now-puny six-foot six-shooter.

We have to wonder if it is technically bigger than the six-shooter, because they seem to be roughly the same scale, except that [Michael] chose a much bigger model to start from. The main body is made from wood, and there are a ton of 3D-printed details that make it look fantastically accurate. The whole thing weighs over 200 pounds and takes at least two people to move it around. We especially love the DIY darts that [Michael] came up with, which are made from a PVC tube inside a section of pool noodle, topped off with a 3D printed piece for that distinctive orange cap.

Propelling those darts at around 50 MPH is a 3,000 PSI air tank connected to an Arduino Pro Mini that controls the trigger and the air valves. While [Michael] hasn’t run the thing quite that high, it does plenty of damage in the neighborhood of 40-80 PSI. As you’ll see in the video after the break, this is quite the ranged weapon. Watch it blow a hole clean through a sheet of drywall and much more.

Want to build something with a bit more stealth? Make it death from above with a NERF quadcopter.

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Expanding On The Creation Of Collapsible Containers

September 30, 2021 by Kristina Panos No comments

You might remember that industrial designer [Eric Strebel] tried to make a collapsible silicone container with 3D printed molds a few weeks ago, and was finally successful after dozens of attempts. Someone commented that commercial containers are molded in the collapsed position instead of the expanded position, so naturally, [Eric] had to try it once he saw the photographic proof of these molds.

This time around, [Eric] made things easier on himself by adding some handles to the mold and using both wax and spray mold release before pouring in the degassed silicone. The first one was a failure — he had let it cure the whole time in the collapsed mold, and it just didn’t want to stay expanded. On the second attempt, [Eric] decided to pull the piece while it was curing, about 5 1/2 hours into the process.

After carefully de-molding the piece, he pressed it into the grooves of one of the older molds from the days of molding containers in the expanded state. Then he filled it with sand and let it cure the rest of the way. That worked out quite well, but even so, [Eric] made a third attempt that he pulled after 3.5 hours or so when the silicone was still sticky. He did the sand trick again, but this time, he ran a piece of string up the wall and over the edge so that the air that gets trapped under the sand can escape. The final result looks great, albeit a little bit floppy, but [Eric] fits the final product into a frame that makes them much sturdier. Check out the process in the video after the break.

Did you miss the first installment? It’s worth a look into the science of creating collapsible walls.

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Left: kids stomping spiders projected on a driveway. Right: the setup.

Make This Halloween A Spider-Stomping Good Time

September 30, 2021 by Kristina Panos 11 Comments

We can count on one hand the number of times that we haven’t needed a coat on Halloween night around here. Even if it was fair and sunny the day before, you can count on Halloween being appropriately windy, cold, and spooky. Trick-or-treating only keeps a kid so warm, and we would have loved to happen upon a house with a spider-stomping sugar-burning good time of a game going on in the driveway.

[Kyle Maas] built this game a few years ago, and it has proved quite popular ever since. It’s so popular, in fact, that they have to have someone on duty with a vaudeville hook to yank spectators off the playing field. The point is to stomp as many spiders as you can in a set amount of time, though you only need to stomp one to win. It can handle one to four players, depending on the size of the projection, but [Kyle] says it’s kind of hard to track more than two at a time.

The setup is fairly simple, provided you can reliably affix your projector to something sturdy. [Kyle] used a Structure sensor for the 3D scanner, but you could easily use a Kinect instead. Conversely, the calibration was challenging. [Kyle] ended up using a DSP math trick known as the inverse bilinear transform to be able to calibrate the system using the 3D scanner itself.

If you’re more into scaring the children, just rig up a coffin bell. Either way, don’t forget about our Halloween Hackfest contest, running now through Monday, October 11th. There are more details over on IO. While you’re there, why not check out the list of entries?