A workbench with a 3D printer, a home-made frame of metal tubing and 3D printed brackets and phone holders. 3 iOS devices and 1 Android phone arranged around the printer with a clock and 3 different camera angles around the print bed

Even 3D Printers Are Taking Selfies Now

October 16, 2023 by Michael Shaub 1 Comment

We love watching 3D prints magically grow, through the power of timelapse videos. These are easier to make than ever, due in no small part to a vibrant community that’s continuously refining tools such as Octolapse. Most people are using some camera they can connect to a Raspberry Pi, namely a USB webcam or CSI camera module. A DSLR would arguably take better pictures, but they can be difficult to control, and their high resolution images are tougher for the Pi to encode.

If you’re anything like us, you’ve got a box or drawer full of devices that can take nearly as high-quality images as a DSLR, some cast-off mobile phones. Oh, that pile of “solutions looking for a problem” may have just found one! [Matt@JemRise] sure has, and in the video after the break, you can see how not one but four mobile phones are put to work.

Continue reading “Even 3D Printers Are Taking Selfies Now” →

Several video clips of a robot arm manipulating objects in a kitchen environment, demonstrating some of the 12 generalized skills

RoboAgent Gets Its MT-ACT Together

August 20, 2023 by Michael Shaub 6 Comments

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have shared a pre-print paper on generalized robot training within a small “practical data budget.” The team developed a system that breaks movement tasks into 12 “skills” (e.g., pick, place, slide, wipe) that can be combined to create new and complex trajectories within at least somewhat novel scenarios, called MT-ACT: Multi-Task Action Chunking Transformer. The authors write:

Trained merely on 7500 trajectories, we are demonstrating a universal RoboAgent that can exhibit a diverse set of 12 non-trivial manipulation skills (beyond picking/pushing, including articulated object manipulation and object re-orientation) across 38 tasks and can generalize them to 100s of diverse unseen scenarios (involving unseen objects, unseen tasks, and to completely unseen kitchens). RoboAgent can also evolve its capabilities with new experiences.

Continue reading “RoboAgent Gets Its MT-ACT Together” →

Mobile phone reading an NFC tag with information on a garden plant

NFC Puts A Stake In The Ground

August 15, 2023 by Michael Shaub 21 Comments

Sometimes we have a new part or piece of tech that we want to use, and it feels like a solution looking for a problem. Upon first encountering NFC Tags, [nalanj] was looking for an application and thought they might make a great update to old-fashioned plant markers in a garden. Those are usually small and, being outside 24/7, the elements tend to wear away at what little information they hold.

[nalanj] used a freeform data structuring service called Cardinal to set up text information fields for each plant and even photos. Once a template has been created, every entry gets a unique URL that’s perfect for writing to an NFC tag. See the blog post on Cardinal’s site for the whole process, the thought behind the physical design of the NFC tag holder, and a great application of a pause in the 3D print to encapsulate the tags.

NFC tags are super hackable, though, so you don’t have to limit yourself to lookups in a plant database. Heck, you could throw away your door keys.

a modern car dipped into a chemical bath for electrodeposition adding a phosphate layer

Watching Paint Dry For Over 100 Years

July 2, 2023 by Michael Shaub 19 Comments

A Model T Ford customer could famously get their car “in any color he wants, so long as it’s black.” Thus begins [edconway]’s recounting of the incremental improvements in car paint and its surprising role in mass production, marketing, and longevity of automobiles.

In it, we learn that the aforementioned black paint from Ford had so much asphalt in it that black was the only color that would work. Not to go down a This Is Spinal Tap rabbit hole, but there were several kinds of black on those Model Ts. Over 30 of them were used for various purposes. The paints also dried in different ways. While the assembly only took 12 hours, the paint drying time took days, even weeks backing up production and begging for innovation. [edconway] then fast-forwards to an era of “conspicuous consumption and ‘planned obsolescence’” with DuPont’s invention of Duco that brought color to the world of automobiles.

See the article for the real story of advances in paint technology and drying time. Paint application technology has also steadily improved over the years, so we recommend diving in to get the century’s long story.

Ventbot fans with 3D printed brackets and control circuit board with ESP32 breakout and multicolored 3D printed cases

Ventbots Are Fans Of HVAC And Home Automation

June 24, 2023 by Michael Shaub 21 Comments

[WJCarpenter] had a common HVAC problem; not all the rooms got to a comfortable temperature when the heater was working to warm up their home. As often happens with HVAC systems, the rooms farthest from the heat source and/or with less insulation needed a boost of heat in the winter and cooling in the summer too. While [WJCarpenter] is a self-reported software person, not a hardware person, you will enjoy going along on the journey to build some very capable vent boosters that require a mix of each.

There’s a great build log on hackaday.io here, but for those who need more of a proper set of instructions, there’s a step-by-step guide that should allow even a beginner hardware hacker to complete the project over on Instructables. There you’ll find everything you need to build ESPHome controlled, 3D printed, PC fan powered vent boosters. While they can be integrated into Home Assistant, we were interested to learn that ESPHome allows these to run stand-alone too, each using its own temperature and pressure sensor.

The many iterations of hardware and software show, resulting in thoughtful touches like a startup sequence that checks for several compatible temperature sensors and a board layout that accommodates different capacitor lead spacings. Along the way, [WJCarpenter] also graphed the noise level of different fans running at multiple speeds and the pressure sensor readings against the temperatures to see if they could be used as more reliable triggers for the fans. (spoiler, they weren’t) There are a bunch of other tips to find along the way, so we highly recommend going through all that [WJCarpenter] has shared if you want to build your own or just want some tips on how to convert a one-off project to something that a wider audience can adapt to their own needs.

See a video after the break that doesn’t show the whole project but includes footage of the start-up sequence that tests each fan’s tachometer and the customizable ramp-up and ramp-down settings. Continue reading “Ventbots Are Fans Of HVAC And Home Automation” →

What’s Black, White, And Red On 20 Sides?

May 22, 2023 by Michael Shaub 11 Comments

You won’t need to pack a full set of dice for your next game with this DIY Multifunctional Eink Gadget. [Sasa Karanović] brings us a fun device that combines a few essential aspects of tabletop gaming, D6, D12, and D20 dice rolling and a hero dashboard. While they have grand plans for a BLE networked future application, we admire the restraint to complete a V1 project before allowing scope-creep to run amok. Well played!

For this project, [Sasa] realized it needed to be battery powered and just choosing the right display for a battery powered application can be daunting. Even if you aren’t building this project, the video after the break includes a nice intro to electronic ink and low power microcontrollers for the uninitiated. We even see a graph of the completed board’s power draw from the button wake up, display refresh, and low power sleep. The project has some neat tips for building interaction into case design with the use of the display and a flexible bezel as integrated buttons. Continue reading “What’s Black, White, And Red On 20 Sides?” →

Wood game piece being carved by a CNC mill with a hacked rotary axis

This $12 CNC Rotary Axis Will Make Your Head Spin

May 15, 2023 by Michael Shaub 19 Comments

[legolor] brings us a great, cheap rotary axis to add to your small 3 axis CNC mills. How are you going to generate G-Code for this 4th axis? That’s the great part, and the hack, that [legolor] really just swapped the Y axis for the rotation. To finish the workflow and keep things ~~cheap~~ accessible to all there’s a great trick to “unwrap” your 3D model so your CAM software of choice thinks it’s still using a linear Y axis and keeps your existing workflow largely intact. While this requires an extra step in Blender to do the unwrapping, we love the way this hack changes as little of the rest of your process as possible. The Blender script might be useful for many other purposes too.

The results speak for themselves too! We thought the 3D printed parts were suspect in a CNC setup, but for the small scale of game pieces and milling wood, the setup is stable enough to produce a surprisingly accurate and detailed finish. If you want to try the same approach with something larger or a tougher material, [legolor] has a suggestion of a tailstock setup that’s still under $100 USD. Continue reading “This $12 CNC Rotary Axis Will Make Your Head Spin” →