Minimalist LED Lamp Is Circular Beauty Incarnate

September 4, 2023 by Zoe Skyforest 8 Comments

Lamps used to be things built to provide light with specific purpose, whether as reading lamps, desk lamps, or bedside table lamps. Now we just build them for the vibes, as with this minimalist LED lamp from [andrei.erdei].

The build uses a 3D-printed frame printed in opaque grey, with a diffuser element printed in a more translucent white. This is key to allowing the LED to nicely glow through the lamp without ugly distracting hotspots spoiling the effect. The lamp mounts 36 WS2812B LEDs in strip form. These are controlled from an Arduino Nano running the FastLED library for lightweight and easy control of the addressable LEDs. Smooth rainbow animations are made easy by the use of the HSV color space, which is more suitable for this job than the RGB color space you may otherwise be more familiar with.

[andrei.erdei] does a great job of explaining the build, including the assembly, electronics, and code aspects. The latter could serve as a particularly good resource if you’re just starting out on your own builds in the blinky, glowable space. Video after the break.

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Fiery Torch Build Is Remarkably Stylish

September 4, 2023 by Zoe Skyforest 7 Comments

Hollywood movies, RPGs, and Dungeons and Dragons campaigns are all full of flaming torches. They’re a typical source of light in scenarios where electrical solutions simply aren’t available. [Wesley Treat] decided to build a rather attractive ceremonial torch of his own design, showing off his impressive crafting skills in the process.

The torch ignited a pretty rad sculpture.

The build starts with a foam simulacra that helps [Wesley] rough out the general shape of the torch. It’s a little shorter and stubbier than an Olympic torch might be, for reference. The main body of the torch is then hewn out of stout wooden blocks with the aid of a bandsaw with a nifty angle-adjustable cutting bed. A torch was then used to heat and bend steel strip to make an attractive and heat-resistant flame shroud to sit on top. A wad of fuel-soaked material installed inside the shroud serves as the actual flaming compoment.

[Wesley] built the torch for the Maker Burn at Maker Camp in upstate New York. It did a plenty good job of helping burn down the giant scrap wood jackalope sculpture built for the event. We do love the fire and the flames around these parts. Video after the break.

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Modding A Nerf Blaster The Old Fashioned Way

September 3, 2023 by Zoe Skyforest 3 Comments

The Pistol Splat was a very weak blaster built for children, designed to shoot toy-grade paintball-like ammunition. [Matt Yuan] recognised the potential of the single-shot design, though, and repurposed it as a powerful Nerf blaster.

The blaster is a simple spring-plunger design. Upon pulling the trigger, the spring drives the piston forward, shooting the ammunition out the barrel. As stock, the Pistol Splat featured an incredibly strong spring and an unrestricted barrel, giving it plenty of performance capability. With some finagling, it’s capable of shooting a Nerf dart at 100 feet per second in stock form.

[Matt] improved the blaster by removing its dry-fire protection spring, which consists of a second spring to resist the plunger’s motion. Modification also involved fitting a barrel sized to properly seal on the darts. These two mods boosted the dart velocity to 110 feet per second. Adding a spacer to ensure the spring fully drove the piston forward for its full travel further boosted the dart velocity to a mighty 145 feet per second.

It bears noting that serious Nerf blasters like these demand eye protection. Video after the break.

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Bare PCB Makes A Decent Homemade Smart Watch

September 3, 2023 by Zoe Skyforest 15 Comments

These days, we live in a post-Dick Tracy world, where you can make a phone call with your fancy wristwatch, and lots more besides. [akashv44] has gone a simpler route, designing their own from scratch with a bare PCB design.

The build is based around the ESP-12E microcontroller, providing useful wireless connectivity that lets the watch interface with the outside world. The firmware makes queries of NTP servers and Yahoo’s weather API to collect time and weather data for display. It’s also capable of interacting with Blynk relay modules for controlling other equipment, which [akashv44] uses with lights and an air conditioner. The watch uses a small OLED display and a handful of small surface-mount tactile buttons for control. Power is courtesy of a small lithium-ion pouch cell, with charging handled by a TP4056 battery management IC.

It’s a simple smartwatch, but nonetheless one that teaches all kinds of useful skills in embedded development and design. It’s also funny to think how simple it is to build. A decade ago, before the ESP8266 was released, getting wireless connectivity in such a small package was a major engineering challenge. Even the Apple Watch didn’t come out until 2015! Food for thought.

Tiny Drone Racing Gate Records Your Best Laps

September 3, 2023 by Zoe Skyforest 3 Comments

Professional drone racing is now an elite sport, with all the high-end tech, coverage, and equipment that goes along with it. If you’re just practicing with tiny drones in your home though, you might not be so well equipped. You might want to build something like this tiny FPV drone racing gate from [ProfessorBoots] to help keep track of laptimes while you’re training.

The build uses ultrasonic range sensors to detect when an object passes through the gate. The gate itself consists of a ring of addressable LEDs in strip form. The gate switches from green to red as a visual indicator of a drone passing through the gate. There’s also a small 2.4-inch touch screen that displays laptimes and enables the gate to be configured quickly and easily. The gate also serves up a webpage on the local network for viewing laptimes in a browser.

It does bear noting that at this stage, it’s primarily a practice tool. The gate doesn’t currently work for proper competitions, as it has no way of determining which drone might be flying through the gate at any one time.

It’s not the first time we’ve seen a TinyWhoop drone, either. Video after the break.

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Arduino-Powered Trap Hopes To Catch Mice

September 2, 2023 by Zoe Skyforest 30 Comments

The old adage that you’ll make a fortune by developing a better mouse trap is not super realistic, as the engineers behind Sony’s Betamax video tape standard could tell you. However, you can still learn a lot building your own, as this project from [ROBO HUB] demonstrates.

The trap is intended to catch mice in a humane fashion, without injury to the animal. To that end, it uses an Arduino Nano armed with an ultrasonic distance sensor to detect when mice have entered a plastic container. The container’s hinged door is is held open with a servo. When a mouse is detected, the servo trips the door to snap shut under the power of an elastic band.

The key to making this design work well is ensuring that there are no gaps in the closed container that the mouse can use to escape. They’re wily creatures able to squeeze through positively tiny spaces, so it’s important to get this right. Besides that, you want to check the trap regularly, lest any caught mice simply claw and chew their way out.

We’ve seen a few mousetraps around these parts before, too. Video after the break.

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Solar Powered Flower Chases The Light

September 2, 2023 by Zoe Skyforest 2 Comments

Many plants are capable of tracking the sun in order to get the most possible light. [hannu_hell] built a solar powered sculpture that replicates this light sensitivity for the benefit of better charging its own batteries, allowing it to run theoretically indefinitely where suitable light was available.

The 3D-printed flower features six movable petals mounted on an articulated stem. The flower’s leaves themselves bear solar panels that collect energy, analogous to leaves on a plant. A Raspberry Pi Pico is at the heart of the show, which is outfitted with a DS1307 real-time clock and a ST7735 TFT display for displaying date and time information. It’s also responsible for controlling servos that aim the flower’s solar panels towards the brightest light source available. This is achieved by using the Pico to read several photoresistors to determine light levels and adjust the leaves accordingly.

It’s a fun build, and one that could teach useful lessons relevant to even large-scale solar arrays. Video after the break.

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