Tindie

Do you want a lightsaber? As you’re reading Tindie’s blog, the answer is a resounding “yes.” Unfortunately, these elegant weapons are not currently available in this galaxy, so you’ll have to make do with a prop device. You could buy one online or from a local retailer, but a true Jedi would need to construct one for his or her own use.

These props are normally made out of translucent tubing, with programmable LEDs arranged so as to allow the light-blade to extend properly. Many also feature an inertial measurement unit (IMU), allowing the device to hum when not in action, audibly slash through the air, and crash into objects as needed. Here’s a solution that ticks all those boxes:

To give you a head start in construction, you’ll want to check out this prop shield, meant to be used with a Teensy 3.5. It includes programmable LED outputs, an audio amplifier, USB battery charger, and an IMU. While there are other solutions available for this type of prop, the one featured here is open-source, and notably features a USB battery charger.

If you need prop-making inspiration, here’s a few YouTube lightsaber builds that should pique your interest. I especially enjoyed the demonstration just after 4:30 in the first video:

Finally, if you’re somehow wondering what a lightsaber actually is, here’s the original:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aRtupiY9Dw

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If you want to get started programming physical “things,” the normal progression would be to buy an Arduino Uno board or similar, plug it in, and see if you can blink the onboard LED. While this certainly feels amazing to get past level 0, if you want to progress to writing more interesting programs, you’ll need more lights and buttons!

For this purpose, the Petit Biscuit, by Saandial is a really excellent device for programming practice, containing four rows of red, yellow, green and blue LEDs, plus a couple of buttons, a switch, and a dial input. While not an Arduino board per se, it uses an Atmel chip and is programmed in the Arduino IDE. The one wrinkle is that it uses a USB-TTL connector instead of the normal USB cable, but it’s included in the package, and could be useful elsewhere.

Check it out in action in the video seen here, with the “fraise” or strawberry version seen on the right, along with the vanille or—you guessed it—vanilla board on the left with an added rotary input.

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Bristlebots are extremely simple DIY devices that use a vibrating motor attached to a toothbrush to allow it to move across the floor. While they generally move randomly about, if you add pipe cleaners as shown in the video below, they can actually be set to move in different patterns.

This favorite weekend hack combines a vibration motor from the store with the head of a used toothbrush. But if you want a lot of them—for classroom instruction or your own personal swarm—Brown Dog Gadgets has 4, 10, and 25-packs of the needed components available here. They even include googly eyes, which certainly increase the enjoyment factor of these little buggers.

While bristlebots are interesting to show off what can be done just by hacking a few common items together, you can take this concept much further. For instance, seen below is a very large dual bristlebot that can be controlled with simple R/C transmitter:

Or, as seen on Hackaday, you could even add an optical sensor to a ‘bot setup, allowing it to control itself automatically:

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We know, your kid is never going to be a professional athlete. But those Saturday morning soccer games don’t need to be boring for parents on the sidelines. One way to spice up the experience for both players and spectators is to add a scoreboard into the mix.

Scrolled has just the thing: a digital scoreboard for football (AKA, soccer). It counts up and down with a simple button interface, and even spells out “GOAL” when either the home or away team scores. The display is made out of 7 MAX7218 8×8 matrix displays, allowing it to count up to 99 before rolling over to 0 again. As programmed, the small display could certainly be used for other sports or competitive task—Foosball comes to mind, or perhaps even for some sort of work-related score tracking.

Making this even more interesting is that it runs on an ATMege328 chip that can be swapped out with your own bootloaded chip, then programmed using an FTDI cable. While the original scoreboard code won’t be published, the board still gives you a ready-made platform on which to display 7 matrices without having to redesign the hardware from ground zero.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyBe9RYL5EU

If you do feel like going the hardware hacking route, since the score is actuated with simple buttons, you could bypass them with a microswitch or transistor. This would allow one to implement automated score keeping on a game or task without even modifying the device’s programming!

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In my humble opinion—as I’ve mentioned elsewhere—ePaper is really an amazing display technology that has never really burst onto the mainstream. ePaper is incredibly energy efficient, requiring power only to change the display, the refresh rate is atrocious compared to television or smartphones, but seems to have been relegated to dedicated e-readers and the odd smartwatch. The natural outlet then would be makers and hobbyists, but options are less numerous than most other display methods.

The other market I could see for this type of device is as a static display, such as in office meeting rooms, or for weather and other stats which needs to only be updated intermittently. You can try to hack something together yourself, but the 2.9″ ESPaper Plus Kit has everything you need to get started with your semi-static display, including an ESP8266 WiFi module.

This means that your display can grab the info it needs over WiFi, then go back to sleep, running for weeks or even months on a single LiPo charge. Importantly, it’s also programmable in the Arduino IDE, and its creator Daniel Eichhorn has written a library to make creating your own display easy. There’s also a web app in the works to allow configuration via the web, which will be especially appealing to those who aren’t particularly comfortable programming in the Arduino IDE.

It looks like a great time to get started with this tech, and it’s wonderful to see Tindie serving as a market for awesome niche devices like this. The Plus Kit linked above includes a battery, programmer, and case, but the lite Kit is available without these accessories for $10 less.

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Way back in the good old days, if you wanted something on, you just flipped a switch. Now you have to find your phone, open the correct app, and adjust things as needed. What happened to sci-fi display panels where you just touch a screen display to have it work?

Of course such devices are available, most obviously in the form of touch screen displays. However, permanently mounting a full touch screen and Raspberry Pi or similar SBC everywhere you simply need to turn something on or off is normally overkill.

For an upgrade that isn’t too over-the-top, then these illuminated capacitive touch panel switches are a nice solution. They feature blue and orange or RGB lighting for each of four static appliance icons, which allow it to display its state visibly, even at night.

Inside is these devices is your choice of a relay board that allows it to handle 8 amps at 240 volts on each of the 4 switching channels, or triacs which handle 1.5 amps each. You can also select from a range of wireless interface options, including Zigbee, WiFi, or Bluetooth, allowing it to interface with your smart device, or even integrate with an existing home automation system.

Finally, and most importantly for many Tindarians, this device is reprogrammable! It interfaces with the Arduino IDE via an FTDI module. So if the on/off colors don’t suit you, or if you would like it to exhibit some novel functionality, there’s no reason you can’t make that happen!

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Last week I mentioned that Hackaday is putting on a coin cell challenge. While you would logically first think of the CR2032 battery as the subject, the contest is actually open to anything that could reasonably be called a “coin cell.” One such battery is the ML2032, which features the same footprint as the CR2032, but is rechargeable.

While that sounds good in theory, you’ll also need some way to actually charge these batteries, which Tindie seller bobricius of Permi Technology provides with this handy charger. As he notes, you can find cheap chargers from other outlets, but if they happen to say “LIR2032” on them, they will actually end up destroying these cells because the LIR uses a different battery chemistry than the ML, which uses Lithium Manganese Dioxide. But the ML2032 is a worthy consideration since they’re a bit more earth friendly than their traditional counterparts.

Besides actually being designed for the batteries you’ll be using, this unit plugs into any USB charger without the bulk of an extra wall wart or similar. According to the description, it takes 24 hours to charge an ML2032. Per the next question that you’re likely forming after reading this, it’s “only for use with rechargeable coin cells!”

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When you go to a restaurant or drinking establishment, you expect to receive a coaster to put under your glass. While they may have interesting logos or pictures on them, you likely pay them little attention. One thing to note though is that the square coasters all come in the same square shape.

Hacker Bart Dring noticed this dimensional consistency himself, and decided that this would make it perfect for automation, coming up with a portable laser coaster customizer that he calls “Coasty.” This device, as shown in the video below, “eats” a coaster that you slide into a slot on the front, then manipulates it with a roller and laser cutter/engraver until it spits out your own customized design.

If this looks pretty neat and you’d like to build your own, Dring is selling the controllers for it here. Of course you’ll need to provide your own chassis and laser unit, however, it would give you a huge head start on building your own.

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As this product’s listing notes, the sun is awesome, but inconveniently for those that would like to generate power with it, it tends to move around in the sky throughout the day. This means that no matter where you aim a solar panel, unless you’re able to move it around, you’re just looking for the best compromise possible.

While it would be possible to mathematically model the sun’s movement for the season and latitude in order to aim towards the sun’s path, this small smart tracker instead senses the sun’s position using a set of light-dependent resistors (LDRs) arranged on a small PCB. As shown in the video below, the laser-cut setup tracks the light from a smartphone with a good response time, meaning it would have no problem tracking the sun as it slowly passes overhead.

While this setup does indeed track a light source, the parts involved are quite interesting by themselves. If you want to check out the aiming assembly or the LDR board in more detail, design files are open source and are available here.

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3D printers generally operate in a very defined manner, with stepper motors carefully moving an extruder in order to produce a part designed in CAD. The Lix Pen approaches this process from an entirely different standpoint, allowing you to literally draw 3D objects as a handheld device.

If this looks familiar, you may remember it from a 2014 Kickstarter campaign which generated a massive amount of interest, and there are other devices that do a similar function. The Lix Pen, however, claims to be the smallest in the world. It also looks extremely professional, fitting in well with other hand-modeling tools seen in the video demonstration below.

https://vimeo.com/155827159

The device can be powered by either a wall socket or USB port, and supports ABS and PLA filament depending on your creation needs. Filament specifically meant for the device can be found here, available in a variety of colors. While it might not replace your “traditional” 3D printer for most jobs, it’s an interesting device to expand your creativity options.

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