Tindie

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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Automation should be easy and if what you need is simple on/off input and confirmation there’s no need for fully customized gear. For those applications, the QK-G–21 GSM/SMS Remote Controller lets you control and monitor equipment remotely via text message.

In action, a text message can be sent to up to four phones when one of two possible alarms are triggered, and users can operate three relay outputs via an SMS text app. The device features a GSM sim card, making it usable in Europe and the US.

While the possible applications for a device like this are limitless, one scenario envisioned is for use with a liquid tank, where an operator can remotely trigger a valve to fill it up. Feedback could be provided by a high and low level sensor, confirming that the device has indeed done its job. While meant as a standalone device, there’s no reason why these I/O pins couldn’t interface with an Arduino or similar, allowing it to trigger a complex sequence with this simple control method.

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If you buy any type of electronic musical equipment today, chances are it runs via the MIDI specification. This allows a wide variety of instruments to work together, and can carry up to 16 channels of musical information on each cable. While this is normally a good solution, analog control voltage and gate-based (CV/gate) systems allow musical information to be broken out and used in unusual ways.

Naturally, the CV/gate spec (or specs, as it has multiple implentations) would appeal to musical hacking, but in order to use all kinds of musical equipment, you’ll need some way to throw MIDI signals into the mix. For this purpose, the CV.OCD bills itself as “a super flexible MIDI to CV box.”

The CV.OCD takes signals from a MIDI input, then converts them to CV/gate outputs. 4 CV outputs function at between 0-8V at a 12-bit resolution, and 12 gates are available to signal your analog synth as needed. Because of the way things are broken out, you could play several monosynths together as a polysynth, split up different note ranges to be played on separate electronic instruments, or any number of musical hacks that you can think of!

You can see it in action in the video seen here. One thing that is noted right off the bat is the integrated 1/8 inch jack that sits above the conventional DIN connector, meaning you don’t need to use an adapter for either. As seen there, you’ll have a huge number of cables flying around with this type of synth setup, so even a tiny bit less cable clutter would be quite helpful!

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When working with electronics, many times you’ll need to produce a voltage for some or all of your system that doesn’t align with your battery supply. Using a voltage dividing resistor is one technique, but has some disadvantages, and if you actually need to increase your voltage level going into a circuit you’ll need to employ a different technique.

One way is via a boost converter, which takes a certain voltage input, then allows you to literally dial in the needed higher output voltage. This item is one example of this type of device, and can take 3-35V in and convert it to 4-45V out. Of course, this means that the current in will need to be greater than the current output in order to satisfy the laws of thermodynamics, so you’ll need to take that into account when designing your system.

The opposite of this is a buck converter, which is also available from the same seller. Either of these are also available from your favorite online auction sites, but after looking at a few of these listings, many will call them “Buck-Boost” converters or similar, while they appear to only do one of those jobs.

Whether you buy components here or elsewhere, be sure to check the specs carefully to ensure you’re getting what you really want. If you do buy something from us, you’re backed up with the Tindie Guarantee. This allows you to refund what you buy within 30 days if you’re unhappy with your purchase, but be sure to “read the docs” to help you avoid even this inconvenience.

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When working with basic electronics, a multimeter is usually all you really need, however, there’s a lot more going on than you can tell by simply measuring the instantaneous voltage and other stats. To peel things back another layer, you need an oscilloscope, telling you whether what you’re measuring is a constant value, or if there is a variety of oscillations or even signals combining to form what you see with this instrument.

Traditionally, these have been extremely expensive instruments, but with the availability of powerful hardware for extremely reasonable prices, you can find these for under $100, or even much less.

The Labrador from EspoTek takes a somewhat different approach than most ‘scopes, and takes the form of single board that interfaces with your computer or smart device for control and display. As shown in the video below from its fully-funded CrowdSupply campaign, you can plug it into a breadboard to allow it to function as a oscilloscope, multimeter, and logic analyzer. Additionally, it has the capability to act as a power supply as well as a function generator, making it a very versatile tool.

[vimeo 179257602 w=640 h=360]

Given its multi-platform capabilities, and open source software, this could be a great way to recycle an old laptop or unused smartphone into a versatile piece of lab equipment!

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As announced here, Hackaday is hosting a “Coin Cell Challenge.” What is a coin cell challenge  you might ask? The contest involves using this type of battery—be it the venerable CR2032, or any other device that  you could reasonable call a “coin cell battery”—for your own impressive hack.

Catagories include:

• Lifetime Award: How long you can run a process on a coin cell.
• Supernova Award: The most exciting display of power out of these little guys.
• Heavy Lifting Award: Personified by the idea that, “You can’t do that with a coin cell battery.”

If that didn’t get you excited enough to show off your latest hack, note that the top 20—that’s right, 20—projects will receive $100 in Tindie credit to spend on the wide variety of products listed here. If that still isn’t enough to get your creative juices flowing, the top 3 entrants in those categories get $500.

The contest runs until 2PM PDT on January 8th, so be sure to get your awesome ideas in!

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Pong, which Wikipedia calls “the first commercially successful video game,” can be played against a computer or one other player. This game was originally developed in an upright cabinet. If you were to reimagine it as a tabletop or even a cocktail cabinet game for up to four players, Retroball is what you might come up with.

The device uses a 32 x 32 RGB LED matrix display to give it a nice “pixely” look, and comes as a kit so that you can have the fun of putting it together. Controls are via four potentiometers to move your paddle left and right. If you get tired of Pong-ish gameplay, there’s also a hidden menu that lets you access a few other random games and applications.

If that wasn’t cool enough, it comes pre-wired so that you can plug an Arduino Uno directly to the back of it for expansion. Personally, I could see this forming the basis of a unique clock, or as part custom cocktail arcade cabinet and/or coffee table.

If this looks familiar, you might have seen it as a now fully-funded Kickstarter. With the campaign done, we’re happy to add this unique project to our ever-expanding family of listings!

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Unless you’ve just emerged from hibernation to check out the Tindie blog for the latest in maker electronics, you’ve certainly heard of the ESP8266 module. While interesting by itself, having a versatile development board to go along with it can make projects much more accessible. One new board in this category is the ESP8266 Precision Sensor Board by Burgessworld Custom Electronics.

It boasts an onboard accelerometer and magnetometer, and can optionally be ordered with a sensors for temperature, humidity, pressure, and luminosity. Additionally, there’s a slot for an SD card, which is accessible via a standard Arduino Library. If those don’t suit your application, the module’s I/O pins are broken out via female headers.

Another interesting feature of this device is the plethora of power options available. You can, of course, power it via a micro USB cable, but it also includes accommodations for a Molex connector, and even a 2.1mm barrel jack. Usefully, it also features a protection diode to keep batteries safe if other sources of power are connected.

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