Tindie

Tindie is a great place to sell actual electronics and gadgets, but what if you’re a well-known hacker who would rather get the word out about yourself through cool stickers? Sure, you could give them away, but if they’re free, people may not value and use them like you hope.

Perhaps charging a nominal fee would weed out the people who would simply discard your clever promotional items without much thought. For an easy way to set this up, Tindie would be a great place to list them, as Stefan Kremser, AKA Spacehuhn, has done with his stickers.

So what is a Spacehuhn? After some quick searching, it seems that huhn means “chicken,” in German, so a chicken astronaut? This particular chicken-o-naut has a 1s and 0s collar to secure its helmet in place, indicative of Mr. Kremser’s coding prowess, on display via GitHub here. He also notes that if you want to buy something based on his software, Travis Lin’s store has several items that run his code.

The sticker pack includes two cut in the shape of a chicken with a space helmet on, as well as a square with the chicken’s unique mug/helmet on a black background. Each looks like a lot of fun, and willcompliment your laptop or car bumper nicely.

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Growing up in an era when a 200MHz PC was extremely fast, it still amazes me that a 1GHz machine with 512MB of RAM is available for $5—that is, the Raspberry Pi Zero. Oh, and its small enough that you can fit several of them in your pocket. One thing it doesn’t have, however, is an RJ45 jack for Ethernet connectivity or full-sized USB-A ports.

If you want these options, Marcel has a nifty Ethernet/USB shield that does the trick nicely. While you’ll be giving up the built-in Micro USB connector, this is replaced by two full-sized USB-A ports, which can be powered by an external power supply if needed. Also, the GPIO connections can still be used, giving you lots of options for your next connected project.

As reported in its generally glowing reviews, it can also be used with the Raspberry Pi Zero W. This means you could turn it into a wireless access point, or use it for any other number of tricks that require WiFi connectivity along with Ethernet and/or wired USB connections.

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Perhaps you’ve considered building a line following robot, but don’t know where to start. Or maybe you’d like a more challenging solder kit than a simple badge. If so, then you might consider the D2-5 Smart Tracking Robot Car.

The device is cleverly made with a PCB forming both the body of the car and the chassis, resulting in a design that’s not much more expensive than simpler solder badge kits. The device uses transistors to switch a pair of motors propelling two wheels. To follow the line, on/off feedback is provided by one LED and photoresistor pair for each wheel. As seen at the end of the video below, this does a pretty good job staying on the track.

If you want to know exactly how this works, the circuit diagram is published on the product listing page. Besides the circuit, one other clever trick is that it only uses a screw and cap nut to keep the non-driven side off of the ground. While this wouldn’t be good in rough terrain, this simple setup is a good low-cost wheel alternative for smooth surfaces.

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Installing a solar panel is easy, you just take it outside, point it up in the sky, and voila! you are now pumping “free” power into your house or outdoor appliances… OK, it’s not quite that simple. There are wiring considerations that need to be figured out, and you need to actually install it on a secure base so it’s facing the sun as directly as possible, angled toward the equator.

Per this writeup, this angle should be roughly equal to your latitude plus 15 degrees during the winter and minus 15 degrees during the summer. What about the sun’s east-west position? Wouldn’t you want it to face this ball of energy as it tracks along the sky during the day?

For an easy way to get it to face the correct direction, you might check out Plantboss’ Solar Tracker. It comes with an IP66 grade case, and outputs 12V to your solar panel actuator. According to the product listing, there’s no configuration required, just place the sensor correctly and it does the rest. The actuator itself isn’t normally included, but can be added as an option if required.

As for what this kind of setup might look like, here’s an unrelated video of a panel array finding the sun’s position.

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You probably remember reading about the wonderful time Tindie had at the New York Maker Faire this September. Hopefully lots of people reading this were able to stop by to see our smiling faces and pick up some promotional items. We’ve been giving away something very special at live event this year.

Like many other exhibits, we were giving away stickers and pamphlets. The Tindie mascot sticker with him holding a welding torch was my favorite. Judging by how many we gave away, it seems I wasn’t the only one that though it was particularly awesome.

In the end though, lots of people have stickers and informational pamphlets. Only Tindie has a badge shaped like a robot-dog with flashing LED eyes. Appropriately, given that Tindie is a marketplace for DIY and semi-DIY electronics, they come as a solder kits. You can see me putting mine together in the video below:

Assembling my badge definitely wasn’t the hardest project I’ve ever done—but it was a quick bit of fun soldering LEDs, battery holder, and the pin into place. On the other hand, the design process that went into getting these into people’s hands wasn’t so straightforward. You can see the work that Brian Benchoff put in to make these a reality on his Hackaday post.

Interestingly, the badge has gone through three revisions, and as seen here, I’ve got the Mark 2 version. None of them are available for sale, but if you run into the Tindie and/or Hackaday crew at an event, we just may have a few (hundred) available as giveaways!

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If you’re familiar with Tindie whatsoever, you know that the products here can be very specialized, sometimes appealing to only a small group of people. Making them one-by-one usually works fine if you’re only going to sell one or two, and becomes obviously impractical if you need to make, say 10,000. But what about products that you anticipate making an intermediate number of, say 30 or 40?

The video below shows that this kind of production isn’t unique to Tindie, and YouTuber Eric Strebel goes over his low volume production process. In his case, he’s designed a series of pained vacuum formed parts. While I’ve never seen something exactly like this sold here, much of what he has to say is applicable to many situations.

Design-wise, he notes that it’s a very good idea to know and keep in mind how your product will be made, and since most of us will be involved in the manufacturing process in some fashion, that would be hard to neglect more than one time. He also isn’t too “proud” to send certain tasks off to other shops. While it’s fun to make things yourself, your time and space/money available for the correct tools command a certain premium. Best to concentrate on what you’re good at!

Finally, all sellers here should keep in mind packaging, as he points out at 4:40 in the video. At a minimum, this needs to keep your product intact, but if you do a really good job, such as a nice cloth bag for each item, buyers will be quite impressed!

[Via: Hackaday]

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If surfing around in Tindie’s curated “garden” of guaranteed products is getting too tame for you, then perhaps it’s time to check out the Flea market. You really never know what you’ll find there, and here are a few products that caught my eye this month:

Dell Inspiron 1100 Celeron 2.4GHz 1GB RAM

Let’s be honest, this computer isn’t going to run the latest FPS game, and doesn’t come with a hard drive. On the other hand, at $50 it does comes with a working monitor. Perhaps the screen could be integrated into a retro-gaming setup, and the other parts should be good for some enterprising hacker here.

Objective2 Headphone Amp

Some of us perhaps don’t quite get others’ obsession with really good audio. On the other hand, if you’re curious as to what else is out there, here’s a headphone amp to enhance your listening experience.

Ball Bearing: 1/4″ ID

The world couldn’t run without bearings. Your car uses many, as perhaps does the chair you’re sitting on right now. Here’s a listing for bearings with a convenient 1/4″ ID, ready for your next robot or personal vehicle project.

Breadboard Button Cell Breakout

Button cells—AKA coin cells or officially CR2032 batteries—make a very convenient source of power with the caveat that they can be difficult to hook up if you don’t have some sort of enclosure for them. This device allows you to pop the battery into the holder, then plug it into a breadboard for power. Simple!

Wooden Fidget Spinner

Is the fidget spinner fad over? Is it just getting started? I honestly have no idea, but this wooden model is one of the prettiest spinners that I’ve seen. As shown in the video, it also does a great job of—what else?—spinning!

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While learn to solder kits can be entertaining, at the end of the day I’d wager that most become shelfware in fairly short order. On the other hand, this kit from The Curious Electric Company not only serves as a beginner soldering project, but also functions as a solar powered keychain light.

The device includes a small solar cell, which charges an ultra-capacitor when a light source is available. This gives it enough energy to power the red LED for about an hour, or the white LED for 20 minutes. Another cool feature of this device is that if you need a tiny bit of power for something else, the P4 terminals are connected to the ultra-capacitor, opening up all kinds of possibilities.

This little device would be great for your for your quick lighting needs, or even for an emergency situation. For that matter, if you have a need for illumination during a power outage, be sure to check out the Tindie Guide to Emergency Lighting for a few ideas.

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The Enigma Machine, an encryption device famously used by the German military in World War II, has been the subject of much intrigue, producing documentaries and works of fiction based around it and the efforts to break its code. Given this fascination, a favorite project has been to come up with modern Enigma simulators. But rarely do they have the level of finish found on this Arduino Enigma device.

The device in question was inspired by another Android-based simulator, and while both do nominally the same thing, this makes for a great item that can be taken around and demonstrated. With its laser-cut wooden case, it even strives to resemble the original’s design.

Taking things one step further, you can now also get an External Lamp Field attachment (seen below), inspired by the Swiss-K variant of the machine that made its appearance before WWII. When connected, this disables the display on your Arduino simulator, and displays characters via a series of physical letters that light up. As it uses a USB connector to interface with the main Arduino unit, it would also likely work with other Enigma simulators, provided you’re able to tweak the source code.

For that matter, it looks like an interesting fixture for any sort of text display. Perhaps it could inspire or even be adapted to your own design!

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While the Nintendo Wii is old news at this point, the hardware that goes into their controllers is still awesome. Wii Nunchucks and their clones are inexpensive and readily available, making an ideal control method for all kinds of robotics projects. The devices feature a small joytick on the top, a pair of buttons on the front, and an accelerometer inside, allowing for a variety of interesting control schemes.

While using one of these with your electronics project normally requires interfacing with it’s I2C (or technically the TWI) interface, what if you wanted to simply use it as computer mouse or game controller? This is indeed possible, and with the iTapStick Nunchuck-toMouse adapter you simply plug it (or even more than one) in an a USB HID device. As shown below, playing the One Finger Death Punch PC video game with two controllers looks like a lot of fun.

The adapter is made from a USB Pro Trinket with a Nunchucky interface, allowing you to plug in a wireless or wired Nunchuck controller without any soldering. It can also be programmed for custom HID interactions, opening up all kinds of gaming or productivity possibilities. Additionally, since this setup is simply an HID device, it could also be used with Raspbery Pi board for retro gaming, or as a controller for your Pi-based robot.

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