Tindie

Enrico Miglino’s ring lighting assembly

When you start getting serious about documenting your projects, getting lighting correct can make a huge improvement. Like many Tindarians, much of my work takes place in a garage, where lighting isn’t usually a priority. My solution was to put up several clamp lights to illuminate the area. While this generally works well, when you need to get really close to your subject to photograph or record video of small parts, the actual camera can get in the way of your illumination.

To solve this problem for photography, a ring flash is a great option where a series of LEDs forms a ring around your camera’s lens. This eliminates the shadow of the camera since the light source is in front of it. Unfortunately, the portable versions of this type of lighting are generally setup as a camera activated flash, not a continuous light source.

In order for more control over his shooting, Balearic Dynamics’ Enrico Miglino came up with a battery powered LED ring that emits light continuously, and can even be dimmed as needed. While meant for still photography use mounted on a DSLR camera, this type of lighting would also work for closeup videography work, such as showing how components are soldered onto a circuit board.

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If you’ve been following along with this blog for a while, you’ve perhaps noticed my general annoyance with soldering. I have a love for screw terminals like the one’s as seen here for Arduino and involving the ESP8266.

After buying a TS100 iron to replace my extremely cheap model due in part to a review on Hackaday, my view on this is somewhat changed. Regardless, sometimes solder is just not the best connection method.

One interesting alternative are alligator clips, generally used for temporary connections between devices like an oscilloscope or multimeter and a signal source. On the other hand, there’s no reason that this kind of connection can’t be used for experimentation and semi-permanent connections, as shown by the Makey Makey and BBC Micro:Bit connection methods.

What if you want to connect to an Arduino with clips, or perhaps implement four-pin sensors with this type of connection? While you would normally have to do a little bit of hacking to make this work properly, EasyPads, seen in the above video, makes this operation simple. Just plug the pads in, and it provides four connections with alligator clips, allowing for experimentation without the hassle of soldering, or even connecting screw terminals.

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Thermal imaging has remained an interesting, if costly, technology for some time. One lower cost option is the the Grid-EYE sensor from Panasonic. While it has a resolution of only 8×8 pixels, it’s priced in the low double digit range, making it an ideal candidate for budget projects. If you’d like to add it to your build, Pesky Products has a has a breakout available that allows it to be used with the I²C protocol.

Xose Pérez, after finding this sensor and breakout on Tindie, which he (correctly) considers “a great place to find uncommon electronic components or weird/interesting boards,” decided to make his own low-resolution IR camera. At only 64 pixels of resolution, it’s not as capable as more expensive units, but it could still be very useful for getting a general idea of what is hot and cold in a room/environment. The case is made out of slices of acrylic, paper, cardboard, and MDF, giving it a very unique look. It also features a small screen to display supplemental information, and a simple button/switch  interface.

The Grid-EYE with Pesky Products’ breakout

While Pérez ended up making his own breakout for this sensor, we’re happy to see that this site helped inspire this awesome project. If you’ve made something awesome involving or influenced by Tindie, we’d love to hear about it. Tweet at us @Tindie, or you can ping me on my personal account @JeremySCook!

Finally, if you want to see what an 8×8 resolution IR sensor can do, check out the video below:

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innovations in water conservation, especially hot water which has a large amount of energy added to it, take many forms. Tankless water heaters eliminate the waste of having hot water constantly losing energy to the environment, and solar heaters cleverly pipe water to an energy collector in order to defray much of the energy required to heat water up to an acceptable temperature.

While both can reap real benefits, either one requires a significant cost and/or time commitment to set up. One less-involved alternative is the QiQi smart shower controller. Rather than helping to heat the water in a better or more efficient way, it addresses the issue of leaving the shower on too long to heat up.

Instead of turning it on and testing intermittently with your hand to see if it’s hot, you simply use a mobile app to turn it on. When the temperature is to your set point, it turns the shower off and alerts you via your phone that the shower is ready. Saving time and energy simultaneously—what’s not to like?

On the other hand, if you have enough time (and perhaps an understanding HOA) you can build your own solar heater yourself, as Jake Teater demonstrates in the video seen below:

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You might be able to detect lightning by looking out the window or listening for a loud boom, but getting a machine to do this is a bit more tricky. For this purpose, Smdking’s EMP sensor does the job nicely.

The device was developed after parents were concerned about kids being injured by lightning during sports training sessions due to nearby lightning strikes. Now outdoor training can be stopped if lightning is detected within a 30 km radius.

While avoiding lightning yourself is obviously a good thing, another exciting application of this sensor is to photograph the phenomenon. The product listing notes that it works quite well, though you’d of course need to aim the camera in the correct direction.

While other sensors like this are available, they either operate on their own, or are simply integrated circuits that require other accessories like an antenna. This device features a digital output that can be used as a device trigger, as well as an analog output to study details of lightning intensity. It also beeps if you need a human “readable” warning.

Incidentally, if you’d like to know where you can use this type of device, here’s an article about the most lightning prone places in the world. While I thought the Tampa Bay area where I reside was #1, the title holder is reportedly Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. Orangetree, Florida, south of Tampa, does hold the title of #1 in the US, so perhaps naming professional sports teams after airborne electricity isn’t too far off!

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The words “medical equipment” and “affordable” aren’t generally heard in the same sentence. Of course there are good reasons for this, including the fact that these devices must meet certain certification standards, and that some types of equipment are thankfully not needed outside of specialized situations.

However, with the wide availability of powerful computing devices like the Raspberry Pi, its become possible to create some medical devices without the backing of a large corporation. One such device is the Healthy Pi, an open source vital signs monitor based on the Raspberry Pi. It takes the form of a HAT that attaches to the 40-pin header, and allows you to monitor such statistics as ECG, respiration, and skin temperature, charting them out nicely on the integrated display.

While this device does have all of the features of a patient monitoring system, it does not have any of the medical certifications alluded to earlier, and is not approved for true medical or diagnostic use. According to the project’s Hackaday.io page, regulatory compliance and certifications are on the to-do list. Perhaps this type of device could become more accepted and useful in the future, bring down costs for quality medical care and advanced remote monitoring.

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In the world of electronic music, keyboards are the first thing you think of, followed perhaps by drum pads, exotic looping equipment, or simply software running on a computer. On the other hand, many “real” instruments are powered by air from a human, the digital equivalent of which gets relatively little attention.

That being said, if you’ve been looking for a way to play electric oboe or clarinet, then the T.WI, which stands for either TeensieWI or TeensyWi, looks like an excellent solution. As shown in the video below, it takes input from your breath, and allows you to play notes in a similar style to a recorder. While the audio seen there is from wind instruments, given that it’s a MIDI input device, there’s no reason that any sort of tone couldn’t be played. It also features a thumb joystick underneath to control pitch bend and other musical elements.

According its product description, “It is made from cool UV reactive perspex that will look awesome on stage or in your blacklight lit chill out room. Actually, it always looks cool. And it is awesome to play.” Whether or not you need a new MIDI input, it’s certainly worth checking out as a novel computer interface design.

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While incredibly cool, thermal imaging systems have remained out of the price range of most hackers. Even if you can afford to plunk down hundreds of dollars on one, taking one—or several—apart to see what’s inside would require an even larger budget. The PureThermal 1, while still not inexpensive at just under $300, is more budget friendly than most thermal cameras on the market.

What makes this camera unique, however, isn’t so much the cost, as that its build for hackability. It comes as a PCB without a plastic housing, meaning that electronics can be accessed without unscrewing or destroying anything. Even better, the camera’s reference firmware as well as its hardware schematic are open-source.

While it doesn’t have its own display, the camera is recognized by a computer as a webcam, thus setup, as seen in the video here is extremely easy. It works with Windows, Mac, and Linux out of the box, and would be a perfect fit for thermal computer vision experimentation. Or you can use the The GetThermal app, a cross-platform thermal image viewer, for more temperature information.

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As humans, we can balance and walk on two legs. While this may seem simple, if you’ve seen a baby struggling to get the hang of it, or if you’ve tried to create your own balancing robot, it becomes obvious that this is actually an incredible feat. So much is going on here controls-wise that it’s very difficult to get a robot to duplicate this task.

On the other hand, if you kept the center of gravity inside of a single foot’s boundaries when on one leg, you could forgo the need to balance in the traditional sense altogether.

That’s the concept behind the Otto DIY kit, which uses four servos to actuate a pair of stubby legs and gigantic feet, and uses an ultrasound sensor to avoid obstacles. While it won’t be the fastest or most agile robot at the local hackerspace, it can exhibit some impressive dance moves as shown below:

If this looks familiar, Otto isn’t the only robot to take advantage of this type of locomotion. For example, the Arduped has a more minimal body design, and its three-toed green feet look decidedly awesome. You should also check out BoB the BiPed, which inspired this design and features an array of LEDs as a mouth.

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The ESP8266 module, with its 80Mhz processor and built-in WiFi capabilities, has taken the maker world by storm in the past few years. Along with the module itself, development boards like the Wemos D1 mini have sprung up, providing a convenient way to use it, and it can even be programmed using the Arduino IDE.

This is great if you want to read sensors from a distance, control a few LEDs, or other non-power intensive tasks, but what if you want it to physically do something? One of the easiest ways to do this would be to use a hobby-style servo, but control and power distribution can be dicey, especially as you implement control of more than one or two.

For a ready-made solution to this issue, the 16-channer D1 Mini servo shield looks quite convenient. It plugs into the top or bottom of a D1 Mini board, and can power the servos via an external power supply if needed. Communication with the board is via I²C, offloading control duties to the shield, and allowing up to 64 boards to be used together.

The ability to use 64 of this item together means that you could, in theory, control up to 1024 servos or other PWM devices (64 expansion boards each driving 16 servos). If you do end up controlling a thousand servos with these boards—or come up with other cool inventions using products you found here—please let us know! You can find Tindie on Twitter here, or tweet me directly @JeremySCook. I’d love to feature it!

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