Tindie

Despite the importance of protecting our files – it is way too easy to forget to make regular backups. Save yourself from explaining to the teacher that the dog ate your USB stick with the ThinkLearnDo Key Holder. This key holder provides an innovative solution to file storage, backing up your files each and every time you hang up your keys!

Useful for everyone from studious school children to busy office professionals – this key holder backs up your files while you rest! Shipped as a fun DIY kit, the device is powered by an Omega2+ development board and features a high-quality encrypted backup system. Let this key holder take charge of your backups whilst you recharge your batteries.

The kit contains all of the parts needed to build your very own auto-backup key holder, and is exceptionally well documented with its own hardware setup guide. You can either create a custom enclosure that fits your home perfectly, or purchase the brilliant black 3D printed case as an optional extra. Inside the enclosure is the green PCB, housing the main components and circuitry that make up this clever device’s brains.

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For years, the holy grail of portable communication devices has been mesh networking. Instead of using high power transmitters and long antennas like amateur radio, or base stations like the common cell phone, mesh networking promises a huge coverage area with small, cheap transmitters. The only caveat is that there are enough devices to actually create a mesh network.

Currently, LoRA technology is the best way to get to where we want, and the Meshtastic from B&Q Consulting Shop in Shenzhen is an excellent solution to creating a useful mesh network! Inside the Meshtastic is a Semtech SX1276 LoRA transceiver, alongside an ESP32 WROOM module and a GPS module. By connecting the credit card-sized Meshtastic module to your smartphone, you can send data over an improvised mesh network over LoRA. Think of the Meshtastic as a LoRA modem for mesh networks, using your phone and an app as the actual interface.

More information about Meshtastic can be found with the documentation, alongside the hackaday.io project page, and firmware and schematics. There is a really incredible writeup on the use and capabilities of the Meshtastic on their blog, showing how even in urban environments a low-bandwidth network can be made without any other infrastructure.

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Get ready to defeat project after project at record speeds with the Robotistan Electronic Giant Project Kit! This well-organised box comes packed to the brim with technology – featuring 150 fun components from robot platforms to LCD screens! You’re sure to find something that will spark your imagination here.

This kit is designed to help makers who want to explore electronics but won’t stand for being held back by shipping delays! With a vast array of sensors and components right at your fingertips, this kit makes it super simple to bring your ideas to life. Why not create a musical instrument that can be controlled by water, or control your blinds using light sensors? With this many components, the ideas are limitless!

Perfect for robotics enthusiasts, this kit comes complete with multiple robotics components and the sought after Robotistan Uno R3 – a custom chip compatible with Arduino, and explicitly designed for easily creating robots. Robotistan hand picked every element of this kit to help teach the fundamentals of electronic devices, so building projects which combine these elements is very educational!

The sturdy plastic case makes finding your desired component as easy as possible. Everything you could need is right in front of you and has a home to return to when you’re done. Pack everything away with ease, making cleaning up a simple task and leaving you with more time to invent. So, get to building, and create something new!

Robotistan is an independent electronics manufacturer based out of Delaware, United States. A producer of innovative kits for more than a decade, they have recently joined Tindie to share the unique products they produce! Support a talented maker and try out one of their well-considered electronics kits.

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Instead of using hands or digits to display the time, a word clock writes the time out – instead of the hands on ten and two it’ll show “It is ten past ten.” The best part is there aren’t many pre-built word clocks around and you usually have to build one yourself. A good thing that electronics kits exist!

The Personalized Word Clock Kit is one of those kits. While this kit doesn’t give you the “fun” of soldering 150 LEDs, it is a small, svelte clock that can sit on your desk. Because the LED matrix and shadow mask for the words are distinct, you can easily add a tiny bit of text to the top of this word clock. Theoretically, this word clock can also display the time in a language other than English.

This word clock kit uses an ESP32 to drive a 13×13 array of RGB LEDs. On top of those LEDs sits a 3D printed shadow mask that you will have to build. Lay a diffuser (a piece of paper) over this mask, insert it into the case, and you have a word clock. If you’re handy with programming, the clock can also be customized for various foreground and background colors, time of day and year messages, an alarm sound, and an ambient light meter to dim the lights at night.

This clock is available in two variants — a Personalized Word Clock PCB Shield that requires the end user to print the 3D case, baffle, and front panel. The most complete option is the Full Personalized Word Clock Kitset where techkiwigadgets will print all the parts and program the Wifi and timezone credentials.

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This development board for the ESP32 is one of the densest boards I’ve seen on the Tindie front page – the number of features packed into such a compact board is awesome! Beyond holding the ESP32-WROOM package and the CH340 to program and communicate with it, you also get a huge number of optional peripherals that can be added as needed.

Some of the attractive features for building IoT devices include the high-efficiency DC/DC converter that can accept from 5-9V to power the whole board; a real-time clock with coin cell battery backup; headers to accept a GSM module which allows remote communication when WiFi or Bluetooth aren’t available; positions to fit a 433MHz radio module for communication on the ISM band (in North America, it’s 902-928MHz); the list just goes on and on!

The board can optionally connect to a user interface board which can have a TFT display and push buttons fitted. At around 8x8cm, the board is small enough to fit just about anywhere you might want to put it!

Note that this product is just the PCBs — though the seller hints that fully populated boards might be available in the future, which would be a great option for getting a fully working ESP32 prototype platform up and running quickly!

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Oscilloscopes are fundamental tools for electronics experimentation, graphing fluctuations in voltage over time. Working with current is a bit more complicated, generally involving probe adapter equipment that costs in the thousands of dollars. As an alternative for relatively low voltage and current reading, in the sub-$50 range, seller LeoNerd is offering an alternative with his Oscilloscope Current Probe Adapter.

This device can be used at voltage ranges of 3V to 28V and measures current at up to 1.5A. Measurement error is less than 2%, and has a bandwidth capability of 1.8MHz. So while it’s not appropriate for working with heavy multi-amp DC motors, it’s nicely well spec’d for traditional USB devices that function in the 5V, 500mA range. The device includes USB connections, binding posts, and 0.1″ pin sockets for versatile connection possibilities.

One usage consideration here is that because of the way this shunt system works, in order to display its full 1.5A, it needs to be supplied by at least 15V. You’ll also need BNC-to-BNC patch cables to connect up a scope to this device’s output, which are found here. For a bit more background on LeoNerd (AKA Paul Evans), check out this interview from 2016. You may even notice a picture of an earlier version of this particular product shown there, with fully metal BNC connectors.

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The Open Hardware Summit happens every year in the spring, and this year is once again happening online on April 22, 2022. Every OHS is jam-packed with awesome talks; this year hackers working on everything from sustainability to pellet 3D printing to open source laptops will be filling the 8-hour event. This year, Tindie, Hackaday, and Supplyframe are all sponsoring the event, and will be running a virtual ‘booth’ on the OHS Discord server which we encourage you to check out during the summit! The booth will be discussing Tindie & Open Hardware, as well as details about this year’s Hackaday Prize.

There are so many fabulous talks this year, but a few to keep an eye on are Leon Anavi’s talk about using open source software to make open source hardware – Open Source Tools for Making Open Source Hardware runs from 11:50 to 12:10. Another Tindie friend, Alex Glow, will be talking about A Better Hardware Life Cycle: Build Stuff Without Feeling Like a Jerk from 10:40 to 11:00. This talk is all about sustainability in open hardware; how to choose materials, design, produce and repair in an Eco-friendly and sustainable way.

Another talk that shouldn’t be missed is Andy Quitmeyer’s Open Source Toys for Endangered Animals! I mean, we get to look at cute animals playing with open source hardware to help keep them stimulated, healthy, and happy! What’s not to love? This talk is at 15:20 and runs until 15:40.

Tickets are still available! The goodie bag has some really cool stuff in it this year, including some very awesome artwork by Dushan Milic. Buying a ticket helps support OSHWA and the costs of running OHS. If you are unable to afford a ticket due to financial difficulty, don’t worry – you can watch the livestream for free!

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If you’d like to augment your earlobes with a bit of electro-scientific bling, then these Golden Ratio LED earrings by California STEAM may be just the thing. Controlled by an ATtiny 416, and powered by a pair of size 13 zinc-air hearing aid batteries, these spiral devices can flash away in green and red for over 300 hours.

Each device has 27 dual-color LED units (54 individual diodes) that flash away via a 6×12 matrix setup. These are standard non-addressable LED units, so the 6 anodes are connected to PWM outputs for brightness variation, while the cathodes are connected to 12 digital pins. The setup could control up to 72 LEDs, but the 27/54 pixel light-up configuration should be sufficiently bright and sparkly for any occasion!

A push-button on the back is used as an interface, allowing one to change between 6 different patterns and 5 color modes. If these aren’t quite your style, Tindie has a variety of other earrings for sale, including the TOO-THE-MOON rocket-themed ear adornments, cassette tape styled PCBs, and even a lockpick set.

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MIDI has been around for almost forty years, and over the decades we’ve seen MIDI controllers for everything. Want a piano controller? There are millions. A drum pad controller? Done. Xylophones? Yes. But if you want a custom MIDI controller, with all the bells and whistles you want, you’ve got to build your own.

The 2 Octave MIDI Controller is just that. It’s a relatively small MIDI controller that’s still packed to the gills with features. They include a two octave polyphonic keyboard, eight drum buttons, seven rotary and seven slide pots, a two-axis thumbstick for pitch bends and modulations, octave up and down buttons, and an LCD with a rotary encoder to navigate the UI.

Deep in the firmware for this keyboard are a lot of neat features that automatically generate scales and chords, making this one of the smartest DAW-less setups possible. Of course, all the source code and documentation for this keyboard is available. If you have an idea of what a MIDI controller can be, it’s time to get coding!

Designed and produced by Midi Controllers out of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, there’s enough MIDI goodness in this controller to do just about anything. Take a look at the Midi Controller’s Facebook page, or, alternatively, get the all the docs on the project’s Github.

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Use your voice as a unique electronic instrument with the ROBOTO Eurorack Robot Vocoder! This glitchy and distinctly analog sounding vocoder adds exciting timbres to your voice, turning it into a brand new ethereal instrument. With an input gain function that allows you to use a wide variety of microphone sources, this adaptable module will transform your modular setup into a robot rock machine!

Producing sounds reminiscent of early electronica and Kraftwerk, this versatile vocoder modulates your voice using four CV controlled parameters. It can shift the pitch of your voice over 7 octaves – create intergalatic effects by modulating the chip’s clock speed, and toggle the vibrato in either a pitch or robot mode.

These parameters are controlled using either CV input or the associated knobs and buttons, meaning there are many ways to get this module singing. ROBOTO can even create some incredible sounds when used without vocals; get experimental! By plugging it into other elements of your modular synth, you can create outstanding pitch-modulated and effected sounds for your compositions.

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