June 2024 Maker News Round Up
It's another fantastic Maker News Round Up. Chock full of videos to watch and articles to read.
Welcome to the June 2024 Maker News round up
The long summer days are giving us plenty of time for projects - who needs fancy expensive holidays when you have a workshop to spend time in!
Things To Watch
Automate those repetitive tasks
Laser cutters are great - but there’s a lot of setup and alignment involved in getting the perfect cut. And it’s even more difficult when you need to make multiple pieces. Clem at element14 presents makes himself redundant with an automated Arduino controller jig.
Want to make you own chip?
It sounds like pure fantasy, but thanks to the TinyTapeout initiative, designing and manufacturing your own chip is not just for the big players anymore. Robert Feranec gives us the low down on how to make your own chip.
ESP32-S3 ZX Spectrum emulator
We’re travelling back into the childhood of atomic14. He’s made an ESP32-S3 based ZX Spectrum. What’s really cool about this is the full-color silk screen touch keyboard. It’s looks fantastic. You can follow updates here as he tries to turn this into a product.
Tired of typing passwords?
Back on the subject of automating mundane tasks - do you ever get tired of typing in your passwords? Mellow_Labs has a plan to save the wear and tear on your fingers with an automatic login gadget.
Ultrahuman Ring
What does Becky Stern do when she gets a new high tech gadget? She sends it off for CT scan of course! Find out what’s inside one of these super smart health tracking rings.
Hacking a cheap health ring
Sometimes ideas just collide and two people do almost the same thing. It’s another health tracking ring - but this one is super cheap from AliExpress. Aaron Christophel takes a good look at the hackability of it.
You can’t be too visible at night
TechnoChic Natasha takes her bike light to the next level with Micro:bit controlled neo-pixel strips everywhere! This project has been going for over 3 years and Natasha has a whole bunch of tips on addressing NeoPixels, weatherproofing the project, and designing a user interface that’s easy to understand and use while riding.
Fixing Maths
If you think floating point maths is the only way to handle numbers with precision in computing, think again. Low Byte Productions takes us into the world of fixed point numbers and shows that it’s not the only way.
Things To Read
What’s that smell?
I’ve definitely experienced this. You’re sat there minding your own business doing some electronics and slowly you become aware of a strange smell… yep - something somewhere is burning!
Speed reading flash
Reading SPI boot ROMs can be a tedious and slow process. The answer is to build something dedicated to do it - this one uses a Teensy and an 8-SOIC chip-clip. It can read/write the entire multi-megabit ROM in a minute!
Making USB devices
Thinking of making a USB device? The goal of this article is to give you the simplest end-to-end journey to a working USB device. It covers everything from the physical connection between the USB device and the host, and developing a super sample application that interacts with your USB device.
Why do components have those values?
Ever find yourself puzzled by the seemingly random numbers on resistors, capacitors, and other electronic bits? Let’s take a trip back to 1877 France, where the solution to an entirely different problem will explain why we’ve ended up with these standardised values.
Beating Rubik’s Cube in Record Time
Blink and you might miss this - a robot that can solve a Rubik’s Cube in just 0.305 seconds! This is really pushing the boundaries of servo motors and control systems.
DIY Paper Tape Reader
I’m not quite old enough to have used paper tape and punch cards, but it’s part of our heritage. This DIY paper tape reader is as much about preserving history as it is about the thrill of bringing old technology back to life.
The Ultimate Geek Timepiece
Truly we are living in the future - You can now have a Cray C90 supercomputer on your wrist! Why settle for a mundane time-telling device when you can have a piece of computing history.
Build Your Own CNC
This guide goes through all the steps to build your own CNC machine from scratch. It includes a complete bill of materials (BOM), STL/OBJ-files for all the 3D-printed parts and detailed instructions on how everything is assembled and how to install all the necessary open-source software.
Closing thoughts
As always, thanks for taking the time to read the newsletter. If you've got a project that you're proud of and ready to share, let us know! You could be the inspiration for fellow makers in a future newsletter!