HackSpace magazine — Issue 2

30 MB·English

by  HackSpace magazine

NEW HACK MAKE BUILD CREATE
TECHNOLOGY IN YOUR HANDS
hsmag.cc January 2018 Issue #02
LASER MAKE A
CUTTING KNIFE
Make flashing Unleash
lights with Iron Age
flashing light technology
MUSIC
BOX
When clockwork
meets electronics
RUBBER
BANDS
BAD DOG
Build a thermodynamic engine
DESIGNS
02
Transforming junk to Nixie clocks
Jan.2018
Issue #02 £6 9 772515 514006
SINE WAVES CHEESE MAKING DIGITAL BRAILLE CROCHET

WELCOME EDITORIAL
Editor
Ben Everard
[email protected]
Welcome to Features Editor
Andrew Gregory
[email protected]
HackSpace magazine
Sub Editors
Jem Roberts, Nicola King
DESIGN
Critical Media
Automatically fabricating 3D objects has been the stuff of criticalmedia.co.uk
Head of Design
science fiction almost as long as there has been science fiction,
Dougal Matthews
and now – thanks to 3D printing – it’s slowly becoming real.
Designer
There have been some fantastic advancements Lee Allen
in the field in recent years and it’s more Photography
Brian O’Halloran
accessible that it’s ever been. Here at HackSpace
Illustrations
magazine, we’re fantastically excited about the Sam Alder
new possibilities that 3D printing is opening CONTRIBUTORS
up, such as small-scale manufacturing, hyper- Lucy Rogers, Andrew
Huang, Cameron Coward,
customisable products and an open-source Jenny List, Liam Smyth, Ed
Rogers, Mayank Sharma,
approach to physical things. Will Kalif, John Wargo, Eric
Coates, Sophie Wong,
This technology is still in its infancy and it’s John Teel, Andy Clark,
Inderpreet Singh, Graham
too early to say for sure what direction this will Morrison, Martin O’Hanlon,
Phil King, Richard Smedley
take, but we do know that it’s up to hackers like
PUBLISHING
you to determine the future. That’s why we’ve
Publishing Director:
picked 3D printing for this month’s cover feature and that’s Russell Barnes
[email protected]
why we’ll continue to feature great 3D printing content.
DISTRIBUTION
BEN EVERARD Seymour Distribution Ltd
2 East Poultry Ave,
Editor [email protected] London EC1A 9PT
[phone]
PAGE50
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This magazine is printed on
paper sourced from sustainable
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h ackspacemag which has been assessed as
conforming to ISO 14001.
HackSpace magazine is published
ONLINE by Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd.,
Station Road, Cambridge, CB1
hsmag.cc 2JH. The publisher, editor, and
contributors accept no responsibility
in respect of any omissions or
errors relating to goods, products or
services referred to or advertised.
Except where otherwise noted,
content in this magazine is licensed
under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-
ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-
SA 3.0). ISSN: 2515-5148.
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Contents
SPARK LENS
06 31
06 Top Projects 32 3D Printing
Brilliant builds to inspire and invigorate What it is, why you should do it and how to get started
14 Manchester Robots 40 Badgelife
Explore 500 years of android history The unlikely hacker culture art form
18 Meet the Maker 46 We Learn Crochet
Paul Parry of Bad Dog Designs A new old skill with the help of Swansea Hackspace
22 Columns 52 Canute
Learn to stop worrying and embrace failure A massive step forward for Braille readers
24 Letters 56 Interview Hacker House
In which you, the public, demand more robots Drones, cybersecurity, and baby monitors
25 Crowdfunding now 62 Improviser’s Toolbox Rubber bands
Gadgets to help you work better, smarter, faster Who knew you could build a fridge out of rubber bands?
26 Hackspace of the month
Say hello to Birmingham’s fizzPOP makerspace
18
32
86
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CONTENTS
52
40 56 26
FORGE FIELD TEST
69 113
70 School of Making Make a knife 114 Review Hero101 3D printer
Craft metal tools without any expensive specialised kit The ultimate in affordable printing?
74 School of Making Laser-cut LED clock
116 Best of Breed Arduino IDEs
Bring designs to life with rasters and vectors Find the best coding environment for you
78 School of Making Digital data – Arduino
How to handle digital inputs on your microcontroller 120 Battle Tested K40 laser cutter
The K40 laser cutter, tested to destruction
82 School of Making Sine wave Stylophone 128
Create musical sine waves, then write a top-ten single 124 AIY Vision Kit
Google shares its latest AI trinket with us
86 LED goggles
Embellish a pair of goggles with some Adafruit NeoPixels 125 Raspberry Pi Power Switch
92 Custom Arduino Turn your Pi on and off remotely
Arduino not doing enough for you? Design your own!
126 Adafruit Grid-EYE
98 Music box A thermal camera on a tiny board
Resurrect old clockwork tech with a pair of 555 timers
128 Bearables
102 Build a cheese press
Programmable fun for kids
Turn milk, time, and pressure into cheesy goodness
106 OpenHAB 2 129 Books: The Case for Working with your Hands
Set up an open-source home automation system It’s not just fun: turns out that making things is good for you!
Some of the tools and techniques shown in HackSpace magazine are dangerous unless used with skill, experience, and appropriate personal protection equipment. While we attempt to guide the reader, ultimately you
are responsible for your own safety and understanding the limits of yourself and your equipment. HackSpace magazine is intended for an adult audience and some projects may be dangerous for children. Raspberry
Pi (Trading) Ltd does not accept responsibility for any injuries, damage to equipment, or costs incurred from projects, tutorials or suggestions in HackSpace magazine. Laws and regulations covering many of the topics
in HackSpace magazine are different between countries, and are always subject to change. You are responsible for understanding the requirements in your jurisdiction and ensuring that you comply with them. Some
manufacturers place limits on the use of their hardware which some projects or suggestions in HackSpace magazine may go beyond. It is your responsibility to understand the manufacturer’s limits.
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TToopp PPrroojjeeccttss
REGULAR
Wimborne
Model Railway
By Terry Coles @WimborneModTown
T he modern use of the word ‘hack’ comes from
the model railway world (specifically the Tech
Model Railway Club at MIT). It is, therefore, perhaps
appropriate for HackSpace magazine to feature a model
railway. In an ongoing push towards greater realism,
the Wimborne Model Railway has received a new
lighting model courtesy of a Raspberry Pi Zero controlling a system
of LEDs. The lighting system had to be able to simulate a day-and-
night cycle, showing the house and street lights gradually coming on
as the sun goes down, and going off again in the morning.
A major requirement of the project is that it could be both
developed and operated by volunteers. The team selected the
Pi Zero to run the system, as this made it easy for developers to
work on the system. To make it easy to work in an embedded
system, the Pi runs on the piCore distribution, which is a stripped-
down Linux that runs entirely in memory. As it boots up, the root
file system is loaded into RAM rather than running off the SD card.
The LEDs are controlled by a combination of relays and
MOSFETs. Although off-the-shelf modules were used, the driver
boards came with IRF520, which don’t work particularly well with
the 3.3 V GPIO pins on the Pi, so the team de-soldered these and
replaced them with IRLZ44NPBF MOSFETs, which worked better.
You can see all this operating for yourself as the 00-gauge railway
is open for visitors at Wimborne Model Town and Gardens in
Dorset, UK.
Right
We don’t want to
alarm the people of
Wimborne, but that
police box doesn’t
bode well
6
SSPPAARRKK
7
Top Projects
REGULAR
AND gate
By Paul Smith @NncPSmith
e featured this logic gate in issue 1 of
W
HackSpace magazine – you can read all about
it here: hsmag.cc/issue1.
It’s one of the fundamental building blocks
of making a computer, and you can make one
yourself with just some switches, wire, and a
few cheap components.
Right
The same enclosure
could be used to
create any other
two‑input logic gate
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SPARK
UTTERLY HIPSTER
BICYCLE GAUGES 2.0
By Grzegorz Holdys
InsightMachinesLab
Remember the analogue cycling dials that
worked with digital technology to bring accurate
speed and cadence readings to a normal bike?
If you don’t, you can refresh your memory in
hsmag.cc/issue1.
You may have thought that they deserved a
cooler bike and some edgy urban photography.
Well, here you go!
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Top Projects
REGULAR
Kermit
By Muhammad Badr @mobadr
K ermit InMoov is a humanoid robot that lives at
fizzPOP. It came to existence in 2014 as a 3D-printed
right hand which was based on the InMoov designs
published by Gael Langevin (see inmoov.fr if you
want one!). With time, it grew into two 5 DOF arms
with a pan-and-tilt head, a tilting stomach, a rotating
waist, and a differential-steering base from an old wheelchair
(though it can’t wait for the day it walks!). Kermit is powered
by ROS, and uses 17 digital servos to move its head and arms.
A dozen more motors will soon give it the ability to grasp and
manipulate stuff. It sees the world using a stereo camera in its
eyes, a PIR sensor in its chest, and an Asus Xtion in its tummy.
Kermit had been suffering from an identity crisis since its first
day; it never knew what it wanted to be. It found a meaning for its
plastic-based life when it came to fizzPOP. It now knows what it
wants to be: a butler. After all, no modern makerspace is complete
without a robot butler, right?
Right
You need a 3D printer
with just 12 cm ×
12 cm × 12 cm volume
to build your own
InMoov humanoid
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