this week on maker update: a fog machine for your pocket, a cnc for under $500, flipdots, fidgets, contests, maker books and maker faires. it’s wednesday, october 26th, i’m donaldbell and welcome to another episode of maker update. i’ve had a great week.
router reviews woodworking australia, there's a lot of new subscribers to thechannel, so thank you everyone for helping to get the word out. it really helped. and i had a great time at maker faire, east bay maker faire in oakland on sunday. i got to run into a lot of my old friends at make magazine. i got to see so much cool stuff.
and i got to meet anouk wipprecht and talk to her about a new dress she’s working on. i'm not going to tell you about it yet. but uh... let’s just say it involves furbys. but there’s still lots to cover in this episode, so we're going to jump into it, starting with the project of the week. this week, one of my new favorite makers andartist in residence at autodesk pier 9, scott mcindoe, posted an instructablefor a portable, battery powered fog machine. scott here hacked together an ingenious combinationof an e-cig vaporizer, a pc fan, and a 3d printed enclosure. the vaporizer runs the same non-toxic fogfluid as a conventional fog machine, and the
whole thing can be put together for under$100. if you don’t have a 3d printer, there’sa link right in the instructable for working with a local 3d hubs member to have it printedand shipped. pricing was a round $20-30 when i looked. alright, two things i love about this project. number one: it gives me a totally legitimate excuse tobuy a vaporizer. and #2 and more importantly -- more importantly! scott made this fun useful thing that didn’t exist before, and he gave it away to to all of us.
and i know that sounds simple, but in the venn diagramof fun, useful, unprecedented, and free those things rarely overlap. so thank you scott. and now for news. this past tuesday, maker bar smith launcheda kickstarter campaign for a scalable cnc router that costs under $500. it’s called maslow, and unlike most cncrouters that use a table design, the maslow is tilted up vertically. it sorta reminds me of those panel saws yousee at home depot that can breakdown big sheets
of plywood. there’s a lot of interesting design choiceshere, from the geared dc motors, the chains, the use of bricks as counterbalance, but itall seems to check out. and for under $500, it’s really hard ignore. it may not be as precise as a shopbot, butit’s a fraction of the price, it takes up less space, gravity takes care of clearingaway the dust, and if it breaks at $500 i’m not even that angry. and what makes this even more newsworthy for us is the fact that it’s been completely open sourced. if you want to make this thing right now, you totally can.
i’ve got the link in the show notes for the parts and the software. alright, and now for more projects. this week i indulged my obsession withflipdot displays. these are those electromechanical displaysthat are used in fancy train stations where magnet physical flips a plastic pixel oneway or the other. i love the way they look and even more i lovethe way they sound like a sizzling glitchy maraca. so, to my delight, last week i saw that acompany breakfastny is selling these as a fully assembled flip-dot display.
they have an amazing video that demos the whole thing, and for me i could listen to this with my eyes closed and enjoy it just as much… as cool as that is -- it’s not a project-- it’s like a prefabbed thing that's really meant for startups to buy and show off in their lobby. but it got me thinking about flipdotdisplays again, and that led me to this… this project, called vote with your feet bychengxx, was part of the market st. prototyping festival in san francisco -- which is worthchecking out in its own right and i’ll leave a link in the notes. the project gives pedestrians a chance tovote on a question posed by flipdot sign and
then their vote is registered as they walkthrough the door of their choice. now, it’s a cool project, but it’s a little bittoo complicated to fall into my ideal project category of of something that's cool-yet-realistically-achievable. it uses an omax industrial waterjet for god’ssake. but within this project there is the holy grail of what i’vebeen looking for, which is an august 2016 instructable on how to easily animate flipdot displays using a raspberry pi. i know that took a ridiculously long timeto get to the actual project, but here it is: how to flipdot with a raspi by philetusis the best resource i’ve seen yet on how to easily getting these displays up and running and animated withjust two connections.
he includes details on where to buy the displays,the sparkfun usb converter you’ll need to interface with it, dip switch settings, pisettings, and the python script that will get a custom message scrolling. maybe i’m crazy and i’m the only one whothinks these displays are magic, but just in case you feel the same way -- now you knowwhere to go. for those of you with 3d printers, anotherinteresting thing i found this week is a collection on thingiverse dedicated to fidget spinners. these are generally some kind of handheldtoy meant for mindless fidgeting -- but what i’ve noticed is a recent boom in designsthat integrate ball bearings for spinning.
there’s at least 20 designs here just fromoctober. this feels like a trend to me. like, i think they look like fun, i haven't made one myself. maybe one of you can explain to me - leave a comment for me and let me know what the sudden surge in interest is all about. when did we get so obsessed with fidgeting? books! i’m going to do something new here and i'm going to run through a list of recently released maker books that i think you guys should know about. the first is workshop mastery with jimmy diresta.
this came out yesterday! it’s $20, and if for some crazy reason youhaven’t heard of jimmy diresta, please leave this video now and look him up on youtube. the book is full of workshop skills and projects,and there’s a foreward by nick offerman, who coincidentally also has a book that justcame out on the 18th called good clean fun, full of woodworking projects. i’ve got links to all of these books inthe show notes. i also wanted to let you know about two newbooks from dale dougherty, the creator of maker faire and make magazine.
the first is called maker city: a practicalguide for reinventing our cities, co-written with peter hirshberg and marcia kadanoff. it’s $20, and if you’re interested sometruly earned insight on how makers and local government can symbiotically benefit fromeach other -- this is your book. dale also has a book out called free to make,which is essentially a $12 introduction to the maker movement and all its facets, itshistorical roots, where it’s going and why it matters. this is probably the book i should buy for my mom to help explain why i’m out here in a shed filming a video for no money. it's the maker movement!
again, amazon links for all of these booksare in the show notes. you should check them all out. we have some maker contests ending soon oninstructables, just in case you want to whip something together and see what happens. all four halloween contests end on november7th, including props, costumes, food, and decor. a pumpkin carving contest also got tackedon ending november 14th. and you also have yarn and survival ending onthe 14th. maybe you could find a way to survive in aknit tent eating carved pumpkins and halloween food, and then you just sweep all the categories!
it’s a slow weekend for maker faires thisweekend there's just 3, one happening in leã³n spain, wenatchee washington, and new taipei cityin taiwan. and that’s it for this episode of makerupdate. in case you haven’t noticed, i’m publishingthese every wednesday morning, i've never actually said that out loud until now, so i thought i'd let you know. if you’re subscribed on youtube, you’ll see a new episodes every wednesday morning. i also haven’t mentioned this for awhile,you can email me, i'm donald@makerprojectlab.com. if you've got a great project or a bit of maker news or a cool tip or a cool event let me know about it. i love hearing from you guys.
you can also just leave a comment on this video. that works too. and if you liked this video, please hit the share button. that's the best thing you can do for me. you can think of that share button as my tip jar, alright. i'll see you next week. thanks for watching.
