Category: Original Project Video Series

3D Printer Filament Dry Box

This tutorial describes how I made a dry box for my 3D printing filament. It protects the PLA from absorbing moisture from the air, which can lead to failed prints and nozzle clogs. The dry box dispenses the filament to the 3D printer too, providing convenient storage.

This box fits four standard rolls of filament. This is an easy project that takes less than an afternoon to complete, and then you’ll reap the filament-preserving benefits for countless days to come!

You’ll need a gasketed plastic container that’s at least as tall and deep as a roll of filament, and as long as you want to accommodate your shelf space or filament collection.

Besides the box, you’ll need a piece of PVC pipe or closet rod to match the length of your box (I cut mine with a hand saw), some teflon tubing to feed your filament to the printer, some silica gel packets to absorb moisture from the air inside the box, a step drill and screw gun, some O-rings and screws (with appropriate drivers), and some 3D printed parts I found on Thingiverse.

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Solar Soil Moisture Meter with ESP8266

In this project, we’re making a solar-powered soil moisture monitor. It uses an ESP8266 wifi microcontroller running low power code, and everything’s waterproof so it can be left outside. You can follow this recipe exactly, or take from it the useful techniques for your own projects.

If you’re new to microcontroller programming, please check out my Arduino Class and Internet of Things Class to get caught up on the basics of wiring, coding, and connecting to the internet.

This project is part of my free Solar Class, where you can learn more ways to harness the sun’s energy through engraving and solar panels.

Supplies

You’ll need a solar battery charging board and ESP8266 breakout such as the NodeMCU ESP8266 or Huzzah, as well as a soil sensor, battery, power switch, some wire, and an enclosure to put your circuit inside.

Here are the components and materials used for the soil moisture monitor:

Here are the tools you’ll need:

You’ll need free accounts on cloud data sites io.adafruit.com and IFTTT.

To keep up with what I’m working on, follow me on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and subscribe to my newsletter. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases you make using my affiliate links.

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Solar USB Charger

Let’s make something super useful— your own solar powered USB backup battery! After some simple soldering, you’ll be ready to charge your phone and other portable electronics on the go while camping or during the next power outage. What follows is a basic recipe which you can follow exactly, or switch out the solar panel and battery size to match your desired capacity, charge speed, and budget.

This project is part of my free Solar Class, where you can learn more ways to harness the sun’s energy through engraving and solar panels.

To keep up with what I’m working on, follow me on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and subscribe to my newsletter.

What You’ll Need

Parts (Adafruit shopping list):

Tools:

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases you make using my affiliate links.

First soldering project? No problem! This is a great project for beginners, and you’ll get a variety of types of solder practice while building it. You can learn how in the soldering lesson of Randy’s free Instructables Electronics Class, then come back here to assemble your solar charger.

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Pi Camera Tumblr GIF-Maker

I wanted a way to use my vintage cameras in a new, digital way. I have a few kicking around in various conditions, but haven’t used them in ages because the film is costly to develop. Follow along with this Instructable to see how I put a Raspberry Pi and Pi Camera inside a retro film camera, and programmed it to upload GIFs to my Tumblr.

In my desire to capture more GIFs (and b-roll of using it) and discover the remaining bugs before publishing the tutorial, I took it to Maker Faire NY today, published the Instructable soon after. 

The code is based on Lara’s free Instructables Raspberry Pi Class, which contains valuable background info if you’re new to electronics, programming, or the Pi. If you have some Pi experience, you may appreciate the Pi Tumblr GIF Photobooth Instructable, which is a more concise overview of the class content. The same code can be used to run a photo booth at your next party! I chose to take my camera mobile with a big battery pack to capture GIFs at Maker Faire NY this year.

This Target Brownie Six-20 is a 40s camera, and it was pretty dirty and didn’t take great photos, so I don’t feel bad about gutting it. I’d think twice about cutting and drilling through some other members of my collection. If you take this on, be sure you’re comfortable disabling your camera’s ability to shoot film, as my methods are a bit destructive.

For this project, you will need:

To keep up with what I’m working on, follow me on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and subscribe to my newsletter. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases you make using my affiliate links.

I used the Raspbian operating system for this project, which includes Python 2, but you’ll need to install some packages using the following lines of code in your Pi’s terminal window in order to run the script:

sudo apt-get install imagemagick
sudo apt-get install mpg321 -y
sudo apt-get install python-RPi.gpio python3-RPi.gpio
sudo pip install pytumblr
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Vinyl Helmet Stickers

Here’s how I created custom vinyl stickers for my motorcycle helmet. I was inspired by hand painted helmet designs and chose brush script lettering to communicate my two most common thoughts about drivers while riding my motorcycle in NYC. For single-color designs like mine, you don’t need a big vinyl printer, just a hobby vinyl cutter will work fabulously. I was visiting the Pier 9 Autodesk workshop and used the Roland VersaCAMM printer/cutter because it was available. Alternatively, you could bring your sticker design files to a local sign printing shop for printing/cutting.

For this project, I used:

To keep up with what I’m working on, follow me on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and subscribe to my newsletter. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases you make using my affiliate links.

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Concrete Succulent Planters

This week I made some small concrete planters, using old plastic containers as molds.

This was my first time working with concrete, but I do have some mold making and casting experience from school, albeit rusty. If you’re a newbie like me, these two free Instructables Classes will be extremely handy:

Supplies

For this project, you will need:

  • Concrete mix (or cement mix, mortar mix, since we’ll be sifting out the gravel)
  • Small gravel (or reuse from concrete mix)
  • Plastic mixing containers & stir sticks
  • Plastic containers with an appealing shape, of various sizes
  • Plastic drinking straw
  • Strainer
  • Hot glue
  • Heavy-duty scissors
  • Utility knife
  • Pliers, awl, etc. for demolding
  • Gloves (optional but recommended)
  • Dust mask
  • Small succulents or other plants
  • Potting soil with good drainage
  • Succulent gardening tools (optional)
  • Decorative sand (optional)

To keep up with what I’m working on, follow me on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and subscribe to my newsletter. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases you make using my affiliate links.

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Cat Portrait Patches

RIP Beatrice, 2000-2017

I made embroidered patches to memorialize my cat, Beatrice. You could use this technique to create an embroidered patch from any image, really. I’m going to walk you through the things that I did, but there’s a bunch of different tools you could use instead for each step to arrive at a similar result (like tracing directly from the computer screen like in my similar 2008 ‘ible).

For an excellent introduction to embroidery, try Jessy’s free embroidery class.

Supplies and tools:

To keep up with what I’m working on, follow me on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and subscribe to my newsletter. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases you make using my affiliate links.

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Easy Brandied Cocktail Cherries

When cherries go on sale, I always whip up at least one batch of brandied cocktail cherries. The recipe is super simple:

1 cup hot water
1/2 cup sugar
Pitted cherries
1 cup brandy
Whole spices like cinnamon, star anise (optional)

These cherries will keep in the fridge for several weeks, and only get better as they soak up the alcohol-sugar mixture, and besides cocktail garnishes, they make a great ice cream topping along with the liquid from the jar.

Brandied Cocktail Cherries - Becky Stern

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