Category: Portfolio

DIY Pen Plotter Wedding Place Cards with NextDraw

Here’s how I made the place cards for my wedding reception using my NextDraw pen plotter and the NextDraw Merge software. Not only do they welcome guests to their seats at dinner, but each one has a personal note inside from me, my new husband, or both of us. Follow along if you’re interested in making place cards or notes like this for your own wedding or other special occasion.

Event photos by Arius Photography

Overall, I’d consider this an intermediate-level project, and an ideal first project with NextDraw Merge. This was my first big project with any plotter and the whole reason I bought it in the first place. So I’m new to plotting, and was still able to pull off this project without any problems. But I’m not new to vector graphics software.

For this project, you will need:

The NextDraw plugin works within InkScape, the open-source vector graphics software, to plot your drawings. The software comes with some sample files to test out and get familiar with plotting. Admittedly I’m more familiar with Adobe Illustrator than I am with Inskcape, but the skills are transferable.

I picked some brown letter-sized paper and experimented with some different gold Gelly Roll pens.

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Sewable CR2032 Coincell Battery Holder with Switch (files included)

Today I’m making a coin cell battery holder – my first assembled PCB product.

I have been selling purple coin cell battery holders in my LED sewing kit for years. They’re perfect for making a simple circuit, and they have a handy on-off switch so you don’t have to take the battery out to power off your project. Before these boards were available, I would use a surface-mount coin cell battery holder with tiny holes in the metal tabs. I had just enough space to sew a few stitches through those holes with conductive thread. They weren’t designed for this purpose and didn’t have that handy switch, but they were better than the through-hole variety available since those don’t have holes in the tabs at all.

There are a handful of circuits like this on the market that include a coin cell battery clip, a single on/off switch on a PCB, and tabs or holes to connect it to the rest of your circuit, either by soldering to the pad or sewing through the holes with conductive thread. The design I was using in my kit was a knockoff of a SparkFun Lilypad product, an open-source design. I don’t feel great about buying the clones, but I was looking for the best price available for my kits. My version observes the open source license, which means you can download my files too.

To make my own version, I started with that same open source design for the sewable LilyPad CR2032 coin cell battery holder. I used Autodesk Fusion for this project, partially because it’s what I already know how to use, and because the design files are Eagle files, which is the previous name of the software package that was rolled into Fusion. The personal use version of Fusion is free and it has enough features to do all the things I’m going to do today.

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Rewiring vintage lamps

Today we’re rewiring old lamps. I got invited to participate in this lamp show at my hackerspace, NYC Resistor, and it got me dusting off my yellow antique banquet lamp. This thing used to be a gas lamp, and at some point, it was converted to electrical. So it has a socket and a bulb and a cord. But the cord is not up to modern safety standards, and it’s kind of ugly.

So I took the opportunity to clean the whole lamp, which made it easier to also rewire the cord while I was at it.

This is an easy project you can do at home, but it’s a little dangerous because you’re plugging into AC mains power. So double-check your work with somebody who knows what they’re doing, and be sure to unplug the cord while working on the wiring.

The supplies you will need are:

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Automotive Sensors

Discover how sensors and electronics have revolutionized vehicles with this hands-on look at all the smarts engineered into your car. From Becky’s DIY diagnostics to an interview with expert car hacker Specters, this is the video to watch if you’ve ever wondered how tech enhances your ride.

Full article on DigiKey’s Maker.io – Automotive Sensors

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Electronics and Taxidermy?!

Electronics and Taxidermy! That’s what’s on the menu for this diorama project collaboration between Emily Graslie and me. In this project, we will build a plywood diorama box and fill it with cityscape features like a brick wall with a dryer vent and LED lighting. Oh, and rat taxidermy. You’d be surprised how much overlap in tools there can be. Check out how many of the tools we need are carried by DigiKey!

Supplies

[DK list https://www.digikey.com/en/mylists/list/7XKTVCR5D6 ]

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How to pick the best microcontroller for your project

If you want to build an electronics project but don’t know what microcontroller to choose, this video is for you. Learn the different types of common boards available and how they differ, then see the microcontroller selection process in action as Becky demonstrates what boards she chose for her latest builds.

Full article on DigiKey’s Maker.io – How to pick the best microcontroller for your project

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Getting Started with Arduino IoT Cloud

Want to build an internet connected project but don’t know where to start? In this video, Becky Stern shows you how to get started with the Arduino IoT Cloud and set up a new IoT sensor device like a temperature and humidity monitor.

Full article on DigiKey’s Maker.io – Getting Started with Arduino IoT Cloud

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Arduino vs. Raspberry Pi

Which should you use for your project, Arduino or Raspberry Pi? In this video, Becky Stern shows you the primary differences and explains why you would choose a microcontroller or single board computer (SBC) for your project.

Full article on DigiKey’s Maker.io – Arduino vs. Raspberry Pi: What’s the Difference?

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LED Poles

Here’s how I made four LED poles for a recent art performance here in New York City.

Requirements

The project brief, as it was pitched to me, was to create four tall uprights for the corners of an eight-foot by eight-foot raft. They needed to be quick to deploy and start up the animation on their own after a five-minute countdown timer. And just in case anything were to fail, the show must go on without human intervention, so they needed to have as much redundancy as possible built into the design. So I came up with a set of four independent circuits, one on each pole, each containing a strip of pixels that will go up the pole and then over to the top of its neighbor, with some slack to drape in between the uprights. It’s like an LED huppah. Oh, and I had one week before the show to build everything, so this is a speed project.

Supplies

Also available as a DigiKey wishlist.

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