Remember the Whee-Lo? Makers Secret Santa 2022

This year I pulled This Old Tony‘s name for Makers Secret Santa. I was inspired by Tony’s love of benders and bending, and built him a toy from my childhood in the shape of a letter T. It’s got a magnetic spinning device that rides along the wire, and these little bends provide a turnaround point so you can, with practice, get the spinner to move continuously along the track.

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Embr Wave 2 Teardown

Today I’m taking a look inside the Embr Wave 2, a wristband that helps with temperature regulation. It’s the only wearable I’ve ever seen with a Peltier cooler in it. Watch the video above to see me try it out, take it apart, and analyze the design and manufacturing of the circuitry inside. Thanks to David Cranor for lending his EE expertise and to Lumafield for the 3D scan.

This teardown is sponsored by Digi-Key, where you can pick up supplies and tools for your own electronics projects. Check out this project on their maker.io site.

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PS4 Controller Breakout Board

Here’s how I made a custom replacement circuit board for a PS4 controller. I had been hanging onto a few broken controllers, hoping to turn them into something new. I thought that if I connected to all the switches, I could repurpose the controller.

Inside, there’s a circuit board that hosts the joysticks, a few switches, and the brains of the operation, but most of the buttons are wired up through a membrane keypad. The connector on the circuit board is a rectangular cutout with small pads that line up with the membrane’s contacts. So this is what makes a custom PCB necessary for this project– there just isn’t another way to connect to all those membrane keypad switches.

So I got to scheming a breakout board– a circuit that would have the required membrane interface, but then wire it to headers I can wire out to the rest of my circuit. I started by drawing a circuit diagram with the joysticks and the 19 membrane contacts each connected to its own header pin.

This project is sponsored by Digi-Key, where you can pick up supplies and tools for your own custom electronics. Check out this project on their maker.io site.

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My NYC Workshop Tour (200 ft²)

This is a tour of my compact New York City studio, which I use for my work as a full-time content creator. I’ll show you how my small space pulls off some big tasks, share with you some of my favorite storage and organization tips, and answer your frequently asked questions about my workshop.

My studio is the biggest bedroom in my Brooklyn apartment– it’s about 200 square feet of space, and it has one closet, laminate floors, central air, and a small but useable space outside one of the two windows.

You can get tools and supplies for your own dream workshop at Digi-Key, the sponsor of my workshop tour video. Check out all my favorites on Maker.io.

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.

We’ll start with my tool chest. It holds way more stuff than shelves or a pegboard while making everything easy to reach for a short person, and provides an additional work surface. I keep my 3D printer on top of it and use the space next to it for whatever I’m working on. For a space with floors that aren’t necessarily level, it was important to me to get a tool chest with drawers that latch shut and casters with locks, so nothing goes sliding around. The color is a bonus for me– it matches the rest of the space and I can draw on it with dry erase makers. I like that everything can have a place in these drawers and be out of sight when not in use.

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Electro-Etching Brass Plaques

Here’s an easy method for etching metal with electricity. I wanted to make some brass plaques to commemorate my brother, who passed away recently. Other methods use toxic etchant chemicals, but this method uses salt water. Both methods have pros and cons, but I prefer the electric method because it’s safer and the cleanup is more straightforward.

Supplies:

Thanks to Digi-Key for sponsoring this project! Check out this project on Maker.io.

I designed the artwork in Illustrator to mimic the Cafe Bustelo logo– really I only needed to make up an R and an N, since I could just trace the rest of the letters. Before you etch, you’ll need to get your artwork transferred onto the brass, masking out everything you don’t want to etch. There are a few methods for this step, as well. I first tried the toner transfer method of ironing on a laser print-out, then soaking off the paper in water, but I couldn’t get the temperature and pressure worked out well enough to successfully transfer my image. So instead I used my vinyl cutter to make a sticker of my design and stuck it to the brass.

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Muse S Meditation Headband Teardown

Welcome back for another teardown! This time I’m taking apart the Muse S meditation headband. This biofeedback wearable sends sensor data back to the app to help inform the audio experience during its meditation or sleep sessions (iOS/Android). Thanks to David Cranor for lending his EE expertise and to Lumafield for the 3D scan.

Tools used in this teardown:

You can get supplies for your own teardowns, as well as some of the chips in the Muse, at Digi-Key, my sponsor. Check out this project on their project site Maker.io.

As is my routine for teardowns, I reached out to the maker to ask for a sample device, and this time they said yes! Muse set up a discount code for my audience–use code BECKY at checkout for 10% off your own meditation headset.

If you’ve been following my work for some time now, you may remember I’ve also taken apart Muse’s first headset a few years ago. The Muse S isn’t the new version of that, it’s a different product designed to be softer for sleeping. Hence the S. There is also a Muse 2 that is made of harder materials and is a more direct iteration of the Muse 1.

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Portable Soldering Station

Here’s how to make a portable soldering station with a USB iron and a battery pack. I’ve 3D printed some sides for a plain stand that turns it into a storage box for the soldering iron and solder.

The TS80P smart soldering iron is super tiny but packs a ton of features. It’s got a little OLED screen, adjustable temperature, customizable firmware, and comes apart to get even tinier.

You need to power it with USB-C, either with an AC adapter or a beefy backup battery.

I picked a full-size soldering iron stand for three reasons:

  1. I am super clumsy and therefore never liked the mini stands, which leave the iron exposed not only to my flailing arms but to other things on the desk. I prefer an enclosed design to prevent burning myself or the things around me.
  2. The full-size stand has a brass sponge for cleaning the tip, which I’ve been spoiled by at home and therefore can’t live without.
  3. The open space in the middle will fit all the things I need to carry in a portable kit.

Supplies:

You can get all these supplies, even the 3D printing filament, at Digi-Key, the sponsor of this project. They carry all kinds of soldering supplies, backup batteries, and other tools, and they ship super fast. Here are the specific items I used to build this project.

Check out this project on Maker.io.

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Custom Body Scan Jeans: Unspun Review and Interview with Cofounder Beth Esponette

This is a bit different than my normal build video, but I’m so interested in the environmental and sociological changes Unspun’s business model has the potential to bring about. Let me know what you think. You can get 20% off Unspun jeans with code BECKY https://unspun.io/

As part of the YouTube robodubbing beta, this video has a Spanish audio track. Check it out in the Settings menu of the YouTube player.

Today I’m taking look at an innovative denim company that’s using high-tech software to reduce waste and make completely custom-fit jeans. I got to speak to Unspun co-founder Beth Esponette and try out the body scanning phone app for myself.

Here’s the way it works. You pick out your style and fabric, then record a short video to scan your body using the Unspun app.

So it takes a few weeks to get the jeans in the mail. They arrive in a recyclable mailer with instructions to wear them in for a week before evaluating the fit, and unspun will remake them for free if they don’t feel perfect. This happened to me– I don’t know if it’s because I wore tight leggings or if I was sucking in my gut for the camera, or maybe because I gained weight while my jeans were in production, but the revised jeans, fit perfectly– Better than any denim I’ve ever owned. These revisions were made based on my feedback, not a new scan. But I did end up ordering another pair with a new scan just to compare the results.

The traditional supply chain requires large minimums. Many thousands of units of a product must be made for the price of each one to feel affordable. That means only products that are predicted to sell in those quantities are manufactured. In the video above, Unspun cofounder Beth Esponette explains how their business model turns the traditional supply chain on its head.

I am admittedly a tough customer when it comes to pants, or trousers as some of you call them. I’ve been wearing overalls and coveralls for the past few years, and I’ll let you in on a little secret, it’s not just because they are workshoppy and cute. I’ve been avoiding waistbands because not only have I gained weight, so none of my pants fit me, but I was also diagnosed with PCOS, and I have occasional abdominal discomfort. But my unspun jeans fit great and are very comfortable. In addition to the waste-reduction benefits of this business model, there’s also a real improvement to the customer experience. No longer is your personal fit experience beholden to where your figure fits on a bell curve compared to everybody else, which serves the economics of the inventory model.

If you’d like to try out their tech and pick up a pair of unspuns, you can use my discount code on the screen now to get 20% off. I’m not earning affiliate income and this video is not sponsored by Unspun, but they did gift me the jeans.