Category: Blog

I’m in the 2025 Princesses with Power Tools Calendar

It’s here! The 2025 Princesses with Powertools calendar, featuring yours truly as miss January. I’m honored and thrilled to join these 11 other amazing women and nonbinary individuals in this year’s lineup.

More about the calendar:

We set out to create a calendar featuring the classic Princesses many of us grew up with. Too often, young girls are presented with the idea that they can be either a princess or an engineer: we are proving they can be both. Our Princesses with Power Tools Calendar is a perfect example of that– featuring 12 incredible women and nonbinary individuals in STEM and the Trades doing their work in a princess gown.

Inspired by Beauty and the Bolt’s incredibly popular #PrincessesWithPowerTools program which has taught nearly 17,000 kids to use their first power tool, this one-of-a-kind calendar is back! With your help, Reinvented Inc. is determined to get even more calendars to students and teachers in 2025 than ever before!

My princess bio:

In a vibrant underwater kingdom, there once lived a princess named Becky who had a boundless curiosity and a passion for crafting wonders from the trinkets she collected. With an enchanting voice that could light up the darkest depths, Becky penned countless magical guides, teaching her friends everything from seaweed knitting to sparking life into mystical gadgets. During her reign, Princess Becky has held esteemed positions crafting innovative treasures at the Instructables workshop, leading enchanted wearable projects in the illustrious Adafruit guild, and producing captivating tales for a renowned magical scroll (MAKE Magazine). Now with every new dawn, Princess Becky eagerly gathers fresh hobbies and crafts to share with her kingdom, forever inspiring and enchanting those around her. Her story is a testament to the magic that arises from following one’s heart and the endless wonders that await those who dare to explore.

And some behind the scenes:

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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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Ultrahuman Ring AIR Teardown

Today we’re looking at the Ultrahuman Ring AIR, a biometric tracking smart ring. The device consists of two parts: the ring and the charging base. It also comes with a charging cable, but no charging brick. That’s a benefit in my opinion, since I already have plenty of AC adapters lying around.

The ring has a flat part inside that lines up with the flat part on the charging base. Ultrahuman provided two rings for this video, so big thanks to them for being down for this destructive and reverse-engineering type of review, which they did not get to influence otherwise.

Thanks to David Cranor for lending his EE expertise and to Lumafield for the 3D scan of the (ring) and the charging base.

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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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