Category: Tech

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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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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Cat TV with Raspberry Pi

Today we’re building a mini television for cats. My cat Benchley loves watching TV. It’s really a mini computer, since I’m using a Raspberry Pi to play YouTube on a little HDMI screen. Let’s get started.

Thanks to DigiKey for supplying the materials for this project! Their boxes make great cat beds.

Materials and supplies:

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How to Keep Your 3D Printer Filament Dry

Storing filament properly is important for the quality of your prints. It will absorb moisture from the air, which will sizzle and pop as it passes through your printer’s hot end, causing blobs, under extrusion, and other defects.

Back in 2017, I showed you how to make a filament dry box, and while that’s a great project, a lot has changed since then and I want to update you on my current filament storage methods, and share some of my favorite things to print along the way.

The simplest and cheapest way to store filament spools is in plastic bags with a packet of silica gel. New spools come this way, but only some manufacturers use ziptop bags that you can reuse. Gallon freezer bags will do the trick, but the chonkier spools will be a tight fit, so to make them keep their seal for as long as possible, tape up the edges of the zipper.

Supplies:

Files mentioned in the video:

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Relief Band Teardown

Today we’re looking inside the Relief Band 50 hours, a motion sickness wearable. It works by stimulating the nerve in your wrist that has been found to relieve motion sickness. You may have heard of or seen the compression-style wristbands before, but this takes it up a notch by using electricity to stimulate the nerve using two electrodes that you’re supposed to place on the inside of your wrist and turn it up until you can feel the buzz up through your first fingers. The single button on the device increases the power level when pressed, or turns the device off if you hold it down.

This “50 hours” version is great for keeping in the car in case I forget to take my Dramamine. I find the electrical stimulation a little annoying, so I don’t think I would want to rely on it for the whole car ride or whatever else is making me motion sick, but it definitely works and is great for the 20 minutes it takes the Dramamine to kick in. Because if you get motion sickness, you know that once you’re queasy, nothing can make that feeling go away until you stop moving.

So because it’s so useful to me, the relief band joins the club of devices I’ve taken apart that I like so much, that I bought another one for my personal use. And this isn’t sponsored by them, but they sell some of their models on Amazon so if you use my affiliate link, I’ll get a portion of the sale at no additional cost to you.

To take this gadget apart, I used leverage to pop the two halves of the enclosure apart. As I suspected, it is possible to replace the coincell batteries inside when they die, then snap the enclosure back together. But I get it, they wanted to offer a more affordable SKU than their rechargeable models, some of which also have a screen. 

Thanks to David Cranor for lending his EE expertise and to Lumafield for the 3D scan.

Tools used in this teardown:

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Hug-sensing IoT Parihug toy (w Xyla Foxlin)

Here’s how to make your own telepresence hug toy. Each circuit connects to the Arduino IoT Cloud and translates your hug into a soothing vibration on the other toy. Xyla Foxlin originally developed this project as a crowdfunded product, and we collaborated to bring this DIY version to life.

To make this project, you will need 2x of each:

Plus these tools:

  • Soldering tools and supplies
  • Silicone adhesive
  • Hot glue gun with glue sticks
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Penny’s Computer Watch

Today I’m sharing how I made a replica of Penny’s video watch from Inspector Gadget.

I 3D printed the case, buttons, and strap, and wired up the circuit using an Arduino Nicla Voice, which is available at Digi-Key.

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Penny Cosplay (Inspector Gadget) Costume

After working on this project over the span of two years, It’s finally time to share my costume for Penny from Inspector Gadget. I made the wig, I made the computer book, I made the watch, I customized the clothes, and I put together a look for the Inspector. In this post, I’ll share how I built each element of this cosplay.

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