Time to build.
A while back, my wife knitted me a BB-8 which was pretty awesome. What’s even more awesome is that she used that pattern to knit me a BB-9E. He’s bigger, blacker and badder. Now I’m ready for The Last Jedi!
BB8 and BB9E knitted by my wife
A few weeks back, my wife (Rozenn) came home with a broken cane chair, which looked something like this, and wanted to try repairing the seat. A few tours through youtube videos, a visit to Amazon and some time with my Dremmel (she’s logged more hours on that thing than I have) and she managed to replace the seat. Even I can sit in it!
Now that it’s completed, I think we both agree that the project was very doable. The hardest part was removing the old spline (don’t believe those Youtube videos where it comes out with one tap of a chisel). Once the spline was removed, however, the rest of the process was a breeze. Yard-sale season may be wrapping up, but I’m sure we’ll find a few more broken chairs at rock-bottom prices that will not only give us a fun project, but also result in a nice-looking chair in the end.
The staff over at the Wolfram Community have recognized Mandy – the bright Periodic Table as one of their Staff Picks. The forum post, which can be viewed here, highlights how Mathematica was used in various parts of the project. In the design phase, Mathematica was used to create the layout of the periodic table, which then could be exported to Inkscape/Adobe Illustrator for final processing of an image that could be recognized by the laser cutter. The curated data provided by the Wolfram platform is used to create the trends, and I used some notebook Manipulate commands to visualize the RGB-LED output for (rapid) rapid prototyping. The actual operation of Mandy uses a Python-based speech recognition script that calls on Mathematica to communicate to the Arduino controlling all of the LEDs. (Yes, this is an ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ project.)
Thanks, WC Staff, for the recognition.
About six months ago, I started working on a project I like to call my piece de resistance. It combines a number of maker skills that I’ve learned over the past few years. I call her Mandy, and she’s a laser-cut periodic table that has a bunch of three-color LEDS, an Arduino that controls the individually addressable LEDs, and a Raspberry Pi that stores information about the elements. To make it stand out from being “just another bright periodic table”, I added a voice activation component, so Mandy is able to display different periodic trends at your verbal command!
I’m getting ready to move to a different part of the country, so I do not have time to provide more information about Mandy. In the meanwhile, I created a teaser-trailer for your (OK, my) personal enjoyment.
Increasing accessibility to electronics projects is a mission that resonates with me. Personally, I find the autonomy and self-sufficiency that comes with “making” to be very rewarding. With hobbyist sites such as Adafruit and Sparkfun, we have plenty of (inexpensive) resources at our disposal. As the technology advances, these resources become cheaper – which is a good thing – and smaller – which is a mixed bag.
