Just like the garage computer explosion of the 70’s through the 80’s, which brought us such things as Apple, pong, Bill Gate’s hair, and the proliferation of personal computers, the maker movement is the new garage hardware explosion. Today, 135 million adults in the United States alone are involved in the maker movement.
Enthusiasts who want to build the products they want, from shortwave radios to personal computers, and to tweak products they’ve bought to make them even better, have long been a part of the electronics industry. By all measures, garage-style innovation remains alive and well today, as “makers” as they are called continue to turn out contemporary gadgets, including 3D printers, drones, and embedded electronics devices.
Making is about individual Do-It-Yourselfers being able to design and create with tools that were, as of a decade or two ago, only available to large, cash-rich corporations: CAD tools, CNC mills, 3D printers, low-quantity PCB manufacturing, open hardware such as Arduinos and similar inexpensive development boards – all items that have made it easier and relatively cheap to make whatever we imagine. For individuals, maker tools can change how someone views their home or their hobbies. The world is ours to make. Humans are genetically wired to be makers. The maker movement is simply the result of making powerful building and communication tools accessible to the masses. There are plenty of projects from makers that show good engineering: Take this Arduino board with tremendous potential, developed by a young maker, as example.
The maker movement is a catalyst to democratize entrepreneurship as these do-it-yourself electronics are proving to be hot sellers: In the past year, unit sales for 3D printing related products; Arduino units, parts and supplies; Raspberry Pi boards; drones and quadcopters; and robotics goods are all on a growth curve in terms of eBay sales. There are many Kickstarter maker projects going on. The Pebble E-Paper Watch raises $10 million. The LIFX smartphone-controlled LED bulb raises $1.3 million. What do these products have in common? They both secured funding through Kickstarter, a crowd-funding website that is changing the game for entrepreneurs. Both products were created by makers who seek to commercialize their inventions. These “startup makers” iterate on prototypes with high-end tools at professional makerspaces.
For companies to remain competitive, they need to embrace the maker movement or leave themselves open for disruption. Researchers found that 96 percent of business leaders believe new technologies have forever changed the rules of business by democratizing information and rewiring customer expectations. - You’ve got to figure out agile innovation. Maybe history is repeating itself as the types of products being sold reminded us of the computer tinkering that used to be happening in the 1970s to 1990s – similar in terms of demographics, tending to be young people, and low budget. Now the do-it-yourself category is deeply intertwined with the electronics industry. Open hardware is in the center in maker movement – we need open hardware designs! How can you publish your designs and still do business with it? Open source ecosystem markets behave differently and therefore require a very different playbook than traditional tech company: the differentiation is not in the technology you build; it is in the process and expertise that you slowly amass over an extended period of time.
By democratizing the product development process, helping these developments get to market, and transforming the way we educate the next generation of innovators, we will usher in the next industrial revolution. The world is ours to make. Earlier the PC created a new generation of software developers who could innovate in the digital world without the limitations of the physical world (virtually no marginal cost, software has become the great equalizer for innovation. Now advances in 3D printing and low-cost microcontrollers as well as the ubiquity of advanced sensors are enabling makers to bridge software with the physical world. Furthermore, the proliferation of wireless connectivity and cloud computing is helping makers contribute to the Internet of Things (IoT). We’re even beginning to see maker designs and devices entering those markets once thought to be off-limits, like medical.
Image source: The world is ours to make: The impact of the maker movement – EDN Magazine
In fact, many parents have engaged in the maker movement with their kids because they know that the education system is not adequately preparing their children for the 21st century. There is a strong movement to spread this DIY idea widely. The Maker Faire, which launched in the Bay Area in California in 2006, underlined the popularity of the movement by drawing a record 215,000 people combined in the Bay Area and New York events in 2014. There’s Maker Media, MakerCon, MakerShed, Make: magazine and 131 Maker Faire events that take place throughout the world. Now the founders of all these Makers want a way to connect what they refer to as the “maker movement” online. So Maker Media created a social network called MakerSpace, a Facebook-like social network that connects participants of Maker Faire in one online community. The new site will allow participants of the event to display their work online. There are many other similar sites that allow yout to present yout work fron Hackaday to your own blog. Today, 135 million adults in the United States alone are involved in the maker movement—although makers can be found everywhere in the world.
7,076 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hacker Dictionary: RS-485 Will Go The Distance
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/05/hacker-dictionary-rs-485-will-go-the-distance/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/05/wireless-bootloader-saves-you-from-swapping-rom-chips/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Monitor Space Weather And The Atmosphere With Your Cellphone!
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/04/monitor-space-weather-and-the-atmosphere-with-your-cellphone/
Above our heads, the atmosphere is a complex and unpredictable soup of gasses and charged particles subject to the influence of whatever the Sun throws at it. Attempting to understand it is not for the faint-hearted, so it has for centuries been the object of considerable research. A new project from the European Space Agency and ETH Zurich gives the general public the chance to participate in that research in a small way, by crowdsourcing atmospheric data gathering to a mobile phone app. How might a mobile phone observe the atmosphere? The answer lies in their global positioning receivers, which can track minute differences in the received signals caused by atmospheric conditions. By gathering as much of this data as possible, the ESA scientists will gain valuable insights into atmospheric conditions as they change across the globe.
https://www.esa.int/Applications/Navigation/Turn_your_phone_into_a_space_monitoring_tool
Tomi Engdahl says:
Levitate The NE555 Way
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/04/levitate-the-ne555-way/
Ultrasonic levitation — the practice of creating a standing wave between two ultrasonic sources and positioning lightweight objects such that they can float in the pressure minimums between them — has been a source of fascination to more than one experimenter. [Peter Lin] demonstrated this in the video below the break, by creating an ultrasonic levitation system using only the trusted chip of all true experimenters, the NE555. (Video, embedded below.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4pIJwy_ySY
Tomi Engdahl says:
SAMD11 Provides Two Serial Ports For Price Of One
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/04/samd11-provides-two-serial-ports-for-price-of-one/
While the average computer user likely hasn’t given much thought to the lowly serial port in decades, the same can’t be said for the hardware hacker. Cheap serial-to-USB adapters are invaluable for snooping debug ports or programming chips, and if you ask us, you can never have too many laying around the bench. [Quentin Bolsée] loves them so much that he’s even figured out how to build a dual-port adapter with a SAMD11C14 microcontroller.
https://fabacademy.org/2020/labs/ulb/students/quentin-bolsee/projects/dual_serial/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Servo Surgery Teaches Us DIY Encoder Implants
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/03/servo-surgery-teaches-us-diy-encoder-implants/
Today, we shall talk about how [Adam Bäckström] took a DS3225 servo and rebuilt it to improve its accuracy, then built a high-precision robot arm with those modified servos to show just how much of an improvement he’s got – up to 36 times better positional accuracy.
https://github.com/adamb314/ServoProject
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/03/tshwatch-helps-you-learn-more-about-yourself/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Flashing TI Chips With An ESP
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/03/flashing-ti-chips-with-an-esp/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Using Statistics Instead Of Sensors
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/03/using-statistics-instead-of-sensors/
Statistics often gets a bad rap in mathematics circles for being less than concrete at best, and being downright misleading at worst. While these sentiments might ring true for things like political polling, it hides the fact that statistical methods can be put to good use in engineering systems with fantastic results. [Mark Smith], for example, has been working on an espresso machine which can make the perfect shot of coffee, and turned to one of the tools in the statistics toolbox in order to solve a problem rather than adding another sensor to his complex coffee-brewing machine.
Using R-squared to Detect Espresso Shot Volume With a Water Tank Sensor
https://surfncircuits.com/2022/03/19/using-r-squared-to-detect-espresso-shot-volume-with-a-water-tank-sensor/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Monitoring Water Quality Using Lots Of Sensors And Machine Learning
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/02/monitoring-water-quality-using-lots-of-sensors-and-machine-learning/
https://hackaday.io/project/184621-gsm-sms-enabled-water-pollution-monitor
Tomi Engdahl says:
Confessions Of A Crimpoholic
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/04/confessions-of-a-crimpoholic/
Tomi Engdahl says:
I see more than a few projects built around Arduinos (or similar devices) that could be better implemented using discrete components – aka an “old school” approach. Fran Blanche makes a very good case for using hardware over software.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gcb6NAvDsb4&feature=youtu.be
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/electronichobycircuits/permalink/5321827321175267/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Custom Macro Keyboard With RGB Lighting
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/07/custom-macro-keyboard-with-rgb-lighting/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Turning Old Plotter Parts Into A Smooth Camera Slider
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/07/turning-old-plotter-parts-into-a-smooth-camera-slider/
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Gaggle Of Boards Makes For An I2C Playground
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/06/a-gaggle-of-boards-makes-for-an-i2c-playground/
Hardware Hacking 101: E01 I2C Sniffing, How to Listen to Your Arduino’s I2C Bus
https://cujo.com/hardware-hacking-101-e01-i2c-sniffing/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/06/hacking-a-fuel-sensor-into-a-portable-tank-literally/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Magnetic Hockey Game Uses A 555
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/06/magnetic-hockey-game-uses-a-555/
Tomi Engdahl says:
My Custom Scanning Electron Microscope
https://hackaday.io/project/184197-my-custom-scanning-electron-microscope
This is a scanning electron microscope I am building from scratch from mechanical, electronics and control software.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/07/remoticon-2021-rob-weinstein-builds-an-hp-35-from-the-patent-up/
Tomi Engdahl says:
OpenMower: Open Source Robotic Lawn Mower With RTK GPS
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/07/openmower-open-source-robotic-lawn-mower-with-rtk-gps/
Robotic mowers are becoming a common sight in some places, enabled by the cost of motors and the needed control electronics being much lower, thanks to the pace of modern engineering. But, in many cases, they still appear to be really rather dumb, little more than a jacked up bump-and-go with a spinning blade. [Clemens Elflein] has taken a cheap, dumb mower and given it a brain transplant based around a Raspberry Pi 4 paired up with a Raspberry Pi Pico for the real time control side of things. [Clemens] is calling this OpenMower, with the motivation to create an open source robot mower controller with support for GPS navigation, using RTK for extra precision.
The donor robot was a YardForce Classic 500, and after inspection of the control PCB, it looks like many other robot mower models are likely to use the same controller and thus be compatible with the openmower platform. A custom mainboard houses the Pi 4 and Pico, an ArduSimple RTK GPS module (giving a reported navigational accuracy of 1 cm,) as well as three BLDC motor drivers for the wheels and rotor. Everything is based on modules, plugging into the mainboard, reducing the complexity of the project significantly. For a cheap mower platform, the Yardforce unit has a good build quality, with connectors everywhere, making OpenMower a plug and play solution. Even the user interface on top of the mower was usable, with a custom PCB below presenting some push buttons at the appropriate positions.
https://github.com/ClemensElflein/OpenMower
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wireless Weather Station Gets Solar-Powered Supercap Upgrade
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/07/wireless-weather-station-gets-solar-powered-supercap-upgrade/
When [knight-of-ni] bought an Acurite Atlas weather station to replace his earlier 5-in-1 model, he was initally happy with its performance. However, after just ten months the batteries in the outdoor unit died; since the previous model would happily run for several years on one charge, this was a bit of a bummer. Climbing up on the roof more than once a year just to replace batteries was becoming inconvenient as well, so [knight-of-ni] designed a solar power system with supercap backup and remote monitoring that should keep the sensors running 24/7, come rain or shine.
The heart of the new power system is a pair of supercapacitors totalling 250 Farads, with an integrated protection circuit that limits the voltage to 5.4 Volts. The caps are charged by a 12 V solar panel; this means that quite a bit of power is dissipated in the protection circuit when the supercaps are fully charged, but since this is completely free solar power that is not much of an issue. A 6 V panel would have worked as well in full sunlight, but might have struggled on a cloudy or snowy day.
https://moteino.blogspot.com/p/5v-solar-power-supply.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi Test Stand Tells You Which Glues To Use
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/07/raspberry-pi-test-stand-tells-you-which-glues-to-use/
Not all glues are created equal; or rather, not every glue is good for every application. But how is one to know which glue to use in which kinds of joints? The answer to that is not always clear, but solid numbers on the comparative strength of different glues are a great place to start.
To quantify what can ordinarily be a somewhat subjective process, there’s probably no one better than woodworker and hacker [Matthias Wandel], equipped as he is with his DIY strength-tester. Using its stepper-driven power to blast apart glued lap joints, [Matthias] measured the yield point of the various adhesives using a strain gauge connected to a Raspberry Pi.
Which glue is strongest? Testing with my computerized tester.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUCB4dhvVlc
Tomi Engdahl says:
Shop-Built Rig Measures Strength Of Wood Accurately
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/22/shop-built-rig-measure-strength-of-wood-accurately/
Wood is an incredibly versatile material, but like everything else, it has its limits. Build a chair from weak wood and the worst that can happen is probably not that bad. But if you build machine tools from wood, the stakes for using the wrong wood can be a bit higher.
That’s the thinking behind the wood strength testing setup [Matthias Wandel] came up with. Previously, he had a somewhat jury-rigged test setup with a hydraulic bottle jack to apply force to the test piece and a bathroom scale to make measurements. That setup was suboptimal, so version two used a jackscrew to apply the force, but the bathroom scale still left the measurements open to interpretation. Version three, the topic of the video below, went with strain gauges and an A/D converter connected to a Raspberry Pi to automate data collection. The jackscrew was also integrated into the test setup with a stepper motor and, of course, [Matthias]’ famous wooden gears.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxR-dexHiI4
https://woodgears.ca/gear_cutting/template.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/05/hacker-dictionary-rs-485-will-go-the-distance/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Arduino Based DIY Robot Lawnmower
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN7Gcw-nIkk
This is a design description of my Arduino based robot lawnmower. Please let me know in the comment section what you would like to know more about the robot.
DIY Robot lawn mower with perimeter wire system
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcjYHHvRyQc
This lawn mover robot is based on a Arduino UNO. It uses motor encoders to keep track of the wheels rotations speed to make the robot drive straight and to detect if it get stuck to stop the motor and gearbox from getting damaged. It also has two forward pointing ultra sound sensors to stop it from running in to obstacles. And finally it has a perimeter wire sensor, basically a coil connected to an OP Amp, to detect the wire signal that is transmitted by a base station that also uses a Arduino UNO to generate the wire pulse.
In the future I will probably add IMU (motion sensor), Wifi and GPS units to make the robot more capable.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hololens for Industry 4.0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxuQuin-pYU
Hololens in the building process
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ_4rsK7XUM
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/01/3d-printing-a-guitar-neck/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stresses Revealed With A Polariscope
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/01/stresses-revealed-with-a-polariscope/
How to build a polariscope with common items to see the stress in different materials
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W29-6HUcfoU
Tomi Engdahl says:
Using A Vacuum Diode To Make The Cleanest Noise Source You’ve Ever Seen
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/01/using-a-vacuum-diode-to-make-the-cleanest-noise-source-youve-ever-seen/
Noise is an annoying but unavoidable part of any engineering project. Fixing noise issues is hard enough, but even just measuring how much noise an amplifier adds to your signal is tricky without proper equipment like a spectrum analyzer. One other thing that makes noise measurements easier is a good, stable noise source that can serve as a reference: you first measure your amplifier without any input, and then measure it again with the noise source connected. Using a few simple formulas you can then calculate how much noise the amplifier produced.
Building a source that generates exactly the amount of noise that you want, no more and no less, is quite a challenge in itself. Several techniques exist, but [Wolfgang] over at the Electronic Projects for Fun blog decided to go for the classic method of using a vacuum diode. He describes the design and analysis of a noise source based on a 2D3B tube in a detailed article.
https://electronicprojectsforfun.wordpress.com/making-noise/noise-sources-i-have-built/a-tube-noise-source-using-the-2d3b-tube/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Making Your Own Technically-HDMI OLED Monitor
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/01/making-your-own-technically-hdmi-oled-monitor/
One day, [mitxela] got bored and decided to build his own HDMI monitor – the unconventional way. HDMI has a few high-speed differential pairs, but it also has an I2C interface used for detecting the monitor’s resolution and issuing commands like brightness control. In fact, I2C is the backbone for a lot of side channels like these – it’s also one of our preferred interfaces for connecting to cool sensors, and in this case, an OLED display!
https://mitxela.com/projects/ddc-oled
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/02/razor-crest-control-lever-for-the-grogu-in-your-life/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/02/monitoring-water-quality-using-lots-of-sensors-and-machine-learning/
Tomi Engdahl says:
This Big 3D-Printed Game Boy Actually Runs MacOS
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/03/this-big-3d-printed-game-boy-actually-runs-macos/
While mobile gaming has largely moved to smartphones these days, the classic Game Boy remains a hugely popular platform for retro enthusiasts, owing in no small part to its enormous library of quality games. The original Game Boy hardware is pretty much bulletproof, but feels a bit outdated today because it lacks modern conveniences like a large, backlit display or a rechargeable battery.
[iketsj] wanted to build a modern take on the Game Boy design and designed what’s in effect a 3D-printed, oversized copy of the classic handheld powered by a modern single-board computer. Most people would have gone for something obvious like a Raspberry Pi running Linux, but not [Ike]: he decided to go for a LattePanda Alpha board and run macOS Monterey on it. That makes this a Hackintosh, and probably one of the last ones as well since Apple is busy migrating all of its products onto its own proprietary CPUs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zust1wxkRt4
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/03/using-statistics-instead-of-sensors/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/03/flashing-ti-chips-with-an-esp/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Servo Surgery Teaches Us DIY Encoder Implants
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/03/servo-surgery-teaches-us-diy-encoder-implants/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Vain kaksi tarviketta – näin teet halvalla ja helposti kasteluautomaatin
Järjestä kukkien kastelu helposti kuntoon kotikonstein.
https://www.iltalehti.fi/iltv-lifestyle/a/10402e84-4fa2-4283-882d-9df9731f5ab8
Tomi Engdahl says:
Enjoy This Animatronic Eyeball’s Smooth Moves
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/08/enjoy-this-animatronic-eyeballs-smooth-moves/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/10/robotic-boat-rides-high-on-pvc-pipe-pontoons/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/10/a-super-simple-diy-ozone-generator/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/10/a-turbocharged-robot-mop-to-save-your-date/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/09/twitch-and-blink-your-way-through-typing-with-this-facial-keyboard/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/10/coin-acceptors-are-higher-tech-than-you-think/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/10/boards-for-playful-exploration-of-digital-protocols/
Tomi Engdahl says:
New IPC Standards Help Engineers Weave Through the World of E-Textiles
March 28, 2022
Developing standards for the rapidly expanding e-textile industry has become more vital than ever. This article discusses the standards put in place by the IPC, and those that are under development.
https://www.electronicdesign.com/industrial-automation/article/21236759/new-ipc-standards-help-engineers-weave-through-the-world-of-etextiles?utm_source=EG+ED+Analog+%26+Power+Source&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=CPS220330053&o_eid=7211D2691390C9R&rdx.ident%5Bpull%5D=omeda%7C7211D2691390C9R&oly_enc_id=7211D2691390C9R
In this article, we report on standard activities for e-textiles. These materials have been known by various names: ultraflexible circuits, printed electronics, functional fabrics, technical textiles, wearable technology, smart fabric, smart textiles, and so forth. The currently published E-textiles Standard, IPC-8921, Requirements for Woven and Knitted Electronics Textiles (E-Textiles) Integrated with Conductive Fibers, Conductive Yarns and/or Wires, includes 20 new terms and definitions for e-textiles.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/11/this-chariot-is-pulled-by-a-team-of-motorcycles/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/11/glow-in-the-dark-computer-memory-illuminates-the-fundamentals/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Blood Pressure Cuff Hacked Into Water Level Sensor
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/11/blood-pressure-cuff-hacked-into-water-level-sensor/
We often write a post and then learn something new and cool from the comments. The same thing happened when [Andreas] posted a video about monitoring fluid levels. Commenters told him that the best fluid level sensor was a hacked blood pressure monitor.
It is well-known that an air-tight tube in a tank that is closed at the top and open inside the tank will develop a pressure that corresponds to the liquid level in the tank. This is a common approach when you want the pressure sensor to be far away from the tank in, say, an enclosed building. So why use a blood pressure monitor? Because a common enhancement to the system is to use a pump to pressurize the measurement tube first so the system can tolerate small leaks. The blood pressure monitor has everything you need: a pump, a valve, and a pressure sensor.
To get accurate results, you need to measure differential pressure. Pressure transducers can measure gauge pressure, differential pressure, or absolute pressure, depending on the kind you select. [Andreas] took apart a cheap blood pressure cuff and there were all the needed parts. Like most cheap consumer gear, though, the CPU was a mystery blob of epoxy.
Some prebuilt sensor modules had some issues because of the 5V supply. In the end, he used a new sensor, a microcontroller, and then used the pump and valve from the blood pressure cuff. It is easier to repurpose the blood pressure machine than build an airtight system from scratch.
Fluid (Water) Level Meter from Blood Pressure Monitor Hack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5Z5pAUJxC4
Tomi Engdahl says:
Quick Hacks: Countersinking Screw Heads With 3D Laser Engraving
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/11/quick-hacks-countersinking-screw-heads-with-3d-laser-engraving/
Here’s a fun quick hack from [Timo Birnschein] about using the 3D laser engraving (or ‘stamp’ engraving) mode of certain laser cutter toolchains to create a handy countersink shape in a laser-cut and engraved workpiece. Since [Timo] uses a small laser cutter to cut out and mark project boards for their electronics builds, having an extra messy, manual countersinking operation with subsequent clean-up seemed like a waste of time and effort, if the cutter could be persuaded to do it for them.
Countersunk Screws with Lazers!
https://hackaday.io/project/184794-countersunk-screws-with-lazers
Laser-Engrave countersunk screw holes straight into the material with no further steps required for assembly.