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The NoiseMakers (Part I)

noisemaster-3000

Around the end of 2016 I got some PCBs made that would hold ATtiny85 chips, and I used them in a sound installation. I was trying to figure out how I might reuse the piece(s) for Maker Faire Milwaukee, but I didn’t want to hang things, and I didn’t want to do the same thing again…

After I made SpringTime4 I thought about using the ATtinys in various noise-making devices, and so the journey began. (I also convinced Maks to join in and the idea for NoiseMaster 3000 was born. Oh, and along the way we recruited Dustin to join us.)

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I started digging up all the speakers I could find, and grabbed lots of wall warts from Milwaukee Makerspace, and I’ve always got scrap wood on hand, so I started building. At first I just slapped things together fairly haphazardly, but as I built more devices, I started making design choices. (You’ll see these in future posts.) In this post, we’ve just got a simple noisemaker. You press a button, it makes noise. (One of the criteria we set was that everything would be momentary, so no on/off switches. Sound could only be activated temporarily, so no one could turn everything “on” and then walk away. Sound should only be present when a person was engaged with it.

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In nearly all of the noisemakers I built, I chose to keep the wires and electronics exposed, or on display, as it were. If I used enclosures, they were typically open on multiple sides. Speakers were almost always visible. I didn’t stray too far from that aesthetic as I built things. Most of the buttons provided power to the unit, which started the noise, though later there were a few that used the button to enable the speaker. A subtle difference most people would not notice, but if you did, you probably know how microcontrollers work. :)

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I started working on the noisemakers in June, and thought that would leave plenty of time to make a dozen before Maker Faire. I came pretty close too, and along the way ended up doing some interesting things (at least I like to think so.)

I plan to write up posts showing each noisemaker (hence the “Part I” in the title of this post.) I’ll include photos and a short video, and notes about construction.

Enjoy the Noise!

This is just one post in a series about noisemakers. Check out the other posts as well:

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Dalek Headwear

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One of the big attractions for Maker Faire Milwaukee this year was a Guinness World Record Attempt for the “largest gathering of Daleks” and since I was drafted to be part of the “Dalek Dream Team” I thought I should make something to be part of it all.

You may have seen a few in-progress shots on Instagram of the Dalek eye which was 3D printed and then painted, but I’ll cover a bit more of the construction of the rest of it.

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For those of you unfamiliar, the Daleks are evil creatures from the television series Doctor Who. Above is a photo of a Dalek so you can see what the head looks like. I was aiming to replicate the head on a low-budget, and without much time as I was just a little bit busy organizing Maker Faire.

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I started with a large metal bowl I got from a retired science teacher who was cleaning out her house and garage that held 30 years of classroom experiments and materials. Getting the bowl (and a bag full of plungers) was pretty much the inspiration for this project… along with the fact that the folks at Dalek Asylum Milwaukee were on a rampage building Daleks at Milwaukee Makerspace every time I was there.

Once I had the bowl and acquired a lovely gold spray paint, I grabbed an eye from Thingiverse, split it in two pieces, printed it, and then painted it and attached it to the bowl with a bolt.

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I forgot to get a photo of the two halves, but this is a trick I often use, printing in two pieces and the assembling together. This time I drilled a hole through the bottom part, stuck a bolt in, and then hot glued it in place before gluing both pieces together. It worked out well.

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Jon (Master of the Daleks) gave me two light cages, which appear to be laser cut Acrylic glued together and painted silver, along with two ping pong balls. I then got two size PM-40 pill bottles which I Dremel’d to the right size, and put sliced in half pudding cups inside of to hold the ping pong ball at the right height.

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I also cut some 1/4″ Baltic Birch (by hand) to put on the bottom of the light cages. I hot glued those in place then attached Velcro® Hook and Loop so I could easily attach them to the bowl (and remove them if needed.)

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The next part was the most difficult. I should state that I really never make costumes or wearable things, so… yeah. I originally tried to make something with foam, and I thought about chin strap, but then I got a hard hat for about $7 on Amazon and thought that if I could attach that, it would be easily adjustable to (nearly) any size human head. The hard part was getting it attached to the bowl. I tend to deal with rectilinear things, not curvy shapes.

I brought the whole thing to Milwaukee Makerspace and asked for ideas… One member said he could make a wooden frame for it, and we did that, but it ended up being really heavy. Like.. uncomfortably heavy. I ended up removing that and using Great Stuff, as another member recommended. I’ve never used Great Stuff before, and let me tell you, it’s terrible.

I got Great Stuff on my hands, and that shit is nasty! I tried to scrub it off, and eventually using Comet cleanser, probably not the best thing to clean your hands with, but then again, Great Stuff shouldn’t be on your hands either. Wear gloves! I ended up getting my hands clean enough to not be sticky, but my fingers were stained for a few days. Yuck!

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I ended up spraying the Great Stuff into the bowl, then laying down plastic wrap and pushing the helmet in to shape the Great Stuff into a helmet receiving shape. It actually worked okay. Then to get the helmet to stay in place, I turned to my old friend, hot glue. There’s a liberal amount of hot glue holding the helmet to the Great Stuff. It’s ugly as Hell, but it works.

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Since I also had some plungers (from the science teacher’s house) I painted one gold to go along with the headwear. Every Dalek should have a plunger and a whisk, or a paint roller, or something that looks like that silly Dalek arm… the one that is not a plunger.

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The first time I painted the plunger I ended up flexing the rubber part and flaking off the paint a bit, so I turned to… hot glue, once again, to make a sort of “weld” thing around the base to prevent the rubber from flexing. It worked, but I forgot to bring the plunger with me (a symptom many were guilty of) so it didn’t get to be part of the ensemble.

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And here’s Rick from Milwaukee Makerspace wearing the Dalek headwear while holding the 10 foot ladder I was standing on. The headwear does work okay, but if you’re moving around it tends to fall forward. And forget about running or leaning forward. Perhaps it does need a chinstrap. Or maybe I’ll just keep it around without actually wearing it. I don’t know… it’s just another ridiculous thing I made because I love Doctor Who and Maker Faire.

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RepRap Report #5

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This time in the RepRap Report we’re going to talk about the functional 3D printer, and not the old RepRap Prusa which I don’t know the status of since someone else has it right now…

I upgraded to a CNC Machined Lever and Extruder Plate back in June after having some issues printing ABS. I also replaced the 2m PTFE tube inside the hot-end, and now (thanks to eBay) have enough to last for years.) Other things I’ve done is add a PEI print surface attached to a piece of glass, and I had to replace a fan I broke while trying to attach it while it was spinning (which is a bad idea.)

Besides all that, it’s just been cranking out prints of various types for work, fun, and whatever else I create. Nine months into it, I’m still pretty happy with the Maker Select Plus for basic 3D printing using PLA.

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The Moxie Board

Moxie

A large part of the Power Racing Series is Moxie. Moxie is best described as, being awesome. The crowd gets to vote for your car using the Moxie Board. Each button press equals a vote. Being fast is one way to get points, but another way is by being awesome… so, Moxie.

Above you’ll see a photo of the official Moxie Board used by the series. Since we also had a PPPRS race during Maker Faire Milwaukee, which overlapped the race in New York, we had to build our own Moxie Board, so here’s what we did…

The Moxie Board

It looks fairly similar, but it’s a bit smaller and lighter than the original, and it’s got 24 buttons instead of 30 (though I believe the original was recently expanded to have that 30 buttons. Who knew there’d ever be that many cars in a race!)

I got some Coroplast from Midland Plastics for super cheap, and they didn’t have any wide enough, so the black strip running down the center is gaff tape used to hold two pieces together to be wide enough. I then found some scrap wood in the shop at work which was long enough, but too skinny to be used for anything else, and built a simple frame with some small blocks of HDPE in the corners to hold it all together. (I was told the reduced weight of this Moxie Board was a big plus.)

The front is screwed into the wood frame, and the back is held in place with some VELCRO® hook and loop so we could open it to get to the electronics…

As for the inside and the electronics, while the original uses an Arduino Mega with a Bluetooth module to send real-time updates to Patrick’s Android phone which is running some special app, I chose to do it differently.

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I’m using a Teensy 3.5 which has plenty of input pins and a built-in MicroSD card slot. The way it works is simple, each button represents a number from 1 to 24, and when pressed, the Teensy gets the value of every button, with the ones not being pressed equal to 0 and the one being pressed equal to 1, and then writes it to a file called MOXIE.csv. When the race is over you just put the MicroSD card in a card reader and import the CSV file into a spreadsheet and grab the last row. (Hopefully your spreadsheet is set up with the names of the cars in the corresponding columns.)

In testing, this all worked fine, but obviously the real world had to come along and crush my hopes and dreams…

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Failure #1: Because the Teensy is a low power device, it doesn’t draw much power from the USB battery pack we were using. I’ve seen this before, so I use a battery pack with a built-in LED “flashlight” that stays on, as long as you press and hold the button when turning it on. I told this to two people, but forgot to write instructions to put inside the Moxie Board, so there’s a chance this was not done properly and power was lost. (There is an indicator LED that lights up when a button is pressed, but not a “POWER ON” LED which would have helped… maybe.

Maybe Failure #2: It could be that my code isn’t quite right. I do not have the most recent code that the official Moxie Board is running, but I have an older version that may be close. My code is a little different, but should yield the same results… I think. This is worth checking on.

I also do not have a good way to attach Moxie Labels, so they are just attached with tape or Hook and Loop for now. Ran out of time for anything better. :/

One more note! In the photo there’s a bunch of green wire and LEDs attached to the front of the Moxie Board. Those were added for the night race. All the actual wiring for the Moxie Board is located on the inside.

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I’ve heard of one other group working on a Moxie Board that will use a Raspberry Pi, which I thought about doing as well, but ended up choosing a Teensy instead. As we add more races, we’re going to need more boards, so I’m hoping we see more ideas and eventually come up with even better ideas. (Note that I wanted to stay simple because simple gets done while over-complex builds, while fun, don’t always get finished, or work properly. But then, who am I to talk!?)

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Hakko FX-901 Portable Soldering Iron

Hakko 901

I’ve got a Hakko FX-901 Cordless Soldering Iron and I love it. I was reminded how much I love it when Donald mentioned it in Maker Update #37.

I got mine about two years ago after using one at the Be A Maker space. I stick a set of rechargeable AA batteries in it and I’ve usually got it ready to go when needed. Oh, while you can find it on Amazon for about $32, I got mine from SparkFun where it’s usually $34.95 but you can sometimes find it on sale for $24.95, which is an awesome deal!

The one thing I don’t like about it is the replacement tips. Right now a Hakko T11-B Tip for FX-901 is $24.95. Yeah, that’s the same cost as a new (on sale) iron from SparkFun. Hmmm…

I know some people really like the butane soldering irons, and they can be found for cheap, but I prefer rechargeable batteries to dealing with butane fuel. Also, I’ve flown more than once with the Hakko, and bringing AA batteries on a plane is not an issue. :)