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Classic Mac Paper Bot

You might remember my Rockin’ Amp Vibrobot. Well, I thought it would be fun to make a old Mac, since they were iconic and sort of cube-shaped.

This is another project for Brown Dog Gadgets and you can grab the Classic Mac template if you want to make your own. As always, we recommend Maker Tape for this project because copper tape suuuuuuuuucks!

Inspiration (and files) came from SVGRepo, where I found the front view of a Mac and a floppy disk. Light editing was involved, as well as creating the other five sides of the Mac, the tabs, slots, etc. (This follows the same basic template of the Rockin’ Amp.)

We usually make a small non-descript “key switch” that slides into a slot to turn on our vibrobot friend, but I couldn’t resist make a tiny floppy to do the honors.

Oh, and Josh recommended we add the 3mm LED to the front. Tiny LED to go with Tiny computer and floppy disk!

Welcome to Macintosh!

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Bear Notes

I’ve been using Evernote for years, and while Evernote has a ton of features, what I was really after was a way to have my notes available on my computers (multiple desktops and laptops) as well as on my mobile devices (phones and tablets) and the ability to log into evernote.com with a browser to see my notes was a nice bonus.

I avoided things like storing web clippings, rich media, or even images (beyond a simple sketch on occasion) within Evernote because I didn’t want to get too entrenched in their offering, in case I’d need to move in the future. Looks like a safe bet now.

Months ago I toyed with the idea of just using text files and a private GitHub repo to store my notes, but I didn’t really have a good way to do it on mobile. Part of the thinking around that was that I was using Markdown more and more for work projects and systems, so using Markdown in my notes made a lot of sense…

Enter Bear, which works on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Yeah, no Windows or Android, but I’m really not using those platforms much these days. On occasion I’d use the browser version of Evernote but honestly, if I am anywhere, my phone is probably with me. Also, there may be some options to get the note data from Bear via SQLite.

Bear comes in at about 1/4th the price of Evernote… I’m still not a fan of subscriptions, but it’s just the way things are now. Part of the cheaper price might be that there is no front-end web interface to the notes. Evernote kept going up in price and limiting the lower tiers. I think they completely did away with the tier I had and raised the price even more. For what I use it for, it’s just not worth it.

So far I’m loving Bear. It’s not perfect, but between Markdown, multiple themes, the clean interface, and other features, I like it. It does use tags instead of notebooks, but honestly I was able to transfer to that method very quickly. Tags also let you easily group notes that are in different “categories” into their own separate category. It’s nice. Oh, you can also link to other notes! That’s something I really wanted in Evernote. Now I’ve got it in Bear. You can also encrypt notes, which I haven’t played with yet, but seems like a nice feature.

If you’re sick of Evernote, and use a MacOS/iOS, and like Markdown, tags, themes, a clean interface, etc… Give Bear a look.

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Cutting Fan Blades

Here’s a fun project. My uncle asked if I could cut down some ceiling fan blades to be about 38mm shorter. Without knowing the material or how I would do it I said “Sure, I’ll give it a try!” and he was fine with that. I guess he purchased a new set for his fan thinking they were shorter but they were the same length as the existing blades, so it was low-risk if I failed.

My first idea was to build a jig and laser cut the ends off. This would (in theory) make sure all the cuts matched exactly. Since the cuts are curved, I thought this would be a good idea. The blades are plastic though, and I didn’t know what plastic. I gave up on this idea. (I think they might be ABS, but I don’t know for sure.)

So what I did was used my desktop scanner to get an image of the blade, then printed a paper template I could tape to each blade to do a cut on the bandsaw. (Note: I have a pretty low-quality bandsaw at home, which is fine for rough cuts of thin materials, but not exactly precise.)

I taped the template to each blade and cut them one by one. I did better on the first two than the third, and probably better on the first one than the second, so I had three cuts that were not exactly matching. No matter, on to the disc sander!

Did I mention the blades are plastic? I ended up taping all three blades in a stack so I could sand them evenly. It mostly worked. I had to take breaks to allow the plastic to cool and use a razor to keep cutting off the gunked up plastic on the bottom of the stack, but I think I got them really close to being even with each other. (Apologies for the lack of process photos, I was concentrating pretty hard on getting them right.)

I cleaned up the edges a bit with a razor, but didn’t actually shape them like the original ends were. Hopefully these will work. If not, it was a (somewhat) fun challenge to do something I’d probably never otherwise do…

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Cardboard Knife Switch

For many electronics enthusiasts there is a special place in their heart for knife switches. At least that’s the case for educators I’ve worked with the past decade or so. My guess is it has to do with the simplicity of the knife switch in explaining how a circuit works. Is the circuit opened or is it closed? A knife switch provides a visual demonstration of this like few other switches do nowadays.

Knife switches are not used for most modern day circuits as they have been replaced by switches that are safer at high voltages, but since we work with low voltage circuits in educational settings this DIY Cardboard Knife Switch is perfect.

I’ve talked to a few educators and heard complaints about how expensive the old style knife switches are. (You can buy new “cheap” plastic versions for about $2 per switch, but the ceramic ones are often $10 or more.) I thought I’d lower the curve by creating a cheap DIY version that can be made with Maker Tape.

There’s a template that can be used to make one from cardboard or other material that’s got some rigidity and thickness to it. Cardboard is great, foamcore could work, cereal boxes are too thin. The template expects some cardboard and a way to cut it, which could be an X-ACTO knife, some scissors, a razor blade, or even a laser cutter.

Once you have your four pieces you attach some conductive Maker Tape, poke some holes for the brass fasteners to go through, and you’re nearly done!

Assemble the four pieces using the brass fasteners to hold them together and to act as a pivot point for the lever and you’ve got a knife switch. It may help to pinch the top of the two outside pieces a bit narrower so the knife is guided into place a bit better. (You’ll see this tip and more in the PDF guide.)

Besides the Brown Dog Gadgets Project Database, you can also find this project on Instructables.

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Reflect-O-Scope

The Reflect-O-Scope was an interactive museum exhibit I worked on a few years ago. It was a fantastical machine that allows users (typically children) to slide materials under a microscope and examine them. The materials were from the sponsor of the exhibit and consisted of specialty tape materials adhered to plastic boards.

One of the original ideas was to allow for focusing, but that got scrapped. We figured kids would put almost anything under a microscope, their hand, their little sister, etc. Focusing meant a moving mechanism, and it was deemed to complex at the time.

The sculptural build was done by John McGeen and Austin Boechler. My focus was on the hardware and software. There’s a USB microscope connected to a computer and then a small HDMI display in the “goggle” shaped piece that the user looks into. It’s all a bit “periscope” like in design.

The original design also had a secondary monitor (a large TV) that would be mounted further away, so people could see weird things on the TV and it would draw them over. Lots of features got killed due to lack of time or other reasons. Most of what you see on a museum floor probably started out a lot more complex when originally designed, and then simplified as time goes on.

I wrote the software, which is just an application written in Processing that automagically launches at boot up, runs full screen, and shows the output from the USB microscope. There’s also a companion application called “List Cameras” that can display all the connected USB cameras and all of the possible resolutions they support. This is there in case the USB microscope ever needs to get replace. The exhibit tech just needs to run the application and then edit a config file. No recompiling of the application is necessary.

One more fun addition was a white plastic tube running along the outside with some NeoPixels in it featuring some funky color runs to add to the fantastical nature of the piece.

One of the nice things about this component was that the software was created in-house, so the component could be replicated easily without additional license fees. (We had an amazing software partner we used for the complex things, but simple stuff was done, when possible, in-house by the tech team, which was basically me.)