Robots in HackSpace

My domination of the publishing world continues. In this month’s HackSpace magazine you can find episode 2 of my series about the Robot Operating System.

It was great fun to write. There’s a complete walkthrough of setting up ROS 2 on a Raspberry Pi using Docker in the lab part of the article. This makes it comparatively easy (if you use my scripts) to run ROS on a Raspberry Pi 5 running the latest Bookworm OS. It runs rather nicely on that platform, including the graphical tools.

Carbonizing in HackSpace magazine

The two images on the left are at 0.2mm layer height and the one on the right is at 0.1mm

I forgot to mention that my article about Carbonization is also in HackSpace this month. Worth reading if you’ve always wanted to embed your friends and relatives in plastic.

Rob in HackSpace and MagPi

Need to tidy this desk…

If you take a look in the April edition of HackSpace magazine you’ll find an article by me about getting started with the Robot Operating System. And if you take a look in the April edition of The MagPi magazine you’ll find my Hull Pixelbot article and also an article about the Red Telephone.

Go me.

Multicoloured Printing in HackSpace magazine

I went out and bought this especially for the blog

This month’s HackSpace magazine is great for all kinds of reasons. Hopefully including my article about 3D printing in colour….

Hull Pixelbot Rugby in HackSpace Magazine

There are some great gadget ideas too

My Hull Pixelbot rugby article is in this month’s HackSpace magazine. It tells you how to add WiFi to your Raspberry Pi PICO powered robot and then control the robot from a web page. And maybe make a rugby team out of them.

And if you pick up a copy of the Raspberry Pi MagPi magazine (also a cracking read) you will find my article on making a haunted red telephone.

Hull Pixelbot in Raspberry Pi Blog

Fame at last at last

My article about the Hull Pixelbot has reached the dizzy heights of the Raspberry Pi news stream. You can find the HackSpace issue containing the article here.

Hull Pixelbot in HackSpace Magazine

Finally hitting the bigtime

Hull Pixelbot has been around for a while and has appeared in all kinds of places. But now it has made it to HackSpace magazine. The latest version can be powered by a Pico and I’ve built a website which you can use to program it directly over a serial port. You can find the magazine in newsagents now.

Redphone in HackSpace magazine

I’ve bought another phone so that I can try to make them call each other

Issue 73 of HackSpace magazine has my red phone article in it. This is where I take an old telephone, rip out all the electronics and replace them with a Raspberry Pi. I then have something which can call me up and say menacing things to me..

Redphone for Halloween

Only a bit scary

The “RedPhone” lives. The bell sounds like a real phone. But the insides are now possessed by a Raspberry Pi running JavaScript…..

This runs on the local network

It hosts a web page into which you can type messages and send them to the phone. When you send the message the phone rings and if you pick up the receiver you hear a ghostly voice dictate the message to you. If you pick up the receiver to make a call you get the dial tone. If you dial “2” and replace the receiver the phone will ring a few seconds later and deliver a ghostly message of doom:

randomMessages = [
    "I know what you did last summer",
    "Is that you, Boris?",
    "Look out of the window.",
    "They are on to you.",
    "Look behind you."
    ];

Other messages may be available later….

It’s been great fun to build. You’ll be able to find out all about it an upcoming article in HackSpace magazine.

Magazine Takeover

They are both jolly good reads

I’m in two magazines this month. Which is nice. If you pick up a copy of the latest HackSpace magazine you will find my article about creating a PICO Powered Bluetooth remote control for a light. This is known as the “milkshake” project because I put the device in an empty milkshake container. Delicious. Then, in MagPi magazine you can find a reprint of my article about making a chord keyboard. This is known as the “missing wires” project because I forgot to add some of the wiring to the design.

Blue Chord Keyboard now in Hackspace Magazine

If you use both left handed and right handed keyboards at the same time you can channel your inner Rick Wakeman….

Issue 68 of HackSpace magazine is now out. On page 70 you can find my article that tells you how to create a Bluetooth connected chord keyboard using a PICO-W. There are lots of other great articles too. Well worth a read.

Bluetooth Chord Keyboard

Now avaialble for left and right handed users with adjustable key positions

The Raspberry Pi PICO-W powered Bluetooth Chord keyboard (I call it “Blue Chords”) is now on GitHub. You can find it here. I’ve updated the code to use the latest version of the Raspberry PI PICO SDK and updated the PC design and matching case design.

I used the Kicadstepup plugin to import the board into the design

I’ve built some prototypes (you can see them at the top) but I’ve not built the final design yet. The project will be the basis of an article in an upcoming HackSpace magazine.

3D Printed Camera article now in Hackspace magazine

One of the funnest articles I’ve written

The article about my 3D printed camera is now in HackSpace magazine, which you can find in all good newsagents. There’s lots of great stuff in there along with my few pages. If you fancy making a camera like this you can find the designs and lots of useful stuff here.

The camera is now light tight and works a treat

I took the picture above with the 3D printed camera. The amount of detail in the branches is very impressive.

Thick Printing

This is the newly printed left hand version of the chord keyboard.

I’m printing some items for a HackSpace magazine article. This one is about making a Bluetooth version of the chord keyboard I made a while back. Today I printed the top of the left handed version of the keyboard. I’ve thickened up the top plate quite a lot. This has done a few things to the print job; perhaps the most notable thing is that it now takes over 6 hours to print. However, it has also added a really nice bit of extra “heft” to the keyboard.

Lots of things benefit from a bit of extra weight, and this is one of them. Up until now I’ve usually printed the thinnest structures I can get away with to save time and filament. However, I think from now on I’ll live with the extra time and cost and print things a bit thicker.

Spintronics and Tagjousts in HackSpace Magazine

This month’s edition of HackSpace magazine is now out. It’s in the shops, or you can find it here. It’s contains a review wot I wrote of Spintronics. I’ve also made it into their Toys & Games item with TagJousts.

The magazine is, as always, a great read. There is nothing else on the market which has such a broad coverage of interesting stuff, from detailed descriptions of hardware and software projects to 3D printed guitars.

The Trombone Controller Lives!

My trombone controller article is now out in the latest edition of Hackspace Magazine. It was great fun to write, even though I made a disastrous design decision half way through. If you want to control your mouse using a trombone action, you should grab a copy.

Update: If you can’t be bothered to download the magazine (although you should - it’s a great read) you can find the article on Raspberry Pi news here.

Hackspace Magazine

If you’re looking for a last minute Christmas present packed with ideas and fun you could do a lot worse than get some lucky person a copy of the latest HackSpace magazine which has just come out. And, to make it even better it contains an article I wrote, all about making cases and covers for gadgets by using “not-sewing sewing”.

Got two articles in HackSpace Magazine

My plan to take over HackSpace magazine is going well. This month I’ve got a couple of articles in there. On page 96 you can find my article about building a printing camera. On page 112 you can find my review of a rather nice PICO Lora board. There is lots of other excellent content too. The magazine is in the shops now, or you can download it here.

I really want to build a Magna-Doodle Clock

I’ve got all these things to do. I need to write the introduction chapter for the new book. I’ve got an article about the Chocolate Synthbox to finish. And, since reading HackSpace magazine yesterday, all I can think about making is a Magna-Doodle clock….

Tag Jousts now in Hackspace Magazine

I’ve got an article in Hackspace magazine this month. This is good news for readers, but also good news for me as I need to buy some new shoes…..

Anyhoo, this article is all about making a 3D printed game. It tells you how to run Python code inside the FreeCAD modelling tool and create game pieces programmatically. You find the magazine in shops and there is also a free pdf download here.