The CLUE Tracker Points You To a Target, using CircuitPython

[Jay Doscher] shares a quick GPS project he designed and completed over a weekend. The device is called the CLUE Tracker and has simple goals: it shows a user their current location, but also provides a compass heading and distance to a target point. The idea is a little like …read more

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Handheld 3D Scanning, Using Raspberry Pi 4 and Intel RealSense Camera

When the Raspberry Pi 4 came out, [Frank Zhao] saw the potential to make a realtime 3D scanner that was completely handheld and self-contained. The device has an Intel RealSense D415 depth-sensing camera as the main sensor, which uses two IR cameras and an RGB camera along with the Raspberry …read more

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Fail of the Week: In CAD, Remember to Model the Environment

What’s wrong with the above picture? Failure can be an excellent teacher, and [J. Peterson] reminds us all of this when he says to remember to model the environment when designing things in CAD. He contrasts a failure with a success to demonstrate what that means.

The failure was a …read more

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Teardown of Costco Ceiling Light Reveals Microwave Motion Sensor and Hackable Design

[hclxing] eagerly picked up an LED ceiling light for its ability to be turned on and off remotely, but it turns out that the lamp has quite a few other features. These include adjustable brightness, color temperature, automatic turnoff, light sensing, motion sensing, and more. Before installing, [hclxing] decided to …read more

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How To Try Generative Optimization at Home

Chairs, spokes on a wheel, bridges, and all kinds of other load-bearing objects are designed such that material is only present where it is needed. There’s a process by which the decisions about how much material to put and where is determined by computer, and illustrating this is [Adam Bender]’s …read more

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Can Solder Paste Stencils be 3D Printed? They can!

[Jan Mrázek]’s  success with 3D printing a solder paste stencil is awfully interesting, though he makes it clear that it is only a proof of concept. There are a lot of parts to this hack, so let’s step through them one at a time.

First of all, it turns out …read more

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The Fart Box, a Synthesizer Not Quite Like Others

[lookmumnocomputer] enjoys creating synthesizers, and early last year he created one called The Fart Box. It is an entirely analog synthesizer with which, according to its creator, it is difficult to make anything that doesn’t sound gassy. It’s not quite like any other synthesizer, and while it is capable of …read more

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Used Soda Stream Cylinder Becomes DIY Canned Air

Soda Stream machines use a cylinder of compressed CO2 to carbonate beverages, and cylinders that are “empty” for the machine’s purposes in fact still have a small amount of gas left in them. User [Graldur] shared a clever design for using up those last gasps from a cylinder by turning …read more

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3D Printed Tooling Punches Above Its Weight With Added Hardware

Reddit user [thetelltalehart] has been making brake press tooling with 3D printed PLA, and recently shared an interesting picture of a hybrid brake press punch, shown here on the right, in blue.

In a press, material such as sheet metal is formed into a shape by forcing the material around …read more

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See the Damage 250-Pound Combat Robots Get

Combat robots have been a thing for a while, but we don’t normally get a close look at the end results of the sort of damage they can both take and deal out. [Raymond Ma] spent time helping out with season four of BattleBots and wrote about the experience, as …read more

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