M A K E B U I L D H A C K C R E AT E

hsmag.cc November 2019 Issue #24

R A S P B E R RY P I
weather
TIME V EG
E TABLE MATT
E forecaster
Stay warm with a
MACHINE

R
connected display
RN

IN
Keep calm and carry on
TU

with a portal to the past

TO
Nov.2019
Issue #24 £6

BREWING beer cider mead kombucha

BRIAN LOUGH

3D
Power, control, and Tindie:
DE

how to scale up
KS
LI

IN

wuthering IO R
C

US D
bytes
Learning tech on the
A LC O H OLI
C
printing
Design, refine, and fabricate
wily, windy moors jewellery using Fusion 360

DIY ANTENNA
PLUS ARBOR PRESS
ˇ
ˇ

Optimise your airwaves Press things into little holes

DIY COMPUTERS BINDER CLIPS RADIOS

 Infrared Thermopile Semiconductors
Triboelectric Passives
Magnetic Position Electromechanical
Gesture Control Power
Interconnect Circuit Protection
Rectenna Automation
Connected Cloud Connectors
Decoupled Network Interconnect
Hybrid Envelope-Tracking Signal Hyperfast
Re-Entrant Leveraged Design IoT
Embedded Logic Switches
TEGs RFID
Passives TMR Magnetic Sensors
Logic Eco-System RF Directional Couplers
Third-Order Sensor Bipolar Digital Latching Sensor
Clock/Timing Logic
Memory Digital Omnipolar
Filters Crystals
SoC Augmented Reality
Thermal Management Earth-Friendly Display
Class-G Amplifier Embedded Cellular
Decimated Power-Efficiency IO-Link
Microwave Solenoids
Bluetooth Proximity Sensor
Remote Control Capacitive Touch
FPGA Embedded Computers
DDS Thermocouple Interface
Batteries PIR Sensor
Betavoltaics SPI Interface
MiWi Transceiver Linear
Nanogenerators Ultra Low-Power
AMR Narrowband
Recycling Radiowaves Mesh-Networked
Ask Receiver Virtual Reality
Transformers Keyfob
Solar Isolators
Sensor MCUs
2-Way Remote RF Evaluation
Simplex Transmission Dev Boards
ADC RF Antennas
Potentiometers Axis Tilt
Interface Zettabyte Era
NFC I2C
Frequency Synthesizers Robotic Process Automation
Oscillators Microservice Architecture
Low Energy Rezence Compatible
We Make It Easy. PMIC
Relays
WPC-Certified
XCVR
Immersive Experience
Artificial Intelligence
Smart Devices Internet of Things
Capacitors Na-TECC
Electromechanical 3D Alteration
Optoisolators Quantum Computing
ZigBee Shunt Sense
Semiconductors Touchless
EMI Smart Home Technology
Tools 5G Mobile
Hardware Energy Harvesting
Cable MotorData Acquisition
 WELCOME EDITORIAL
Editor
Ben Everard
ben.everard@raspberrypi.org

Welcome to
Features Editor
Andrew Gregory
andrew.gregory@raspberrypi.org

HackSpace magazine Sub Editors

David Higgs, Nicola King

DESIGN
Critical Media
This time, 24 months ago, we were preparing to launch a criticalmedia.co.uk

new magazine to the world. We had so many questions – Head of Design

Lee Allen
would people be interested in a magazine for makers, were
Designers
there enough projects to fill 132 pages every month, could Ty Logan

we find enough great writers to create the articles? It turns Photography

Brian O’Halloran
out that the answer to all those questions was an emphatic
CONTRIBUTORS
yes! Two years on, we’re still constantly amazed by the Lucy Rogers, Andrew
Huang, Jo Hinchliffe,Adam
ingenuity and creativity Clark, Mayank Sharma,
Two years on, we’re still constantly of the maker community. Andrew Lewis, Sophy
Wong, Gareth Branwyn, Les
amazed by the ingenuity and creativity Whether it’s electronics, Pounder, Marc de Vinck

woodwork, metalwork, 3D PUBLISHING

of the maker community Publishing Director
printing, or some other form Russell Barnes
russell@raspberrypi.org
of fabrication, there’s so much to discover, play with and turn
Advertising
into great projects, products, and curios. Charlie Milligan
charlotte.milligan@raspberrypi.org
The maker and hacker community is a constant source of
inspiration to us as we put the magazine together, and we DISTRIBUTION
Seymour Distribution Ltd
hope we can share a little bit of that inspiration with you 2 East Poultry Ave,
London EC1A 9PT
each month. +44 (0)207 429 4000

SUBSCRIPTIONS
BEN EVERARD
Unit 6, The Enterprise
Editor ben.everard@raspberrypi.org Centre, Kelvin Lane, Manor
Royal, Crawley, West
Sussex, RH10 9PE
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TODAY
GET IN TOUCH
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hackspace@ paper sourced from sustainable
raspberrypi.org forests. The printer operates an
environmental management system
hackspacemag which has been assessed as
conforming to ISO 14001.
hackspacemag HackSpace magazine is published
by Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd.,
Maurice Wilkes Building, St. John’s
ONLINE Innovation Park, Cowley Road,
Cambridge, CB4 0DS The publisher,
hsmag.cc editor, and contributors accept
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omissions or errors relating to goods,
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noted, content in this magazine is
licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-
ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-
SA 3.0). ISSN: 2515-5148.

3
Contents 100

06 SPARK 35 LENS
06 Top Projects 36 Brewing
The Ferens Gallery of DIY projects The art and science of making your own drinks

14 Objet 3d’art 56 How I Made: WW2 time machine radio

A 3D-printed concrete construction Use a Raspberry Pi to hear messages from the past

18 Meet the Maker: Brian Lough 62 In the Workshop: Raspberry Pi laptop

Homemade electronics to scratch an itch Hack together a tailor-made computing solution

22 Columns 66 Interview: Eben Upton

How not to get taken for a ride when fixing things Pity the man who has no time to build robots…

24 Letters 74 Improviser’s Toolbox Binder clips

Quick! Turn on BBC iPlayer now! Making things out of little levered metal springs

26 Kickstarting
The cutest way of checking the surf conditions
Tutorial
28 Space of the month STEAMhouse
Innovation in the shadow of the Bullring School of making:
Arbor press
32 Wuthering Bytes
Open-source learning from the northern hills

Cover Feature

82 Add extra capabilities to this

BREWING
simple metalworking tool

62
Have a ridiculous amount of fun
turning honey, fruit, grains, and tea
into delicious beverages

36
4
 CONTENTS

26
Best of Breed 124
Lidar
Interview
Eben Upton

14

116 Find neolithic monuments

in villages near you

28 66 Why manufacturing, like football,

is coming home

79 FORGE
80

SoM LED matrix
Add 64 pixels of output with Arduino or CircuitPython 113 FIELD TEST
82 SoM Arbor press 114 Direct from Shenzhen Bluetooth module
Squeeze half a ton of pressure into bearings Resurrect old speakers with the power of Bluetooth audio

88 Tutorial Optimise your antennas 116 Best of Breed

Reach the parts other radios cannot reach The best lidar scanners for geo-scanning

94 Tutorial Forecast the weather 122 Can I Hack It?

Build an at-a-glance climate visualiser Rule your next networking event with a video business card

98 Tutorial Superglue 124 Review Tool sharpener

How not to stick your fingers together A tiny grinder for your non-essential sharp things

100 Tutorial Workshop turntable 126 Review Dremel router attachment

Control every angle of your work A simple gadget to bring more life to your rotary tool

104 Tutorial FM radio 128 Review Template maker

Build your own programmable radio receiver Winter is coming! Prepare with this festive box-designer

106 Tutorial 3D-printed jewellery 129 Book Review Booze: River Cottage Handbook
Design and print in multiple filaments How to make delicious drinks, in book form

Some of the tools and techniques shown in HackSpace Magazine are dangerous unless used with skill, experience and appropriate personal protection equipment. While we attempt to guide the reader, ultimately you
are responsible for your own safety and understanding the limits of yourself and your equipment. HackSpace Magazine is intended for an adult audience and some projects may be dangerous for children. Raspberry
Pi (Trading) Ltd does not accept responsibility for any injuries, damage to equipment, or costs incurred from projects, tutorials or suggestions in HackSpace Magazine. Laws and regulations covering many of the topics
in HackSpace Magazine are different between countries, and are always subject to change. You are responsible for understanding the requirements in your jurisdiction and ensuring that you comply with them. Some
manufacturers place limits on the use of their hardware which some projects or suggestions in HackSpace Magazine may go beyond. It is your responsibility to understand the manufacturer’s limits.

5
Top Projects

REGULAR

ILC1-1/8L Clock
By ChristineNZ hsmag.cc/lrqV0C

T
his Arduino Mega-powered clock/weather
station combo (featuring humidity, pressure,
and temperature readings) is a great example of
the power of old technology. The large display digits
are provided by six ILC1-1/8L VFD tubes, which is
a technology similar to electronic valves, running
at a much lower voltage. The tubes that Christine used are still
available as new old stock from Ukraine via eBay, and if you like
the retro look of Nixies, but aren’t confident with the opening
voltages they use, VFD is a useful intermediate technology to
cut your teeth on.

Right
Big displays are
perfect for telling the
time at night when
you don’t have your
glasses on

6
SPARK

7
Top Projects

REGULAR

Above
Someone has grafted
a pair of these arms
on to a quad copter.
Nightmare fuel!

8
 SPARK

Robot arm
By Federico Ciccarese hsmag.cc/Ms34D0

Y
oubionic is a project born five years ago.
We work every day to evolve humankind by
developing sophisticated technologies to greatly
improve the intellect and human physiology. We
fight to transform the human into transhuman, and
fight aging, illness, and death.
Our robotic human arm is the first 3D-printed arm with shape,
structure, and movements, obtained from an in-depth study of the
human arm. These features make it compatible with remote control
uses (through an exoskeleton), or independently controlled with the
use of artificial neural networks.
We wanted to develop this so that it could be taken and
developed by the greatest number of developers, so the challenge
was to use low-cost components without sacrificing the quality
of the device. We managed to offer it at an affordable price: $97
for print files and electronic documentation, $150 for prints and
mechanical and electronic components.

9
Top Projects

REGULAR

Mini smoker
By F_A_B_A_S hsmag.cc/ySxBo6

T
his miniature hot smoker is just the thing for
tiny briskets, individual ribs, or teeny-tiny
lamb shoulders. It was made out of a collection
of scrap metal, including a speaker mounting, two
fire extinguishers, bits of a broken typewriter, and
some welding rods (to make the grill). Its maker,
F_A_B_A_S, reckons, “If I need to smoke two sausages, I can do
it”. Maybe it’s not all that useful, but it’s absolutely gorgeous.

Right
We heartily
endorse a slow-
smoked pork
shoulder on a cold
winter night

10
SPARK

11
Top Projects

REGULAR

Solenoid
boxer engine
By Maker B hsmag.cc/oK2Wa1

M
y name is Jony [aka Maker B]. I’m a maker
and hacker. I like to build creative things that
have never existed before. A lot of the time, I just
build things for fun, which I think is one thing that
makes me a maker.
Unlike the internal combustion engine, which
uses an air/gasoline explosion to turn a crankshaft, the Solenoid
Boxer 4 Engine is an electromagnetic device which pulls the
piston into the cylinder, using the electromagnetic force to turn
a crankshaft.
 Four microswitches are installed in the base that are pushed
down by the camshaft, to actuate electromagnet according to the
position of piston in cylinder.
First, I used CAD software to design this engine, and aluminium,
brass, and steel are carefully crafted into the various components of
the engine using a lathe and milling machine. Lastly, all the parts are
assembled with small fasteners and retaining compound.

Right
Jony milled every
element of this
beautiful engine
himself to create an
incredibly soothing
20-minute video

12
SPARK

13
Objet 3d’art

REGULAR

Objet 3d’art
3D-printed artwork to bring more beauty into your life

14
 SPARK

W
e’ve seen 3D-printed
buildings before, but the
leap forward here is that
this one meets local
building codes for a
residential building – that means it’s a
massive step up from a proof of concept,
and is something that can actually be
lived in.
The 3D-printed part of this 350-square foot
home took two days to print, and cost around
$10,000. That’s fast and cheap, compared
with traditional methods. And it needs to be,
because the aim is to take 3D printing

15
Objet 3d’art

REGULAR

16
 SPARK

technology to the developing world, to help

improve living standards for the estimated
one billion people without access to
adequate housing. The project is a joint
venture between New Story, a non-profit
focused on improving housing, and ICON, a Left
The first houses built
firm with expertise in large-scale 3D printing. in the developing
The house was printed in ICON’s Vulcan world using this
technology are due to
II printer, which uses a proprietary concrete break ground next
year in El Salvador
blend called Lavacrete. The maximum print
height is 8.5 feet, and width is 28 feet – and Below
We’re used to
it needs 4–6 people to operate it. If you feel thinking of print
like having a go yourself, they’ll be on sale layers in terms of
microns, but the
from 2020. standard print bead
of the Vulcan II is
one inch tall, by two
iconbuild.com inches wide

17
Meet The Maker

REGULAR

Meet The Maker:

Brian Lough
Tindie, makers, and the loveliness of sharing

I
f you’re running a business, a good first print something. But I was turning the printer off in
step is figuring out what people might between prints, and the Raspberry Pi is connected
want to buy. That’s what most people will to the printer via USB. I had, and still do have, a
tell you, anyway. For most makers though, the cheap Chinese printer…it takes the power from the
process starts with fixing an itch of your own. Raspberry Pi USB and powers the screen board and
That’s what led Brian Lough to put his first stuff. So even though the printer was off, the screen
creation up on Tindie a little over a year ago. Since was staying on. It’s quite a bright LCD screen, so it
then he’s added more gadgets to his stable, scaled was quite frustrating.
up, and shared knowledge with makers all over the “This is a common problem; loads of people have
place. We chatted with him to find out more about it. What some people do is they cut their USB cable;
the world of open-source electronics. they peel back the shield, and cut the 5 V wire inside
“I was always interested in the idea of making the cable.
a PCB, but I put it off for a while. And then I saw
a couple of other makers, like Unexpected Maker THE FIRST PROJECT
showed it a few times on his channel – I thought that “I was thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a
it looked like something I could do. I made it a goal a solution for this that didn’t require you to cut open a
few years ago to make a PCB and see how it goes. cable?’ This would be a nice first PCB design because
“Similar to software or whatever, when I’m learning it’s super-simple: there are two components, all I
a new language I prefer to have a project in mind have to do is connect three of the four wires between
rather than just go ‘OK, I’m going to learn Python those two components, and that would be it. I had a
because I want to learn Python’. It would be more, practical use case, so I said OK, I’ll make that.
‘I’m going to do something on the Raspberry Pi “[PCB fabricating service] JLCPCB had this thing
because that uses Python’. where you could panellise your board for free, so
“If there’s a practical thing that’s going to come out once it fit within 10 by 10 cm, you could have rows
at the end of it, I’m more encouraged to keep at it and columns of the same PCB design. I think I ended
and keep learning. If it’s a useless project or has no up ordering about 200 PCBs for what I call the Power
end goal, I struggle with motivation. BLough-R. I got two hundred of these Power BLough-
“I had this minor bugbear for years…I had OctoPrint Rs and thought this is an absolute lifetime supply of
set up on a Raspberry Pi controlling my 3D printer. So these; I will never need to order any of these again.
I left my Raspberry Pi on all the time; I didn’t want I bought enough parts for ten of them, and thought,
to be booting it up and down every time I wanted to this will do me for months, even if I decide to

18
 SPARK

Above
Making nice things
for christenings, bar
mitzvahs, and weddings

19
Meet The Maker

REGULAR

to pack pretty much on demand; I would

go get the pack and put all the parts in it,
but I found that was really inefficient from
a time point of view.
“If you bought something off me and I
had to get down all the boxes, put one kit
together and then put everything away,
it was quite inefficient. Oftentimes on a
Saturday, my wife and I would just bag up
kits ahead of time.
“I’ve tried really hard to reduce the
amount of time it takes me to pack orders
to an absolute minimum. I was writing
the address by hand, and I have terrible
handwriting, so that’s a big problem. If I
write badly, then it doesn’t get to you!
“I’ve optimised now though; where it
was taking me a couple of minutes to
print out a label, it now takes me seconds.
If you’ve made an order with me, I could
have it processed and ready to go out in
two minutes now.
“It takes the pressure off you too – I
found that whatever was on my plate,
sell them. That ended up being a lot more popular when someone is giving you money for something, it
Above than I thought! automatically becomes top of the list, whatever else
Brian’s take on the
classic seven- “I like to design things that solve problems that you’re doing. Context switching is a bit of a problem
segment display I have, because I feel like if I have problems with too – five evenings a week, you’ve packed one thing,
it, then surely other people have problems with it and maybe the process of packing only took you five
too. A lot of people come to me with some problem minutes, but the cleaning up afterwards and all that
in a far-off field saying that there would be good stuff… it’s just so inefficient at times.
money to be made in that, but I find that really hard
to develop anything for, because I don’t experience MAKING FOR MAKERS
the problem myself, so I can’t have empathy with “Sometimes it can be really busy. The matrix shields
other people’s problems; I don’t fully understand the recently I’ve been selling a lot of. They’re the
issues they’re having, and I would have to conduct display that normally would make up large displays
in a soccer stadium or whatever. You can buy

”
individual panels of them, and you can control them
If I’m solving a problem I with Arduinos.

have, I understand what the

crux of the issue is and how

”
to make it better

a lot of interviews and things like that. But if I’m

solving a problem I’m having myself, I understand
immediately what the crux of the issue is and how to
make it better. If you solve the problem in a way that
makes it significantly better for me, maybe it’ll make
it significantly better for another person.
“I have a full-time job, a 40-hour a week job
in software development. On top of that, I can
Right easily put in eight hours, ten hours a week making
The Power BLough-R hardware. Sometimes you’d have a really busy week,
is even in a retail
shop in the USA sometimes a quiet week. When I started out, I used

20
 SPARK

“They’re really nice displays. They’re not particularly of it are not written by me, but by other people. It’s
difficult to connect an Arduino to, or an ESP32, but very nice. I haven’t had any negative experiences in Above
Brian’s builds are
the matrix shield makes it a lot easier, because you selling to anybody at the moment. A couple of times electronically simple,
just drop the shield into one of the ports, use the things have gone missing in the post, but people have but they have real-
world uses
ribbon cable that comes with the display to connect always been happy to take a refund, or for me to
to the other one – that looks after power because it send it again. I haven’t had any negative issues. Let’s
has a barrel jack on it. hope that continues for the next year as well.” 
“It tidies things up, makes it less prone to error, it’s
a bit neater as well. They’ve sold really well over the
summer. There are a couple of people in the States
on Twitter who have been playing around with these
pixel purses: Les Pounder took one apart in the
magazine, Emily Velasco is one of the two people
I was talking about, and Geek Mom Projects is the
other one. When people ask Emily what’s controlling
her project, she tells people she’s using my board,
and links to it. That has given me a boost.
“I’m happy enough for it to be a side project. At the
moment it funds the other stuff I do; it’s nice to not
have to worry about the money you’re spending on
electronics for projects.
“Tindie’s great – I think because it’s targeted at
makers. I think, in general, makers are a pretty good
community and pretty friendly. As I mentioned with
Emily, she seems to be happy to tell people about
it any time – people go ‘Hey, what are you using to
make it run?’ She could just say ‘Oh, it’s an ESP32’,
but she does go out of her way to link to the board
and things like that. People, if they get the board,
seem happy to talk about it on Twitter. If they develop
code for it, they always seem to be happy to share
it back, and let me use it to show off the board’s
features. Some of the coolest things that come out

21
Lucy Rogers

COLUMN SPARK

Fixing wizard
Share and share alike (your skills)

A
re you the friend that If challenged, this laziness is
everyone brings their obviously denied – people say “Oh, but
broken things to for you’re so much better at it than me”,
repair? Are you the tech or “But you find this stuff easy”. I’m
‘wizard’ who has to work only better at it because I have done it
out what they have more often!
done to break their phone/computer/ What isn’t said, but what I can now
television and then fix it? hear is, “I really can’t be bothered to
I get a buzz out of fixing things. It’s think about or do this”.
not a natural talent of mine though A friend told me a story recently – her
– but I do have a lot of tenacity and brother (in his forties) got huge kudos for
make great use of the internet – so having bought their mother a birthday
Lucy Rogers eventually things usually get fixed. I like present from a high street clothing store
the accumulation – complete with
@DrLucyRogers of knowledge I get receipt. The positive
from it – it gives me Our joy in fixing, comments he got
Lucy is a maker, an engineer, greater confidence for doing this “on
and a problem-solver. She is to fix things in mending, or making his own” – without
adept at bringing ideas to life. the future. can easily be tarnished help from his wife
She is one of the cheerleaders However, or sister – were
for the maker industry, and is sometimes, it feels
by the reaction considerable. My
Maker-in-Chief for the Guild like I get taken of others friend has been
of Makers: guildofmakers.org for granted. buying presents for
When it’s a fair her mother from
trade of time, it’s fine. For example, her father since her twenties. And not
if in return for my making or fixing once was it commented upon that this
skills, a meal is cooked for me, clothing was wonderful. In fact, it only made her
is mended, the dog is walked, or I father more likely to ask her to do other
get lifts to places – these all make chores he didn’t want to do. I hear it’s
me feel my time and effort is valued the same with nappy changing in some
and appreciated. households. And putting up shelves, or
But there are only so many “thank checking tyre pressures.
yous” I can take before I feel like I’m Our joy in fixing, mending, or making
enabling lazy behaviour, rather than can easily be tarnished by the reaction
helping someone out. Instead of of others. I am sure I have been guilty
helping, I am encouraging them to of not appreciating the efforts of others
rely on me. I let people think, “Why in the past. Maybe it’s time for some
should I even try to fix this when Lucy honest discussions with our friends
enjoys fixing things”. and families.

22
Bunnie Huang

COLUMN SPARK

Two years young

So long, and thanks for all the fish

S
ince HackSpace magazine can play. However, it’s worth remembering
launched about two years that all technology is fundamentally dual-
ago, a lot has changed. use: controlled fire cooks food; unchecked
We’re now on to Raspberry fire burns down villages. Smartphones
Pi 4. It’s an exciting have brought us closer to each other; but
development that continues they also expose us to greater
the trend of narrowing the gap between surveillance. Drones aid exploration of
what’s found in bleeding edge mobile land, sea, and space; but also deliver
phones and entry-level maker hardware. bombs. AI helps us access and process
Meanwhile, chip foundries have managed more information; but also helps spread
to finally bridge the EUV (Extreme more disinformation.

Bunnie Huang Ultraviolet) lithography chasm, promising

to unlock a flurry of improvements in
Fundamentally, I’m a technology
optimist. I believe that a utopian Star
performance and transistor density. Trek future, where technology has
@bunniestudios We’re also finally getting a sneak peek eliminated poverty, making space
at what’s beyond exploration the
Andrew ‘Bunnie’ Huang is a Moore’s Law: primary mission of
hacker by night, entrepreneur researchers at MIT We can build anything the human species,
by day, and writer by have managed is a possibility.
procrastination. He’s a to fabricate a
if we put our hearts and However, in order
co‑founder of Chibitronics, functional RISC-V minds to it, but the for that world to be
troublemaker-at-large for the microprocessor out realised, the primary
MIT Media Lab, and a mentor trick is knowing what
of carbon nanotubes, utility of fantastic
for HAX in Shenzhen. while researchers to build technologies like the
at Google have laid replicator needs to
claim to the mantle be for making ‘Tea,
of quantum supremacy, albeit on a very Earl Grey, Hot’, and somehow not for
specific problem. making weapons.
A lot has also changed in the world There’s a lot going on in the world,
outside of technology. At the time of and I need time to reflect, grow, and
writing, the UK hangs on the edge of a invent. As such, this is my last column
hard Brexit. The US president is facing for HackSpace magazine. We can build
an impeachment inquiry. The #metoo anything if we put our hearts and minds
movement continues to unseat patriarchs. to it, but the trick is knowing what
Hong Kong is filled with unrest. to build. So, instead of writing, I’ll be
The stark juxtaposition of the progress taking the time to explore and connect.
in technology, against the turmoil in Meanwhile, I look forward to watching
politics, reminds us that there may be a this community continue to grow and
larger role in society that technologists flourish. Happy hacking!

23
Letters

REGULAR

Letters ATTENTION
ALL MAKERS!
If you have something you’d
like to get off your chest (or
even throw a word of praise
in our direction) let us know at
hsmag.cc/hello

ELECTRICK FLAPJACK
The guitars made by Michael Dales at
Makespace Cambridge look fantastic. I
started out the same as Michael, taking
the electronics and neck of an old guitar
and adding it to a body I’d made myself.
It was scratching my own itch because I
wanted a Flying V, but I found that the
Gibson/Epiphone models in the shops are
really thin and flimsy. So I made my own
V-shaped body out of a bit of oak. The
thing weighs a ton!
If I ever get around to making a neck
(unlikely given how hard it looks), I’ll use
his system for laser-etching the fretboard
markings. Thanks for sharing!

Jamie Rider
West Mids

Ben says: Give a man a fish, and you feed

him for a day. Give a man a ready-made
way of calculating fret distances for a
given scale length of guitar, and you’ve
done the world a favour. We’re amazed
that Michael is so happy to help other
people with their projects – but that’s
makers for you.

THE TELLY BOX

Top Tip: get on the BBC iPlayer and
look for The Big Life Fix. It’s a bunch of
makers, making things to help real
people, and it’s excellent. That is all!

Dave Smith
Swindon

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 SPARK

DARKNESS FALLS
ACROSS THE LAND
Cheers for the Halloween stuff last
issue! As far as I’m concerned, it’s a
poor man’s Bonfire Night, but the kids
love it and they pester me every year
to help them make scary stuff. It’s like
Christmas; it gets earlier and earlier.
This year they started in September, so
the magazine came at the right time. I’m
thinking something with hydraulics and
fake blood…

Daniel Greeves
London

Ben says: The science on ghosts and

ghouls isn’t settled yet, but whether or
not you believe in things that go bump in
the night, Halloween is a brilliant excuse
to make something daft just for the sake
of it. Just make sure the kids share their
sweets with you when they get back
from trick-or-treating.

BRAZE YOURZELF
I had no idea brazing was that easy [as demonstrated in
issue 23 by Andrew Lewis]. In fact, scratch that, I’d never
heard of it. I can solder, but I always thought I’d never have
the space/budget/fire-resistant trousers to try welding, so
I’ve never had a go at sticking bits of metal together. Thanks
for showing us non-welders how easy it can be!

Dietmar
Hamburg

Ben says: When I first tried welding, I was rubbish at it, but
it felt amazing. The power to join bits of metal is a
completely different feeling to my normal making. Thanks
for the feedback on this from everyone who’s written in; we
want to get as much variety in the magazine as possible, so
it’s good to know what’s struck a chord.

25
Crowdfunding now

REGULAR

CROWDFUNDING
NOW
Surf window
The Internet of Beaches and Reefs

From $299 kck.st/30gBTnR Delivery: June 2020

S
creens have become the default way of displaying
data. They’re cheap (depending on size), easy to use,
widely available, and… pretty boring. In our view, they’re
unpleasant to look at as well. Perhaps we at HackSpace
magazine towers are just a bit too old and crusty, but we
really like displays that are a little more inventive. The Surf Window
is a great example of this. It uses motorised plywood to create a
display that is, by itself, interesting to look at, but that also provides
useful data about the conditions at the local surf break.
Of course, the

”
downside of
It uses motorised
bespoke displays
is that they’re plywood to create a
single-purpose. display that provides
This display only
useful data about

”
shows information
about surf surf conditions
conditions. In our
opinion, that’s a
small price to pay for an object that’s an interesting curio in its own
right. The actual price is not so small, at £299 (for the early bird).
That pays for what is obviously quite a lot of love and attention to
detail in this build.
Regardless of whether you’re thinking of buying this, we’d
recommend taking a look at the Kickstarter page. The video takes
you through all the information that’s shown on the display, and this
may also give you some inspiration if you’re thinking of building a
display for other data. For surfers, this one is a great way of keeping
an eye on your local break when you’re not close enough to see it.
For non-surfers, it’s a great example of a data-driven curio to inspire
mantelpieces around the world. Let’s make the ‘Internet of useful,
beautiful Things’. 

26
BUYER
BEWARE !
When backing a crowdfunding
campaign, you are not purchasing
a finished product, but supporting
a project working on something
new. There is a very real chance
that the product will never ship
and you’ll lose your money. It’s
a great way to support projects
you like and get some cheap
hardware in the process, but if
you use it purely as a chance to
snag cheap stuff, you may find
that you get burned.

27
Space of the month

REGULAR

Space of the month:

STEAMhouse

S
TEAMhouse differed from most
spaces we’ve been to. The usual
paradigm is that everyone’s welcome,
for a small fee, finances are tight, and
there’s a range of ages and
seriousness to the makers there. This
STEAMhouse is a different offering entirely. It’s part of Birmingham
City University, it’s open to businesses (this includes
steamhouse.org.uk sole traders and people who are just starting out and
STEAMhouseUK who need a leg up), and there’s a focus on product
development. This is a place for people who want to
@STEAMhouseUK
get things done.
“You have to be a member to use STEAMhouse”,
Business Development Manager Sophia Tarr tells us.
“To be eligible to be a member, you have to be a
company or have a Unique Tax Reference. The
application isn’t difficult; the most important things
we need to know are what it is you’re trying to do;
what product idea you want to work on. We take the
time to go over your idea with you, and see what we
can offer you. We don’t like to say no!”

” We take the time to go

over your idea with you,
and see what we

”
can offer you

“You don’t have to have a business plan, because a

lot of the time, especially with the business route,
they’re obsessed with getting a business plan, and
actually they haven’t even got their concept together.
A good business plan has to be a live document, as
well. Some people do one; it kills them. There’s
something called a concept overview that people do
Right
instead of a business plan. It has a lot of the same “You get to work with
information, but is much less detailed. If you go for a technician who has
expertise in your area
massive amounts of funding, you will need a – I think that’s what
business plan, because [anyone willing to put money makes us unique
as a makerspace or
in] will want to see that you’ve thought about it.” innovation space”

28
SPARK

29
Space of the month

REGULAR

Right
STEAMhouse doesn’t
have two members
doing the same
thing, which is really
exciting – there are
furniture makers, a
luthier, electronic
music makers,
artists, and all sorts

Below
Everyone has to do a
one-hour induction,
regardless of
previous experience

30
 SPARK

“It’s such a curse that people think you’ve got to

do one straight away when you don’t even know
what you’re making yet. We wouldn’t put that
pressure on you.”
STEAMhouse employs a team of technicians to
help its members in the area they’re working on –
the four specialisms are metal, wood, print, and
digital design. It feels like a formalised version of the
makerspace phenomenon where there’s often
someone on hand to help out, with the exception
that the experts here keep regular hours, and you
won’t feel like you’re pestering them or stopping
them from getting their own work done.

TEARDOWN
Like the Royal Marines, the STEAMhouse experts
want to take your idea to bits and rebuild it stronger:
“We have two dedicated teardown spaces,” Sophia
tells us. “Some of the companies don’t want to do
the teardown, but they always come out smiling. A
lot of the designers go through the teardown
process, and also get 3D models out of it to help
CONTACT US them refine the design, so it’s a useful process.”
We’d love you to get in
This is something we’d not seen before: a formal
touch to showcase your
makerspace and the recognition that breaking something is a key part of
things you’re making. making it better. We talk about failure being iterative
Drop us a line on Twitter [and it is!], but if you can take a concept to bits in
@HackSpaceMag, or the presence of an expert, and let them guide you
email us at hackspace@ through likely failure points or ways you can make
raspberrypi.org
the manufacture cheaper, you might save yourself Below
with an outline of what STEAMhouse had
makes your hackspace months or years of trial and error. 30 grants available
special, and we’ll take it The makerspace itself is huge and full of goodies for its members for
Phase 1, worth
from there. – there’s a woodworking area with band-saws, a £2500, one-third of
steamer for bending wood for furniture, a huge CNC which is earmarked
for intellectual
machine, many, many metalworking tools including property advice;
a welding station, an area for print and textiles, plus the remaining
two-thirds are for
a load of computers with all the 3D design software prototyping materials
you’ll ever need.
So what are the fees? “STEAMhouse is fully
funded, so you’re not charged for anything. It’s a
combination of European funding, Arts Council
England, and Birmingham City University; you just
need to demonstrate that you’ve done twelve hours
working within STEAMhouse to become a member.
That’s not twelve hours a week; that’s twelve hours
full stop. And if you have a meeting or any
inductions here, it counts towards those hours.”
If you’re interested in making tables and chairs
and you have no experience of doing that,
STEAMhouse isn’t the right place for you. But, if
you’ve got a design idea or a prototype, and you’re
local to Birmingham, this is a fabulous resource.

31
Wuthering Bytes Festival Day 2019

REGULAR

Wuthering Bytes
Festival Day 2019
Geeking out in Yorkshire

W
uthering Bytes is an amazing medicine and how PET scanners work, through
event that takes place over Michael Dales’s approach to making electric guitars;
a week in the picturesque space and satellite talks from Ben Cartwright and Jo
and vibrant Hebden Bridge in Hinchliffe; Badgelife by Jenny List; Muriel Howorth
Yorkshire each year. This year and atomic gardening by Sarah Angliss. Drew Fustini
was the seventh Wuthering of OSHPark gave a great presentation on the current
Bytes, and we were lucky enough to attend the state of play of single-board computers that are
opening Festival Day and spend a little time there that capable of running Linux. It’s fair to say the Festival
weekend. Wuthering Bytes is a collection of events Day was fascinating from start to finish.

”
with an opening Festival Day on the Friday featuring
a plethora of talks, and then OSHCamp takes over There was a real sense
the weekend with a day of talks followed by a day of
workshops. Something is happening each day of the of community, with lots of
week, including more in-depth workshops and an open areas of maker and hacker

”
day at Hebden Bridge’s makerspace Bridge Rectifier.
There have been some amazing activities over the
culture represented
Below years, from igniting a large rocket motor in the town to
This fantastic badge
for all Festival Day flying high-altitude balloons. The MC for the day was Dr Laura James, who kept
attendees was a This year’s Festival Day featured a great range of everything running to time and well managed, and
lovely welcome to
the event talks, ranging from Dr Heather Williams on nuclear the venue was excellent with everyone well fed and
watered. There was a real sense of community, with
lots of areas of maker and hacker culture represented.
In terms of both audience and content, it felt like one
of the more diverse technology events we’d attended.

Below
Electronic design engineer, programmer, and contributing
editor to Hackaday Jenny List gave a great talk about Badgelife
and how we can make them useful beyond their event

32
 SPARK

Above
Drew Fustini from OSHPark gave an excellent talk on his quest
to research every Linux-capable single-board computer

The Festival Day finished with drinks, nibbles, and

music in the bar, while the early evening talk on Tesla
coils was set up in the main room. Derek Woodroffe
(Extreme Electronics), whom we featured in issue
16, delivered this fantastic final talk of the day which
not only looked at the technical aspects of Tesla coil groundwork so that attendees on Sunday had
construction but also its history and Tesla’s work. some theory knowledge ready to apply. It was an Above
Spencer Owen,
Culminating in an audible rendition of Kate Bush’s excellent day, with subjects ranging from Ken Boak’s creator of the
‘Wuthering Heights’ played by two larger Tesla coils – talk on the TTL Gigatron computer through to the RC2014 – a retro
computer kit built
a memorable finale! architectures of RISC-V chips. The Wuthering Bytes around the Z80
microprocessor –
Saturday marked the start of the OSHCamp festival continued over the following week. was a sponsor of
weekend, and attendees piled in to hear the talks. Thanks to the organisers, speakers, hosts and the this year’s OSHCamp
weekend events.
The talks were focussed and technical, but all sponsors for putting on a great festival. Wuthering Each attendee got a
speakers went to great lengths to make their talks as Bytes are keen to hear from you if you have an idea free RC2014 Micro
kit to build
accessible as possible. Many of Saturday’s speakers for something you would like to run at next year’s
were also scheduled to run workshops on Sunday, events – get in touch with them via the festival
and were therefore laying out some theoretical website: wutheringbytes.com

Above
Derek Woodroffe, of
Extreme Electronics,
finished off the
Wuthering Bytes
Festival Day with a
spectacular talk both
about and featuring
Tesla coils!

Left
Wuthering Bytes
takes place in the
small town of Hebden
Bridge, which is a
fabulously welcoming
town with plenty of
beauty spots

33
LENS
HACK MAKE BUILD
Uncover the technology that’s powering the future
CREATE

PG

56
HOW I MADE:
PG
36
WW2 TIME
MACHINE
How a refurbished radio and a
Raspberry Pi provide a portal
to the past

62
PG
BREWING
IN THE WORKSHOP: Make mead, cider, beer,
TAILOR-MADE and kombucha to your own
unique recipes
LAPTOP
A dual-screen ruggedised
Raspberry Pi-powered machine
for doing real work

PG PG

66 74
INTERVIEW: IMPROVISER’S TOOLBOX:
EBEN UPTON BINDER CLIPS
Wales is the new China, 4 is the Let your imagination
new 3, and doing the right thing run free with affordable,
is still doing the right thing bendy bits of metal
Brewing

FEATURE

ING
BREW
beer cid
er mead kombucha

I O U S D RINKS
LIC
MAKE DE NEY, APPLES,
O
OUT OF H R BARLEY
O
LEAVES,

BR
M
A
EW
be
er
OU KE
36
T DE
O
LE F L IN
I
ci
de
r
 LENS

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that t
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There alcohol
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S D RI N KS
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OF HON E
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37
Brewing

EW e
R
FEATURE
cid

B beer

mead
KE
BREW LI
(BC)
IT’S 1999

W
e start our fermentation
journey with mead – one
of the oldest alcoholic
drinks. We’ll start with it
because it’s an easy place to
start; the ingredients and
processes are all easy to
understand. The resulting drink is pleasing and can be
tweaked to suit different tastes.
Let’s first look at the very basics of alcoholic
fermentation. There are two things you need to create
alcohol: yeast and sugar. There are many forms of both
that work. You’ll find yeasts labelled ale yeast, cider
yeast, wine yeast, and many more in brewing shops.
These are actually the same species: Saccharomyces
cerevisiae. The different strains produce different
flavours, but all work in the same basic conditions. You
won’t generally find specialist mead yeast, so you’ll
Right have to improvise a little. For ‘clean’ flavours like you
Your mead will
go cloudy as it get in mead, we use cider or champagne yeast.
brews, but should The second thing you’ll need is a form of sugar. In
slowly settle to a
clear drink (but is mead, this comes from honey, but there’s nothing
fine to drink while particularly special about honey (other than the fact that
it’s cloudy)
it tastes nice) – most forms of sugar will work. There

38
 I
Wer
mead
LENS

are a few unfermentable sugars like lactose, but you’re

unlikely to have trouble with these unless you’re doing
something particularly unusual.

The process for basic alcohol fermentation is:

• Prepare your liquid
• Add the yeast and allow it to colonise the liquid
• Remove any oxygen
• Wait
• Drink

There are a few things you need to keep in mind at

each stage. In step one, you’re creating a liquid with a
large sugar content. This sugar content affects the
final drink in two ways: its sweetness and its alcohol
content. Yeast will keep on consuming sugar and environment, so we need a way of removing any Above
There’s a wide range of
producing alcohol until one of two conditions is met oxygen. In vigorous ferments, we can just leave the honeys available, and all
– either it runs out of sugar, in which case you have a container open, and enough carbon dioxide is should work
dry drink, or the alcohol content exceeds the level produced to stop too much oxygen getting in.
yeast can survive (usually around 14–16% but it However, in less vigorous ferments, we need to seal
depends on the strain of yeast). This means that with the brewing container. As the liquid ferments, yeast
this process, you can’t create a weak, sweet drink. produces carbon dioxide, and we need a way to let
You can create a weak, dry drink or a strong, sweet this out. The usual way of letting gases
drink (we’ll look at ways of getting around this when escape without letting air in is via an
we look at cider). S-shaped ‘airlock’. This is made in such a
At step two, you add yeast and allow it to colonise
the liquid. Although yeast needs an oxygen-free
way that it contains a small amount of
water that lets gases bubble out, but none
Honey
environment to create alcohol, it grows much better get in. There is a second reason for adding Honey varies hugely in price and
in the presence of oxygen, so this step is usually an airlock – if oxygen gets in, it allows flavour. We suggest starting with
done in a container that allows air in. acetic acid bacteria to convert the alcohol cheap honey – the yeast doesn’t
Steps three and four are when the fermentation into acetic acid, which turns your lovely care. Once you’ve mastered the
brew, you can try more expensive
happens. Yeast only produces alcohol in an anaerobic mead into vinegar.
honey if you wish – or try some
other ways to adapt the drink.
GET BREWING
That’s enough of the
theory, let’s get down
to the business of
making mead.
You don’t need a lot of
equipment to make mead. At
the very least, you’ll need a
container in which to ferment
the mead and a means of
stopping air getting in it. With
stronger drinks like wine and
mead, this is typically a glass
demijohn and an airlock, but you
can use more hack-y solutions.
When this author first started Left
Most brews start with
fermenting, he used two-litre dried yeast granules,
soda bottles with balloons but it’s also possible
to brew with wild yeast
from the air

39
Brewing

FEATURE

bottle bombs
stretched over the
necks. If you put a few
pinpricks in the balloons,
Yeast will convert sugar into alcohol and carbon
dioxide as long as it can, and it can survive at high these will open up when
pressures. If you bottle your drink while the yeast the gas pressure inside
is still working, it will build up pressure inside the is greater than outside
bottle. This can result in a pleasant fizziness if and let carbon dioxide
controlled, or it can result in too much pressure out, but then close up to
building up and the bottle exploding. Make sure
stop any oxygen getting
your ferment has stopped before bottling, either by
in. It’s not perfect, but it
using a hydrometer (the reading should be static
and at the expected level given how much alcohol can work if you want to
should be produced), or by giving it plenty of time try out brewing before
to finish before bottling. If you’re unsure, keep the committing to
drink chilled (yeast is inactive below 14 °C) and purchasing equipment.
drink it! For larger quantities, you
In the next section, we’ll look at adding a little
can get larger
fizziness to our drinks.
fermentation vessels
that also take airlocks.
It’s also useful to have Follow the instructions on the packet, but typically
Right a funnel to get the liquid into your brewing container you’ll need around one teaspoon per gallon.
An airlock lets carbon
dioxide escape, but especially if it has a small neck. We’ve never had any problem using chlorinated tap
doesn’t let oxygen in In step one, we need to produce our liquid. This is water, but if your water is particularly heavily
simply honey and water. We made a gallon of mead chlorinated, you might want to take steps to
as this fits nicely in a standard demijohn, but you can dechlorinate it (such as boiling and leaving to cool)
adjust the amounts depending on your brewing before adding.
containers. Our preferred mix is 1.6 kg of honey per Make sure that the liquid has cooled to room
4.5 litres of total liquid (this quantity fits nicely in a temperature (or at least below 30 °C), then add the
one-gallon demijohn). This will ferment out to a yeast. Yeast usually comes in 5 g packets, which can
make up to five gallons.

more than 2 kg

There’s no harm in adding
too much, so we usually
split one packet between
two or three demijohns.

will probably Pour your yeast for the

brew into a glass of
lukewarm water with a

be too sweet
pinch of sugar added, and
wait for it to start to froth a
little and smell like baking
bread. This may take up to
strong, slightly sweet mead. 1.4 kg of honey will give half an hour. Once it’s showing signs of life, pour this
a dryer mead, and anything up to about 2 kg will give liquid into your brewing container. Give the brewing
progressively sweeter meads (more than 2 kg will container a good shake or stir and cover it with
probably be too sweet for even the most sweet- a cloth.
toothed brewers). The easiest way of doing this is to
mix the honey with about two litres of warm water in SETTLE DOWN
a bowl or pot, then pour this into the brewing After a day or so, the liquid should have gone cloudy
container before topping up with cold water. and started bubbling. At this point, put the airlock on
This contains all the sugar that the yeast needs, and leave it to ferment. It may ferment very
but, like us, yeast needs vitamins to survive. The vigorously for the first few days before settling down
easiest way of adding these is with yeast nutrient. to a more mundane pace.

40
 LENS

Cleanliness
To give your ferments the best chance of success, it’s
a good idea to keep everything sterilised using either
baby bottle sterilisers or specialist home-brew
sterilisers. Make sure you fully rinse off the sterilising
liquid to avoid it flavouring the final drink, and follow
the instructions for your sterilisers.
Also, pay attention to your own hygiene – keep
your hands and fingernails clean.

Honey contains two sugars: glucose and fructose.

The glucose will ferment very quickly, followed
by the fructose at a more sedate pace – it may
take a month or two to fully ferment, depending
on temperature.
Once the bubbling’s stopped, your mead should be
ready to bottle. If you’re using a hydrometer, then
you should see the reading stay stationary for a week
or two. There are loads of options for bottling – the
key thing is that it’s food-safe and airtight. You can
reuse beer bottles (hand-operated cappers are cheap
and widely available) or wine bottles (corking devices
are easy to use), or you can purchase home-brew
bottles with swing tops. Whatever you use, make
sure the bottles are clean, and follow the instructions

Hydrometer
for sealing the bottles if using caps or corks.
You can drink your mead straight away, or let it age
to soften the flavours. After about a year it should be
You can brew perfectly well without monitoring anything, but
at its peak. if you want to keep an eye on your brew, a hydrometer is the
most basic piece of measuring equipment. It tells you the
amount of sugar in your liquid. This is particularly useful as
you can calculate the amount of alcohol in your drink by
seeing how this changes, using the formula:

ABV(%) = (Initial Gravity - Final Gravity) × 131.25

You can also make sure that all the sugar has been
metabolised before bottling, to avoid exploding bottles.
Hydrometers are basically graduated sticks that only just
float. Pour a bit of liquid off into a measuring cylinder that’s
Above
big enough for your hydrometer, then drop the hydrometer in. You can use a
You read the hydrometer at the point it breaks through the hydrometer to
measure the amount
surface of the liquid (level with the surface, not the ‘ramp’ up of sugar left in your
to the edge of the hydrometer). For accurate readings, make drink (shown here on
sure the liquid is close to 20 °C, and free of any carbonation finished cider)
(pour the liquid between a few containers to get rid of Left
carbonation if necessary). Unless you sterilise your A demijohn (known
measuring equipment, it’s safest not to pour this liquid back as a carboy in
America) is a
into the fermenting container – we prefer to only measure fermentation vessel
occasionally and drink the liquid to get a sense of how the designed to take
flavours are developing. an airlock – they’re
traditionally glass,
but plastic ones
are available

41
Brewing

FEATURE

I
EW er

BR beer
cid

cider
P P L E JUICE
FROM A ICIOUS
TO DEL DRINK
LC O H OLIC
A

W
ith mead, we created a
sweet liquid and added
yeast. We’ll use the same
basic processes with cider,
but there are a few things
we need to do differently.
We’ll begin by assuming
that you don’t have access to an orchard of cider
apples, a scratter, and a press, but if you do, take a
look at ‘Starting with apples’ (overleaf). Fans of
traditional cider had better have a sit down before
reading this because we’re about to get modern.
There are many types of apple, and not all of them
make good cider. There are a few things that affect
how your final cider will turn out:

• Tannins – These affect the ‘dryness’ of the

final cider. Apples without much tannin, if
fermented out of all their sugar, will end up
watery rather than dry.

Above
Pressing apples is a fun • Acid – Apple juice can be surprisingly acidic
way of starting cider, but – usually between pH 3 and pH 4. Again, this
we’ll start with the more
available apple juice contributes to the ‘dryness’ of the drink.

42
 G
LENS

IN
mead safety
There are persistent rumours that home-brewing is a dangerous
hobby. This is almost entirely people getting confused between
the risks of distilling alcohol (i.e. making spirits), which can be
dangerous and is illegal in many countries, and brewing (i.e.
making low-strength drinks – below about 20%), which is legal in
many countries (but check your local regulations) and very safe.
By far the most dangerous thing about home-brewing is the
alcohol – make sure you drink responsibly. As long as you pay
attention to hygiene, and don’t drink something if your nose or
taste buds tell you not to, you shouldn’t run into problems.
• Sugar content – Natural apple juice varies a
bit in sugar content, and will usually ferment
out to between six and eight percent alcohol.
In other cider-growing regions, it’s more common
• Flavour – This is more-or-less what you expect to use multi-purpose apples. A mix of high-acid
– apples with a good apple-y flavour often cooking apples (such as Bramley) and eating apples is
make better cider, but the flavour is heavily a common way of creating a juice that tastes good
dependent on the sugars, so dry ciders can after fermenting (though it lacks the tannin kick of a
taste less apple-y than apple juice, hence you West Country cider). In Northern France, eating
want apples with a strong flavour. apples are used, but a process known as keeving is
used to prevent them fermenting all the way to dry,
There are many different traditions of making cider. and they get much of their flavour and mouthfeel
This article is being written in Bristol, which is in the from sugar in the final product.
heart of the ‘West Country’, a traditional cider-making As we’ve assumed you don’t have an orchard of
region of the UK where specific varieties of cider apple apple trees, and buying apples commercially is a very
are used. There are hundreds of varieties, and it was expensive way of making cider, we’ll have to turn to
common for each village – often each farm – to have
their own variety of apple. These cider apples are very
high in tannin and acid. If you ever accidentally eat one,
it’ll turn your face inside out.

Temperature
The warmer your liquid is, the faster it will ferment.
This isn’t necessarily a good thing, as fermenting
too fast can introduce some strange and unwanted
flavours into your drink. Under about 16 °C, yeast
usually stops fermenting. It’s not a problem if it does
this occasionally as it will begin fermenting once it
warms up again, but you probably don’t want to
leave it too long.
In general, you probably want to try to keep your
ferment below about 25 °C.
Different fermenting temperatures will result in
different flavours in the final drink, and you can get
very serious with temperature-controlled
apparatus. Makers often use old fridges as the
base of temperature-controlled spaces for brewing,
and devices such as the BrewPi (brewpi.com)
make it easy to build your own DIY setup. While this
Left
can be a fun and interesting angle to perfect your Your brew will initially
brews, it’s absolutely not necessary to go to this foam brown. This will
level of precision to create delicious drinks. soon die back to a much
smaller white foam, but
leave a residue on the
fermenting vessel

43
Brewing

FEATURE

Sweet cider
We’ve talked quite a bit about fermenting to dry, but
many people prefer their cider with a little sweetness.
There are a few options here. The simplest way is to
ferment to dry, then add a little apple juice to it as you
drink it, and that’s the way we’d recommend you drink
this cider – even if you like a fairly dry drink, a little
juice really adds more sparkle to the flavour. It doesn’t
have to be apple juice that you add – a little cordial
can also add a little sweetness. Blackcurrant is the
most famous option here, but we’ve been particularly
enjoying our home-brew with ginger or elderflower
cordial recently.
A second option is to add a non-fermentable sugar
to the cider such as lactose, or an artificial sweetener.
Above The traditional way of making sweet cider is called
You can give body to keeving, and it’s a strange process that removes some
your cider by adding of the nutrients from the apple juice so that the yeast
powdered tannin –
about one teaspoon dies of malnutrition before it has fully fermented the
per 4.5 l of apple juice sugar. It can produce excellent cider, but it’s a difficult
process to perfect.
the only source of liquid

Reracking apple that’s commonly

available – apple juice.
As any drink ferments, you’ll see sediment collect Yep, the stuff you get at • Grape tannin – This is a powder that you can
on the bottom of the brewing container. This is a supermarket (we hope add to your juice to give it more dryness in the
known as the lees, and it’s dead yeast. If the drink you traditionalists took final cider.
sits too long, it can impart a slight flavour on the our advice to sit down
drink. To reduce this, many longer-fermented before reading this). • Malic acid – This is the acid that’s naturally
drinks are ‘re-racked’ or poured into a new
There are a wide present in apples.
fermenting container leaving the sludge behind.
This is usually done once the ferment has slowed variety of types of apple
down and almost finished to allow the long, slow juices on offer, and Shop-bought apple juice usually has about
final bit to take place without the risk of imparting we’ve had reasonable 11 grams of sugar per 100 ml (see your packet for
off flavours. success with all the the actual details). This will ferment out to around
On drinks with strong flavours (like mead and ones we’ve tried. It’s a

don’t use
cider), it’s not very noticeable. So if you only have
great area to experiment
one fermentation vessel, or if you forget to re-rack
it, it’s not a big problem.
in, but the basic ‘from
concentrate’ stuff is a
good starting point.
This apple juice is low
in tannin and low on acid. If you add yeast and
ferment it, then you’ll end up with a very
old wine
bottles
disappointing drink – something like slightly apple-y
water with a shot of vodka poured in (but worse).
We need to convert this apple juice into something
more akin to cider apple juice before starting, and
there are two ingredients that we can use: 6.5% alcohol by volume. You can add more sugar if
you like (we’ve had success in the past by adding
honey to take it up to a wine-strength drink), or water
it down for a lower percentage.
In theory, you shouldn’t need yeast nutrient for
cider, as apples should contain the full range of

44
 LENS

Starting with apples

If you’ve got access to a large number of apples, then squeezes down on it to extract the juice. In cheese
that’s a great starting point. presses, the apple pulp is loaded into sacks, and these
The first thing you’ll need to do with your apples is to sacks are loaded into the press in a pile (with planks of
convert them into juice, which is a two-stage process. wood between the presses to stabilise the pile). This
Firstly you need to scrat them, which is basically the pile is then pressed, again using a screw-thread press.
process of breaking them up into small pieces. Most You can improvise your way of doing this if you want,
small-scale scratters are hand-cranked machines that but be careful as the forces needed to extract juice
take the form of two spiked wheels rotating against from the pulp are very large and if anything goes
each other. Put apples in, turn a handle, and out comes wrong, it can go badly wrong. A less risky option is to
apple pulp. take your apples to a communal press. These travel
This apple pulp needs to be pressed to extract the around the country in autumn, and you can turn up with
juice. There are two common types of press: basket your apples and leave with bottles full of your own
presses and cheese presses. In basket presses, you apple juice to either drink now or ferment for later.
load the pulp into what looks like a barrel with gaps Search for local ‘apple days’ to find one near you.
between the planks, then a screw press at the top National Trust properties are common locations.

vitamins and minerals that yeast needs. However,

we usually add a little just to be safe.
As with mead, we make our cider in 4.5 litre
demijohns, but other containers will work – scale up or
down the quantities as needed.
Add 4.5 litres of apple juice, one teaspoon of grape
tannin, and one teaspoon of malic acid (you can adjust
these up or down slightly, but we recommend these
levels for your first batch). Once that’s all mixed up,
pitch the yeast in the same manner as with mead, and
leave to ferment.
Once the bubbling has stopped, your cider is ready
to bottle. If you like still cider, you can bottle it as we
did with the mead (just syphon it into bottles and
protect it from oxygen). However, we can also make
fizzy cider. To do this, add a half a level
teaspoon of sugar per 500 ml to a bottle
before capping. This will be fermented by
the yeast and produce enough carbon Flavoured
dioxide to make a fizzy drink. Make sure
that you’re using bottles designed to take
cider
You don’t have to stick with just
pressure, such as old beer bottles
apple juice – you can put in
(definitely don’t use old wine bottles as whatever else you want. We’ve
these may explode). After a few days, your had success adding one bottle
cider should be fizzy and ready to drink. of another fruit juice to three of
apple. A personal favourite of the
author is one bottle of mango juice
to three of apple. The resulting
Above
Malic acid is
drink doesn’t taste of mango; in
available as a fact, it seems to taste more of
supplement from apple than the version made with
health food shops
apple juice.
Left Bear in mind that other fruit
Don’t add too much juices don’t necessarily have
sugar when bottling.
We can speak from the same sugar content as apple
experience and say juice. This isn’t necessarily good
that too much sugar or bad, it’s just different.
can lead to cider
hitting the ceiling
when you open it

45
Brewing

FEATURE

goin
g al
free
coho
l
KOM
BUCH
AND A
MOR
E

S
o far, we’ve focused on alcoholic
drinks. However, not everyone
wants alcoholic drinks, and
there’s a great range of
fermented non- or minimally
alcoholic drinks available.
Let’s take a look at kombucha. This is a form of
fermented tea – the process for making it is very
simple. You need to start with sweet tea. The exact
amounts of tea and sugar you start with are up to you.
We’d recommend starting with something that’s
about the right strength for sweetish tea that is OK to
drink on its own. You then need to wait for it to cool.
The starting point for the live part of this ferment
is a ‘scoby’ (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast)
which is a jelly-like disc, and some kombucha from
a previous batch. You can buy these online, or
other kombucha brewers are often happy to give
them away.
Add the scoby and kombucha to your sweet tea
(kombucha is traditionally made with black tea,
Right
Secure a clean cloth but you can experiment with others). Make sure
over the opening to that you add at least 10% of the total volume of
prevent flies from getting
into your kombucha

46
 LENS

Lactic
ferments
liquid in kombucha to the tea (this ensures that the
There’s another category of alcohol-free ferments –
liquid is acidic enough to prevent the growth of those done by lactic acid bacteria including water
unwanted organisms). kefir and ginger beer. The basic process is fairly
The scoby may float or sink in the liquid. It similar to here (inoculate a sweet liquid with bacteria
doesn’t really matter which, but if it sinks, a new and wait for it to get an acidic tang), but the ferment
scoby should form on top in a few days to a week. here is straight from sugar to acid without going via
alcohol. This isn’t necessarily better or worse, but
It‘s this new scoby that you’ll need to use in your
gives a different flavour that some people will prefer
next batch. and some won’t.
You then leave the liquid in an open-topped jar There are loads of different ways of gaining the
(covered with a cloth to stop flies from getting in). bacteria for these ferments – water kefir grains and
Two ferments will take place. Yeast will turn the ginger beer plants can be purchased online, or you
sugar into alcohol, and acetic acid bacteria will turn can harvest them from a more common source such
as the whey on natural yoghurt or the skin on
the alcohol into acetic acid. Both of these are going
vegetables (such as root ginger). You can get recipes
on simultaneously, so there shouldn’t be a point from fermentation supply shops; or, if you want to
when your brew is particularly alcoholic. If you want explore this area further, we’d strongly recommend
to completely minimise the alcohol content (which the book The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz.
should be very low anyway), make sure you’ve got
good airflow into your fermenting container, as the
acetic acid bacteria need oxygen to ferment the
alcohol into acetic acid. All this talk of acetic acid You may find that your scoby gets thicker and
might be putting you off, but we’ll drink the thicker with each batch. This isn’t a problem, but it
kombucha (see below) before too much has built might start getting a little inconvenient. You can peel
up. We want just a little to give the drink some tang, layers off the scoby and either discard them or give
but not enough to make you pull a funny face when them to friends to start their own kombucha batches.
it hits your tongue. In general, there’s not much that can go wrong
There’s not really a point where kombucha with kombucha, but if you notice anything looking Below
The scoby is a
becomes ready: it starts sweet and gradually like mould (furry rather than slimy like the scoby), slimy disk that will
gets tangier over time. Keep tasting it and drink it then it’s best to be safe and discard the lot and begin grow to cover the
entire surface of
when it reaches a point you’re happy with. Just again with a fresh scoby. your kombucha
make sure you don’t drink it all – keep some back
for the next batch.

Alcohol free?
Here in the UK, a drink can legally be sold as
alcohol-free if it’s under 0.5% ABV. That may satisfy
the law, but some people may prefer a different
definition. It’s annoyingly difficult to know exactly how
much alcohol a drink has – the traditional method of
using a hydrometer just tells us how much sugar there
is in a drink, from which we can infer how much
alcohol yeast could have produced, but this method
falls flat when bacterial ferments are used.
Any fermented drink can contain alcohol (as can
ripe or overripe fruit), even if you’ve not added yeast
as it could gain wild yeast from the air. The same can
be said for any sweet drink that’s been out of the
fridge for a day or so.
The drinks we’ve looked at here shouldn’t contain
any significant amount of alcohol, but we can’t
guarantee that they’ll be completely alcohol-free.

47
 RE
B
Brewing

FEATURE
b

B
eer is arguably the most
complex of the alcoholic drinks
we’re looking at. As with the
others, it involves a sugary liquid
that has yeast introduced and
left to ferment, but the origin
of the sugary liquid is a bit convoluted. Let’s take a
look at the full process (but even most professional
breweries don’t do the full process).

r
The starting point of beer is usually barley,

ee
though a few other grains such as wheat are

b
sometimes used. However, none of these grains
has a significant sugar content, and therein lies
the difficulty of beer. The grains do contain
starches, but yeast can’t digest starches. It turns
out that the plant also needs sugars in order to
grow, so if you plant a grain (grains are a type
of seed), the grain will release enzymes that
convert the starches to sugars that the growing

R,
plant can use for energy before it has leaves to

U T, P I L S N E photosynthesise. We then need to stimulate the

MAKE STO
grain to release these enzymes, but then stop

R, O R L A G ER IN it fully germinating as we don’t want it to use

BITTE
up the sugar. This process is known as malting.

CHEN
This involves soaking the grain in water, then

YOUR KIT
drying, and roasting the grain. The amount the
grain is roasted has a big impact on the flavour
– unsurprisingly, dark roasted malt makes dark
beer while lightly roasted malt makes light beer.
It’s certainly possible to do this yourself, but only a
few very determined home brewers do. You can buy
pre-malted grains in a range of different roasts.

MASH IT UP
Once you have your malt, you need to ‘mash’ it. In
the malt, you still don’t have sugars, but you have
starches and enzymes that can convert the starches
into sugars. In order to allow the conversion to
happen, you need to soak the grains in warm water.
The temperature of the water is critical here. Cooler
water allows the enzymes to produce simpler sugars,
and these sugars can be completely digested by
Right the yeast (in a later stage) – this results in very crisp
Powdered malt
extract ready
beers. Warmer water allows the production of more
to be added to complex sugars that can’t be digested by the yeast,
your beer
and these sugars will therefore be present in the final
beer. These sugars aren’t particularly sweet, but do
add to the richness and mouthfeel of the final beer.
After mashing comes sparging, where you extract
the brewing liquid (or wort) from the grains. This is
a bit more complex than it may first appear, as you

48
E cider

eer
b LENS

want to extract the sugars from the malt without too

many of the tannins. There are a few processes you
can use here, from the simple ‘fill and drain’ to more
complex sprinkling systems.
This is the third point at which you can enter the
brewing process. If you don’t want to start with
pure barley or malted barley, you can start with malt
extract. This comes either as a liquid or a powder. In
either case, it contains the sugars from the malted
barley and can be mixed with water to create your
wort. Most home-brew kits start at this point, and you
can also buy malt extract by itself.
Now you have your wort, it’s time to boil it with dry hopping, and these hops impart more scent and
hops. There are a lot of different types of hops that less flavour than hops added during the boil. With the Above
Hops create much of
all have different flavours, so the type and quantity of yeast and hops added, you hold it at a temperature the flavour and aroma
hops you add will have a big effect on the final drink. around 20 °C, and wait. Once the ferment has of beer
finished, you can prime it and bottle it as you would Below

You can
with cider to create a fizzy drink. A selection of different
malted grains
By far the easiest way of getting started is with a
beer kit, which should include everything you need
to get started and instructions for how to use it. One

add more thing to look for is whether or not you need to add
sugar – kits where you do need to add it tend to be
cheaper but may not have the same flavour as kits

hops Here
where all the sugar comes from malt extract.
Once you’ve run through the process with a kit,
you can start experimenting, whether that’s designing
your own beers by selecting the right hops and malt
The boiling allows the hops to introduce their flavour, combinations, or by taking control of more of the
removes some off-flavours that can come from the process by starting with malted grains (or if you’re
malt, and sterilises the liquid. really keen, unmalted barley).
Phew, that’s quite a process, and this gives us our
sugary, flavourful liquid that we can ferment. From

water
this point, the process is broadly similar to our other
ferments. We add a yeast – with beer the choice
is perhaps a little more important than with some
other ferments as there’s a wide range of sugars,
and different strains of yeast digest different sugars. The one ingredient that we haven’t talked about is
You can also add more hops here – this is known as water. Although this is mainly H2O, there are also
various quantities of different minerals – and in
domestic water, chlorine. The particular make-up
of the water can affect the brewing process and
the final beer, with different water types producing
better results for different beers. Burton upon
Trent is a town famous for its brewing water, and
the water of Dublin and London are also said to
influence the brew.
Fortunately, you don’t need to drive around the
country with buckets of water in your car – there’s
a range of water treatment products that you
can add to your water to create a make-up more
conducive to a particular style of beer.

49
Brewing IN
FEATURE

EW er
me
a

BR beer
cid

going pr
o I
f you’ve immersed yourself in home-
brew and want to take your hobby
to the next level, what does it take
to turn your hobby into a viable
HOW ONE business? We talk to Michael Wiper from
PA
HOME BR IR OF
Bristol-based Wiper and True to find out.

STARTED EWERS HackSpace Can you tell us how you got

started brewing?
A BUSINE
SS Michael Wiper I got started by making cider as well
[as Ben Everard conducting the interview]. A few
friends got together and started making cider every
year as a bit of a tradition. I got really into making
things that way. Also, as a massive beer lover, that got
me started thinking about making beer, so I started
home-brewing. And got straight into it really quickly –
started reading too much on the internet.

HS Did you start because you were interested in

the process, or because you wanted beer styles
that you didn’t have access to?

MW I was interested in the process. It was much

more about the process than anything – I didn’t have
any ambition with it. I really enjoy being creative. And I
really enjoyed the social aspect of cider-making. It was
so much about community gathering and going picking
together, pressing together, and everyone drinking
cider together, and that’s what got me into that, and I
started making beer with friends.

HS How did you end up brewing professionally?

MW Over a couple of years, the beers started to get

Right better, and that’s when I started making [beer styles]
Bristol water is famously that I had limited access to. Like a lot of people, I was
unpleasant, so it requires
quite a bit of treatment quite influenced by American brewing and American
before brewing can begin
hops, and I started making things that were quite fruity

50
N
ad
LENS

and soft, and quite pale and clean. [They] didn’t look or
smell anything like the kind of beer offering that was
around at the time.
I was thinking about different career options, and I
started writing a document about ‘if we were going to
start a brewery, how would we do it?’, and listed a load
of tactics: how we’d brand it, what sort of markets
we’d want to approach, that sort of thing. I never really
stopped answering those questions.
At the same time, with my business partner Al True,
we started making beers together, and you’ve got the
whole day to stand there talking – if we were going
to do this commercially, what would we do?, and
we never really stopped. Where could we start this
process? Maybe we could find some local breweries lined up, but they’d dropped out and he felt sorry Above
Michael explained
to help us out. Amazingly, some people said yes, and for me so he let me use his kit. We brewed three the importance of
we took our recipes and our malts and hops along to batches and got them branded up and sold them at temperature control
in mashing the malt
some local breweries and made our own beers there. the Christmas market. We didn’t have much of a plan
beyond that – we didn’t have any more beer booked in.
HS How did the process of
brewing in someone else’s
brewery go? there are
no exams you
MW In general, it was a day
working together. Largely it had to
be led by whoever’s there – the
main brewer – and leaving them

have to pass
to be the guardian of fermentation
with instructions on what we
wanted done. I’d be going and
checking on it all the time.
As we built relationships with the breweries, we But they were all commercial brews – I was absolutely
built these amazing setups where we essentially had petrified. They were all 800 litre batches, and I’d only
the keys to their breweries. We’d let them know when made 50 litre batches before that. The amount of time
we’d be in, and we had our own tanks and they’d just I spent looking at recipes and trying to tweak recipes
let us brew. We’d have all our stuff delivered to them. … it was very daunting.
They were completely trusting – they’d say ‘knock
yourself out’ and they’d go and do something else for HS Was the legal side hard?
the day while we used their kit.
MW No, that’s not to say it shouldn’t have been. There
HS The first time you went in to use a brewery – was very little discussion about any legal things with it.
was that a commercial run? There are very few barriers to entry – in the UK
at least. It’s great – if you want to start up you can.
MW Yes it was. The first run was over in Essex, in a You have to follow food safety rules and industry
place called Dominion Brewery Company. It was really practices, but there are no exams you have to pass or
hard to find people who’d let us use their kit – because anything. In Germany, you can’t start brewing unless
it’s a mad thing to do. I met this guy on an organic hop you’re a master brewer, but there’s no rule about that
conference, and he was like ‘yeah, come and have a in the UK. Maybe there should be, but there isn’t.
go’. He was so charitable and open. A lot of the HMRC side of things and food
Then I started pestering a guy in Bristol, and went compliance, we were coming under the umbrella
and hung out with him. We had some other places of where we were brewing, so we’d take on the

51
Brewing

FEATURE

practices of where we soon as we started, landlords and shops got behind

were in at the time. us straight away and said, “We’ll take what you can
give us, and we’re really excited about a new brewery
HS How long were you in town – it’s great, that’s really good for us.” We
borrowing breweries? had an incredible response. At the end of 2012, the
excitement around at the time was really palpable.
MW Two years. We
ended up brewing in HS Are there more breweries around now?
15 different breweries
before settling here MW Yes. I think we were the fourth or fifth. Now
[St Werburghs in Bristol]. there’s 15 or something. We were making something
at that time that was very different and stood out.
HS Were you doing it It was the right time, right place – a lot of people’s
full-time? palettes were sparked by this sort of beer. That’s now
a much more common thing.
MW Yeah – after that
Christmas market it HS How does the process of creating a new
became full-time very Wiper and True beer go?
quickly. The response
Above was so encouraging, so positive. So it was ‘right, we MW To start with, we set it up so that every batch
Despite its size,
brewery equipment should really go for it, and now’s the time’. We should was different and we had no core range. There were
isn’t very different have bought a brewery more quickly, but we had to two reasons behind this – one was, our philosophy
from what home
brewers use – here’s find more and more places as property deals take a behind it was to make how we want to drink.
an airlock protecting long time to get going. Certainly at the time, if we went out to a bar, we
the beer from oxygen
We ended up with three really key relationships would try a load of different beers; even if there was
Below with constant tank space: Cheddar Ales down in one I really liked, I’d still try another one to try and
Alcohol content is
critical for professional Cheddar, The Cotswold Brewing Company which learn as much as possible. If a new brewery came
brewers as it affects
how much tax they pay, is an amazing larger brewing place in the Cotswold out, it was exciting because it meant access to new
but it’s still calculated countryside, and a place in Wales that isn’t around styles of beer with vast amounts to explore.
using hydrometers
any more, unfortunately, but it was called the Celt We wanted to brew like that – the idea that there’s
Experience Brewery. We would have constant beers no such thing as a perfect beer, there’s just lots of
in their tanks. amazing variations on a formula. On a practical level –
this was a total coincidence – it would have been very
HS On the commercial
side of things, was it hard
to build a demand?

MW Not at that time – we

were really fortunate. I think
it would be now. We were
lucky in the timing of it all.
One of the reasons we
hadn’t had the confidence to
jump in and spend hundreds
of thousands of pounds
on equipment and renting
a building was we didn’t
know what the reaction
would be – whether people
would want a new brewery
in Bristol. But actually, as

52
 LENS

difficult to make identical beer in different breweries

at the scale we were operating at. We [didn’t] have
advanced water processing facilities. Big brewers
can do this really well. They can make [for example]
Heineken around the world, and it all tastes the same,
but if we try to make a pale ale in a small brewery
with limited equipment and hardly any measuring
tools, it would have been very difficult. It played into
it very well, but it was driven by the desire to make
something different each time.
We had loads of ideas rather than ‘we need to lead
with this’. That was actually a founding principle of
the company – we wanted all the branding around
that hierarchy. We don’t want people to look at the
name of the beer. It’s that they put their trust into
Wiper and True as a brewery, not that they like ‘Citra
and Rye’ by Wiper and True. We made it so – in the
design – the name is almost irrelevant. It’s there if MW How to make beer! I’m only half-joking. Coming Above
Wiper and True cans
you’re interested, but it’s not the focal point. up from no industry experience, we’ve had to learn ready for filling – the beer
A lot of breweries at the time were leading with the hard way, and we’ve done things differently, like is called ‘Light Pale Ale’,
but you might not notice
their flagship beers, and you might not even know that thing about not having a core range. Another thing
who the brewery is for [e.g.] Doom Bar – you’ve we were doing is we don’t use any finings in our beer,
probably heard of the beer, but do you know who the so it was a little hazy. Again, it was something we
brewery is? We wanted to flip that on its head. That’s were told by the industry, that pubs would reject it and
evolved, now we can make more consistent batches, people wouldn’t go for it at all, but actually, we’ve had
and we’ve got our own place. We’ve changed in a really positive experience from it once we told the
story about why. And we

we’ve had
didn’t want to put fish guts in
our beer. People got behind
us, and we never had an
issue with it. We had maybe

to learn the one or two pubs say no to

our beer, but demand was
outstripping supply for a long

hard way
time. Until we got set up
with our own facilities.
It did give us our own take
on things at the same time;
the market and how we drink, but that was a really it’s such a process-driven, scientific set of procedures
important first part of it. It was also something people that we work to, that would have massively helped
said we should never do. People said ‘you’ve got to if we’d had master brewing degrees. Now we’ve
have a consistent offering for your customers’ when employed a master brewer!
we had advice from the industry. It actually ended
up working too well. We’d release our stock list on a HS Is there any advice you’d like to give to
Monday, and we’d have two new beers on, and we’d someone home-brewing for the first time?
release a second stock list on a Wednesday, and it
had no new beers on, and people were like ‘we’ll wait MW Have fun! Play around as much as possible and
until next Monday’. make mistakes. We started off trying to do things
like roast malt in the oven and burning it and making
HS Going back to brewing, is there anything you a horrible beer using the wrong yeast. It’s the best
wished you knew when you started? way to learn – just keep on making mistakes. 

53
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How I Made: WW2 radio broadcast time machine

FEATURE

How I Made
WW2 RADIO
BROADCAST
TIME MACHINE
Bringing history to life with a Raspberry Pi

By Adam Clark

W
ith the 50th the project in something that would not
anniversary of the look out of place in the living room, and
D-Day landings not to give away the fact that is was
being very much being powered by modern tech. So I
in the news came up with the idea
this year, of using an original
my interest was piqued about radio as the project
all things related to that era. case, and to use as
So it wasn’t long before I many of the original
found myself on the Internet knobs and dials as
Archive (archive.org) possible. I also had
listening to some of the the idea to repurpose
amazing recordings of the frequency dial to
radio broadcasts from select individual years
that time. As good as of the war and to
they were, it felt as if play broadcasts from
something was missing whichever year was
by listening to them on selected. Of course,
a modern laptop, so I the Raspberry Pi was
wanted something to play immediately the first
them back on that was option to run all this,
more evocative of that time, and ideally, I wanted
and would perhaps capture the to use a Raspberry Pi
feeling of listening to them on Zero to keep the costs
a radio set. I also wanted to make down and perhaps to
the collection portable and to make allow expansion in the
the interface for selecting and playing future outside of being a
the tracks as easy as possible – this standalone playback device.
wasn’t going to be screen-based! Another Above Right off the bat, I knew that I would have
No screens here – the interface
important consideration was to house is as original as possible a couple of obstacles to overcome as the

56
 LENS

Right
The Raspberry Pi mounted and connected up

Raspberry Pi Zero doesn’t have an easy

way to play audio out, and I also wanted
to have analogue inputs for the controls.
So the first thing was to get some audio
playing to see if this was possible.

AUDIO PLAYBACK
The first obstacle was to find a satisfactory
way to play back audio. In the past, I have
had some success using PWM pins, but
this needs a low-pass filter as well as an
amplifier, and the quality of audio was
never as good as I’d hoped for. The other
alternative is to use one of the many HATs
available, but these come at a price as they
are normally aimed at more serious quality
of audio. I wanted to keep the cost down,
so these were excluded as an option. The
other option was to use a mono I2S 3W
amplifier breakout board – MAX98357A
from Adafruit – which is extremely
simple to use. As the BBC didn’t start
broadcasting stereo commercially until the
late 1950s, this was also very apt for the
radio (which only has one speaker).
Connecting up this board is very easy – it
just requires three GPIO pins, power, and
the speaker. For this, I just soldered some
female jumper leads to the breakout board
and connected them to the header pins of
the Raspberry Pi Zero. There are detailed
instructions on the Adafruit website for
this which basically entails running their
install script.

curl -sS https://raw.githubusercontent.

com/adafruit/Raspberry-Pi-Installer-
Scripts/master/i2samp.sh | bash

Once the install scripts and mpg123

player are installed with a speaker
connected, the Raspberry Pi Zero
immediately started playing some very nice
quality audio through the on-board 3W
amplifier – and it is certainly loud enough to Left
The case after
emulate a radio. years of abuse

57
How I Made: WW2 radio broadcast time machine

FEATURE

Above Right
3D printing let me The innards
hold everything in the connected up and
right place ready to play

I’d now got a nice playback device that

would easily play the MP3 files
downloaded from archive.org and so the
next task was to find a suitable second- design a new chassis to mount all the
hand radio set. components, which I did in Tinkercad, an
online 3D CAD package. The design was
PREPARING THE CASE then downloaded and printed on my 3D
After a lot of searching on auction sites, printer. It took a couple of iterations, and
I eventually found a radio that was going during this phase, I wondered if I could
to be suitable: wasn’t too large, was use the original speaker. It turned out to
constructed from wood, and looked old be absolutely great, and the audio took on
enough to convince the casual observer. a new quality and brought even more
I had to settle for something that actually authenticity to the project.
came from the early 1950s, but it drew on The case itself was pretty worn and
design influences from earlier years and faded, and the varnish had cracked, so I
wasn’t too large as a lot of the real period decided to strip it back. The surface was
ones tended to be (and it was only £15). actually veneer, but you can still sand this.
This is a fun project, so a bit of leeway was After a few applications of Nitromors to
fine by me in this respect. When the radio remove the varnish, it was sanded to
arrived, my first thought as a tinkerer was remove the scratches and finished off
perhaps I should get the valves running, with fine sanding. Above
The original dial
but a quick piece of research turned up that The wood around the speaker grille was brought the right
I’d probably have to replace all the resistors pretty cracked and had started to aesthetic to the build
and capacitors and all the old wiring and delaminate. I carefully removed the speaker
then hope that the valves still worked. grille cloth, and fixed these with a few dabs have a go at French polishing. This gave
Then discovering that the design used a of wood glue, then used some Tamiya me a huge amount of respect for anyone
live chassis running at 240 V soon brown paint to colour the edges of the that can do this properly. It’s messy,
convinced me that I should get back on wood to blend it back in with the rest of time-consuming, and a lot of work. I ended
track and replace everything. With a few the case. I was going to buy replacement up having to do several coats, and with all
bolts and screws removed, I soon had an cloth, but it’s fairly pricey – I had discovered the polishing involved, this was probably
empty case. a trick of soaking the cloth overnight in neat one of the most time-consuming tasks,
I then stripped out all the interior washing-up liquid and cold water, and it plus I ended up with some pretty stained
components and set about restoring the managed to lift the years of grime out and fingers as a result.
case and dial glass, seeing what I could use give it a new lease of life. The rest of the case was pretty easy
by way of the volume and power controls. At this point, I should have just varnished to clean, and the brass dial pointer
Sadly, there didn’t seem to be any way to or used Danish oil on the case, but bitten polished up nice and shiny with some Silvo
hook into the old controls, so I needed to by the restoration bug I thought I would polish. The cloth was glued back in place,

58
 LENS

and the next step was to sort out the dial MCP3008 seemed to work for the likes to be shut down in an orderly fashion
and glass. MCP3002, nor did many of the examples rather than just having the power cut.
that were around for the MCP3002 – I think There are lots of examples that show how
FREQUENCY, VOLUME, GLASS, I went through about a dozen examples. At you can hook up a push button to a GPIO
AND KNOBS long last, I did find some code examples pin and initiate a shutdown script, but to
Unfortunately, the original glass was that worked, and with a bit of modification, I get the Raspberry Pi to power back up you
cracked, so a replacement part was cut had a simple way of reading the values from need to physically reset the power. To
from some Makrolon sheet, also known as the two potentiometers. You can download overcome this piece of the puzzle, I use a
Lexan. I prefer this to acrylic as it’s much the original code by Stéphane Guerreau Pimoroni OnOff SHIM which cleverly lets
easier to cut and far less likely to crack from GitHub (hsmag.cc/zWyrhX). To use you press a button to start up, and then
when drilling it. It’s used press and hold it for a
as machine guards as well
and can even be bent if The program will then read the value second to start a
shutdown. It’s costly in
necessary. With the dial, I comparison to the price of
scanned it into the PC and of the potentiometer, and randomly a Raspberry Pi Zero, but
then in PaintShop I I’ve not found a more
replaced the existing select a file to play from that year convenient option. The
frequency scale with a power itself is supplied by
range of years running using an old power bank
from 1939 to 1945, as the aim was for this on your Raspberry Pi, you’ll also need that I had which is ample enough to power
anyone using the radio to just dial the year to run up raspi-config and switch on the SPI the radio long enough to be shown off, and
they wanted to listen to. The program will interface. Then it is simply a case of hooking can be powered by USB connector if
then read the value of the potentiometer, up the MCP3002 and connecting the pots longer-term use is required.
and randomly select a file to play from between the 3v3 line and ground and To illuminate the dial, I connected a small
that year. reading the voltage level from the wiper of LED in series with a 270R resistor to the
It was also around about now that I had the pots. When coding this, I just opted for 3v3 rail so that it would come on as soon
to come up with some means of having the some simple if-then statements in cap- as the Raspberry Pi received power, and
volume control the sound and an interface Python to determine where the dial was this lets you easily see when it’s on without
for the frequency dial. Again there are pointing, and just tweaked the values in the waiting for the Raspberry Pi to start up.
always several options to consider, and I code until I got each year to be picked out.
originally toyed with using a couple of rotary DOWNLOADING THE FILES
encoders and using one of these with the POWER SUPPLY AND CONTROL I’m just using the MP3s from archive.org
built-in push button as the power switch, One of the challenges when using a as you can find these sorted by year. I
but eventually decided to just use some Raspberry Pi in headless mode is that it chose mainly the news broadcasts and
potentiometers. Now I just had to come up
with an easy way to read the analogue value
of the pots and get that into the program.
There are quite a few good analogue-to-
digital boards and HATs available, but with
simplicity in mind, I chose to use an
MCP3002 chip as it was only about £2.
This is a two-channel analogue-to-digital
converter (ADC) and outputs the data as a
10-bit value onto the SPI bus. This sounds
easy when you say it, but it proved to be
one of the trickier technical tasks as none
of the code around for the four-channel

Right
The new dial (left) and the original (right)

59
How I Made: WW2 radio broadcast time machine

FEATURE

GPIO.output(clockpin, False) # start ms (~30 samples per second)

placed these into separate year-named
clock low # which is awful for a microcontroller but
subdirectories on the Raspberry Pi. There
GPIO.output(cspin, False) # bring better-than-nothing for Linux
are several hundred broadcasts for each
CS low
year – the amount and range is
# list year , this retrieves a list of
quite astounding.
files from the specified directory and
returns the list
archive.org/details/1939RadioNews commandout = adcnum << 1;
def list_year(radio_year):
archive.org/details/1940RadioNews commandout |= 0x0D # start
war_dir = ‘/home/pi/radio/WWII_
archive.org/details/1941RadioNews bit + single-ended bit + MSBF bit
News_’+radio_year
archive.org/details/1942RadioNews commandout <<= 4 # we
mp3_files = [ f for f in
archive.org/details/1943RadioNews only need to send 4 bits here
listdir(war_dir) if f[-4:] == ‘.mp3’ ]
archive.org/details/1944RadioNews
if not (len(mp3_files) > 0):
archive.org/details/1945RadioNews for i in range(4):
print “No mp3 files
if (commandout & 0x80):
found!”
Depending on the space you might have GPIO.output(mosipin, True)
return mp3_files
on your SD card, you can also add these: else:
GPIO.output(mosipin, False)
print “--WW2 Radio -----------------------
archive.org/details/WWII_News_1939 commandout <<= 1
----------------------------------------”
archive.org/details/WWII_News_1940 GPIO.output(clockpin, True)
last_read = 0 # store the last position
archive.org/details/WWII_News_1941 GPIO.output(clockpin, False)
of the volume pot
archive.org/details/WWII_News_1942
last_year = 0 # store the last position
archive.org/details/WWII_News_1943 adcout = 0
of the frequency pot
archive.org/details/WWII_News_1944
tolerance = 5 # allow a small tolerance
archive.org/details/WWII_News_1945 # read in one null bit and 10 ADC bits
so slight movement of the pots doesnt
for i in range(11):
cause a change
THE SOFTWARE GPIO.output(clockpin, True)
GPIO.output(clockpin, False)
#!/usr/bin/env python while True:
adcout <<= 1
# WW2 Radio - software to read MCP3002 ADC trim_pot_changed = False
if (GPIO.input(misopin)):
and convert to volume and year adjustment year_pot_changed = False
adcout |= 0x1
# Ouput via i2S amplifier 20/10/2018 -
GPIO.output(cspin, True)
Ajax Jones for adcnum in range(2):
# Code fragments supplied from https:// ret = readadc(adcnum,
adcout /= 2 # first bit is
learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-max98357-i2s- SPICLK, SPIMOSI, SPIMISO, SPICS)
‘null’ so drop it
class-d-mono-amp/raspberry-pi-usage if (adcnum == 0): # read
return adcout
# MCP 3002 Python https://github.com/ the pot for the year selector to see it
CaptainStouf/Adafruit-raspi-python/blob/ has moved
# Use these pinouts for the raspberry pi
master/Adafruit_MCP3002/MCP3002.py year_adjust = abs(ret - last_
zero
year)
SPICLK = 11
import RPi.GPIO as GPIO, time, os if ( year_adjust > tolerance+10):
SPIMOSI = 10
from os import listdir year_pot_changed = True
SPIMISO = 9
import subprocess
SPICS = 8
from time import sleep if (year_pot_changed): # Values
import random can be decided after its built
# set up the SPI interface pins
GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)
GPIO.setup(SPIMOSI, GPIO.OUT)
subprocess.call([‘killall’, ‘mpg123’])
GPIO.setup(SPIMISO, GPIO.IN)
# read the SPI data from the MCP3002 chip, #kill any MP3 running
GPIO.setup(SPICLK, GPIO.OUT)
2 possible adc’s (0 and 1)
GPIO.setup(SPICS, GPIO.OUT)
def readadc(adcnum, clockpin, mosipin, sleep(0.1);
misopin, cspin): if ret <=50:
# Note that bitbanging SPI is incredibly
if ((adcnum > 1) or (adcnum < 0)):
slow on the Pi as its not
return -1 war_year=”1939”
# a RTOS - reading the ADC takes about 30
GPIO.output(cspin, True) elif (ret >50 and ret <150):

60
 LENS

of_files) # randomly select one of the

war_year=”1940” files to play Above
elif (ret >=150 and ret <250): war_mp3 = war_dir + play_list[play_ The wiring for the radio isn’t
too complicated
file]
war_year=”1941” cset numid=1 -- {volume}% > /dev/null’
elif (ret >=250 and ret <350): subprocess.Popen([‘mpg123’, war_mp3]) # .format(volume = set_volume)
Use mpg123 as the player for the audio
war_year=”1942” sleep (0.1); # provide a slight os.system(set_vol_cmd) # set volume
elif (ret >=350 and ret <450): pause before continuing
# save the potentiometer reading
war_year=”1943” if (adcnum == 1): # read the for the next loop
elif (ret >=450 and ret <550): volume pot last_read = ret
pot_adjust = abs(ret - last_read)
war_year=”1944” if ( pot_adjust > tolerance): # Pause after volume change so not
elif (ret >=550): trim_pot_changed = True too many changes are sent
time.sleep(0.5)
war_year=”1945” if ( trim_pot_changed ):
set_volume = ret / 10.24
BOOTING THE SOFTWARE ON LOAD
# save the value of the pot for the # convert 10bit adc0 (0-1024) pot value
There are many ways to run a command on
next time around the loop into a 0-100 volume level
the Raspberry Pi on boot up, but I find the
last_year = ret set_volume = round(set_
easiest method is to place a script as a
print (“Playing from “), volume)# round out decimal value
reboot option in crontab.
print (war_year), set_volume = int(set_volume)
print (“ number of files=”), # cast volume as integer sudo crontab -e
war_dir = ‘/home/pi/radio/WWII_
Now just add this line:
News_’+war_year+’/’ # Use the value from the pot to
play_list = list_year(war_year) send to the amixer prog @reboot python /home/pi/volume/year.py &
num_of_files = len(play_list) print ‘Volume = {volume}%’
The next time you reboot, the Audio
print num_of_files .format(volume = set_volume)
control program will run, and you should hear
play_file = random.randint(1,num_ set_vol_cmd = ‘sudo amixer
your first broadcast.

61
In the workshop: A portable computer

FEATURE

IN THE
WORKSHOP:
A portable
computer Taking control of
our computer setup

By Ben Everard

Above
Yes, I have mislaid the
CAPS LOCK and function
keys from the keyboard. If
you come across them in
the Bristol area, please let
me know

62
 LENS

W
hen Raspberry Pi 4 came
out, we were pleasantly
surprised by how the
more powerful processor
and enhanced memory
allowed it to be a serious
contender for a desktop computer. However,
what if you don’t have a permanent desk? What if
you want a more portable option? There are plenty
of designs around for laptops built using Raspberry
Pi computers, but I’ve never been that keen on the
laptop form factor. Joining the screen and keyboard
together always makes me feel like I’m either
slumped over the screen or the keyboard is too high.
I set out to build a portable computer that fitted my
way of working rather than simply copying the laptop
design that’s been making our backs and fingers hurt
for the past decade. wanted a portrait screen. Since Raspberry Pi 4
I headed into the HackSpace magazine workshop has two HDMI ports, I decided to have two Above
to see what I could come up with. portrait HDMI screens. This lets me have one Deciding where to
put the parts on the
to display the thing we’re doing, and one to plywood backing
A few things I wanted to consider from a design have the document to write about the thing
Below
point of view: we’re doing. You can get smaller
voltage converters
than this, but we like
• MATERIAL Computer designers have • NO IN-BUILT KEYBOARD OR MOUSE the look of the large
coil and seven-
decided that either brushed aluminium or Unlike a laptop, I decided I wanted to work segment display
black plastic are the options for computers, with external input devices to create a more
but ever since I saw the Novena Heirloom comfortable working setup.
laptop, I’ve wanted one made in wood. This
natural material isn’t necessarily perfectly • EXPOSED WIRING There’s not a good
suited to computer construction, but it’s reason for this – we just like the aesthetic (but
aesthetically pleasing and in occasionally it does make it easier to hack an upgrade in
stressful work environments, wood is a the future).
calming material. What’s more, it’s easy to
work with common tools.

• SCREEN SETUP Unsurprisingly, I spend a

lot of my time reading or writing. Landscape Raspberry Pi 4
screens aren’t brilliant choices for this, so I
as a PC
After using Raspberry Pi 4 as a main
computer for some time now, we
can confidently say that it’s up to the
task – at least our tasks. For basic programming,
making, word processing, web browsing, and similar office
tasks, it’s not noticeably slower than our previous machine. Of
course, if you hammer the processor or use apps that eat RAM
for breakfast, your mileage may vary.
Having two screens may not be considered a necessity,
especially on a portable machine, but it does give you the
flexibility to think about what you want your machine to display.
Even if you don’t want a full-sized second display, what about a
small screen for notifications? Being able to run a terminal in a
small second screen is something we’ve found consistently
useful, and even a small screen can be useful for that.

63
In the workshop: A portable computer

FEATURE

We
intended
it to be a
prototype
A few things we wanted to consider from a There’s no great secret to this build. I used two
technical point of view: different HDMI screens (one 12 inches and one 7
inches) and mounted them on 3 mm plywood. This
• COOLING Raspberry Pi can run a little hot, gives enough space to mount my Raspberry Pi
so I wanted a way of keeping it cool while still below the 7-inch screen. This plywood backing is
enabling the complete board to be accessible surrounded by a 2×1 inch pine wall that’s just high
for working with the GPIO. enough to expand beyond the screens. There’s a
slight recess in this pine surround that a plywood
• POWER Raspberry Pi needs 5 V, but most front cover slots into to protect the screens during
screens need 12 V. I wanted my computer to transport. The joints on the wood are particularly
have just a single power in. Having this on a unimpressive being butt joints with gaps in. The
12 V DC means I can use an external battery corners are secured by protectors which I fabricated
pack in the future. from 3 mm aluminium sheet (OK, fabricated is a bit
Above
We used a spade of a grand word – we cut, bent, and drilled them
drill bit and a Dremel
with a sanding
from 3 mm aluminium sheet).
attachment to carve I made this machine quickly as we intended it
out the space for our
to be a prototype. I fully expected that the setup
Raspberry Pi
Mistakes, niggles, and would prove too unusual to be useful and planned to
future improvements
Below
We had to cut quite disassemble it and make a different form factor after
a lot of cables up I’d learned what worked and what didn’t. However,
to make them fit. I made one key design mistake with this machine. I made the
Fortunately, most so far, I’m happy with this setup and don’t have any
have sensibly chassis to fit the screens, and not to fit in my bag. It just fits
coloured inners to in my regular rucksack, but it’s a tight squeeze and limits what plans to redesign it soon.
help you understand else I can carry. I attached loops for a shoulder strap and a Power comes in via a 5.1 mm jack. This goes to
what does what
hand-carry handle so I can carry it without the backpack, but both the monitors and a buck converter which steps
in the future I’d make more effort to see if we could transport it it down to 5 V for Raspberry Pi and fan (the converter
easily before committing to the build. has a display showing the current voltage because
Another point that I’m not hugely happy about is that it’s
I like the look of seven-segment displays). Power is
difficult to remove the microSD card (it requires loosening
controlled by three rocker switches (because I like
some bolts). This isn’t a huge problem at the moment, but it
would be nice to have the flexibility to easily switch cards. rocker switches rather than soft switches), allowing
Once USB booting becomes available, I’ll probably switch you to turn Raspberry Pi, fan, and screens on and
to an external drive, so this isn’t much of a concern. off separately.
I did cheap-out on the screens a bit (partly because I We’ve had to cut USB and power cables and
wasn’t sure if this machine would work as a daily driver). shorten them to make them fit nicely in the case.
The resolution is OK, but the colours are a bit poor on both of
The only unusual part of the build was the cooling
them. It’s not bad enough for me to feel the need to upgrade
them now, but if I ever have another project that needs an for Raspberry Pi. Since I wanted to leave the body
HDMI screen, I’ll probably take that opportunity to donate of my Raspberry Pi free, that meant that I had to
these and upgrade. have a fan directing air over the CPU from the side.

64
 LENS

Upgrades
There’s a small amount of space under the right-hand screen
that I’ve wondered about putting another display device into.
Not a regular display, but something like an LED matrix or strip
that can be used to show the device temperature,
notifications, or some other data. I’ve contemplated going full
steampunk and putting a Nixie tube there, but there’s really no
justification for that.
At the moment, I’ve decided that I prefer to leave the space
as bare wood unless I come up with something that would be
particularly useful to show.

After jiggling the fan into various positions, I decided version that renders well in this size, and it’s also big
to mount it at 45 degrees just to the side of the enough for a terminal window or Arduino IDE. A few Above
We control the fan
board. I needed a mount for this – 3D printing would programs struggle to work in this form factor (we’re via a switch rather
have worked well, but I’d been working through the looking at you Mu). than automatically
for two reasons: so
Power Carving Manual reviewed in issue 23, so put We live in a world where – for many of us – we can run silently
when we want, and so
these skills to the test and whittled a bit of wood to computers are an indispensable tool that we spend all the GPIO pins are
the right shape. Although power carving is usually most of our working lives using, yet the options for available for HATs and
other expansions
used to produce artistic objects, it’s also a good creating ones that are personal and genuinely fit our

So far, it
way of working are slim. We don’t have to accept Below
Our corners are not
that. We can build the machines that we want to the best joints, but
use: build our own tools. This is a machine designed the metal surrounds
ensure they are strong

has proved
for my needs – yours may be different, but you and protected from
bumps (oh, and we
understand them better than anyone. If you find off- like the look of them)
the-shelf machines don’t work well for you, head to

sturdy and
the workshop and make something that does.

reliable
choice for fabrication when you need a bit of
a ‘try-and-see’ approach, as it lets you make very
quick adjustments.
Overall, my only disappointment with the making
of this computer is the HDMI cables. I decided not
to cut and splice them to the correct length as the
high-speed nature of the HDMI signal makes this
unreliable. Instead, I got the shortest cables I could
and jammed them in.
In use, I’m really happy with my new computer.
So far, it has proved sturdy and reliable, and our
design decisions have been vindicated by the way
it works for me. Having two portrait screens may
seem odd, but at least for technology journalists it’s
a great option. The 7-inch screen may seem little,
but these days most websites have a mobile-friendly

65
 be
Eben Upton

E
INTERVIEW

HackSpace magazine meets…

Eben Upton
Maverick tech genius, playboy philanthropist…

p
S
ince launching in 2012,
Raspberry Pi has become
indisputably the most
popular single-board
computer in terms of sales.
It’s taken a lot of the fear
factor away for students and teachers
of programming, it’s spawned several
companies selling gear to support it,
and its exposed GPIO pins have enabled
millions of makers to link their creations
to the internet, automate them, or just
make them smarter. It’s a useful bit of kit.
We had the opportunity to chew the fat
with the inventor of Raspberry Pi, Eben
Upton, about what the team has been
doing since the launch of Raspberry Pi 4,
the amazing things that people are doing
with them, and why globalisation, like
football, is coming home.

Right
Raspberry Pi 4:
proudly made
in Wales

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INTERVIEW

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During the course of our chat we
arrived at the philosophy of KEGS –
keep everything great still
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HACKSPACE So, Raspberry Pi then: do
you think it will ever take off?

EBEN UPTON I reckon so: we’d sold 28

is in Europe, so you’re not paying for
shipping from China to get the product to
your customers.
HS Right, so the globalisation trend
almost going into reverse?

EU Yeah, and that’s a good thing, right?

LENS

o
million units as of the end of September HS And it must be good to be close to Do you only want to create the design jobs
2019. That’s a lot of units! That’s twice as the factory… in your country? Or do you want to create
many as the Commodore 64 ever sold. the manufacturing jobs as well? I’m
EU There’s a kind of iteration; as you make always a bit nervous talking about this,

t
HS Are they still made here, in the UK? a product, you learn what the good things because it sounds kind of like economic
and the bad things about the design are, nationalism. But it isn’t really, because I
EU Raspberry Pi from 3+ onwards are and then you can change the things either think it applies to all countries. If you only
only built in Pencoed in Wales. We’ve in a point release of that product or in a create one sort of job in your country…
always built large numbers in Wales, but subsequent product, in order to make it And this is the same in China: China
the 4 and 3+ we haven’t built anywhere more manufacturable or higher quality, realises that it cannot just go on being a

p
other than Wales. With the exception of a and it’s easier to do that learning if your manufacturing country for stuff that’s
small number of legacy products, they’re production line is four hours away in a car, designed in California. That’s not healthy.
all built in the UK. and the people there speak your language, And I suspect it’s not healthy the other
rather than if the production line is on the way round either, that we focus on
HS And is that down to some sense of other side of the planet. designing the stuff and see
patriotism that they’re all made here? People have an obsolete view of how manufacturing as this grubby thing that
cheap China is; China’s actually quite an you can offshore to the cheapest possible
EU It’s really not. We build them in Wales expensive place to manufacture now. country on any given day – then you have
because it’s cheaper and the quality’s And people under-price the benefits unemployment and you have to have high
higher than we’d get if we built them you get from being in close proximity tax rates for your designers, and give
anywhere else. I think there’s an benefits to the people who could

”
obsolete belief that if you are otherwise be making your stuff.
building anything electronic, the That doesn’t feel healthy.
People have an
best, cheapest place to do it is
China. I just don’t think that’s true. obsolete view of HS That’s what a lot of readers
I’m sure 20 years ago this was how cheap China is; are doing, albeit on a very
true; but, even when we started in China’s actually quite small scale: making things for
2012, it was already the case that themselves rather than buying
China had become an expensive an expensive place to them in from somewhere

”
place to manufacture a load of manufacture now else. Innovating on a micro,
product. Chinese manufacturing individual scale.
is emptying out into adjacent
countries. People are shutting EU And that’s what’s exciting
down factories in China to the manufacturing when you’re about being a part of this, is that it is a
and opening up factories in Cambodia designing products. bunch of people figuring out how to be a
and Vietnam and Indonesia. Ironically, that second one is the lesson little bit more self-reliant. When the status
I think it’s still the case that if you’re from China; it’s the lesson from Shenzhen. quo is ‘shut up and buy this thing’, that’s a
building a smartphone, if you’re building Why does interesting technology come boring status quo. This thing has
something that inevitably has a lot of from Shenzhen? It comes out of Shenzhen happened in the last ten to twenty years
manual assembly, then you kind of have because you have a bunch of interesting of people starting to push back a bit
to go somewhere low-cost, because people designing products who are right against that, against this assumption that
you have to have some person-minutes next to the people who make it. your job in life is to consume.
involved in each object. Although you There is still loads of exciting You look at the trajectory Wales had,
could argue that the margins on those innovation coming out of China. But, where you’ve got historically a very, very
products are often rather better, so you increasingly, I expect it’ll be from Chinese successful industrial economy, then
could afford those person-minutes companies innovating in China, and industry moved on and left, and some bits
in Wales. British companies innovating in Britain, of Wales are quite deprived. But then
It’s actually cheaper at the factory gate and American companies innovating there was this next wave in the 1970s of
for us to build in Wales. The factory gate in America. foreign direct investment. Why is there

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“We’re really pleased.
People underestimate
how scary it is,
launching a product”
 n
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a massive Sony factory in Pencoed? It’s
because Sony, at the time, looked around
for a place to make these bulky items,
CRT televisions, near to their market, and
every year. You know those wheels that
have the sideways rollers on them, and
you run the robot in two directions by
running the wheels in different ways?
we knew the 4GB one would be the popular
one, but we didn’t quite appreciate how
popular. We had to do a bit of fancy
footwork in July to turn down 2GB
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o
discovered that land was cheap and they Tom Owen did one of those. It was a manufacture and turn up 1GB
could employ lots of skilled people. triangular robot with a wheel at each manufacture. In descending order of
LCD televisions take over, and one of vertex, and the thing was insanely popularity, it goes: 4GB, 1GB, 2GB.
the things about LCD screens is that manoeuvrable. I don’t think it won It’s like the venti latte: people don’t buy

t
they’re very portable; you can anything, but I saw it driving around and grande lattes, they buy tall lattes and venti
manufacture them further away and fit just thought it was incredible. lattes. The grande latte is there because it
more of them in a lorry, and so Wales lost Formula Pi, that the PiBorg guys do, would look weird if you didn’t have
out again. It’s like waves, but each of Kim and Claire, that stuff is really anything between regular-sized coffee and
these waves leaves a residue of appealing. I used to do a lot of Lego coffee that’s twice the size of your
capability. Wales was a sensible place to Technic when I was a kid, and a lot of stomach. People don’t buy them much.

p
manufacture televisions because it was a what I find appealing now goes back to We did a lot of software work on the
sensible place to dig coal out of the that. The thing about Technic is that you thermals, to take energy out of the design. I
ground. Even when you’re not digging build the kit once, then after a couple of think on day one there were a lot of people
coal out of the ground, the industrial days you rip it apart and start building who thought: ‘This is a bit warm’. But
heritage of the place makes it a good your own stuff. I have a two-year-old you’ve got day-one software. I think a lot of
place for industry. There are a lot fewer daughter, so I see that as an opportunity. people don’t appreciate how much power
factories in Wales now than there is a software thing these days, rather

”
were in the 1980s, but they left than a hardware thing. Chips have a
behind a wave of capability and lot of mitigations in them, a lot of
that’s what we’re tapping into now. The tragedy is that, things you can do, knobs that you
for all the fun you’re can adjust to take power out; but
HS You’ve obviously made quite a having, I’m the guy turning these knobs creates risks.
few Raspberry Pis; what have you The safe thing to do is to run with all
made with a Raspberry Pi?
sacrificing my fun the power mitigations turned off,
time in order to help because you know that will work. It
make it happen!

”
EU I’ve made very little with a will also get warm. Over time you
Raspberry Pi. The tragedy is that, can apply software mitigations to the
for all the fun you’re having, I’m the platform. Every time you turn one on,
guy sacrificing my fun time in order you take the risk that you’re going to
to help make it happen! “Hey, we’re playing! I’m spending quality break something.
I don’t have a lot of time to do this time with my daughter!” USB is a great example. We shipped with
stuff. I use Raspberry Pis generally as high-energy USB firmware and then we
Unix boxes when I need another Unix HS What can you tell us about the new got some low-energy USB firmware from
box. I have a router at home that has REDACTED that’s coming out? our supplier, which enabled power
a bunch of Raspberry Pis hanging off mitigation in the PCI Express link between
the back of it, running bits of software EU I’m not sure I can tell you anything. the main chip and the USB hub, which was
that I needed – network monitoring It’s an unannounced product, and we don’t great. It took 10% of the power out of the
stuff mostly. talk about unannounced products. system at a stroke, but nerfed the
The other thing is that I’m a software performance of a subset of USB 3 mass
guy, not a hardware guy. Although we HS How has Raspberry Pi 4 been storage devices.
make Raspberry Pis and I’ve been received? That was a huge jump So, you go back to your vendor and say
involved with bits of the hardware in capability. “here are some mass storage devices; can
design, the hardware design I’ve been you please make sure it works with these”.
involved with is chip-level design rather EU Really well. We’ve made about a They then give you another version, so
than bigger hardware design. I can solder million and a half, getting on for two what we have now is a USB firmware
stuff together, but I’m not a solder-stuff- million now. What’s nice is that we’ve been which is both low energy and which
together-and-build-robots kind of guy. able to get them in stock really quickly, far doesn’t lose any USB performance.
I really want to do a Pi Wars robot. I go earlier than previous Raspberry Pi But all that takes time – you can’t do all
to Pi Wars, and I either attend or judge products. We’ve also had a few surprises: of these things on day one. On day one,

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all you’re concerned with is making sure

the thing works. Over time, I guess we’ve
made three significant adjustments that
reduce energy in the device, and together
they take out well over half a watt, which
is around 20% of the idle power
consumption, and we’re not done yet.
We’re probably knocking on the door of
taking about a watt out of the loaded
power of the device. You want to take
power out of the idle device because you
want it to be cool when it’s sitting doing
nothing, and then that also means that
you have a lot of headroom for what we

p
call sprint performance. Things like your
mobile phone and your laptop are
designed to idle and then sprint for a
certain amount of time. Your mobile
phone doesn’t have a fan, and it’s
designed to sit there at a low temperature
and then you have a certain amount of
let’s go full tilt, and eventually, it will get
too warm and then slow down.
That’s important because people like Above
Eben’s been working on
idle devices to be cool; they associate heat some classic gaming
stuff – stay tuned if you
with poor performance, so people like it to loved Sensible Soccer!
be cool when it’s not doing anything. And
because it creates a thermal buffer that
you can then use when you push the big step backwards in terms of because there’s no point: he can use a
device hard, you have more time because the stability. Raspberry Pi to check his mail, surf the
there’s more of a gap between the idle web, write a bit of software.
temperature and the limit temperature. HS And has that happened? There was a lot of fuss about this USB C
So idle is important for those reasons. thing that was a bit dispiriting. You can’t
Load is important because it reduces the EU RetroPie doesn’t work yet. That’s use your MacBook charger to power your
rate at which you go toward that been a thing that people have been sad Raspberry Pi – you cannot use your $100
temperature. Both of them contribute to about, and I’m hoping that we’ll get that charger to power your $35 Raspberry Pi.
user experience in different ways. fixed soon. But really, it’s been down to So, I’m sad about that. But it was reported
We’ve probably taken north of half a that kind of level: one or two third-party with a sort of glee almost in some
watt out of idle power and getting on pieces of software where we weren’t segments of the press, which was a bit
for one watt out of loaded power. That’s able to get bits out to the developers dispiriting. But, by and large, actual users
quite satisfying, and that’s three months before launch. were a lot more supportive.
of software engineering. There’s a lot Every launch, we try to do more with Normally, when you read a story in the
more that can be done; we don’t know third parties, and every launch we wish press, the comments are ghastly; the
yet what that’s going to yield in terms of we’d done more with third parties. So, interesting thing is that reading the
power consumption. So I’m pretty happy we’ll try to do more next time. comments to these stories, which were
with that. It was always the dream of Raspberry written by actual human beings, was the
By and large, software has been good Pi to build a PC, except a PC with GPIO right thing to do to cheer yourself up.
actually. We’re not done – it’ll be a long pins. Gordon Hollingworth, our Director That was good. Raspberry Pi people are
time before we’re done with software on of Engineering, he’s always had a nice people. They understand that we’re
this platform – but it’s very, very stable. current-generation Raspberry Pi on his doing our best. If you do the right thing,
We’ve changed a lot more from 3 to 4 than kitchen counter, running with a screen then the community will do the right
ever did before, from 1 to 2 or from 2 to 3. and keyboard. He now doesn’t take his thing by you, and it’s lovely to be part of a
And I had this nightmare that we’d take a laptop out of the bag when he goes home, community like that. 

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You can try out
hardware at the
Raspberry Pi Store

73
Improviser’s Toolbox: Binder clips

FEATURE

BINDER
CLIPS Complete your builds at a pretty good clip

P
erhaps we’ve all spent a bit too is usually in the shape of a triangular prism that’s made
much time idling in the office. of spring steel, with attached metal wire loops that
How else would you explain the are used as handles for opening and closing the body.
popularity of office stationery with Tension along the base of the triangle compels the two
the maker community? This month sides to close, while the loops prevent the sharp steel
we’re looking at the binder clip, which edges from cutting into the paper. There are slots in
Mayank Sharma with its distinctive prism-like shape is often used as a each loop that are cut in order to allow the handles to
@geekybodhi
sturdier alternative to the paper clip. The clips come be folded down once the clip has been attached.
in all shapes and sizes, typically between 0.5 to 5 Not only do these clips have a good grip and are
Mayank is a Padawan centimetres (0.2 to 2 inches), and are also preferred rust-resistant, but their design makes them a lot more
maker with an over the stapler as they can

“ Not surprisingly, the highly

irrational fear of drills.
hold paper together without
He likes to replicate
punching holes in them.
functional and efficient original design
electronic builds,
and gets a kick out Binder clips were invented
of hacking everyday
objects creatively. by Louis E. Baltzley in 1910. has undergone very slight changes in
Until then, if you had to bind
a stack of papers, you had
the 100 years since its invention“
to punch holes into them to
pass a thread in order to sew the papers together. As useful than just holding paper together. Although
you can imagine, this made it rather inconvenient to they are popularly used as alternatives to the paper
remove a sheet of paper from the stack. Louis came clip, their design makes them useful for a variety of
up with the binder’s clip to help his father, a writer different purposes. For instance, with one of their
and an inventor himself, with his manuscripts, and he handles up, you can use the clip to hang papers from
received a patent for the invention in 1915. Initially the a hook. Even as items of stationery, in addition to
clips were exclusively produced by Louis’s company grouping paper together, they are very commonly
before he licensed the design to other manufacturers. used as bookmarks, money clips, and holding objects
Not surprisingly, the highly functional and efficient in place. If anyone could use the clips for such varied
original design has undergone very slight changes in purposes, imagine how useful they would be in the
the 100 years since its invention. A binder clip’s body hands of our creative makers.

74
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MATHEMATICAL
SCULPTURES
L et’s be honest; we’ve all tried clipping
a bunch of binder clips together in
a Lego-esque fashion. Zach Abel has
gone a little too far. A mathematics
Project Maker
Zach Abel
Project Link
hsmag.cc/QjgoGP
lecturer at MIT’s Computer Science
and Artificial Intelligence Lab, Zach loves to “reveal
hidden geometric beauty
in office supplies and
other modest materials.”
“ In addition to the clips, you’ll need
One of his most popular a pair of needlenose pliers and some
designs is sculpted from time to understand the geometry of
132 binder clips. Zach
warns that replicating
the construction “
the build isn’t easy but
is highly rewarding, especially if you are a maths each step of the process. You’ll have to first remove
geek. In addition to the clips, you’ll need a pair of the handles from the clips and wrap them around
needlenose pliers and some time to understand the the body. The rest of the build involves connecting
geometry of the construction. Zach does a nice job the pieces in a particular fashion, and then arranging
of explaining the maths behind the build, and details them into grids of 4×4 clips. The complete build has
six of these grids, built with a total of 96 clips. Once
all the grids have been connected, the leftover clips
are used to fill the edges. There are eight corners,
and each requires handles from three clips woven
in a particular fashion to close them off.

Left
Stop by Zach’s gallery
to admire the other
structures he’s sculpted
from binder clips and
other office supplies

75
Improviser’s Toolbox: Binder clips

FEATURE

LIGHT TENT
O
ne of the essential elements for Labs and details the build on his personal blog. The
tabletop photography (besides a good process requires three A3-size sheets of medium
prime lens) is a light tent. Instead of thickness, and four binder clips. Read through his
shelling out money for one, you can blog to fold the sheets of paper to create the three
create one yourself with some white sides of the light tent. Two are mirror copies of each
paper and binder clips (and save the money for the other and are used as the sides, while the third
lens). Nathan Moroney is a Principal Scientist at HP makes up the back and the bottom. The binder clips
help connect the three folded pieces of paper. Kudos
to Nathan for complementing the textual description
“ Kudos to Nathan for complementing with visual representations of the folds. You can

the textual description with visual

customise the tent as per your needs, such as
substituting the white sheets of paper with coloured
representations of the folds “ ones. Nathan suggests adding more binder clips to
add more stability to the contraption. He uses the
light tent for shoots with indirect
office lighting or reflected sunlight.
Project Maker
It’s a wonderful hack that comes in
Nathan handy when you’re away from your
Moroney studio: “It takes me about a minute
Project Link to make one from scratch.”
hsmag.cc/dvObIV

Left
If you need to shoot
larger objects, Nathan
suggests using
railboard or rolls of
paper, cut as per
your requirements

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PHONE CAR MOUNT

C
ar phone mounts aren’t really
Project Maker
expensive, but the joy of using a hack
Taylor Peet is priceless, especially when you are
Project Link
a college student like Taylor Peet. She
hsmag.cc/FbDJuJ used a large binder clip, a couple of rubber
bands and two 6” long lengths of paracord. The first
and most crucial step is to size the clip to your phone.
This involves disassembling the clips and bending the
wires with pliers to about 20 degrees. To make sure
these wires don’t scratch the phone’s screen, follow
Taylor’s instructions to wrap them with the paracord
before reattaching the clips. The final step involves
wrapping the rubber bands around the wire holders to
provide the reverse tension to hold the phone in
place. If there is some slack, Taylor suggests
looping the rubber band over your fingers or
Right
Rotate and reposition using a smaller one. She says one of the best
your clip to change the
orientation of your phone
things about the binder clip mount is how easy it
from landscape to portrait is to reconfigure.

PEN AND
PHOTO HOLDER
H
ere’s a trick to save you some real
estate on your desk. Sonja uses eight
Project Maker binder clips and four rubber bands to
Sonja create a pen and photo stand that takes
a minute to put together. Pull the wire
Project Link
hsmag.cc/fQbWHm
loops such that they rest on the clip. Then lay them
on their sides arranged in the shape of a circle:
“The shape will look more like a flower, and may
not be a perfect circle, but get as close to it as you
can.” Now take two rubber bands and stretch them
over one side of the clip. Flip the binder clips, and
place rubber bands on the other side as well. Sonja
Right suggests stretching the rubber bands larger than
Place pens and pencils
in the space between the circumference of the clips, and then dropping
the clips and photos, them over the clips in one smooth action in order to
postcards, or notes
between the wire loops maintain the flower-like shape of the stand.

77
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Improve your skills, learn something new, or just have fun
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with these essential skills
WEATHER
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Avoid the rain the 21st century way 82 Arbor press

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WORKSHOP 106
TURNTABLE 3D-PRINTED JEWELLERY
Precision spinning for Create multiple colours of body bling
precision engineering with a single extruder
LED matrix modules in Arduino and CircuitPython

SCHOOL OF MAKING

LED matrix modules in

Arduino and CircuitPython
Add 64 pixels of output using either popular language

T
here are, broadly
speaking, two ways
of hooking up an
LED matrix. One is to
use LEDs with in-built
controllers that handle
Ben Everard communication over one or two
wires (such as NeoPixels), and the
@ben_everard other is to multiplex individual LEDs
– this is wiring them in a grid in
Ben loves cutting stuff,
any stuff. There’s no
such a way that you can turn
longer a shelf to store individual LEDs on or off by turning
these tools on (it’s now connecting voltages to the column
two shelves), and the
door’s in danger. and row wires. Here, we’re going to
look at the MAX7219 chip, which is
a very popular way of controlling
these multiplexed LED matrices.
We’re going to use a very common module that version of CircuitPython installed on your device
combines an 8×8 LED matrix and a single MAX7219 (head to circuitpython.org for details).
controller. You’ll find identical modules in many Let’s take a look at the CircuitPython code to
hobbyist suppliers and direct-from-China websites. display the words ‘HackSpace magazine’ scrolling
While they come in a variety of colours, they’re across the matrix:
typically monochrome. You can get multicolour LED
from adafruit_max7219 import matrices
matrices, and it is possible to control them in this
import board
way. It’s complicated by the fact that the multicolour
import bitbangio
LEDs typically share either a cathode or an anode.
import digitalio
Once you’ve got your matrix module, you
import time
need to connect everything up. There are three
communication pins on the module: Data In (DIN),
clk = board.D12
Chip Select (CS), and Clock (CLK). If you’ve worked
din = board.D13
with low-level comms protocols before, you might
cs = digitalio.DigitalInOut(board.D11)
suspect that this is an SPI interface, and you’d
be right. DIN corresponds to Master Out Slave In
Above spi = bitbangio.SPI(clk, MOSI=din)
The same basic
(MOSI). Some SPI devices also have a Master In
display = matrices.Matrix8x8(spi, cs)
module comes in a Slave Out (MISO) connection, but there’s none on
few different form
factors, and they this board as no data goes from the LED matrix back
should all be quite
while True:
to the microcontroller.
easy to hook up, but display.brightness(1)
make sure you’ve The module also needs power (3.3 V) and a ground
got one with the display.clear_all()
connection. With that all wired up, we’re ready for
MAX7219 chip, not s = ‘HackSpace magazine’
just the matrix our software. First, make sure you’ve got the latest

80
 FORGE

SHOWING NUMBERS
The MAX7219 chip isn’t actually designed to run LED
matrices. If you take a look at the datasheet, you’ll
see that it’s intended to be used with seven-segment
displays. However, it turns out that the needs of
seven-segment displays and LED matrices are
actually pretty similar. Despite their name, seven-
segment displays often have eight LEDs (one is the
decimal point), and this lines up quite nicely with a
single line on an 8×8 matrix.

for c in range(len(s)*8):
display.fill(0)
display.text(s,-c,0)
display.show()
time.sleep(0.25)

As you can see, we’ve created an SPI connection

using the bitbangio module. This allows us to use There are a few libraries you can use to get these
any pins, not just those with hardware support matrices working, but we found the LEDControl Above
The Grand Central is
(though you can switch this to use the hardware SPI library worked well. With everything connected and overkill for this project
port and the busio module if you’d rather). this library installed, we loaded the demo sketch – even a modest
microcontroller should
We use the matrices class in the MAX7219 (LCDDemoMatrix), and changed the setup line to: have no problems
controlling this display
module – there’s also a bcddigits class for displaying
LedControl lc=LedControl(51,52,40,1);
binary coded decimal on seven-segment displays
using the same chip (see box above). Once the code uploaded, the demo sequence
ran smoothly.

”
There are three ways of setting the LEDs using
With these matrices, you can this library:
add all manner of graphical lc.setRow()

”
interest to your projects lc.setColumn()
lc.setLed()

The first two take three parameters – the index

The text method takes three arguments – the of the LED matrix (that’s 0 if there’s only one), the
string to display, the x position, and the y position. row or column index (between 0 and 7), and the data
By slowly making the x position more and more to display in a binary string. The final function takes
negative, we scroll the text across the display. four parameters – the matrix index, the x and y
If you’d rather do more free-form drawings, coordinates of the LED, and the Boolean value you
you can also set individual pixels using the want to set.
display.pixel(x, y) method. With these matrices, you can add all manner of
graphical interest to your projects. You can get quite
ITALIAN JOB a lot in 64 pixels, such as anthropomorphic
Let’s now switch our attention to the Arduino expressions, bar graphs, or even a game of Pong.
programming environment. Unlike in CircuitPython,
most libraries for the MAX7219 require you to use
hardware SPI connections for the Data and Clock
CHAINING
inputs. You’ll have to refer to the documentation for MAX7219 chips are designed to be daisy-chained,
your device to find out which pins these are. On our allowing almost arbitrarily large LED matrices to be
test board (the Adafruit Grand Central M4), MOSI created. Most modules are designed with input pins
(which corresponds to DIN) is on pin 51, and SCLK on one side and output pins on the other, so they can
(which corresponds to CLK) is on pin 52. CS can be be simply connected together.
whichever pin you want it to be (we used 40).

81
The arbor press, its uses and modifications

SCHOOL OF MAKING

The arbor press,

its uses and modifications
Let’s look at this useful and affordable workshop tool and
explore some simple modifications to increase its functionality

A
n arbor press is a really useful have a rotating spindle which, when turned, raises
workshop item that is reasonably or lowers the ram which can exert a downward
affordable, and many of the pushing force onto an object placed on the work
large DIY retailers sell them. table. The work table is often a rotating cast disc
They are available in lots of sizes with a flat surface, with different size gaps in it to
and pressure ratings, but the accommodate various jobs. The rotating table is
Jo Hinchliffe common smaller sizes are able to apply either a often removable, and a flat work surface underneath
half tonne or a tonne of pressure. In this article, we can also be used.
@concreted0g will explore some common uses of the arbor press, A typical job for an arbor press is to press-fit
as well as looking at some less common uses and something into something else with an interference
Jo is a contributor some modifications. fit; for example, pressing a bearing into a hole that
to the Libre Space
Foundation, and is Arbor presses consist of a solid, heavy cast body has been created to a tolerance that will hold the
passionate about all that should be bolted down to a bench surface and bearing once it is pressed in.
things DIY space. He
loves designing and
scratch-building both
model and high-power
rockets, and releases
the designs and
components as open
source. He also has
a shed full of lathes,
milling machines, and
CNC kit!

YOU’LL NEED
Arbor press

Drilling
and tapping
equipment

Some small
pieces of steel

Access to a lathe Above

An arbor press
Access to bolted to a
a 3D printer workbench, and
a collection of
Eyelet fitting tool homemade tool
accessories for it
Vee block

82
 FORGE

We can see in Figure 1, the bearing (a 10 mm one

in this case) is placed onto the hole edge, and the
ADJUSTMENTS
assembly is placed on the work surface. Lowering the The arbor press is quite a simple tool that is relatively easy to assemble and
spindle results in pushing it onto the bearing and, in disassemble. The spindle that runs through the body is removed by removing a locking
turn, pushing the bearing into the workpiece. ring on the left-hand side which is clamped in place with a grub screw. The ram can
When raising and lowering the ram to engage with be removed by undoing the four bolts on the corners of the cover. Inside the section
a piece of work, it’s very common for the handle where the ram passes through the body, two floating strips of metal can be tightened
and loosened against the surface of the ram. These are called gib strips, and they will
to end up in the wrong place and not have enough
fall out when you remove the cover and the ram. The gib strips are adjusted by the
travel for the job in hand, or for it to be in an awkward bolts on the centre line of the front of the ram and the two bolts on the side of the body
place for the user to exert any pressure. A common casting. The ram should move freely up and down with little play from front to back
modification for this is to remove the ram and modify and side to side. Also, the ram shouldn’t be so loose that it travels down under the
it by removing a few teeth from it, which means that weight of the handle when no pressure is applied. To adjust the gib strip, loosen the
at the top limit of travel the ram will ratchet on the locking nut on the adjustment bolt and then finger-tighten the bolts against the gibs.
Then try moving the ram to ascertain if you need to adjust more. Usually, you might
spindle, allowing the handle to be set to any position
need to back off each bolt a fraction to get the ram flowing freely while minimising
relative to the ram and spindle. It should be noted that play. Once you have the ram how you want it, use two spanners: one to hold the bolt
this will slightly limit the travel length of your arbor in the current position and not allow it to move, and the other to tighten the locking nut
press, as the ram will be unable to be fully retracted, so that the bolt is set in position and cannot move.
but it’s definitely a modification that is worth
considering. We haven’t done this modification as we
came up with a slightly different solution that allows force through the socket, spindle, and ram means QUICK TIP
for a ratcheting handle from a socket set to be used, that the force at the end of the ram is different to the
Do ensure that
as well as a torque wrench. force dialled in on the torque wrench, it does mean you bolt your arbor
that repeated use at the same torque wrench setting press to a sturdy
LET’S TORQUE will deliver the same workbench. We

”
This simple modification repeatable force every have removed the
was to drill and tap the Using the torque wrench as a time. This is useful for fixings in some
of the images to
end of the spindle on the handle means that the user numerous things; for
enable us to move
other side from the example, when inserting
can set it to deliver different the press into

”
handle and to insert a PEM nuts, we have more photograph-
bolt. This allows the user amounts of force found that a particular worthy positions.
to use torque wrenches torque setting is the best
fitted with the correct- combination of getting
size socket, in this case, a 10 mm one. Using the the nut in while not distorting the workpiece. Another
torque wrench as a handle instead of the actual use is in materials testing. For example, we wanted
handle means that the user can set the torque to explore the different strengths in 3D-printed tubes
wrench to deliver different amounts of force (Figure 2 with varied wall thickness and printed infill; setting up
overleaf). While it’s probable that the translation of the press with the torque wrench allowed us to see
and measure the amount
of deflection in the
same-size tubes under
the same amount of load
(Figure 3 overleaf). It’s
worth noting that the
addition of the bolt also
allows you to use
non-ratcheting bars from
a socket set, or a long
‘breaker bar’, with Figure 1
A typical use for an
which it would be arbor press, using
possible to create a force the ram to press-fit
a bearing into a hole.
larger than the press is The hole has been
created accurately so
specified for – useful, that the bearing is an
but be careful! interference fit

83
The arbor press, its uses and modifications

SCHOOL OF MAKING

EYELET AND TOOLS

Also modified to fit our 8 mm mounting system are

pressing tools to fit eyelets to materials. The larger
tool for fitting the 15–20 mm eyelets (pictured) is
adapted from a standard tool by shortening the shaft
and turning the shaft down to 8 mm to be held in the
ram. The smaller tool is for fitting the smaller 9 mm
eyelets and has been made from scratch in the lathe
by turning down a 10 mm steel rod. Again, using
MORE SQUEEZING THINGS IN! these tools in the arbor press, rather than by hitting
Figure 2 Inserting PEM nuts and threaded inserts is another them with a hammer, means that the work is more
A simple modification accurate and the pressing load is exerted evenly and
allowing a torque useful task for which an arbor press can be used.
wrench to be used as simultaneously over all of the eyelets, leading to an
PEM nuts are press-fitted into an undersized hole
an alternate handle to accurate, strong eyelet being placed in the material.
deliver a repeatable with a small jagged crushable area on the nut that We have also turned down some cheap hollow
force through the ram
is forced into the hole and forms a tight fit. They are punches to allow them to be used in the press for
commonly used, but the official insertion tools can be cutting holes in a variety of materials.
very expensive for the home or hackspace tinkerer.
As an example, we needed to insert a PEM nut
inside a small aluminium extrusion but, of course, we
wanted to avoid bending the extrusion itself. Using
ADAPTED END
a steel block (Figure 4), we milled a channel into the
Figure 3
Using the torque
block to create a tool that allowed the edge of the
wrench allows us to 50 mm aluminium extrusion to be placed under the
compare the strength
and the strain in a ram and have the PEM nut inserted while allowing
3D-printed part when the workpiece to ‘float’ and minimise the forces
under a known load.
Using the height directly applied to the extrusion. The result is a neatly
gauge allows us to inserted PEM nut with no visible bending of the
measure the deflection
of the 3D print extrusion (Figure 5). One of the modifications we’ve made to the arbor
press is to remove the ram from the assembly and
drill an 8 mm hole into the end of it to allow it to hold
different tools at the end of it. It’s a bit of a challenge
to drill into the end, due to the length of the ram and
it is essential to make sure that the hole is parallel
and concentric to the spindle. This author’s pillar drill
and manual milling machine are both too small to do
this, and we ended up using a larger lathe to do the
job. Having got our hole into the end of the spindle,
we drilled and tapped a threaded hole into the side
of the spindle to allow an M6 grub screw to be used
to hold tools. If you are unsure how to tackle this job,
we wrote a tutorial on drilling and tapping in issue 20
(hsmag.cc/issue20). We look at some of the tools we
have made in this article, but the most used basic
tool is a piece of hardened and tempered drill rod/
silver steel which is used for general pressing.

84
 FORGE

Figure 4
Inserting PEM nuts
into the inside of an
extrusion requires
a stand to be made
that allows the nut
to be pressed in
while not bending
the actual extrusion

NEW AND OLD TECH QUICK TIP

We had seen some examples in the community of Make sure to wear
people using 3D-printed parts printed with a high your safety glasses
when pressing
amount of infill to make tools to put accurate folds
things in an arbor
into metal. The proper tool for this is a ‘press brake’, press. The high-
but the arbor press can be made to emulate a press pressure nature
brake with the addition of some of these 3D-printed of it means that if
tools. We 3D-printed a pressing vee tool, which something breaks,
again can be received by the 8 mm tool-holding things can leave
the work table at
arrangement (Figure 6). Printed with 1.2 mm thick
high velocity!
walls and a 40% infill in PLA, this tool is plenty hard
enough, in combination with a receiving vee block,
to put bends into thin sheets of aluminium and even

” The arbor press can be made

to emulate a press brake
with the addition of some

”
3D-printed tools
Figure 5
The steel PEM nut is
thin steel sheets. It’s very useful for also placing fitted accurately and
securely into the
90-degree bends into solid wire etc. The receiving vee aluminium extrusion
block could also be 3D-printed, or just use engineering
Figure 6
vee blocks if you have them already. Again, the value A 3D-printed tool that
enables repeatable
of using the arbor press for this is that it is repeatable folds to be pressed
and should result in similar results each time, making into thin metal sheet
it ideal for short runs of folded items etc. Figure 7
We had also seen people using 3D printing and Using the press,
we managed to
some form of press device to emboss shapes into some simple additions and modifications can easily emboss the shape
items. As an experiment, we have printed a small broaden the range of tasks. We have lots of jobs left from a 3D-printed
object into a vinyl
rocket shape (of course!) and attached it to a backing on the list to try with the arbor press: fitting thermal covered notebook
plate. Using this and the arbor press, we managed to inserts into 3D prints and broaching key ways into
emboss the image into a notebook which had a card metal, for example. The internet is full of useful
and vinyl cover (Figure 7). things that people have done with this affordable and
Hopefully this tutorial has shown that the arbor resilient tool. If you have a job or a modification you
press is a valuable tool that, with a little time and do using an arbor press, do let us know via either the
imagination, can be used for lots of tasks – and that letters page or social media.

85
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Making and tuning antennas

TUTORIAL

Making and
Left
The simple quarter wave
ground plane antenna
we are going to make
on the N1201SA vector

tuning antennas
impedance analyser

Sending and receiving data the most power-efficient way

I
n this tutorial, we are going to make a of wire in our case, which is the radiating or driven
simple DIY antenna, and we are going element called a vertical monopole, and numerous
to try to maximise its efficiency. We are radial elements that form the ground plane. These
going to make a type of antenna called a ground plane radial elements can vary in number
quarter wave ground plane, and we are between three and six, but we are going to use four
going to make it suitable for use with a LoRa for our design.
Jo Hinchliffe device operating on the 868MHz frequency. As this As we can see in Figure 1, the dimension for the
frequency will result in quite a small antenna, we are driven radiating element is 8.2 cm, and the radials are
@concreted0g going to attach the antenna elements directly onto 9.2 cm. However, as it can be difficult to cut these
an SMA chassis mount socket. accurately – including some material for the bit that is
Jo Hinchliffe is The first thing we do is use an online calculator to soldered on – and then difficult to measure the length
passionate about all
things DIY space. work out our design. We used the one on this site: once attached, we are going to cut them oversize and
He loves designing hsmag.cc/LIVzgj. Simply insert the target frequency then trim them to size whilst measuring the efficiency
and scratch-building
model and high-power
of 868 into the input box, and click the ‘calculate of the antenna.
rockets, and releases my quarter wave’ button. You will see that some We used some enamel-coated copper wire that
the designs as open dimensions for different parts of the design are given we had a reel of, but it’s fair to say that any solid
source. He also has a
shed full of lathes and in the other boxes. The quarter wave ground plane wire (such as the copper stripped from mains cable)
CNC kit! design has essentially one vertical element, a piece could be used.

88
 FORGE

Left
The copper wire
elements cut to
length and the
chassis mount SMA
socket we are going
to use

QUICK TIP
The N1201SA is a
brilliant tool but has
some quirks! For
example, the knob
rotation is slightly
counter-intuitive
when adjusting
frequencies –
anti-clockwise
connector we are going to solder, begin by soldering raises numbers and
the shorter vertical element onto the centre pin. Next, clockwise
in turn, solder the radial coming off each corner of the lowers them!
connector chassis mount plate (Figure 2, overleaf).
We found it was easiest to solder these on and then
bend the radials down to the 45-degree slope after
attaching them all (Figure 3).
An antenna such as this one could be used on a
LoRa node (we covered LoRa in issue 22). In this
YOU’LL NEED
node, the radio transmitter module and the antenna’s
job would be to transmit a data payload, radiating the An SMA chassis
mount socket
signal out into the air to be picked up by a gateway
receiver. LoRa devices are limited to 100 mW of Some copper
power, which is enough but not a huge amount wire
Figure 1 of power in terms of radio transmission. This low
Using the online calculator to get the
Soldering
dimensions needed for our antenna design power obviously helps in terms of battery life and equipment
other factors important for LoRa networks. We need Some sharp
A CUT ABOVE the LoRa device (and usually any low-power radio side cutters
Having straightened a section of wire, we are going device) to be able to maximise the use of its small
A budget antenna
to use some side cutters to cut the five pieces power budget. A well-optimised antenna will send analyser (N1201SA
we need for the design. Let’s cut them oversize, as much of its available power as possible through or NanoVNA)

so that we can trim them to length once we have

assembled the antenna. We went roughly 8 mm
over the lengths that we calculated. The wire we
STRAIGHTENING WIRE
used happened to be coated with an epoxy finish, Often, for antenna building and other projects, we have the need for straight pieces
so we sanded one end to reveal the bare copper of wire, but wire is often supplied coiled on a small reel. A simple way to straighten
underneath to allow it to be soldered. a piece of wire is to use a vice and a cordless drill. It does result in the wire surface
Next, tin those ends with some solder. To appearing like a spiral, but in this case, that doesn’t matter. Cut a length of wire around
assemble the quarter wave ground plane antenna, we 60 cm, and fold a small 1 cm section over at each end to give a little more surface area
for the vice and the drill to grip onto. Clamp one end into a vice and tighten the other
held the chassis mount SMA adapter in a small vice
end into the drill chuck. Pull the wire taught by pulling the drill away from the vice, and
and tinned the centre pin, and also a small amount on then rotate the drill slowly. The direction of rotation doesn’t matter. You should see
each corner of the chassis plate. It can be quite hard the wire begin to straighten along its length. Continue until the entire length of wire
to solder to the chassis plate, as the SMA connector has straightened. It’s a good idea to wear safety glasses for this as, with copper wire,
itself acts as a bit of a heat sink, making it tricky to get sometimes the wire can snap and go in any direction.
the solder flowing. Having tinned all the parts of the

89
Making and tuning antennas

TUTORIAL

into the air, maximising the signal strength. A poorly an antenna optimised, and this should be easily
Figure 2 optimised or badly designed antenna will reflect achievable with our antenna. It is certainly possible,
The centre radiating
element and the four
some of the power back into the transmitting device; however, to simply try as best as one can to make
ground plane radial this can cause damage to the transmitting device, the antenna using the design measurements and, if
elements, all soldered
into position but also will dramatically reduce the capability and realised accurately, it should perform reasonably.
range of a system as that power is wasted. To begin optimising the antenna, connect it to
Figure 3
The completed the N1201SA analyser and long-press the CTRL and
antenna, with each GOOD VIBRATIONS

”
radial carefully bent
downwards by When antennas are tuned to their resonant
45 degrees
frequency, we can optimise the ratio of transmitted The ratio between
power versus reflected power, enabling as much transmitted power and
of the power to be used to radiate the signal and
reflected power is called the

”
therefore maximising the transmission range.
The ratio between transmitted power and standing-wave ratio (SWR)
reflected power is called the standing-wave ratio
(SWR). As this is a ratio of voltage, it’s also referred
to as VSWR (voltage standing-wave ratio), as indeed power/OK buttons to turn it on. Press the M button
it is on the N1201SA vector impedance analyser we once to get to the screen that looks like Figure 4.
are going to use. It’s widely accepted that a VSWR Next, we need to set the range of frequencies that
ratio of less than two is acceptable enough to call this screen is going to show us. At the bottom
of the screen, we can see the ‘start:’ and ‘stop:’
frequencies. Clicking the arrow keys enables us
THE THEORY to highlight these numbers, then click OK. We can
Adjusting the VSWR is a great way of optimising the then select each digit of the frequency number with
antenna; however, the theory behind what we are the arrow keys and use the rotary knob on the top
doing is a broad and complex subject. Impedance of the unit to change the value. First, adjust the
matching, or balancing the capacitance and start and stop values to between around 400MHz
inductance of the antenna, and these underlying and 1500MHz – you should see a dip in the line
theories are worth exploring. A great primer video
somewhere on the screen, probably not near our
by Andreas Spiess, which also features the N1201SA
and a quarter wave ground plane antenna, can be desired 868MHz frequency. Next, let’s set the yellow
found here: hsmag.cc/MgITHK. cursor to our desired target resonant frequency of
868MHz. Navigate to the frequency at the top of

90
 FORGE

Figure 4
The reasonably
affordable N1201SA
antenna analyser
with our quarter wave
ground plane antenna
attached, ready to be
made more efficient

the screen and adjust it to 868. You should now see

that a small yellow cursor is set to 868MHz. The AVOID INTERFERENCE
game now is to try to get the lowest point of the
When using the N1201SA, it’s important to be in an area that doesn’t interfere with
dip to correspond to the yellow cursor. We can see the analyser too much. Working in a space that doesn’t have any large metal objects
that the y axis scale of this screen is the VSWR, close by is a good start. We also found that using a camera or a phone near the
and therefore the y axis reading (the position of the N1201SA affected the readings – not easy to avoid when trying to take photographs
yellow cursor) is the VSWR of our antenna. for an article! In the image, we have the same antenna attached, but local objects are
To make our adjustments, we are going to causing interference and changing the output of the N1201SA.
carefully take small cuts from the antenna elements
to bring them close to the designed dimensions round of cuts, the elements are the same length.
and hopefully reduce the VSWR down to less than For the adjustment of the radials, it is less important
two. We started by taking a measurement of the that we end up with the exact designed length,
centre monopole element we attached first. It’s as the body of the chassis socket also affects the
important that we measure from not just the solder capacitance and inductance of the design, but we do
joint but also include any length of the brass pin want to keep each element the same length as the
we soldered. Measuring from the point that the others. Again, aim to get the yellow cursor of the
brass pin protrudes from the insulating jacket, we resonant frequency to the lowest point in the VSWR
made a small cut to reduce this element towards ratio dip. We achieved a VSWR of just under 1.2,
its designed length of 8.2 cm. You should see the which is very satisfactory.
resonance (dip) change and the dip move closer Congratulations, you should now have a
to the yellow cursor representing our desired reasonably well-optimised antenna that should be QUICK TIP
frequency. As the antenna becomes closer to being fairly capable on the designed frequency. Adjusting It is pretty difficult to
optimised, you might consider reducing the range of the VSWR is a similar task for many antennas, and add material back to
frequencies a little to make the dip look larger and there are lots of tutorials online about many different the element if you go
easier to see. We ended up with a start frequency of types of antenna designs, as well as heaps of too far! Always cut
less than you think
600MHz, and a stop frequency of 1000MHz. resources on the theory of antennas and signal
you need to remove,
Once you have reduced the monopole element to propagation. A great place to start with this complex and allow the
the designed dimension, turn your attention to the subject might be to visit the Radio Society of Great analyser to settle
radial elements. In turn, make small cuts to remove Britain site (rsgb.org), or check out your local and take a reading
some material and try to ensure that after each amateur radio group. before continuing.

91
Orientation With Sense HAT

TUTORIAL £12.99
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92
Join us as we lift the lid
on video games

Visit wfmag.cc to learn more

Keep an eye on the weather

TUTORIAL

Keep an eye
Above
The 2020 LEDs are
tiny and give pleasing
pinpoints of light

on the weather
Display data from the internet in a concise but meaningful grid of lights

B
arometers are great, aren’t they? • W
 ill it rain on the way home from work?
A quick tap and they tell you if it’s • S
 hould I wear shorts or trousers today?
going to be stormy, rainy, or fair. The • C
 an I hang clothes on the washing line?
only problem is that they tend to be
fairly inaccurate. The reason for this To make these decisions sensibly, we need to
is that they only have one bit of data know how the weather’s going to change the next
Ben Everard going into them, the current air pressure, and this day. We decided that we wanted to highlight four
isn’t really enough to know what the weather’s doing things (but you might find other information useful):
@ben_everard
now, let alone what it’s going to do in the future. • P recipitation
Fortunately, in the modern world, we have access • C loud cover
Ben loves cutting stuff,
any stuff. There’s no to supercomputers chomping thousands of data • T emperature
longer a shelf to store points to create weather forecasts that are at least • W ind strength
these tools on (it’s now
vaguely accurate. Let’s use this to create a device
two shelves), and the
door’s in danger. that we can understand with a simple glance, but In order to enable users to tell at a glance
that’s actually accurate. what’s going to happen, we decided to use an
The first thing to think about with any data LED matrix to display the data. Each row on the
display is ‘what do you need to know’. That isn’t the matrix represents one type of data, and the colour
same as ‘what information do you have’ or ‘what of the LED shows the data. For example, on the
information is easy to display’. What we really want temperature line, LEDs are lit on the blue-purple-red
to know is what information do we need to make scale to show what the temperature will be. It’s hard
useful decisions. When it comes to weather, we to know the exact temperature from the colour, but
need to answer questions like: it’s easy to see if it’s getting colder or warmer.

94
 FORGE

Each LED will represent a three-hour period, so a

row of eight shows a 24-hour day. Since we’re using
OPTIONAL UPGRADES
an 8×8 matrix, and there are four data lines, we can The look you go for is up to you. We like the little, bright lights, but that’s just us. A
show two days’ worth of data. larger matrix with some diffusion could also look good, as could a design made using
separate LED strips for each line.
KEEPING THINGS SIMPLE Our lights are always on, but you may want to include some way of turning them
We’re going to use a SparkFun LuMini Matrix. This on or off, a button could be added, and the ESP32 has some touch-sensitive pins that
you could use as well. A PIR motion sensor could also be added to just light up when
is a tiny matrix which means that the device will fit
someone’s near.
nicely into our home and not be a big obtrusive thing. We’re using our device to show the weather, but you could display anything that
We simply mounted it on a short section of 2×1 inch you can get data for. Hay-fever sufferers may wish to show predicted pollen counts;
pine, leaving enough space to mount the SparkFun you could show UV strength, a warning for ground frost, or anything that’s important
Thing Plus on the back. You could use the exact to you.
same setup to work on a wide range of different
microcontroller and LED options. Most ESP32
microcontrollers should work, but ESP8266 boards to drive this can also drive WS2812B (and other
may struggle unless they’ve got additional RAM. WS28XX LEDs), so it shouldn’t take much to switch
While you could use any LED matrix (it doesn’t to a different LED technology. If you want to use
even need to be 8×8, a multiplexed LED

”
you could change the panel, then you’ll need
code to work with a It’s hard to know the exact to rewrite the output
wide range of form sections of the code.
factors), we selected temperature from the colour, There’s not too much
the LuMini Matrix but it’s easy to see if it’s wiring involved in this

”
because of its size. project. We can get
The LuMini Matrix getting colder or warmer enough power from
is made up of APA102 the USB connection, so
LEDs which are a little connect VUSB to the 5 V
different from WS2812B NeoPixels. There are a in on the LEDs. Ground goes to Ground, MOSI goes
few technical differences, but the most obvious to DI, and SCK goes to CI. However, before you
one for casual use is that there are two data wires solder all these together, make sure you’ve got the
rather than one. The FastLED library that we use physical setup right. We were mounting the LuMini
Matrix on a separate side of the
wood to the Thing Plus. To keep
things neat, we drilled four small
holes to feed the wires through
and lined these up with the solder
points on the LuMini Matrix.
We mounted both the Matrix
and the Thing Plus using machine
screws and threaded inserts in the
wood. These brass inserts can be
pushed into tight-fitting holes and
allow machine screws to securely
hold wood, plastic, or other
materials that wouldn’t usually fit
in. We originally intended to use
inserts that have an outside thread
and can be screwed into wood, but
when we came to build this, we
found that we only had M3 size and
Left
up which were too large for this Four small holes let
build, so we used push-fit inserts, us pass power and
data through to the
and they’ve held well. LED matrix

95
Keep an eye on the weather

TUTORIAL

We won’t go through the code line by line

(you can download it from hsmag.cc/egoYov),
but instead, look at the key parts. The JSON
deserialisation uses a lot of memory, so there’s
quite a lot of memory tracking code – we’ve left
this in, rather than remove it, as it might be useful
for anyone adapting the code, but we won’t
include it here.
Here’s the code for grabbing the latest forecast
and decoding the JSON response:

WiFiClient client;
if (!client.connect(host, port)) {
Serial.println(“connection failed”);
return;
}
Serial.println(“Connected!”);
client.print((String)
With everything bolted and soldered together, let’s “GET /data/2.5/forecast?q=bristol&appid=<insert
move onto the software. your appid> HTTP/1.1\r\n” +
“Host: “ + String(host) + “\r\n” +
WEATHERDUINO “Connection: close\r\n\r\n”);
Above
We made a mistake You’ll need to install the Arduino IDE and set it up to unsigned long timeout = millis();
when first mounting
the matrix. Rather
be able to communicate with the Thing Plus. There while (client.available() == 0) {
than waste the are details on doing this at hsmag.cc/MCwBPp. if (millis() - timeout > 5000) {
wood, we flipped
it around, so this Now let’s now take a look at the code. The Serial.println(“>>> Client Timeout !”);
is on the unseen SparkFun Thing Plus is based on the ESP32 client.stop();
back of the device
microcontroller, so we’ll use the in-built WiFi library. return;
Below We’ll also use FastLED to control the LEDs and }
The SparkFun Thing
Plus works with ArduinoJson to parse the data (that we get from }
the Adafruit ESP32
Feather Arduino
OpenWeatherMap), so you’ll need to install these if String line = “”;
board definition you don’t have them already. while (client.available()) {
line = client.readStringUntil(‘\r’);
if (line.indexOf(‘{‘) >= 0) {
DynamicJsonDocument json_doc(60000);
DeserializationError json_error =
deserializeJson(json_doc, line);
if (json_error) {
Serial.println(“parseing failed”);
Serial.println(json_error.c_str());
} else {
//process json here

In order to run this, you’ll need to acquire a free

APPID from openweathermap.org.
This uses the ArduinoJson library to decode the
response from OpenWeatherMap – we’ll look at
how to use the data in the next code block. The
basic challenge here is that decoding JSON requires
quite a lot of memory (at least in microcontroller
terms). The ESP32 has 520kB of RAM, so that’s
quite a lot to play with, but we’re also using quite a
bit to establish the WiFi connection, and to handle

96
 FORGE

the LEDs. We allocated 60kB of heap to the JSON }

deserialisation, which proved to be enough. If you’re if (i < 8) {
working with other JSON documents, you may need matrix[56+i] = rain_colour;
more or you may be able to get by with less. }
The fundamental use of this library is quite else {
straightforward, but the devil is, as always, in the matrix[24 + (i-8) ] = rain_colour;
details. Fortunately, the library is well documented }
at arduinojson.org if you need to use it for a
different purpose. }

”
This pulls the data our of the pre-created json_doc Above
There are loads of things you object. The data is the amount of precipitation Our finished display
showing just how
could display to help you make expected in the three-hour period (if it’s null, that rainy it’s going to be
means no rain). We set the blue value for the LED
good decisions about how to with the calculation min(max(2,int(rain.

”
go about your daily life toInt()*10)), 255). This turns the value into an
integer and multiplies it by ten (to make the
blueness sufficiently visible. If the value is 0 (i.e. less
Now, let’s take a look at how to use this than 1 mm of rain is forecast), we set the blue value
processed JSON document to light up the LEDs. We to 2. Finally, we use the outer min function to make
won’t go through all of it because each of the four sure this never goes above 255, as this is the largest
types of data are handled in a similar way, and you colour that the LED can take.
can take a look at the full source if you’re interested. The rain values correspond to two rows on the
As an example, though, here’s how we handle the matrix (one for the first 24-hour period and one for
‘rain’ LEDs: the second). This matrix is addressed in a zigzag
fashion, so the first 24-hour period is LED 56 counting
for (int i = 0; i<16; i++) { up, while the second is from 24 counting down.
String rain = json_doc[“list”][i][“rain”] The rest is all fairly straightforward, and if you’re
[“3h”]; interested, you can take a look at the full code.
if (rain != “null”) { There’s lots of data available about the environment,
rain_colour[2] = min(max(2,int(rain. while it’s useful to know, we have to build the right
toInt()*10)), 255); indicators into our daily lives. This is just one
} example, but there are loads of things you could
else { display to help you make good decisions about how
rain_colour[2] = 0; to go about your daily life.

97
Getting the most from ‘Super Glue’

TUTORIAL

Getting the most from

‘Super Glue’
Cyanoacrylate glue can do a lot more than stick
workpieces (and your fingers) together

C
yanoacrylate. Superglue. Krazy
Glue. CA glue. Whatever you call it,
we all use it, and we all both love
and hate it. We love the speed,
convenience, and holding power of
cyanoacrylate, but we hate the way
Gareth Branwyn it seems to want to stick to you before sticking to
anything else.
@garethb2 Cyanoacrylate (pronounced: sai·a·noh·a·kruh·leit)
glue is a fast-acting, strong-bonding adhesive
Gareth has been a commonly found in industry, medicine, and for
lifelong practitioner
(and chronicler) of home and hobby use. Some of cyanoacrylate’s other
DIY tech, media, and attributes include binding a wide range of materials
culture. He is the author (metals, plastics, ceramic, wood, elastomers) and
of ten books, including
Tips and Tales from holding up well to weather and ageing.
the Workshop, and
is a former editor for
Boing Boing, Wired,
LITTLE BOTTLES
and Make:. The iconic image of cyanoacrylate glue is in the tiny
tubes branded ‘Krazy Glue’ and ‘superglue’. These
small tubes actually make sense for the periodic
users because cyanoacrylate doesn’t have a great
shelf life (around 30 days). But if you use it regularly,
there are many sizes of bottles, working times, and Above
delivery methods to choose from. A selection of CA glues of different thicknesses and working
times, accelerator, needle and Flexi-Tip applicators, and
YOU’LL NEED Pro and ‘prosumer’ brands like Bob Smith replacement ‘snip-tip’ nozzles
Industries, Satellite City, and others offer
Bottle of
cyanoacrylate cyanoacrylate in a range of quantities. Two-ounce want to create a very substantive join or add a gap-
glue bottles are common, and you can get replacement filling function. Cyanoacrylate glues are also available
‘snip-tip’ plastic nozzles for your bottle size. You with a variety of working times, from a few seconds
Accelerator /
kicker can also get much larger bottles (and refill the up to an hour.
easier-to-use 2 oz bottles). You can extend the shelf The number of different formulations of
CA debonder
life of your cyanoacrylate glues by keeping them cyanoacrylate glue can be overwhelming. Start with a
Baking soda in an airtight container with some silica packets. medium thickness glue with a ten-second (or under)
Flexi-Tips The ideal storage temperature ranges between working time and experiment from there for your
35–40 °F (2–4 °C). particular needs.
Replacement
Cyanoacrylate glues come in different
nozzles
thicknesses, from super-thin to extra-thick to gel. ACCESSORIES
Poke-y thing Which thickness you use depends on the materials Besides the glue itself, there are several other
(needle, safety
pin, brad nail) you are bonding. Thicker glues are used when you accessories you can add to get more from your glue:

98
 FORGE

Packs of replacement nozzles are available for most

small bottle glue brands. Left
You can even use CA
glue and baking soda
USES to fashion makeshift
parts, like this hinge
Besides its voracious appetite for bonding, tab for an antique
computer monitor
cyanoacrylate adhesives can be used as everything
from a chemical clamp to a kind of low-tech 3D
building material.

As a clamp – If you want to quickly join workpieces

where wood glue or another slow-drying glue is
your main adhesive, add CA glue to the pieces to
establish an immediate clamping hold.

To add strength – Kinetic sculptor Tom Haney

Poke-y thing – CA loves to linger in whatever on using CA glue in wood-carving: “I ‘saturate’
applicator and clog it up. This is not entirely bad. softwoods, like bass-wood and pine, with clear,
Keeping moisture away can extend its life. Always water-thin CA to make the pieces harder and more
have a straight pin, safety pin, or brad nail close by durable after carving.”
to reopen clogged applicators.
To repair – Combining baking soda and CA glue can
Kicker – A cyanoacrylate activator, also known as create a strong ‘Bondo’-esque material that you can
a kicker, can make bonding time near-instant. A sand, file, cut, and paint. This has long been a go-to
sprinkle of baking soda works as an accelerator, so material for repairing musical instruments that have
too does compressed air. been bashed, gashed, or have small missing pieces.
The most common kickers are commercial
sprays that leave little to no residue. The common To build – Baking soda and CA glue can even be
activator method is to glue on one side of the join, used to build up enough material, in layers, to fashion
spray accelerator on the other, and push the pieces a broken part. Check out this video where Shelby of QUICK TIP
together. Hold for a few seconds, and it’s done. You If you use a needle

”
can also glue and then spray kicker over your join. to apply your glue,
Accelerators do result in a weaker bond, so avoid if Oh no, you just glued your to unclog the
needle the next
you need maximum strength. good side cutters together time you use it,
(or your hand to your head)! run the flame of a

”
Debonder – Oh no, you just glued your good side lighter beneath it
cutters together (or your hand to your head)! No No worries to remove the dried
worries. A debonder will take care of that. Nail polish glue inside.
remover (acetone) is a commonly available debonder.
And there are commercial debonders available. You the antique computing YouTube channel, AkBKukU,
won’t use this often, so a 1 oz bottle is all you’ll need. builds up and then files to shape a hinge tab for an
old computer monitor: hsmag.cc/cmANqB.
Flexi-Tips – These small plastic tubes come in
THANKS
packs of 10, 25, and 50. They fit over the tip of most Double sticky – Double-sided tape can leave residue Thanks to the
common plastic applicators and allow you to deliver on workpieces. Instead, put masking tape on both following makers
for input on this
a very small and precise bead of glue. pieces and CA glue the tape pieces together. To
article: Tom
remove, pry apart the workpieces and remove tape.
Haney, Martin
Needle bottles and applicators – Also for precise Rothfield, Jason
delivery and control, you can use medical syringes Skin care? – Guitarists have long used CA glue on Babler, Lenore
and needles and applicator bottles that have needle sore fingertips caused by steel guitar strings, and it Edman, Nora
tips. These are easily found online. can have medical applications for closing wounds. Lockshin, Miguel
While useful in this area, we recommend consulting Valenzuela,
Michael Colombo.
Replacement nozzles – It is inevitable that you’re a medical professional before attempting to glue
going to gum up the applicator on your glue bottle. yourself back together.

99
Digital indexing turntable

TUTORIAL

Digital indexing turntable

Build an Arduino-controlled turntable for accurate drilling and easy brazing

T
urntables are useful beasts to have 5 mm in from the edge at the centre of the longest
in a workshop. Whether you’re trying side. One of these side pieces will be used to mount
to drill holes around a central point, the controls for the turntable. You will need to mark
brazing a pretty bead around a piece and cut the sheet to accept the buttons, dials, and
of cylindrical stock, taking accurate LCD. The measurements will vary depending on the
measures or scans, or photographing exact components that you use, so just remember to
Dr Andrew Lewis or painting a model, a turntable makes the job much position each component so that it doesn’t interfere
easier. If you’re doing any of these tasks regularly, it’s with the motor or other parts of the case, and check
@monkeysailor
a good idea to buy or build a turntable designed everything twice before you start cutting.
specifically for that task. If you just want a sturdy On the two smaller pieces (100 mm × 110 mm) of
Dr Andrew Lewis
is the owner of general-purpose turntable that can stand up to some aluminium, drill holes 5 mm in from the edge of the
Shedlandia.com, a abuse, however, this project will show you how to shortest sides, and 10 mm from the longest sides.
restorer of old tools,
make one. This turntable will revolve in either The power socket for the Arduino will pass through
a fabricator for hire, a
research scientist, and direction, constantly or incrementally. In addition to one of these panels. As with the turntable controls,
a founder member of some basic metalworking, you’ll see how an Arduino the exact position will depend on the final mounting
the Guild of Makers.
can be used to control more powerful stepper position of the Arduino, so you’ll need to measure
motors, and how to avoid some of the pitfalls this and drill it later.
associated with stepper motor control. Mark and drill the hole for the turntable shaft. You
YOU’LL NEED
need to offset the turntable on the 10 mm aluminium
Arduino Uno MEASURE TWICE plate so that you’ll have room to position the
Push-button Start by preparing the thin pieces of aluminium. electronics and motor. Drill 50 mm from the edges of
switch These pieces will form the sides of the turntable, the top plate so that the circular turntable will be at
10 kΩ panel-mount protecting the electronics and holding the thicker top one end of the top plate rather than in the middle.
potentiometer and bottom plates together. On the two larger This hole needs to be quite large (22 mm) to accept
(100 mm × 150 mm) pieces, mark and drill 3 mm the flanged bearing, so a step-drill is quite useful for
10 kΩ 10-turn
 

panel-mount diameter holes 10 mm in from the shortest sides and this. If you’re more sensible than this author, you’ll
potentiometer 5 mm from the longest sides. Drill an additional hole remember to mark the position of the grub screws

100
 FORGE

STAYING TRUE YOU’LL NEED

CONT…
The top and bottom of the turntable should ideally be
as a close to parallel as possible so that any holes DRV8825
you drill on the turntable are as close to true as stepstick
possible. To do this without a milling machine, you module
can use four pieces of M8 threaded bar as legs that 20×4 I2C LCD
screw into threaded holes in the top plate, and rest
in recesses in the bottom plate. This way, you can NEMA 17
tighten or loosen each threaded leg until the top is high‑torque
exactly parallel to the bottom, then lock the threads stepper motor
into place with a little bit of resin. The sides of the 12 V 2 A power
turntable will screw into the top and bottom plate, supply
preventing them from pulling apart, while the metal
Round
legs will transfer any load from the top to the bottom
aluminium billet
plate without stressing the thinner side plates. The
–– 100 mm diameter
load is transferred from the turntable to the top plate by 10 mm thick
via a thrust bearing, which sits between the two.
2 × 10mm
aluminium plate
–– 100 × 150 mm

Left 2 × 3mm
Aluminium is soft, aluminium sheet
which can make
–– 100 × 150 mm
it more difficult to
drill. Use a light
oil and check your
2 × 3mm
drill bit isn’t getting aluminium sheet
clogged and tearing –– 100 × 110 mm
the metal. Break up
chips of aluminium by 4 × 115mm
‘pecking’ with the drill M8 threaded
rather than applying
stainless
constant pressure
steel rods

threads with an electric 50 mm M8

drill. Drill and tap M3 threaded
stainless steel rod
holes along the centre
line of the edge of the 3 × M6 10 mm
stainless steel
mentioned in the next paragraph before you drill the plate to match the holes in the thinner aluminium side
grub screws
22 mm hole. Fit the flanged bearing – the flange of the pieces. These holes will accept the screws that hold
bearing should be on the inside of the turntable, not the sides in place when the turntable is assembled. 4 × M3 40 mm
countersunk
the outside. machine screws
Next, drill and tap three holes for the M3 grub BE EITHER ACCURATE OR ADJUSTABLE
4 × M3 lock-nuts
screws that will retain the thrust bearing. These holes Finally, the holes for the motor mount need to be
should be positioned 120 degrees apart at the edge of drilled through and countersunk. For a NEMA 17 24 × M3 5 mm
the thrust bearing, motor, that means drilling machine screws

”
holding it in place. Their four 3 mm holes, in a 20-tooth 10 mm
distance from the centre This turntable will revolve in 31 mm square. The exact GT2 pulley
of the turntable shaft position of the motor
either direction, constantly 60-tooth 10 mm

”
should be the sum of the holes on the top will GT2 pulley
radius of the thrust or incrementally depend on the length of 92-tooth GT2 belt
bearing and the grub drive belt you’re using, (188 mm)
screw, which should be but if you’re using a 65 mm OD
34 mm assuming you’re using the parts 92-tooth GT2 belt, then the first hole should be about needle roller
recommended in the parts list. The corner holes for 34 mm from the side of the top plate. If possible, thrust bearing
the threaded bar need to be tapped, so drill them at create slots instead of holes, to allow for easy belt 608ZZ flanged
7.5 mm, and then tap them by hand to 8 mm. It’s tensioning. Put the 40 mm M3 bolts through the hole. ball bearing
tempting to use a power tool to tap these holes, but The bottom plate of the turntable is considerably 100 mm lathe
aluminium is a soft metal, and it’s easy to strip easier to make, and requires only a blind M8 hole chuck (optional)

101
Digital indexing turntable

TUTORIAL

A BIT TENSE
Belt tension is important for accuracy. If the toothed
belt is too loose, then there will be backlash in the
turntable. If the belt is too tight, it can cause the
Top Right motor to skip and flex the turntable shaft. You can
For this project, the
blind holes in the
either tension the belt manually by making the motor
base plate don’t have holes slotted and applying the tension before you
to be completely tighten the bolts in place, or you can add a sprung
blind: as long as the
rods are supported idler pulley to apply the tension automatically. In the
at their base, a small photographs for this project, the motor is mounted
pilot hole will have through holes in the top plate, without an idler pulley
no effect
fitted underneath. This is a mistake, and the holes
Right will be extended to allow tension adjustment the
Finding the centre next time the turntable is disassembled.
of the turntable is
important, so try
to be as accurate
as possible. Use a
centre finder or a 5 mm deep in each corner to accept the threaded bar
set of dividers to
get the best results.
from the top plate. You will also need to mount the
Applying dye to the Arduino to the base plate, at one end of the plate so
aluminium can make
it easier to see your that the power socket is accessible. The
scribe marks measurements for this are not critical, and the easiest
Below way to do this is to offer up the Arduino to the plate
Mixing mechanical and use a marker pen to transfer the screw holes
and electrical parts
means thinking from the PCB to the bottom plate. Drill and tap the
about the position
of wires and gears.
plate to accept M3 PCB stand-offs, and fit them with
Make sure that no some insulating tape under the Arduino to prevent
wires can get caught
in a mechanical part, accidental electrical shorts. Drill and tap M3 holes in
and no mechanical the edge of the plate for the side panels, as with the
parts can fall off into
electrical circuits. top plate.
The pulley here is The turntable itself needs to be as flat as possible. If have a lathe, glue a sheet of abrasive paper onto a flat
held in place by a
thread and two grub you have a lathe, face the round billet and take a skim surface, and use it to lap one side of the aluminium
screws. The wires from the edge to get it round. Drill a 7.5 mm hole in billet until it is smooth. Mark the centre of the billet
can be held down
with cable ties the centre and tap it with an M8 thread. If you don’t with a centre finder, and drill and tap with an M8
thread. Flip the aluminium over, and scribe a line
around the edge of the (uneven) top. Use this as a
guide to flatten the top using a combination of filing
and lapping. It will take a while, but it’s worth the extra
effort to make the turntable as accurate as possible. If
you are mounting a chuck on the turntable, transfer
and drill the mounting holes onto the turntable, adding
appropriate countersinks or clearance to the back of
the turntable.
It’s time to assemble the mechanical hardware for
the turntable. Screw the four M8 threaded legs into
the top plate, and put the free ends into the M8 blind
holes in the bottom plate. Screw the M3 grub screws
into the top plate, drop the thrust bearing and washers
into place, and adjust the grub screws so that they sit
about 1 mm below the top of the thrust bearing’s
height. Add a little thread-lock or nail varnish to the
grub screws to keep them from coming undone. Fit
the 20-tooth pulley onto the motor shaft and lock it in
place. Put the M3 40 mm bolts through the slots/holes
in the top plate and into the motor mounts, using the

102
 FORGE

Figure 1
The wiring diagram.
For details of pin
connections, see the
table below

locking nuts to keep them in place against the top 60-tooth pulley. If you have the facility, tap the pulley
plate. Fit the Arduino, LCD, and controls into place, with an M8 thread and screw it onto the shaft, then QUICK TIP
and wire them as in Figure 1. Mount the DRV8825 tighten the grub screws. Or use a lock nut on the end Aluminium swarf
onto the side of the motor using foam tape. Screw the of the shaft and tighten the grub screws on the pulley sticks to everything,
especially fleece
spindle into the turntable, and lock it in place with to hold it in place. The turntable should be snug
clothing. It also
thread-lock or by drilling a small hole along the edge of against the thrust bearing, but not so tight that it
galls up under
the thread and adding a locking pin. Add an M8 binds. Upload the code (from hsmag.cc/issue24) to machine-ways
washer underneath the flanged bearing, put the the Arduino, and screw on the sides of the box. You and under threads.
turntable spindle through the bearing, and fit the should be ready to give the turntable a test. Clean up frequently.

Pin Connects to
TURN THE TABLES
2 DIR on 8825
The DRV8825 stepstick is a motor controller board that
combines current-limiting and micro-stepping to give 3 STP on 8825
you much more control than a simple H-bridge controller. 6 SLP on 8825
The AccelStepper library makes controlling the stepstick
easy, but there are a few things you need to do to your 7 RES on 8825
hardware and in your code to make sure you get the best
8 +5 V on Step Pot
from a DRV8825. Firstly, you need to set the current limit
level to match the motor you’re using. This is done by 9 +5 V on Speed Pot
adjusting the small surface-mounted potentiometer on
the stepstick, and measuring a reference voltage at the 10 GND on Step Pot QUICK TIP
centre of the potentiometer on the DRV8825. Making a 11 GND on Speed Pot You can edit the
few assumptions, the reference voltage is equal to half of code to change the
the current, so a 1 amp stepper motor would need 0.5 V. 12 GND on Step Button maximum speed
If this sounds a bit fiddly and complicated, some people 13 Step Button and number of
just estimate the correct value by running the motor and divisions for the
adjusting the potentiometer until the motor starts to skip, A5 SCL on I2C LCD turntable. You can
then backing off again and checking that the chip on the even add extra
A4 SDA on I2C LCD
controller isn’t getting too hot. On the Arduino, the motor code to control
control code is timing dependent, so anything that slows A3 Pin 2 on Step Pot acceleration and
down your loop can potentially affect the smooth rotation deceleration to
A2 Pin 2 on Speed Pot
of the motor. It’s also worth keeping in mind that if you counteract the
rely on ‘while’ loops to move the motor, then your board is VIN VMT on 8825 inertia and
going to be tied up until the motor has finished moving. momentum of
GND GND on 8825
bigger loads.

103
Get FM radio on a microcontroller

TUTORIAL

Get FM radio on
a microcontroller
Link your Arduino up to the airwaves and pick up some banging tunes

W
hen you hear the word available, but the most common ones are built on a
‘radio’ in 2019, you may Si4703 chip. These are available for a few pounds
well think of Bluetooth on direct-from-China websites, or for a bit more with
or SatNOGS, or any of a from SparkFun (which come with more support and
myriad of other high-tech documentation). Unlke basic tuners, the Si4703 takes
applications that are using commands from a microcontroller.
these waves to send digital data. Wiring is mostly straightforward. You need to
However, even in the modern day, there’s still connect power and ground, and then SDIO and SCLK
a worldwide network of good, old-fashioned FM to your board’s SDA and SCK pins (which may or may
broadcasters around, sending music and chat over not be labelled as such) – take a look at your board’s
the airwaves. documentation for details. On the Adafruit Grand
Building an FM tuner is an interesting project if Central that we tested with, these are pins 20 and 21.
you want to learn more about how radio works, but Most Si4703 breakouts aren’t 5 V tolerant, so make
you don’t have to start from scratch. You can start sure you’re either using a 3.3 V microcontroller or a
with a pre-built radio tuner breakout. There are a few logic level shifter.

Right
There are Arduino
libraries to help you
get started quickly
and easily with
Si470x radio tuners

104
 FORGE

There are, broadly speaking, two types of breakout can set a frequency as well as seek up or down for
for this chip: those with a headphone adapter and the next station. You can  adjust the volume and also
those without. Those with a headphone adapter will get station information that’s sent. Both libraries are
have an on-board amplifier and, crucially, will most easy to use, and they come with examples that let
likely use the headphone wire as an antenna. This you test out your breakout board using commands
means that you have to use a longish wire to connect sent via the serial interface.
your sound output (whether or not it actually ends As a simple example, you can create an object for
in headphones). If you’re going for a more compact the board using the SparkFun library with:
build, you will want a breakout which has a dedicated
antenna connector so you don’t need to use such a Si4703_Breakout radio(resetPin, SDIO, SCLK);
long connector. radio.powerOn();
There are a couple of GPIO pins on the Si4703, radio.setVolume(4);
but their use isn’t

”
supported by any of Then you can use the
the libraries we’ve If you’re going for a more radio.seekUp() and Above left
GPIO1 and 2
found. There’s probably compact build, you will want radio.seekDown() are available,
but rarely used
not much use for functions to find the
them as you need a a breakout which has a station you’re looking Above

”
All the solderable
microcontroller to use dedicated antenna connector for. Alternatively, you connectors are on
the device, and you’ll can jump straight to one side, so wiring
up is easy
likely have better control a particular frequency
over the GPIO on the microcontroller. However, if with something like radio.setChannel(974).
you do find yourself a pin or two short, there is some
code showing how to access the GPIOs on the WHAT WILL YOU BUILD?
breakout directly in SparkFun’s GitHub repository for This is a fun little board, but it is very specialised to
the board: hsmag.cc/xyAdbe. one use: playing FM radio. There are a few things
we could think of building with this, including adding
ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS a radio alarm function to a clock build, and creating
There are a couple of libraries available to help a radio with a unique interface (this could be big
you control this chip. SparkFun has a library that buttons to hit for different stations, or perhaps a
you can download from here: hsmag.cc/hh0Cqa, phone app to change the station). You could even
while mathertel.de has an alternative library hook it up with your own radio transmitter to send
at hsmag.cc/4zf1GL. audio data between two devices – make sure to
We’ve tested both of these libraries out, and follow local laws on broadcast frequencies and
they both work in a very similar fashion, which strengths if you do, though. We’re sure you’ll come
essentially gives you the programmatic control that up with a whole range of other options for this little
you would expect as a user of a radio tuner. You module as well.

105
Multicoloured 3D-printed jewellery

TUTORIAL

Multicoloured
3D-printed jewellery
Make custom jewellery for yourself, or as a special gift for someone else!

T
hese days, 3D printing filaments In general, we found it helpful to print with
come in many different colours and a smaller layer height. This results in a ‘higher
finishes, from neon to metallic to UV resolution’ print, which can make a big difference
colour changing, and beyond. Making when you’re trying to print tiny details in jewellery.
jewellery is a fun way to experiment Small prints with thin walls, such as rings, may
with different colours and showcase have trouble staying adhered to the bed due to their
Sophy Wong the more exciting filaments in your stash. Here, we’ll minimal footprint – try adding a raft or a brim in your
look at a simple way to create dynamic, multicoloured slicer for better hold.
@sophywong
prints, using a basic printer with a single extruder! As usual, you may need to experiment to find the
This tutorial assumes working knowledge of the settings that work best for your specific 3D printer
Sophy Wong is a
designer, maker, 3D printing process, but if you’re brand new to 3D and filament. All the prints shown in this article were
and avid creator. Her printing, there are many great resources on the web modelled in Autodesk Fusion 360, sliced in Cura 4.3.0,
projects range from
for getting started. On YouTube, check out Angus and printed on a Creality CR-10S printer.
period costumes
to Arduino-driven Deveson at Maker’s Muse, Devin Montes at Make Autodesk’s Fusion 360, a popular 3D CAD program,
wearable tech. She Anything, and Joel Telling, the 3D Printing Nerd. The is used by industrial designers to create everything
can be found on her
YouTube channel and Maker’s Muse channel has a fantastic playlist of ‘3D from water bottles to cars. It’s also free for students,
at sophywong.com Printing 101’ videos that will teach you the processes hobbyists, and makers. Having access to such a
and terminology you’ll need to get up and running powerful program is amazing, but there’s a lot to
with your first prints. If you don’t own a 3D printer, learn if you’re new to 3D modelling. Autodesk has
head to a local makerspace to give it a try! a large library of Fusion 360 tutorials on its website
Jewellery pieces tend to be small, and are often that can get you up and running in the software. For
satisfyingly quick prints – each of the bright, single- this tutorial, we’ll assume a working knowledge
coloured rings shown here took about 15 minutes of 3D modelling in general. We’ll demonstrate our
to print. However, when printing such small objects, design process in Fusion 360, but we’ll focus on
expect to do some experimentation with settings in design concepts that you can use to create your own
your slicer to achieve successful results. jewellery in any 3D modelling program.

106
 FORGE

Far Left
You can download
the models from
hsmag.cc/issue24

If learning how to 3D-model your own jewellery is

a bit overwhelming, don’t worry! You can download
our models and skip right to the fun part: slicing and
printing. We’re using Cura as our slicer to process
the 3D model and turn it into G-code instructions for
the printer. Cura provides a handy ‘Pause at Height’
feature, which makes it easy to change filament in
the middle of a print. We’ll take advantage of this
feature to create multicoloured prints on a standard
printer with just one extruder.
We’ll start by using this filament-change trick
on simple prints for a two-toned effect. This is a
great way to practise the technique and see which
filaments work well together. Then, we’ll take this
concept further and show you how to design models
strategically to make use of colour changes at specific
heights. With some planning and maths in the design
phase, a filament-swap can highlight shapes in your
model and add striking depth to your print.

GEOMETRIC RINGS Start by downloading the Geometric Rings file Above

You can create
Let’s start with the simplest jewellery designs in and opening it in Fusion 360. Each ring design is a
impressive rings with
this collection: geometric rings. These rings are just separate body in the file, listed in the object browser simple extrusions
2D sketches extruded vertically, with no overhangs. on the left. Click the eye next to each body to view
They’re quick, easy prints that are perfect for trying the rings one at a time. We’ve designed our rings
out an experimental technique like this! with parametric dimensions, to make it easy to
change the size of the rings before printing.
To find your ring size, use callipers to measure
the inner diameter of a ring that fits you well.
Alternatively, a ring sizer is useful if you want to
make rings based on standard ring sizes. Select the
size you want on the sizer, and measure its inner
diameter. Open the User Parameters window, and
enter your ring size in the RingSize parameter. All
the designs in this file will be updated with the
new dimension.
To design our rings in Fusion 360, we started
by creating a sketch on the X plane, and drawing a
circle with the diameter of our RingSize parameter.
This is the inner contour of our ring. Then, we drew
the outer contour shape of the ring around the first
circle. For this geometry-themed set, we used a
Above square, a hexagon, a circle, and a triangle as outer
Start simple and build into more complex pieces
once you’ve got some experience

107
Multicoloured 3D-printed jewellery

TUTORIAL

shapes. A triangle is an awkward shape for a ring, so When you’ve finished entering your settings, click
we rounded it into a tear-drop shape. Once we were ‘Slice’ to generate the G-code for your printer. Click
happy with our shapes, we extruded all of the rings ‘Preview’ to see a visualisation of your finished print.
to the RingThickness parameter: 5 mm. You can Zoom in a bit and use the vertical slider on the right
change this value in the User Parameters window to scrub through the layers of your print – it’s always
to make a thinner or thicker ring. It’s a good idea to wise to take a good look at the preview and make
avoid sharp edges on jewellery, so we rounded off sure everything looks correct before printing. For
the corners and inner circle edges with fillets. single-colour rings, this is where you’d export the
Once you’ve updated the file with your ring file and start printing. However, for the multicolour
size, you can export STL files from Fusion 360 by filament-change trick, there are a few more steps
before exporting.

”
For a two-toned look, we’re going to change our
It’s a good idea to avoid sharp edges on jewellery, filament halfway through the print. This means we’ll
need to determine which layer number is at the
so we rounded off the corners and inner circle

”
midpoint of the ring. In the preview window, move
edges with fillets the vertical slider on the right to the top, and note the
number above the slider. This is the total number of
layers in your print. Divide this number in half, and
right-clicking on each body in the object browser you’ve got your middle layer. At a .12 mm layer height,
and selecting ‘Save as STL‘. Click ‘OK’ in the dialog our 5 mm tall ring will take 41 layers, so we are going
box, then name and save the STL file. When you’ve to change our filament at layer 21.
exported all the STL files, move on to slicing our Now that we know what layer we want to change
models in Cura. Be sure you are using the latest the filament at, we could watch the print, counting
version of Cura, 4.3.0, for this project.
Open Cura and click the folder icon to import one or
more of the STLs you created. Use the rotate tool to
orient the rings on the bed so that they are lying flat
Right on their sides. Click on the pencil icon to choose your
Smaller layers mean
higher quality but print settings. You can start with Cura’s ‘Super Quality’
slower print times settings and adjust values from there until you are
Below happy with your prints. If your rings lift off the bed
Cura allows you to
while printing, you can add a brim or a raft in the ‘Bed
customise the
print settings Adhesion’ section of the settings panel.

Below
Preview mode gives you a final chance to check your object
before printing

108
 FORGE

print temperature: for

us, this was 200 °C for
our PLA filament. Do
not forget to set the
standby temperature,
or you may have
trouble resuming
your print after the
filament change.
When you’ve
finished entering
your settings, close
the Post Processing
layers as they are printed, and manually pause the plug-in window. You will now see a hammer and
printer at layer 21 to change the filament. But Cura wrench icon next to the Slice button, indicating that
provides a much easier and more dependable option, you are including a post-processing script. (Cura will
by modifying the G-code itself. (The script used here add the pause script to all future sliced models until
works well on your author’s Marlin-based Creality CR- you remove it by clicking the X next to it in the Post
10S printer, but printers running other firmware may Processing plug-in window.) Click ‘Slice’ again to
require a different script.) generate your new G-code, and again scrub through
Click on the Extensions drop-down menu, and the preview to make sure everything looks correct.
select Post Processing, then Modify G-Code. This will Save the file, and send it to your printer for printing!
open the Post Processing plug-in, which allows you Load the first colour of filament into your printer,
to select from various useful scripts built into Cura. and begin printing the ring. Don’t wander off: you’ve
Click on ‘Add a script‘ and select ‘Pause at Height‘. In got a filament change coming up at the halfway mark!
the settings pane, change the first box from ‘height‘ At layer 21, the printer should pause and move the Above
The post-processing
to ‘Layer No.’ and enter ‘21’ in the ‘Pause Layer’ box. print head off to the side of your print. Change the settings change how
the printer runs
Note: the pause will occur at the start of this layer, filament as you normally would, being careful not
before the layer is printed. This means layers 1–20 will to move the print head or printer bed. Extrude as Below Left
Enter the pause
be the first colour, and layers 21–41 will be the second needed to fully prime the nozzle with the new colour. height for the
colour. Remember this when planning your designs. With your second colour loaded into the printer, use filament change

Check through the remaining settings boxes. The your printer’s control panel to resume the print. The Below
The G-code tells your
‘Park Print Head’ boxes allow you to choose an XY printer should pick up right where it left off, finishing
printer how to move
position for the print head to move to while paused. your print with the second colour. the print head
The default setting (190,190) moves it away from the
print, which makes the filament change easier. Our
prints worked fine without retraction or extrusion
values, so we left those at zero. Make sure to set
the standby temperature to the same value as your

109
Multicoloured 3D-printed jewellery

TUTORIAL

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

Above We’ve had great results with the ‘Pause at Height’
Printing white first
makes the colour
script in Cura, but keep in mind that modifying
change easier G-code is an advanced technique. G-code controls
Right every aspect of your printer, and an error in your
There’s a wide range code can cause unwanted heating or movement,
of jewellery in the
downloadable files: and damage your printer. We do not recommend geometric rings to be the same thickness. This way,
pick your favourites manually modifying your G-code unless you are the midpoint is the same layer for all of them, so you
and get printing!
a G-code expert! can print them all together – just change the filament
Our most common error when attempting this once for an entire set of two-toned rings.
method was forgetting to set the standby temperature We designed an Art Deco-inspired collection with
in the Cura Post Processing plug-in. When this raised details that really pop when printed in a second
happened, the extruder temperature dropped to zero colour. We designed each piece to take advantage of a
during the pause, and we were unable to resume colour change at a specific height. Features below this
the print. In these cases, we had to cancel the print, height would be the first colour, and features above
remove the half-finished pieces from the bed, and would be the second colour. All pieces designed with
start over. If this happens to you, don’t despair! With the same ‘colour change height’ can be printed at the
an experimental technique like this, expect to make

”
some mistakes the first time around, as we did.
Practise on small,15-minute prints first, to get the hang If printing two highly
of the process with your particular printer and test contrasting colours, like
Below your filaments for compatibility, before tackling larger
Silver and gold is a black and white, print the

”
multicolour projects.
classic combination
in jewellery When choosing multiple filaments for the same lighter colour first
print, you’ll want to make sure that both filaments print
well at the same temperature. If printing two highly
contrasting colours, like black and white, print the same time with the filament-swap technique, because
lighter colour first, as it may take longer to clear the their raised details will start on the same layer. See our
dark filament out of the extruder. downloadable chart for the colour change heights of
each model (hsmag.cc/issue24), and the print settings
GOING FURTHER WITH we used. Raised lines and volumetric shapes look
MULTICOLOUR PRINTS great on top of a contrasting background colour.
Of course, 3D printing is great for making multiples For example, our Dome Earrings and Lined Earrings
of things, and if you’re going to change the filament both change colours at 1.75 mm. Import both STL files
mid-print, it’s nice to make more than one tiny ring into Cura, duplicating each one for two earrings. To
at a time. With this in mind, we designed all of our determine which layer to pause and change filament at,

110
 FORGE

Far Left
Two lengths of
elastic complete
the bracelet

Left
Art Deco: perfect
your Peaky Blinders-
inspired outfit

follow the same steps in Cura as before to generate a the bracelet together with elastic cord. Cut two lengths
sliced preview of the model. Zoom in and look at your of elastic cord, and thread the bracelet together,
model from the top-down view. Use the slider to scrub starting and ending with the large holes in Tile B. Tie
through the preview, and find the layer that the raised off each cord with a tight knot, and secure with a dot
details start on. With a 0.12 mm layer height, this of CA glue. (Using two cords to assemble the bracelet
should be layer 16. Enter this as the ‘Layer No.’ setting instead of one will keep the bracelet tiles from twisting
in the Pause at Height plug-in, and print as before, when stretched.)
changing filament at the printer pause. Now that you know how to change filament mid-
To finish the earrings, add ear wires to the top of print, you can use this technique to get creative. When
each, using large jump rings if needed. Chain-nosed designing your models, think about using different
jewellery pliers are useful for opening and closing jump colours at various heights, and build your object
rings without distorting the wire. accordingly. Experiment and practise with small, quick
Similarly, our pendants are designed for a colour prints like rings, then go bigger with a three-colour print Below
Three colour changes
change height of 3 mm, and can be printed together. like our Art Deco Bracelet. Show us your multicoloured
allow for more
With a layer height of 0.12 mm, the filament change 3D prints at hackspace@raspberrypi.org! complicated effects
should occur at layer 26. After printing, the Rectangle
Pendant can slide directly onto a narrow chain or cord
as a necklace. To finish the Sunset Pendant, you’ll
need to add a jump ring to the small loop at the top of
the pendant, before threading it onto chain or cord.
Our most ambitious design in this collection is the
Art Deco Tile Bracelet. We designed the tiles to look
like gemstone settings. If you’re up for it, try printing
these with two filament changes. We chose a dark,
sparkly grey for the base shape, which gives the look
of pewter. Next, we printed the ‘setting’ layers in gold,
and finally the rectangular ‘gem’ shapes in the sparkly
grey. We also experimented with clear translucent
filament for a ‘diamond’ look.
We’ve provided two files for the Art Deco bracelet:
Tile A is the standard tile design, Tile B has two large
holes in the back for tying knots in the elastic cords.
Print as many of the tiles as you need for your bracelet,
including one of Tile B. File down any sharp edges
before assembling your bracelet. Each tile has two
sets of small holes running through them, for stringing

111
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FIELD TEST
HACK MAKE BUILD CREATE
Hacker gear poked, prodded, taken apart, and investigated

PG

114
DIRECT FROM SHENZHEN:

BLUETOOTH
AUDIO
PG
116
Upgrade your old hi-fi with
a wireless connection

BEST OF
BREED
PG

122
CAN I HACK
Let your next project see the world with
A VIDEO our pick of lidar and radar scanners
BUSINESS CARD
Yuppie accessory or source of
hackable parts? We investigate

REVIEWS
124 Tool sharpener 128
Template maker
Keep your blades in shape Fold paper into (almost) any shape

126 Dremel router 129 Booze: River Cottage
An extra skill for your rotary tool A journey of fermentable delights
Direct From Shenzhen

REGULAR

Bluetooth
audio
Revisiting the options for wireless audio

By Ben Everard @ben_everard

W
e’ve looked at a Bluetooth
audio receiver before (in
issue 18).
Then, the board we received
couldn’t put out decent audio.
Perhaps it doesn’t make sense
to buy a bundled receiver and amplifier board. After
all, the subject of audio amplifiers is complex, with
options costing from a few pounds to… well, we’re
not aware of any upper limit on the amount you can
pay for an audio amplifier. In contrast, a Bluetooth
Below receiver is a much simpler proposition – it receives a
The small PCB
antenna proved
digital bitstream and converts this into a low-power
perfectly capable in analogue stream. Yes, there are quality concerns, but
our testing
they’re much more limited because the digital nature
of Bluetooth audio puts a finite upper limit on quality.
Once we’ve got a decent Bluetooth receiver, we can
pair it with an amplifier of our choice, whether that’s
a new one or feeding the audio into the line-in on an
existing system.
We’ve previously used a KRC-86B Bluetooth
module, but this seems to be less available and
it’s gone up in price significantly since we first
experimented with it several years ago. Now, the
most common affordable option is the VHM-314. We
bought one from Global Purchase Store on AliExpress
for £1.92, including delivery to the UK.
There are two sets of connectors: solderable ones
and plug-in ones. For power, there’s a micro USB
connector or a solderable ‘BAT’ connector that can
take 3.7–5 V (a range that includes LiPo batteries,
three AA batteries, and USB power sources). There’s
nothing special about the BAT connection (such as
charging or power management) – it’s really just
a voltage in, and if you’re planning on powering
this from a LiPo, you’ll need additional battery
management hardware.

114
 FIELD TEST

Audio out comes via either a 3.5 mm jack or three hi-fi’, but alas, we can’t. It’s possible to change
solderable connectors (LGR). These solderable the name that they show up as on your phone, Above
the flat back of the
connectors are surface-mount in that they don’t have but that doesn’t help other people. The biggest PCB makes it easy
any holes. They may fit some form of connector, but issue here is that if you have more than one to mount (if you
don’t solder power
we soldered the wires to them. It’s not the easiest speaker built on the same type of hardware, it’s lines on)
soldering job, as it’s slotted between the jack and a recipe for confusion. However, perhaps if we’d
micro USB connector, but shouldn’t be too hard. ordered more than one, we’d have been lucky
There aren’t any components on the back of the and got one that followed the documentation
board, so unless you solder into the through-hole and identified itself as XY_BT or VHM-314.
battery connections, you can mount this board on a Beyond this minor annoyance, the board
flat surface using the two mounting holes. works as expected. It connected and streamed
Considering the price, this feels impressively audio and is of a quality we’re happy with. The
well constructed. The 30 mm × 30 mm circuit board reception worked at the distances we’d expect
is solid, and everything feels firmly attached. It’s it to (with no problems up to about 5-10 m).
certainly a lot more solid than many PCBs we’ve The on-board connectors mean that you could

DIRECT FROM SHENZHEN

received over the course of putting together this easily add Bluetooth audio to an aging stereo
section over the past two years. without any soldering at all. Just connect up the
wires and you’re good to go. With a bit more work,
READY TO CONNECT you can build it into your hi-fi equipment a little
Add power and the light on the unit should start more neatly. At just 30 mm x 30 mm, there’s a good
flashing – ours was blue, but some documentation chance you’ll be able to mount this inside your
for the unit says it’s red. At this point, it’s ready existing equipment somewhere. Alternatively, pair
to pair. Your phone, this up with an amplifier

”
computer, or other For just under £2, you can board of your choice
Bluetooth device should and build your own
pick it up in a scan. You resurrect these systems Bluetooth audio system.

”
will, however, have and get yourself a great We really like modules
to figure out which like this that do one
device it is in the list.
hi-fi system thing well and are easy
The seller page to use. You don’t need
informed us that it should show up as ‘XY_BT’; the to program them, you don’t even need to solder
documents linked from the seller page said that it onto them, and they can add real value to users.
should show up as ‘VHM-314’. However, it actually There are thousands of old music systems that
shows up as XIDADIANZI. It shouldn’t be too difficult can play great-quality music, but are being thrown
to work out which one is the correct device by out because no one uses cassettes or CDs any
seeing what appears when you power on the board. more. And while vinyl is undergoing something of
Herein, though, lies our biggest complaint a resurgence, it’s tiny compared to the streaming
with cheap Bluetooth boards: it’s not usually revolution. For just under £2, you can resurrect
possible to change the name of them. We’d like these systems and get yourself a great hi-fi
this one to identify as ‘Kitchen radio’ or ‘Lounge system, and keep some waste out of landfill.

115
Know your surroundings

BEST OF BREED

ONLYTHE
BEST
Know your
surroundings
Lidar and radar has entered the DIY arena

By Marc de Vinck @devinck

S
ensing your environment is a
popular subject among DIY
electronics enthusiasts. In previous
articles, we’ve looked at many
different environmental sensing
solutions ranging from time and
temperature, to motion and gestures. But in this
article, we are going to look specifically at
measuring distance.
We all know and love components like the classic
ultrasonic and infrared distance sensors, but what
happens when you need accuracy and speed? This
is where light detection and ranging (lidar) sensors
and radar come into play. Many of these
technologies are still relatively new to the DIY
scene, but their availability is growing every day.
In this Best of Breed, we’ll be looking at some
more expensive, and also more accurate, methods
for sensing distance in your environment. Unlike a
simple and inexpensive IR sensor, lidar and radar
systems can add up to 1000s of dollars for a
complete system. But sometimes you need
precision, or need to measure longer distances, or Left
Lidar can capture
in direct sunlight. That’s where these sensors really landscapes (Avebury
shine. And don’t worry, we’ve selected a few and Silbury hill
neolithic sights
sensors and technologies that are much more shown here)
affordable for the average robot builder. So, let’s
Image
jump right in and look at a few of my favourites. Mark Walters

116
 FIELD TEST

Slamtec RPLIDAR A1 vs
Garmin LIDAR-Lite Optical
Distance Sensor
Keep your Raspberry Pi going with intermittent power

SLAMTEC $114.95 adafruit.com GARMIN $130 adafruit.com

T
he Slamtec RPLIDAR, available at
Adafruit, is a low-cost true lidar
solution for your robotics project.
That’s not to say that this is
inexpensive, but just a few years ago
the thought of a true lidar system at just
over $100 USD was crazy talk! We’ve come a long
way in just a few short years, and we can’t help but
think it’s because of the autonomous car craze.
The specifications of the RPLIDAR, coupled with its
affordability, is what really impressed us. Many DIY
Left
lidar systems only include the actual laser and sensor. Lidar can give
But this unit includes all those parts, and the motorised your robot
anthropomorphic
housing which allows for fast 360º rotation of the laser eyes
beam. This gives you extremely accurate, down to
Below
0.2 cm, 360º measurements in a twelve-metre range. A reliable and
The sample rate is adjustable from 2–10Hz, which is fast lidar module
for long-distance
measured in complete rotations, allowing for fast data measuring
acquisition. It’s a near-perfect solution for a moving

I
platform like an autonomous robot. f you don’t need the 360º rotational power
The RPLIDAR comes with an on-board connector of the RPLIDAR, then the Garmin LIDAR-Lite VERDICT
with power and data pin breakouts, allowing you to might be a good option. Version 3 of the
Slamtec
theoretically control this device via a serial port, but Garmin sensor is a high-performance and RPLIDAR A1
most people will want to power it via the included compact lidar solution capable of measuring up
Great value for
dongle and attach it to their computer to handle all the to 40 metres away. Garmin is known for its
fast sensing
incoming data. Head on over to the website for high-quality GPS systems, and their high standards in 360º.

10 / 10
complete details on using the Slamtec RPLIDAR. come through in this lidar module.
The module itself only draws 130 mA, so powering
it up for extended periods shouldn’t be an issue.
And when you need to hook this unit up to your
microcontroller, it’s as simple as using the popular Garmin LIDAR-
I2C protocol. There are example libraries and code for Lite Optical
Arduino and CircuitPython available on the Adafruit Distance Sensor
website, which will get you up and running quickly. Reliable and fast.

8/ 10
When you need accuracy, reliability, and long-
distance measuring, be sure to check out the Garmin
LIDAR V3.

117
Know your surroundings

BEST OF BREED

SparkFun A111 Pulsed

Radar Breakout
SPARKFUN $60 sparkfun.com

N
ow let’s look at something a bit
different: the SparkFun Pulsed
Radar Breakout board. Not only
does this board measure distance up
to two metres, but you can also
sense gestures, speed motion. And it
does it by radar, which is truly amazing technology for
the DIY enthusiast. The A111 is a single-chip solution
for pulsed coherent radar which includes an
integrated antenna and SPI interface.
The headers on the board are Raspberry Pi-friendly,
and it also includes proper voltage regulation and
translation. The A111 can simply plug directly into
your Raspberry Pi B+, or newer model, allowing for
easy setup. It also works with many different ARMv7
or ARM Cortex-M4 platforms. There is a visualisation
tool written in Python that demonstrates how you can
collect the A111’s data in real-time and graph the
distance. When you want the benefits of 60GHz radar
integrated into your next project, this is for you!

Right
New tech enters
the game

VERDICT
On the cutting
edge of
technology.

10/ 10
118
 FIELD TEST

SF30-B High Speed

Laser Rangefinder
PARALLAX $299 parallax.com

I
f you are planning on building a UAV or
any type of moving robotics platform,
taking accurate measurements at a high
rate of speed is going to be critical to
the robot’s success. That’s where the
SF30-B High Speed Laser Rangefinder from
Parallax comes into play. This lightweight sensor
is capable of taking 18,317 measurement readings
per second up to 50 metres. Those are some Left
This sensor
impressive numbers! allows you to
The unit runs on 5 V and is configurable to work detect motion
with both digital and analogue interfaces, making it
easy to integrate with most flight controllers. The
sensor will smooth out its data, but if speed is what VERDICT
you need, you can access the raw output and Speed, at a price.

8 / 10
interpolate the data as needed. Check out the
product page for additional information, including
safety information, sample code, and more.

X-BAND MOTION DETECTOR

SIMPLYTRONIC $39.99 shopsimplytronics.com

Now for something a little more unusual. The X-Band Motion Detector from
SimplyTronics is a fascinating motion and distance sensor. Instead of the commonly
used infrared or ultrasonic technology to detect motion, the X-Band sensor operates
at 10.525GHz and can detect any oscillations in that spectrum, which in turn means
motion. What makes this product really interesting is its ability to work through walls
and windows. Yes, we said walls!
We’ve used this product on several occasions while prototyping, and it’s really
fun. Just keep in mind that this sensor is not FCC or CE approved. If you are planning
on using this sensor in your project, you must go through the process of having it
approved by your national licensing agency. It’s an arduous process, but it just might
be worth it if you need this sensor’s unique capabilities.

119
Know your surroundings

BEST OF BREED

RPLIDAR A3M1
SPARKFUN $699 sparkfun.com

N
ow let’s take a look at a more high-
end lidar system which starts to go
beyond the average DIY enthusiast.
The RPLIDAR A3M1 has some very
impressive specifications, like being
able to take up to 16,000
measurements per second, in a full 360º, and at a
range of 25 metres. But all that speed comes at a
hefty price. Although, if your project requires that kind
of accuracy and speed, you might be thinking this
isn’t so expensive considering the alternatives, which
can be significantly more costly.
The RPLIDAR A3M1 has some other nice features,
besides its more than capable speed and accuracy.
You can also use it in two modes. One is specifically
designed for high-speed indoor measurements, and
the other is tuned for outdoor operation, reducing
inaccuracies from brighter lighting situations. It’s a
nice, close to turnkey, solution.
Another thing to carefully consider about this

”
product is the fact that every unit is tested to make
sure it passes the strict eye safety standards of an You might be
IEC-60825 Class 1 product. Better safe than sorry thinking this isn’t so
when dealing with laser technology!
expensive considering

”
SparkFun also sells the slightly less powerful
RPLIDAR A2M8, which also comes with a lower price the alternatives
tag of $370. Check out their product pages for
complete comparisons.

Above
The RPLIDAR
A2M8, a slightly less
powerful and less
costly alternative to
the RPLIDAR A3M1

VERDICT
High-end
360º sensing.

8 / 10
120
 THE BEST PROJECTS FROM

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THE ULTIMATE SKILLS,
TRICKS, AND MAKES

MUSIC
BOX
Build a touch-activated
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The ultimate guide to making
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£12.99
LASER-CUT
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Create stunning 360° animated
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GIFs with this geared turntable

121
A video business card

CAN I HACK IT?

Can I Hack It?

A video
business card?
Can we hack a video business card?

B
Above usiness cards convey a message ELECTRONICS
On the outside. the
card is very plain, to the recipient, but they can only Externally the unit is very sparse. There is a 2.4-
but we have a lot say so much. What if we had a inch LCD screen and a mini USB port that is used
of electronics in a
small package video business card that could play a to charge the device and to transfer videos to
message to the receiver? Could we the internal flash memory, which is a Samsung
use it with sensors and buttons in a K9F2G08U0C 256MB flash unit. The card appears as
project? There is only one way to find out, and that a USB flash drive when plugged into a PC. Charging
is to take it apart! the built-in 3.7 V 300 mAh LiPo is made possible
due to a voltage regulator which passes the correct
GENERAL CONSTRUCTION voltage to the LiPo battery. Thankfully, the LiPo has
We expected plastic, but no, there is none. To its own protection circuit, which means that the LiPo
Les Pounder keep the costs, down we see a fairly thick, plastic- will not over/under-charge.
@biglesp coated card which is stuck to a chassis made from At the centre of the board is an Artek AK2117
a material similar to MDF, using double-sided tape digital multimedia chip which handles audio and
Les Pounder loves and hot glue. The entire thing is held together with video processing. It connects to the LCD screen to
taking things to pieces
glue, so to get inside, we needed a hair-dryer and display video, and via an XPT4890 audio amplifier
and seeing how they
work. He teaches a spudger to heat the glue and carefully slice our and speaker so we hear audio. The AK2117 has
others how to be way in. Just go easy, as the electronics inside are connections broken out across the edge of the
makers and tinkerers at
events across the UK.
exposed and a metal spudger will short out any board, all of which are easily solderable and provide
He blogs at bigl.es exposed pins. extra functionality, such as buttons for volume

122
 FIELD TEST

OTHER USES YOU’LL NEED

So how could this video business card be used? Recordable Video
Presently, there is a trend to build conference Business Card –
badges, and these can range in price from £5 to £50 2.4” screen – Blank
depending on the tech inside of them. So, can we use Talking 256MB
this as a conference badge? Well, yes! The magnet to
trigger playback can be hidden in a ring, and we can COST
connect LEDs and other components to the spare £15.95
GPIO pins around the perimeter of the board.
We have it all in one package. Sound, video, GPIO, WHERE
rechargeable battery, and a decent box to contain eBay
it all which can be adapted and decorated with
relative ease.

control and a microphone. These are not connected

as standard, which is a pity as volume control would
be handy to control the rather shrill speaker.
Playback is triggered by opening the card. Inside
the cover is a magnet which triggers a sensor inside
the card. The sensor has a resetting state of HIGH,
and when the magnet is passed over it, the sensor
registers a LOW signal, causing playback to start.

SOFTWARE
The business card video player has a very particular
need, and that is an archaic video format called AMV,
which is a modified version of AVI. The AMV format
was used on older MP4 video players and has since
faded into obscurity. In fact, this caused us quite an
issue as converting typical video formats to AMV
proved quite difficult. We tried HandBrake, FFmpeg,
and Sony VEGAS Pro 15. Nothing would convert to HACKABILITY
AMV. After a few hours searching the internet, and With access to the AK2117 available via the exposed
avoiding many sketchy websites which offered ‘free’ GPIO pins around the perimeter of the board, we
tools to download and convert the file, we found have plenty of expandability. The AK2117 offers
a tool to do the job. Video needs to be encoded typical GPIO (on/off) PWM (pulse-width modulation)
as AMV, at 320×240 pixels to match the screen used for the LCD backlight, and I2C/SPI which is
resolution (the video resolution will not scale!) and used to communicate using only a handful of pins.
audio needs to be at 22050Hz mono. The board runs at 4 V which is an unusual voltage: it Top
is too high to directly interface with a Raspberry Pi The mainboard
controls video
and too low for an Arduino. But, for either device, playback, battery
an interface board would be required to safely work charging, and has
access to many more
between these voltages. features via the GPIO

Above
CONCLUSION Access to the AK2117
is via the GPIO which
This is not a cheap thing to be given out. At £15 is handily broken out
per unit, this is something to be used sparingly. around the edge of
the board
Combined with the rather archaic video format, this
board is not an ideal platform for hacks. If you can Left
The sensor that
work around these issues, then this is a fun little detects the cover
magnet is easy to
board to build into a project. Just take care with your remove, and each
voltages and removing the board from the card. pin is easy to identify

123
Multifunction sharpener

REVIEW

Multifunction sharpener
Put an edge back on your knives, chisels, and drill bits

FERREX $14.99 Aldi.com

By Ben Everard @ben_everard

W
e got this tool from Aldi
under the brand name Ferrex.
Identical looking tools are
available under different brand
names from other sources, but
we have only tested this one.
This sharpener tool has three different modes,
which are set by clipping plastic accessories to the
side: knife and scissor, chisel, and drill. The rest of
the unit is a motor with a simple on/off control and a
diamond grinding wheel.
The good news is that the metal and diamond
grinding wheel means there’s no risk of the wheel
disintegrating at high speed, as can happen with a
ceramic wheel. That is just about the only good point
of this tool.
There is only one grinding wheel, and therefore
only one coarseness. It’s not identified just how
coarse it is, but we’d suggest somewhere around
80 grit – in other words, it’s very coarse. This is too
coarse to put a final edge on a blade, but perhaps it
could be useful for shaping the edge before a final
manual grit to finalise the edge?

IN THE TEST LAB

We started by testing out the knife sharpener.
There are two key problems with this. Firstly, it’s
hard to hold the blade in place – there’s no option
to adjust the angle, so you’re stuck with the preset
angle (around 20 degrees), and there’s only a small,
slightly flimsy, plastic ramp
to hold the blade against.
While this doesn’t make
Left
The knife and scissor it impossible to grind a
attachment makes smooth edge, it certainly
it hard to get a
consistent edge makes it difficult.

124
 FIELD TEST

The second problem, though, is a bit bigger. The

grindstone is lower than the height of the control
box, and this means that you can only grind with the
handle facing outwards. This means that one side of
the knife is ground with the grinding wheel going into
the blade and one side with the wheel going away.
Again, not an impossible situation, but another added
difficulty. When combined – the one coarseness, the
difficulty holding the blade in place, and the inability
to grind in the preferred direction, we found this tool
much more adept at destroying blades than sharpening
them. It’s probably possible to sharpen a knife on this,
but the amount of practice it would take for mediocre
end results would be better spent learning a more
manual method.

TOOL SHED
We were nervous about testing the chisel and drill bit
sharpening attachments for the simple reason that
while we have a sacrificial knife, we don’t have any
sacrificial drill bits or chisels. Still, there was at least
some reason to be optimistic – the problems with the
direction of the wheel and holding the blade in place
should be less due to the design of these attachments.
Probably of all the tools that need sharpening, a Replacement grinding wheels are available, but
chisel needs the most care to create an edge that is hard to source. We’ve only seen them on direct- Above
The drill attachment
both sharp and flat. The narrow grinding wheel on this from-China websites. While diamond grinding wheels can hold twist drills
sharpener means that a lot of care has to be taken to are long-lasting, they are still consumable and will between 3 mm and
13 mm in diameter
ensure that the edge is flat. It’s possible, but it’s much wear out. It feels like a travesty that stores selling
easier to do on a larger wheel. The coarse grit on this tools like this aren’t also selling replacements for the
means that it’s completely useless for putting the fine consumables. While it’s unlikely that many people will
edge on a chisel. It can be used for shaping an edge

”
on a worn or damaged chisel, but the small size of the
grinding wheel will lead to a slight curve in the bevel of The website for this tool claims that it works
your chisel, and this will cause a problem for the rest of
on ‘any drill bit’, but then qualifies this to say drill

”
the sharpening process.
The website for this tool claims that it works on ‘any bits between 3 mm – 13 mm in diameter
drill bit’, but then qualifies this to say drill bits between
3 mm – 13 mm in diameter. However, it’s only actually
capable of sharpening twist drill bits with an angle of wear out the grinding wheel on this given how bad it
118 degrees. Brad point, masonry, spade, and other is generally, we’re still disappointed that consumables
drill bits won’t fit in the sharpening attachment. aren’t easily obtainable. We call on Aldi (and others)
Of all the attachments we used, this is the only one to take responsibility for ensuring that customers can
that we had even slight success with. Despite the fact continue to use tools like this.
that the attachment should hold the bit comfortably in Despite the advances in modern technology, VERDICT
place, we found it tricky to get an accurate grind, but keeping a blade sharp is a task that requires some Destroyer of
with a little practice, we could put a new edge on our manual skill and a decent set of tools. £14.99 is very knives and chisels,
bits. It wasn’t a very smooth edge due to the coarse cheap for this task, and it turns out that there’s a but perhaps some
grit, but it was an edge, and it was better than a blunt reason for this. We wouldn’t let this anywhere near value as a twist
bit. We prefer grinding our drill bits using, well, almost our good knives or chisels, but for revamping a set of drill bit sharpener.

3 / 10
any other grinding medium as the drill bit attachment drill bits, this ‘multifunction’ sharpener could perhaps
proved hard to get an accurate edge with, but it find one function. It’s not as useful as a proper
did work. grinding stone, but is much smaller and cheaper.

125
Dremel plunge router attachment

REVIEW

Dremel plunge
router attachment
Get extra skills for your rotary tool

DREMEL $28.99 dremel.com

By Ben Everard @ben_everard

T
here are quite a few different This isn’t a product in its own right, but an adaptor
types of router, but they all do for Dremel rotary tools to convert them into plunge
the same basic job – spin a bit routers. It should work with most official Dremels,
that’s designed to cut sideways and many rotary tools from other brands.
(rather than downwards, as drills It comes as a set of parts, but it’s easy to slot
do). Plunge routers, as the name together. You should be able to unscrew the end of
suggests, allow you to plunge the bit downwards your rotary tool, and this screws into the router body to
and start a cut in the middle of a piece of wood make your router. It contains all the basic bits you need
(other routers require you to come in from for routing – in our test setup, we had a Dremel 3000
the side). Using this edge, you can carve out with a chuck (though a collet will work equally well).
grooves, or hollow out whole areas in wood and There are all the features you’d expect of a plunge
some plastics. router: two solid handles enable you to push the bit

Right
The rotary tool
screws into the top
of this to create a
plunge router

126
 FIELD TEST

down into wood, an end-stop lets you limit the depth, The other thing we’re not keen on is how
and a fence to enable you to cut a groove parallel to unsubstantial it is. Plunge routers typically have a bit
an edge. of heft to them, and this can make them a bit easier
If you’d prefer a different routing setup, Dremel to control. The plastic-with-metal-rods construction
also sells a table router, a line and circle cutter, and a is, at best, OK. It’s not really flimsy, but there’s a little
‘multipurpose cutter’. If you’re of a more automatic more bend to it than we’d like. All the adjusters are
bent, some people have created CNC jigs for rotary a bit more sticky and jumpy than we’d like. All this
tools – there are some quite impressive looking builds means that you have to take a bit more care than
like this, but we’re yet to get one in our test lab. usual to get your cuts in the right place.
We had hoped that this router would save some
ON TEST workshop space, but unfortunately, it doesn’t pack
We’ve been using this tool for a few months now, up particularly small – perhaps a little smaller than a
and have put it through the test on a few builds, regular router, but not much.
including on the ‘word clock’ from issue 20. It’s done There’s certainly a case for this router. It’s cheaper
its job in each build. Bits have been spun, wood has than even the cheapest plunge routers by 30–50%
been carved, and objects have been created. On that (if you’ve already got a compatible rotary tool). If you
want a battery-powered setup, then the cost saving

”
is even more. There’s an environmental win by not
Bits have been bringing another electric motor and associated control
electronics into the world if you don’t need to. It’s VERDICT
spun, wood has been certainly capable of some reasonable routing, and if all Can handle basic
carved, and objects have you need is carving some grooves using the fence as routing jobs, but

”
a guide, then it’s worth considering. not as well as a
been created However, it’s no substitute for a proper plunge dedicated tool.

7 / 10
router. If you need the full range of bits, or if you’re
going to be using it regularly, a purpose-designed tool
very basic level, it’s worked, but we do have a couple will do the job better and easier.
of fairly serious reservations about this tool.
By far and away the biggest limitation of the
Dremel router is the chuck/collet size – it’s far smaller
than those on regular routers. The Dremel router
needs bits with a 3 mm shaft, while the standard
is 6 mm. The result is that there are far fewer bits
available for Dremel routers. The official bit set of
seven bits sells for £29, and there’s also a common
ten-piece set that sells under a range of off-brand
names that expands on it slightly and contains:

• Slot cutter diameter 3.2 mm

• Slot cutter diameter 5.0 mm
• Slot cutter diameter 6.5 mm
• Rounding over cutter diameter 6.4 mm
• V-Slot cutter diameter 6.5 mm
• Combi cutter 6.5 / 2.5 mm
• Core box bit 3.2 mm radius
• Rebating cutter 6.4 mm
• Edge cutter with pin diameter 5.0 mm
• Half-round cutter diameter 13 mm

As far as we’ve been able to tell, these are the only Left
You can route
bits available with a 3 mm shaft. If you don’t see all
parallel to an edge,
the bits you’ll need here, then it’s probably not the or go free-hand
router for you.

127
Template maker

REVIEW FIELD TEST

Template maker
Print your own boxes and decorations

TEMPLATEMAKER free templatemaker.nl

By Ben Everard @ben_everard

T
emplate.nl is a
website
dedicated to
paper templates
of the sort you
cut out, fold, and
glue together. Each template
has a diagram showing what the
object will look like, and can be
customised via a number of
options. Once you’ve set up your
design with the details you want,
you can download the template
in PDF, SVG, or DXF format and
print it out on a normal printer.
Oh, and did we mention that all
this is free?
The vast majority of options
are different types of packaging
– boxes of various forms – but
there are also a few decorative
items such as stars.
The one feature we’d really like
to see is the ability to scale while
keeping the proportions the
same. This would be great to change the properties useful that feature is), but it could be much easier.
while keeping the aspect ratio, but it would also be While we’re having a bit of a grumble, we’ll also Above
Design and print
really useful for fitting an object to a particular point out that the discoverability isn’t great. There’s your own folded
paper size. It would make it easy to, for example, no menu or search facility – the only way you can paper creations
find the largest box you can fit in an A4 sheet. At find models is by looking through the complete list
the moment, the process for this is: (and there’s quite a few!). VERDICT
Overall, this is a great tool, and given that it’s Loads of
• Select Expert mode free even for commercial use (if you find it useful, designs for you
• Select paper size you have you can support the makers via Ko-fi), we really to customise
• Play with the options until it fits in the preview can’t complain too much about the features we’d and print.

8/ 10
like to see. It’s certainly a page we’ll be revisiting in
This isn’t the most onerous process (it would be if a month or two when it comes time to box up gifts
there weren’t a preview, which shows just how to go under the Christmas tree.

128
Booze: River Cottage Handbook No.12

REVIEW FIELD TEST

Booze:
River Cottage Handbook No.12
John Wright £11.49 rivercottage.net

By Ben Everard @ben_everard

W
e’ve been using this book
to guide our brewing for
several years now, and
we particularly enjoy the
breadth of brewing that it
includes. Whether you’re
making mead, country wine, cider, or beer, you’ll
find guidance here, and this breadth makes it a great
book for setting off on your brewing adventure.
Many of these brews are unlike anything available
commercially, so you may be unfamiliar with them,
but we’d encourage you to experiment freely as you
find your way as a brewer.
The only reason we wouldn’t recommend this
book is if you have a particular drink you want to
brew – for example, if you know you want to make
only beer, then you’ll be better served by a book
dedicated to that drink.
We’ve had great fun experimenting with the
drinks in this book and, for the most part, they’ve
worked well (the only one that didn’t work for us
is the nettle beer, but perhaps that shouldn’t be a VERDICT
surprise – nettles really don’t sound like they should The book we
be in beer). wish we had
Booze: River Cottage Handbook No.12 is a great when we
started brewing.
source of inspiration and, after a quick browse,

10 / 10
we’re always brimming with ideas for our next brew
– some of them are recipes from this book, while
others are adaptions that we want to try.

129
#25 ON SALE
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 Saccharomyces
cerevisiae
We owe almost all styles of bread and alcohol
(and Marmite) to this one species of yeast:
Saccharomyces cerevisiae. These days it’s most
commonly added in the form of dried yeast that was
first created for the American military during the
Second World War. In the wild, it’s found on the skin
of fruits such as grapes. It’s hard to imagine what life
would be like without both alcohol and bread, but it’s
fair to say that the world would be a very different
place without this tiny fungus.

Image
Mogana Das Murtey and Patchamuthu Ramasamy
(18 February 2016). Sample Preparations for
Scanning Electron Microscopy – Life Sciences,
Modern Electron Microscopy in Physical and
Life Sciences, Milos Janecek and Robert Kral,
IntechOpen, DOI: 10.5772/61720.

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