This OpenSCAD Script Helps You Design Hot-Swappable Keyboards

by

If you want to design your own hot-swappable mechanical keyboard, this OpenSCAD script can help.

Mechanical keyboards are all the rage these days, and for good reason. They are more pleasant to type on and may even help to prevent repetitive stress injury (RSI), which is a problem that affects many office workers. Cheap keyboards have membrane switches, which are mushy and force you to push a key hard to ensure a key press is registered. Mechanical keyboards, on the other hand, have mechanical key switches that have a clean and consistent “break” point. Some keyboards even let you swap out the key switches to customize the feel. If you want to design your own hot-swappable mechanical keyboard, this OpenSCAD script can help.

Read more…

Boilarm – Never again do you have to check whether your water is boiling.

by

Never again do you have to check whether your water is boiling. Put on your headphones and let your phone notify you!

Have you ever had to wait for your water to boil to make some pasta, but you hate waiting for it? Or, has it ever happened to you that you put the water pot on the stove, put on your headphones and forget you ever left it there? If these bring some resemblance to you then we have the perfect product for you!The Arduino BLE paired with our mobile app allows you to do other important things while the water is heating up. When the water boils, the app simply tells you that the water is boiling, even if you’re in another room.So put the water on the stove, turn on our device, put on your headphones and relax. We’ll take of the rest. 🙂

Read more…

How to make an Arduino custom I2C slave sensor/device

by

In this video, I’m exploring the idea of having your own I2C slave devices and sensors where a helper Arduino is used just for the sensor and the main controller does all of the control logic.

In my case, the slave I2C device is a dedicated controller for a motor speed controller (AC dimmer) that monitors the AC zero-crossing point and it listens on a specific I2C address for the speed at which the motor should run.

By using two separated Arduino Nanos, I can utilize the interrupt pins on both controllers where the one on the slave device will monitor the zero-crossing signal and the other one can be used for interfacing with the UI through a rotary encoder.

Clothing Iron Transformed Into PCB Hot Plate

by

Electronoobs shows how to convert a conventional clothes straightening iron into a PCB reflow hot plate.

When you see the word “iron” here on Hackster, you probably think of a soldering iron, used to construct a wide variety of electronic projects. To the rest of the world, however, an iron instead means something that is used to straighten clothing – an item that is produced in mass quantities, and which is both widely available and inexpensive.

Read more…

Arduino MIDI Mouse Controller

by

I hate throwing away old electronics that still work but are no longer supported by modern appliances. My idea for this project came after finding an old PS/2 port roller ball computer mouse that I no longer had a use for. I’m a musician in my spare time and currently recording an EP with my metal band HELL SHEEP. I’m using MIDI controllers to create synth parts for our tracks on pro tools. Many people use a MIDI keyboard to write MIDI parts on the computer. I’m no pianist so I have been experimenting with different methods of writing MIDI, including using chess games and cellular automata. Trying to think of a way to re-use the old computer mouse, it occurred to me that it could be repurposed with Arduino as a nifty MIDI controller.

(For those of you who don’t know what MIDI is, check out this great video by Collin’s Lab.)

Read more…

It Took Over 900 Hours to Design and 3D Print This Self-Launching Miniature Roller Coaster

by

That’s probably still less time than you’ll spend waiting in line at an amusement park.

Tired of spending endless hours waiting in line to ride the latest and greatest roller coaster at your local amusement park? Why not invest all that time designing and 3D printing a roller coaster of your very own like YouTube’s 3d_coasters has?

As detailed in a video recently shared on their YouTube channel, a lot of work went into creating the NoLimits 2 coaster—far more than you’d expect. Just designing the layout of the track and the coaster itself, which are assembled from 2,983 individual parts, took over 600 hours using a piece of 3D modelling software called. Fusion 360. As pieces were finalized, they could be 3D printed while the rest of the modelling was being completed, which required over 800 hours of 3D printing and seven rolls of filament to complete.