Cast Spells on Devices with This Magic IoT Wand

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Sam March can now “magically” control smart outlets with a wand that detects gestures and sends them via Bluetooth.

As stated best by the writer Arthur C. Clarke, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Internet-connected homes can certainly feel like magic sometimes, as every appliance, light bulb, and outlet can all talk to each other and relay information for increased convenience and efficiency. However, just saying a command to your favorite digital assistant or pressing a few buttons on an app isn’t that fun, which is why Sam March decided to invent a novel way of activating smart outlets — through a magic wand. By performing certain gestures, the user can cast “spells” on specific outlets through Bluetooth.

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Boochow’s RaspberryPi Pico Receives and Decodes MIDI Signals via Its USB Port

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Developed using the TinyUSB library, this project receives MIDI messages via USB and decodes them for printing via UART.

Pseudonymous developer “boochow” has used the popular Raspberry Pi Pico in the heart of a MIDI device with a difference: Rather than making music, it’s designed to monitor and display the MIDI signals received from a USB MIDI device.

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Etching tiles with multi-color (painted layers)

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I keep having to up the anti. First it was white tiles with one color or paint. Then white tile with two colors of paint. Now I am trying white tile with FOUR colors of paint and some with three. I will be laying down a combination of yellow, orange, red, and black. Also yellow, green, and black.
The idea is to burn through the black to show the color under it. Also to burn through that color to reveal the color under that and so on until you get down to the white tile. I wanted to try doing the sun tile again with the yellow, orange, red, and black paint. That way as I burned deeper into the paint, it would look like the hotter parts of the sun. There were two major mistakes I made with this project. The first was to not wait long enough between layers of paint.
This caused the next layers to interact with the layer under it to make it look cracked. The yellow also spat out of the cat at first. I had not had this happen before. I knew it could be an issue and that is why you should always do a quick test spray from the can to insure a fine mist before you spit paint onto your target. In addition to not waiting long enough between layers was to put a NON-WATER BASED clear finish on the tiles.
This also reacts with the paint and bubbles it up. Kind of like putting lacquer thinner on paint to remove it. The textures look is kind of cool but not what I was going for.

In Car Emulation Test Using The CarDongle! Android PC for Your Car

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In this video, we test out some emulators running on the new CarDongle! The CarDongle Is An Android PC For Your Car and with this, you can easily add a full android OS to your vehicle with access to Google Play, Netflix, youtube, Android Auto, Android Games, and Emulators Like RetroArch, PPSSPP! We test out some NES, SNES, Game Boy Advance, Dreamcast, and PSP. So can this thing run emulators on our car’s built-in screen? Let’s find out

Dynamic Build Platforms for 3D Printers Remove Supports and Save Material

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We’re all too familiar with the 3D printing post-processing step of removing supports, and lamenting the waste of plastic on yet another dwindling reel of filament. When the material is expensive NinjaFlex or exotic bio-printers, printing support is downright painful. A group at USC has come up with a novel way of significantly reducing the amount of material that’s 3D printed by raising portions of the bed over time, and it makes us wonder why a simpler version isn’t done regularly.

In the USC version, the bed has a bunch of square flat metal pieces, with a metal tube underneath each. The length of the tube determines the eventual height of that square. Before the print is made, the bed is prepared by inserting the appropriate length tubes in the correct squares. Then, during the print, a single motor pushes a platform up, and based on the height of the pin, that portion of the bed raises appropriately, then stops at the right height.

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Someone Made Part of Wario Land 4 With Unity and It’s Amazing

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It has been well over two decades since Wario Land 4 released for the Game Boy Advance, yet fans still rave about how good the game is and how great it would be to get another installment. People are so adamant that a modern title in the series gets made that they’ve actually taken it upon themselves to create the building blocks for it.

Indie game developer MikMik is one of those people, posting a quick video to his Twitter account that revealed the Wario Land 4 project he’s been workshopping, and boy does it look awesome.

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