00706, Moco turntable

And as well as the slider, there's a new turntable adapter.

C4D design, Shapeways printed in strong and flexible plastic, it's a two-part construction, allowing the turntable to be taken off the motor for storage and transport.

Fits like a glove:

00705, Sliding around

While I'm waiting for new spinners to arrive, the Moco slider's slid into the main.

Mechanical parts from Openbuilds, driven with Arduino Nano and a Big Easydriver on home-made PCB, et voila:

 

 

All to film product shots for an upcoming ting and that.

00704, Spinners

Recently I've been obsessing.

Within reason, obsessing can be a good thing. Sometimes it ends up improving things, helping people, moving things forward.

This is not one of those things.

But without exception, anyone who sees them and certainly anyone who touches them, is captivated - for at least five minutes.

Spinning tops, eh?

 

Sculpted in C4D, 3D printed by Shapeways.

Epic.

00703, OOOR

Meanwhile Outofofficereplies.com trundles on, building up a surprisingly large amount of content in the same way as you might glance down at your fingers and remark on how much dirt has accumulated under your nails.

It's become quite the resource.

00702, Dandelion Trophy

So we met with Mark and Jock of the Dandelion Project and I was playing with spinning tops and Mark said he'd like a trophy for the upcoming Ted Talks. He wanted to give Ollie Guillou an award to highlight his contributions to positive journalism - which is lovely.

I said the printing and shipping of something nice would take ages and he said, "Oh." I said that it'd be really pricey for anything largish and he said, "Oh."

So I said I'd make something.

I told Mark that the main thrust of the trophy would be light. I liked the idea that you could present someone with a "piece of light" and I really liked the idea that it would light up when they handled it. It was supposed to be indicative of the light you shed when you spend your time presenting things in, for want of better words, a positive light. I said that I'd give him some plans and keep him in touch with the process and let him know when I'd be done.

He said, "Just bring it along on the day, do whatever you like." so I did.

Basically, it lights up when you touch it.

Turned out nice:

I'm meeting with Ollie later this week, at which point, I'll mention the fact that it's all a bit prototype.

He received it a couple of weeks back, so I'm interested to see if it still works - things like this usually tend to pleasantly surprise me with their longevity. Until they break.

00702, Fibonacci clock

So Rob (the one from work) sent me an email to say that he'd seen a Fibonacci Clock online, saying (or typing) "Reckon you could make me one of these?".

He didn't really mean it.

But I made him one anyway:

 

 

Arduino Nano and NeoPixels with capacitive touch sensor.

It's not really a clock as such, more a timer. You twiddle the knob to zero (all white) and touch the top of the box, at which point it counts up in five second increments. You set the time with the knob, touch the top of the box and it counts down to zero. You twiddle the knob while it's timing and everything stops.

Good thing he didn't ask me to make heavy ordinance. Can't help myself, can I?

00701, Secret Santa 2015

So Christmas came round again, which was nice.

My first thought was that I should probably not bother this time, but within a day I was lost.

Perhaps it would be better if they just told me about it the day before the office party, that way, I'd have no other option but to buy something instead of doing this:

 

 

 



 

Arduino and capacitive touch with 3 groups of LEDs dimmed by PWM.

Possibly the strangest thing is that I'd never before met the lady who got it. I met her at the do and subsequently never saw her again.

Naturally I wouldn't countenance doing it again. Probably.