If you’re looking for a last minute Christmas present packed with ideas and fun you could do a lot worse than get some lucky person a copy of the latest HackSpace magazine which has just come out. And, to make it even better it contains an article I wrote, all about making cases and covers for gadgets by using “not-sewing sewing”.
My plan to take over HackSpace magazine is going well. This month I’ve got a couple of articles in there. On page 96 you can find my article about building a printing camera. On page 112 you can find my review of a rather nice PICO Lora board. There is lots of other excellent content too. The magazine is in the shops now, or you can download it here.
I’ve got all these things to do. I need to write the introduction chapter for the new book. I’ve got an article about the Chocolate Synthbox to finish. And, since reading HackSpace magazine yesterday, all I can think about making is a Magna-Doodle clock….
I’ve got an article in Hackspace magazine this month. This is good news for readers, but also good news for me as I need to buy some new shoes…..
Anyhoo, this article is all about making a 3D printed game. It tells you how to run Python code inside the FreeCAD modelling tool and create game pieces programmatically. You find the magazine in shops and there is also a free pdf download here.
If you pick up a copy of the April issue of HackSpace magazine (issue 53) you fill find an article from me on page 68. This one is all about how make a chord keyboard powered by a Raspberry Pi PICO. It’s based on a device I had a loooong time ago which I really loved, and it was great fun to make a keyboard inspired by it.
If you want an electronic copy of the magazine you can download it for free from here.
Every now and then I make something that I’m really rather pleased with. I’ve just about finished the Pomodoro timer and it I like how it has turned out. You twist the knob on the right to set the time. Then you set the mode (whether you want time announcements or not) and then you press in the knob to start the clock.
If you press the big purple button the timer announces the time remaining or used, depending on how you set it up. The sound quality is OK too. The speaker packs a surprising amount of punch. With a bit of luck the project will be in the next issue of HackSpace magazine.
Hackspace Magazine has just published another one of my articles. You can find out all how to make a Crackers MIDI controller powered by a Raspberry Pi PICO and then use it in a Pure Data synth. It was great fun to write, you can read it here.
My MIDI Cheesebox article is now in HackSpace magazine which is out today. You can find out more here.
Today I took some pictures for the Pure Data article that is due at the end of next week. I think the controller looks pretty good, finished in “Jacobs Crackers Orange”. The writing is going really well too, I’m writing a four page item and I’ve already got six pages. Oh, wait……..
I’m building a partner device for the “PICO Midi CheeseBox”. This gives four rotary controllers with pixel ring feedback displays which you’ll be able to use to control MIDI playback. It’s called the “Crackers PICO Midi controller”. Why? Take a look inside..
The wiring is a bit crazy, but it worked first time. I’ve got a new build technique called “making the design and writing the drivers before I build the device”. You can see the circuit diagram and the Circuit Python code creates controller instances for each of the four inputs.
The controller will be making an appearance in a future HackSpace magazine, when I’m going to be using it to control a Pure Data synthesizer.
The October issue of HackSpace magazine is out. You can find it here, or in “all good newsagents” as they say. It’s a good read in spite/because of an article that I wrote. I’ve been playing with Pure Data music programming for a while (ever since I got an Organelle last year to play with during lockdown) and so I thought I’d write an article about it. Pure Data is a really good way to create applications that work with streams of audio data. Well worth a look.
issue 46 of Hackspace magazine is now available. Find out more here. It’s a great read, and I’m not just saying that because it has an article in there that I wroted.
My Portable Games article is now available in HackSpace Magazine. Page 88. The rest of the magazine is really good too.
This is the “Two Button Game" running in Python on Raspberry Pi PICO inside a Pimoroni PICO RGB Keyboard base. The game engine is exactly the same as the earlier ones, which is rather nice.
The idea of the game is that you press the red button if there are more red lights and the blue button if there are more blue lights. The buttons are at the bottom of the keyboard (keys C and F). On this occasion I think that the thing to do is press the Blue button.
Here we have two Connected Little Boxes using an MQTT server to play the Two Button Game.
I really think we should press the red button……
The Two Button Game that I made for a Raspberry Pi Jam way back is about to achieve fame. I’m writing an article for Hackspace magazine about creating portable games that run across different platforms and I’m using the game engine as the basis of the piece. Quite fun.
If you pick up the April edition of HackSpace magazine and take a look at page 94 you’ll find a description of my Connected Little Boxes and how you can make them. You can find out more here.
I’ve written an article about MQTT security that has been published in this month’s HackSpace magazine. They’ve done an amazing job of fitting my prose into just two pages. You can download a free copy of the magazine - which also has lots of other great articles - from here. If you want a printed copy you can subscribe and get a free Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller.
I was digitally leafing through the latest copy of MagPi magazine when I had a sense of déjà-vu. They’ve included my HackSpace magazine article about creating Low Power clock controlled Raspberry Pi.
Quite chuffed. I’ve always fancied being in that magazine and now I am. Without even trying.
Authors note: I hope you are all really impressed by me typing “ déjà-vu” correctly. It was surprisingly hard to do.
I’ve been turning out the odd (and I do mean odd) article for HackSpace magazine recently. You can find my description of how to use an ESP32 to control a Furby toy in the latest issue here. I’ve written a little set of helper files that let you connect to a Furby toy, but you can also use the code to talk to any Bluetooth BLE device from your ESP32. You can find the code for the article on GitHub here.
Rob Miles is technology author and educator who spent many years as a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hull. He is also a Microsoft Developer Technologies MVP. He is into technology, teaching and photography. He is the author of the World Famous C# Yellow Book and almost as handsome as he thinks he is.
Begin to Code with JavaScript is now available for purchase and download. You can find it here
