What we have been up to last year and aiming for this year:
Paul – Last year I assembled from a kit a Lumiphone. Which is essentially a hand held theremin allowing you to alter the volume and pitch. My second attempt at soldering since my AS level electronics days, my first was a blinky robot LED badge at the Elephant & Castle Mini-Maker Faire earlier that year. I attempted to make a remote controlled flying TARDIS using a lightweight RC helicopter for the rotor and remote control aspects. Unfortunately the weight to lift to ratio was very narrow meaning I had to make the TARDIS frame weigh less than 3 grams. Before I could test if tissue paper was light enough 3 of the fine wires were torn from their contact points while removing it from storage, still it was an interesting learning experience.
I also started work on making a handheld portable SNES Emulator using a Raspberry Pi. This was driven from a desire to play the old SNES games from my youth and the fact that in the intervening years I had managed to lose the power supply, RF cable and both controllers. It’s quite an ambitious project given my level of expertise but it’s allowed me to get my hands on a Raspberry Pi and gain familiarity with it as well as with the GPIO and more soldering.
This year, now that all the individual components work, I’ll be focusing on learning and using a 3D design tool to custom make a case to hold them all including the controller, battery and display and getting it 3D printed. I’ll also be working on a project to make T-shirt with 80s Battlestar Galactica Cylon with 6 LEDs to have a light scan back and forth.
Andrew Patience