Building a WatchOS Companion App for Flutter
Automatically run Flutter static code analysis for every Git commit
Three Advanced Ways to Secure a Flutter App
Build a Flutter App for Linux from a Windows Machine
Use OpenAI’s APIs in Flutter without Plugins
Create a Cross-Platform Flutter App for Android and Wear OS
A Minimal Flutter App Starter Template
Make a Canvas Art Frame From a Single 2×4
Knot: a Robotic Offcut of Scrap Lumber
Candy Corn Wine
Make Your 3D Printer Play Music
How to Get Printed Circuit Boards Manufactured and Assembled
Sign an APK using Jarsigner
Recently, I was working on visual regression testing for an Android application. In other words, I was working on testing an app on a range of different devices to make sure the design displayed and functioned correctly on devices with different screen sizes,...
Different Ways to Prototype Your Design Using PCBs
Prototype Electronics Designs With a Solderless Breadboard
How Laser Cutting Can Help You Prototype Your Design
The Pros and Cons of Prototyping Designs With CNC Machining
The Benefits and Disadvantages of 3D Printing Your Prototypes
How to Utilize 3D Modeling and Rendering to Prototype Your Design
How to Start the Prototyping Process Using Sketching and Mockups
An Overview of Different Prototyping Technologies and Techniques
How to Use the BareBones PCB Service for Fast PCB Prototypes
Six Figure Crowdfunding Book Review
TL;DR Six Figure Crowdfunding is a succinct yet comprehensive dive into just about everything you need to know to create, run, and survive the aftermath of a successful Kickstarter campaign. It has just a little NSFW language, quite a bit of humor, helpful worksheets,...
How to Program an ATmega328 MCU on a Custom PCB
How to Assemble and Solder Components on a Custom PCB
How to Get a Custom PCB Made
How to Place PCB Components in Autodesk Eagle
How to Design a Schematic for Custom PCB Art
How to Create Custom PCB Graphics in Eagle
How to Import Custom Images into Autodesk Eagle
PCB Art: How to Prepare Your Image in Adobe Illustrator
Coloring Google Sheets Cells from Color Values in Other Cells
I was recently working on an LED-lighting project, part of which involved mapping a single command value to a color. The code for this project was based on the Adafruit NeoPixel library, specifically the wheel() function used in various NeoPixel example sketches. The...
Programming ATtiny MCUs Using Pre-Programmed Chips
How to Program ATtiny MCUs By Using ISP Headers
Programming ATtiny MCUs: IC Test Clip with ISP Programmer
How to Use a Custom PCB to Test and Program an ATtiny
ATtiny Microcontrollers: A Low-cost Arduino Alternative
Adjusting the Size of Traces in Autodesk Eagle
One element of good PCB design that is not often covered in much detail in tutorials is adjusting the width of traces in order to allow your PCB traces to safely carry differing amounts of current. The TL;DR is that traces which carry more current should be wider...
Re-Flash Tinker to Reset your Particle Photon
The Particle Photon is a powerful and easy to use platform for building WiFi-connected projects. However, as you work on different projects, you may occasionally run into issues that cause the Photon to get "stuck." Here's the problem. You normally flash...
Reupholster Your Google Home Mini
Monoprice MP Select Mini Glass Bed Upgrade
The Monoprice MP Select Mini Build Surface The Monoprice MP Select Mini V2 3D printer comes with a BuildTak-like (it is not branded so I do not believe it is genuine BuildTak) surface on the build plate. Out of the box, this surface works great. It offers...
Creality CR-10 Mini 3D Printer Photo Gallery
For quite some time, my daily driver for 3D printing has been the Monoprice MP Select Mini V2. I've had a great time with that printer. It was extremely affordable yet it provides great printing quality. However, the MP Select Mini is also quite small with...
Getting Books Made by Print Size Productions
For the past couple months, I've been working on a book that introduces kids to the world of computer-aided design, a subject that is covered quite extensively on this site. The book is titled 3D CAD for Babies. One of the challenges I faced while...
Add Real Hardware to your Fusion 360 Designs
It is likely that most of the designs you create in Autodesk Fusion 360 are not made from one hundred percent bespoke parts. Most designs have some parts specifically designed for your project, and also things like screws, bearings, inserts, rods, springs or other...
Import an STL into Fusion 360 Without Scaling Issues
Here is an issue you might have run into in the past. If you go to Thingiverse, Prusa Printers, YouMagine, or any similar 3D print repository site, download a model, and upload it into Fusion 360, you might find that the scale of the model is way off....
Build a GPS Tracker for Your Drone
3D CAD for Babies (Book)
Design Sheet Metal Parts in Fusion 360
Sheet metal parts are extremely common in products of all kinds. There are likely dozens or hundreds of individual sheet metal parts inside various products around the room you’re in right now. From the interior structures of electronics, to the chassis of...
Build a Cloud-Connected WiFi Doorbell
How to Build a Basic Radio with an Arduino Uno the SparkFun FM Tuner Basic Breakout
3D Printing With Metal Composite Filaments
Nylon for 3D Printing: Incredibly Strong, Durable Prints
Minimum PCB Design for the Particle P1
The Particle P1 is an electronics development platform consisting of two major parts: a Broadcom WiFi chip and a 32-bit ARM Cortex M3 microcontroller. The module is designed to speed and simplify the transition from prototype to production consumer...
3D Printing with ABS: Print Tough, Functional Parts
A Directory of All Hitec Servos
Hitec is one of the most well-known and popular servo manufacturers, with a reputation for high-quality, reliable products. The company sells a vast range of different servos. Their servos are available in all different sizes, gear train designs, torque...
3D Printing Services for Creative Projects
3D Printing Services for Projects and Prototypes
Why a Consistent Diameter is Important for 3D Printer Filament
When shopping for 3D printer filament, especially common types like PLA and ABS, you will find dimensional tolerances listed from each filament manufacturer. For example, Amazon Basics 1.75mm PLA filament has an advertised tolerance of +-0.5mm. This means...
How to Use the 3D Printer PLA Filament in Projects
How a Stepper Motor Works
How a Servo Motor Works
How a Brushless Motor Works
How a Brushed DC Motor Works
What Type of Motor is Best for My Project?
What is Torque and Why Does it Matter?
How to Measure a Servo’s Torque Using an Arduino
Can filters be used to reduce 3D printer emissions?
The short answer is no. As a Maker who uses 3D printing extensively in a range of projects, a recent scientific study into the particle emissions from 3D printers, highlighting several potential health concerns, was as concerning to me as it was too many...
Put Legs on Your Smart Speaker
Evaluating the Monoprice MP Select Mini with the Kickstarter/Autodesk Test Print
These days, if you are in the market for a 3D printer, you have no shortage of choices. There are hundreds of different 3D printers from which to choose. With printers spanning a huge range of prices and taunting a laundry list of different features and...
Using Fusion 360 to Design Complex PCB Shapes in Eagle CAD
When designing PCBs in Autodesk Eagle, it is relatively easy to create board designs with simple geometric shapes: rectangles, circles, polygons, and other simple shapes are easy to create using the line tool in Eagle. Creating simple variations on these...
Monoprice MP Select Mini 3D Printer Photo Gallery
I use 3D printing for various purposes in almost all of my projects. In some projects, 3D printing is useful for creating proof-of-concept prototypes. For other projects, 3D printed parts comprise major parts of the finished project itself. In other...
Using the Moment Macro Lens for the Pixel 2 XL
Introduction to the Moment Macro Lens One of Google’s goals with the Pixel 2 XL was to create a smartphone with the best camera around, like the company did with last year's first generation. As many reviewers will attest, the Google Pixel 2 XL is indeed...
Using Fusion 360 and Eagle CAD Together
A couple months ago, I wrote a tutorial on taking PCB designs created in Eagle and building 3D models in Fusion 360 based on those designs. The process was not a difficult one, but it did involve generating DXF files, manually building the PCB model, and...
Building Machines with Vention.io
Imagine what you could make if you could build industrial machines the same way you build with Legos, by rummaging around in a big bin of parts where you could find any component you wanted. That is the basic idea of Vention. Vention.io is a web-based CAD...
Which Emojis Can I use in my Kickstarter Story?
Recently, while working on the Kickstarter (or actually Quickstarter) campaign for the Plinthi wall mount, I made the frustrating discovery that adding Emojis to your Kickstarter story is much more difficult than you would imagine. I wanted to add a few...
Disable Double Opt-in for Divi Email Optin Module
The development setup for all of the websites I run, including this site, a couple other blogs, and a few sites used for business purposes, consists of a WordPress installation running a highly-sophisticated theme called Divi. If you are reading this post,...
WiFi Controlled Camera Slider
Check If the Dishwasher Is Clean With Google Assistant
Building an Android App to Manage Your Parts Collection
How to Export Large Videos from the DJI Go App on Android
A couple months ago, I upgraded my smartphone to a Google Pixel 2 XL. The engineers and developers - and the marketing team - behind this phone placed a strong emphasis on the device's camera performance. One of the reasons I purchased this phone is...
Hexapod Inverse Kinematics Simulator
The Mathematics of a Hexapod Robot Controlling a hexapod robot is really just a big math problem. A three-degrees-of-freedom hexapod uses a total of eighteen servos to move, three on each of the robot's six legs. In order for the robot to move, the...
Google Pixel 2 XL vs. Entry DSLR Photography
The Google Pixel 2 XL has been grabbing all the headlines lately for its possibly less-impressive-than-expected-for-a-company-as-well-regarded-as-Google display quality. The display has already been discussed ad nauseam elsewhere. If you are currently...
Creating Assembly Animations in Fusion 360
We've all purchased products requiring assembly or installation at home; we've all probably purchased many such products. Flat-pack furniture, kid's toys, shelving kits, smart home products, small appliances, and many other products are delivered in pieces to be put...
Controlling Philips Hue with a Particle Photon
There is one control system used long ago, in the olden days before Internet-connected home automation technologies existed. Before we all equipped our houses with WiFi, Bluetooth, and Z-Wave hubs, and controlled everything from our smartphones, in the...
Convert a Complex STL into a Body in Fusion 360
Almost daily technology blogs features stories about advances in the field of desktop 3D printing. New techniques and technologies, not to mention new 3D printers, are constantly being developed. But one of the most underrated advances in the consumer 3D...
Create a Fusion 360 Model from an Eagle BRD File
Whether you are working on a robotics project, a consumer product, an IoT device, or any other design involving printed circuit boards and hardware coming together in an assembly, it is highly useful to have a 3D CAD model of your PCB, along with the ECAD schematic...
Visualize Bluetooth in a Long Exposure Photo
Convert a Simple STL into a Body in Fusion 360
If you are interested in 3D printing and follow news on the subject, you will hear almost daily about advances in the sophistication and capabilities of hobby and semi-professional 3D printers. New 3D printing techniques and technologies, not to mention new 3D...
Using the Particle Android SDK
Add the Particle SDK to your Android Project The very first step in getting your Android app to interface with the Particle Cloud is to add the Particle Android SDK to your Android project. This is done the same way that you would include any other dependency in your...
Fixing Unstiched Models in Fusion 360
The Source (Literally) of the Problem When designing 3D models for 3D printing, laser cutting, CNC work, or almost any other purposes, there are a number of great resources for downloading models of common parts other people made. For example, McMaster Carr provides...
How to Run Octoprint on a Raspberry Pi Zero
Introduction Using Octoprint running on a Raspberry Pi 2 or 3 is a setup many Makers have to enable remote use and monitoring of their 3D printer. I have been running Octoprint on a Raspberry Pi 2 for quite a while because I like to put my printers in a separate room...
A Bit About the E3D Titan
This post is a high-level overview of the E3D Titan extruder, featuring a compact and light-weight design that manages to squeeze a 3:1 geared drive mechanism into basically the same footprint as a typical direct-drive extruder. How does the E3D Titan benefit the typical 3D printer?
Use SVG Nest to Minimize Laser Cutting Cost
Creating compact designs is critical for saving both time and money on laser cutting projects. But how do you optimize your designs to minimize their size and maximize your laser cutting dollars? In this post, I will show you how to use a free, open-source tool called SVG Nest to automate the process of packing your laser cutting files into the smallest possible space.
The Ultimate Guide to Customizing Cura
Chapter 1: Introduction If you've spent much time at all working with 3D printing technology, you've almost certainly heard of Cura. Cura is 3D printing host software created by David Braam. The software is currently maintained by Ultimaker who hired David to...
Hexapod Inverse Kinematics Equations
Hexapod Leg Layout and Leg Parts Controlling hexapod robots requires the use of a type of mathematics called inverse kinematics. This post contains all of the inverse kinematics calculations for a hexapod robot consisting of a hexagonal body with six legs spaced...
Inverse Kinematics for Walking Robots, an Introduction
From the Wikipedia page on Inverse Kinematics, Inverse kinematics refers to the use of the kinematics equations of a robot to determine the joint parameters that provide a desired position of the end-effector. Specification of the movement of a robot so that its...
The Ultimate Guide to Customizing AstroPrint
Chapter 1: Introduction Getting Started Prerequisites Required Software Chapter 2: Setting up FileZilla Set AstroBox Root User Password Connect to the AstroBox over SSH SSH on Linux or Mac SSH on Windows using PuTTY Set the Root User Password Configure the FileZilla...
OctoPrint vs. AstroPrint
Introduction Hardware Installation Software Setup User Interface Printing Conclusion Introduction All 3D printers need host software to function. Host software is responsible for sending the actual commands to the 3D printer that tell the printer how to build an...
Why is Rigidity Important for 3D Printers?
One of the most important, and yet one of the least discussed, design considerations for 3D printers is rigidity. Rigidity plays a critical role in a 3D printer’s accuracy and precision.
Flight Testing the Quanum Venture Quadcopter
The Quanum Venture quadcopter is high-performance FPV quadcopter that can be used to take amazing aerial photos and videos. The configuration I built uses a top-of-the-line flight controller (the DJI Naza M Lite) and an excellent FPV system from Fat Shark,...
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