Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • The Shed

    TRIPPING THE LIGHT FANTASTIC

    Feb 15, 2019 7 minutes
    By Enrico Miglino
    Photographs: Enrico Miglino

    In this issue, I explore the development steps of what I call ‘The Christmas Joy Spreading Machine’. This is possibly the most complicated project I have ever made and it is based on the BBC Micro Bit. The original idea was to make a machine using cardboard and a few other salvaged and recyclable materials. I adapted the project for 2018 Christmas Eve — the original project only had a different name and a few different final-assembly details.

    The project is modular and I hope it inspires other makers who may want to build their own, creative ‘joy machines’. The main idea is to build a cardboard rotating engine. This kind of mechanism is commonly referred to as a ‘marble machine’, because they are based more or less on a complex path into which some kind of ball slides. At the end of the free-falling path, a motorized lift drives the ball to the top of the path again, and the cycle continues indefinitely as long as the motor moving the lifter is on.

    The first machines of this

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from The Shed

    The Shed9 min read
    The Plane-makers
    It’s a tight squeeze, but Gary Briggs and I are comfortable enough in the cockpit of his tiny aeroplane. Gary built ZK-SXR in his garage, so it is not entirely without apprehension that I buckle myself in and read the mandatory warning plate advising
    The Shed6 min read
    A Little Bit Of This, A Little Bit Of That …
    Off-grid living consists of a never-ending list of to-dos, which in turn get prioritised by urgency – or sometimes by the looks she gives me! Over summer, I’d been avoiding the list to concentrate on sailing, so there was a bit of a backlog. That was
    The Shed4 min read
    Introduction To Arduino Uno R4 Playing Chess
    In this third instalment, we complete the notes on the application testing that we developed to verify the performance of the Arduino Uno R4, including the extra boost provided by the use of the ESP32-S3. As already discussed in the previous articles

    Related