MakerBlock

Loud 3D Printed Whistle Test, Take 2

Impatient for my decibel meter to arrive from Amazon and eager to get more feedback on the loudest 3D printed whistle, I brought the four loudest whistles to work and enlisted the help of two friends. We performed the test much the same as the last time – only this time they were on one end of a large parking lot and I had driven to the far side to blow each whistle once, then repeated them each once. Here’s the result on their subjective test:

Name	Thingiverse ID	Mass (grams)	Price	Print Time (minutes)	Rank	Decibels
Extremely loud and compact emergency whistle [v2]	2933021	3.7	$0.11	18	1	TBD
Extremely loud and compact emergency whistle [v1]	2933021	3.9	$0.12	22	2	TBD
2 chamber whistle (LOUD) [w5]	2616512	8.1	$0.24	49	3	TBD
v29 (Over 118 db!)	1179160	13.9	$0.42	90	4	TBD

Whether the1 loudest whistle is the v1 or v2 of the “Extremely loud and compact emergency whistle,” Thingiverse user whistleblower clearly designed an amazing, quick printing, low cost whistle. It has a very high pitched piercing tone that can be downright painful to be near, let alone create. 2

As before there’s a number of different things that could be happening here. Perhaps the particular tone of this whistle travels better through open spaces (such as a parking lot) rather than through a door and down a hall (such as inside my house). I know there are some whistles that require a lot of blowing power to hit maximum volume and others which almost “choke” on too much pressure.

In two days my decibel meter will arrive and I’ll try all of these tests again and post a new table. If you think you’ve got a contender or have seen a really loud whistle on Thingiverse, let me know in the comments so I can print and test it.

Loudest 3D Printed Whistle

Subjectively [↩]
Again, I had my earplugs in for the test [↩]

Loudest Whistle on Thingiverse… The Answer Might Surprise You!

You'll need a pair of these earplugs — You’ll need a pair of these

Whistles have been a staple on Thingiverse for years, probably because they’re such a small, simple, and impactful way to demonstrate the usefulness of a 3D printer. 1 I don’t know how many there are, but there are a LOT of whistles on Thingiverse. I’ve been curious about which whistles on Thingiverse are the loudest and conducted a semi-scientific experiment to figure this out.

I say “semi-scientific” because I don’t have a decibel meter.2 My methodology was to have my family at one end of the house while I went to the other side, closed the door, put in my earplugs, and wailed away on six whistles as hard as I could. In any case, here’s my findings:

Name	Thingiverse ID	Mass (grams)	Price	Print Time (minutes)	Rank	Decibels
Extremely loud and compact emergency whistle [v1]	2933021	3.9	$0.12	22	1	TBD
2 chamber whistle (LOUD) [w5]	2616512	8.1	$0.24	49	2	TBD
Extremely loud and compact emergency whistle [v2]	2933021	3.7	$0.11	18	3	TBD
v29 (Over 118 db!)	1179160	13.9	$0.42	90	4	TBD
Emergency Whistle with Solidworks 2014 source	495172	1.2	$0.04	7	5	TBD
Whistle Ring Modified [v2]	2027115	1.6	$0.05	9	6	TBD

I added a few columns that may (or may not) be of interest to you. I indicated the weight of each whistle, because sometimes I want to know how many whistles I could produce off a single spool of plastic.3 Sometimes I want to produce the loudest whistle for the time I have to produce a whistle.4 I showed the cost per model5 , because it brings me so much joy to know I can make my daughter’s classroom louder than a jet engine for less than the cost of a pack of gum.

I know there are a number of important variables are are simply not addressed in this test. Different frequencies sound louder or might be easier to hear through the door. I tried to blow each whistle the same amount, but some whistles are louder with less forceful or more forceful blows. Once that decibel meter shows up, I’ll be sure to post another update.

Loudest 3D Printed Whistle

Photo by mosambers [↩]
Yet. At <$20 on Amazon, you can be sure I’ll be adding actual readings soon [↩]
With careful design, approximately 2,500 whistles per kilogram of plastic [↩]
The v2 of this whistle is the clear winner [↩]
Assuming a spool costs about $30, shipped [↩]

How to Back Up Files from Google Drive with a Supervised User

Google suddenly discontinued/crippled their Google Supervised User program in January of 2018. This was a fantastic program which allowed parents to set up a Google account for a child on a Chromebook and monitor and control access to the internet. Unfortunately, the “manage user page” redirects you a page “Supervised Users can’t be created or edited.” Sure, there’s Google Family Link – but that only works for Android and mobile devices.

This means the Chromebook we bought for our daughter and which she’s been using for about a year now, is borderline useless. How useless?

Imagine using a modern computer (or even a phone or tablet!) without the ability to copy, cut and paste. No being able to visit any new sites, since I can’t edit her access to whitelist the website. You can’t copy, move, or drag-and-drop the files from Google Drive to the internal microSD card or a flash drive.

And, as I discovered today, no being able to download files out of the Supervised User’s Google Drive account, since Google’s ability to zip the files is crippled.1 Since my daughter’s account had hundreds of files, it was beginning to look like my only option was to download each file individually, one after the other.

If you find yourself in a similar predicament, here’s how you can back up your Supervised User’s account out of Google Drive:

Create a new empty folder with a catchy name like “20180528 Backup”
Select all other files in their Google Drive
Tap the trackpad with two fingers2 and select “Move”
Move all the files into your newly created folder
Select the newly created folder
Tap the trackpad with two fingers3 and select “Share”
Share that folder from the Supervised User with yourself (probably by typing in your email)4
Open up Google Drive in your web browser on a completely different, non-Chromebook device
Click on the icon that looks like two people and is labeled, “Shared with me”
You should see the previously named folder under the documents recently shared with you
Right click on the folder and click on “Download.” It will take some time as Google zips the folder and all the documents in all the sub-folders into a file
When prompted, save the file to your computer

I got through this with the usual trial and error. I really hope it’s helpful to someone else some day.

You can download a single file at a time – but not more than one at a time [↩]
This is the Chromebook version of a “right click” [↩]
Again, the Chromebook “right click” [↩]
You may get a warning that you won’t receive a confirmation email – don’t worry about it [↩]

Maker Faire 2018 – 3D Printing for Home Improvement

If you’re here checking out my site after my presentation, you can check out all the slides from my presentation above. If you’d like more information about the individual things in the slides, I posted an update for most of them over on Hackaday. If you’ve still got some questions, feel free to leave a comment below, hit me up on twitter, email me directly.

Wemos D1 Mini Arduino Pin Mapping

I was expecting to be able to set up digital pin 0 on the Wemos D1 Mini and have it “Just Work.”

It turns out the Arduino pins don’t match up neatly to the Wemos D1 Mini pins. The path of true love, eh?

Luckily, Richard Lee mapped the Wemos pins to the Arduino pins well all know so well.

SOLVED! I can’t upload Arduino sketch to Wemos D1 Mini ESP8266

My Wemos D1 Mini WiFi boards had arrived from China1 on Friday and I’ve been fiending to build… something with them.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the very basic “blink” sketch to upload. Here were my symptoms:

When uploading, I got the “error: failed to open” message
My Windows computer flashed a message when I connected the board, saying it was an unrecognized device
The Device Manager showed a little “alert triangle” suggesting the proper drivers were not installed
All of the ports in the Arduino IDE were disabled and greyed out

I tried several different upload speeds and several different USB micro cables to no success. It was not until I found this post explaining that I needed to update the Wemos drivers along with a handy link to said drivers.

Now that I got this board blinking, I can’t wait to get it to do MOAR…

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Update: My buddy Chris pointed out that I’ve been mixing up ESP32 and ESP8266. I’ve corrected the title now.

$13 for four boards plus headers?! [↩]

Bamboo Illuminated Dome

I’ve always liked the idea of geodesic domes, but haven’t had the space, time, or ability to actually assemble one. On top of all that, I was having trouble coming up with an idea for struts that would be both sturdy and cheap enough to build a dome at a reasonable cost.

Until I went to the grocery store recently. The local supermarket had a clearance table with long bamboo skewers. I realized these could probably work really well as struts and they were extremely cheap to boot. I bought a few a the store to try out, but ultimately turned to Amazon for my bulk bamboo purchase.

I’ve already designed the connectors to work with these bamboo skewers. You can try them out here on Thingiverse.

Once I’ve got the skewers cut to size and the remaining connectors printed, I’ll be wrapping the entire structure in that stretchy plastic wrap used for protecting furniture when you are moving. 1 Then I’ll be putting some LED’s and possibly a laser inside to make it more interesting. :)

Lasers.

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We have two rolls left over from the last two times we moved… [↩]

Practical 3D Printing for Everyone

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3D printing can sometimes get a bad rap. At first people are excited by the possibilities, then after printing a few trinkets the novelty can really start to wear off. However, our 3D printers have become an absolutely critical part of our home repairs.

We have printed literally dozens and dozens of things in and around our home. As of the time I’m editing this post, we’re up to 82 things so far! The vast majority of these are completely bespoke custom creations, with a few things that are printed from Thingiverse or mashups with things from Thingiverse.

My proposed Maker Faire Bay Area 2018 Presentation submission is for a presentation that discusses:

Practical things everyone can 3D print for their own home
1. Repairs
2. Improvements
3. Other useful things
3D Printing with Family and Friends
1. Specifying a purpose (“Honey, can you make me something that…”)
2. Specifying dimensions and purpose (“I need something that will…”)
3. Simple techniques for creating replacement parts (using good reference photos, GIMP, Inkscape, and OpenSCAD)
3D Design with Family and Friends
1. Photographs
2. Sketches
3. TinkerCAD and Sketchup

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ESP WiFi Board Experiments

A friend of mine pointed me in the direction of some ESP32 board tutorials over at MsRaynsford.co.uk.1 You know it’s a fast moving area when a post that’s less than a month old already has a dead link. :) Rather than re-creating all the tutorials that are already out there, I’m going to just jot down my notes and links as a short of “quick start guide to quick start guides.”

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ESP Boards
1. There’s several different “flavors” of ESP WiFi tech, however it seems as if they all break down into one of three different categories.
  1. Bare ESP WiFi module. These require a bit of effort to make work since the bare module requires the pins to be broken out to be made useful.
  2. ESP WiFi breakout boards. This type of board, which has 8 pins broken out, requires a programmer. Since these 8 pins are arranged in a 2×4 pattern, they can’t be used directly in a breadboard.
  3. ESP WiFi development boards. These board seem to have lots of pins broken out and typically a USB connector. Since these boards have more features (voltage regulators, compatibility with other boards’ form factors, USB communication built-in), they’re going to be more expensive. There’s the Adafruit Huzzah, the Sparkfun ESP Thing, and then something called the ESP Wemos D1.
2. There are several different ESP modules and boards which have varying amounts of space from 512kb to 4MB and varying amounts of pins from 2 to 24 pins. These modules all tend to have different names (ESP-01, ESP-07, etc, etc) but are all known as ESP8266.
3. The ESP modules require 3.3v, so a 5.0v USB or other source will fry them. Plan accordingly. Some development boards have voltage regulators on them to adjust the power going to the module.
Correct Board Manager URL for ESP boards
An overwhelming amount of information for ESP boards
Ordering Boards
1. I’m ordering several boards off of Aliexpress. I’m getting a few Wemos D1 boards, since they’ll be easy to prototype with2 , and a few ESP-01 breakout boards and a single programmer to toss into a project. Then again, at <$3 a piece for the Wemos boards and <$2 a piece for the ESP breakouts, it doesn’t make a ton of sense to stretch to put the ESP-01’s into a project. My thinking is that most any project I build will only use a pin or two and not be too terribly complicated anyhow, so that once it’s been prototyped I can just burn it into the ESP-01’s and permanently install it into a project.
2. I’m not exactly sure which what WiFi enabled things I’d like to build yet. 3 Here are some ideas:
  1. A pair of tap lights that are connected over the internet. I’d tap one before I left work, it would flash a color to let me know it sent a message, and the other one at home would light up to let my fam know I was on the way. I guess it’s similar in theory to this.
  2. A button to call an Uber or Lyft.
  3. A button that will email or call my cell in 2-5 minutes from the time I press the button. Useful when I know someone who stepped into my office isn’t good at taking a hint. Or when I need to get off a conference call.
  4. A button that can be used to log simple events. Might be useful at work in a variety of ways.
  5. A button that will automatically start a print job on my WiFi enabled 3D printer.

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Another tutorial here and here [↩]
Solder in headers, connect via USB, drop in breadboard, prototype away [↩]
Sometimes I will buy a few parts I know will be useful, spend some time tinkering with them, and then later build something when inspiration strikes. [↩]

Hacked Tap Light Enclosure

Just seeing a post and pile of code about a project isn’t always that interesting. The nifty thing about this project is also one of the problems. They’re cosmetically identical – so you can only tell which one you’ve got by activating it. :)

I couldn’t be more pleased with the way this project came out. I basically took my daughter’s setup based off an Adafruit Circuit Playground, built a more specialized (and louder!) version into a breadboard using an Adafruit Trinket, and then ported the entire design into an ATTiny85. The only thing I would change about it would be to add a socket for the ATTiny to make it easier to modify down the line.

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