Intro

Welcome to That Maker Show with me, chalkers, your host to all things new in the maker movement.

This week we’re talking carbon nanotubes, bluetooth low energy, DIY smart-locks and an awesome kickstarter project.

Carbon Nanotube Printing

Gigaom published a story about a 3D printing startup called Arevo. They’ve created a series of 3D printer filaments with carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes, also known as graphene, has a number of awesome characteristics. Objectives made from them are stronger, lighter, and more durable and can conduct electricity.

The filaments aren’t for sale yet but when they are Arevo will also sell optimised print heads to use the filament. This is a very exciting development to keep on your radar!

Adafruit Bluefruit LE nRF8001

This week Adafruit released an awesome new bluetooth product. It’s called Adafruit Bluefruit LE nRF8001 breakout board.

Bluetooth LE is also known as Bluetooth 4.0, Bluetooth Low Energy or Bluetooth Smart. It’s in every new smartphone and is being embedding in everything from heart monitors to dog collars.

If you want to embed Bluetooth LE into your Arduino or other microcontroller projects this is the board for you. Adafruit have even released an iOS app to help you experiment with the breakout board. Follow along with their tutorial to get it up and running.

DIY Smart Lock

Over on the Twilio blog, Jonathan Gottfried, show’s you how to make your own Lokitron smart lock.

The project allows you to send an SMS to lock or unlock your door. It involves the Twillo API, Node.js, a serial connection, an Arduino Uno and a servo.

By the end of the article you should have a rudimentary DIY smart lock. Alternatively you could buy one, ready assemble without the ducktape and cardboard but where’s the fun in that.

Kickstarter of the Week

This week’s awesome kickstarter project is EPIC! It’s called AgIC - Ag Inkjet Circuit – which allows you to print circuit boards with a standard inkjet printer.

AgIC comes in two parts, the ink and the paper. You put them in a standard inkjet printer. Your new circuits require no soldering, just use conductive glue or tape. You can prototype your circuit boards at home before sending them off to be manufactured in a more finalized form. It’s the fastest, cheapest and easiest way to create circuit boards on the earth!

There’s only a couple of days left so if you want to be the first to get your hands on the equipment to print circuit boards at home, back them now!

Outro

Thanks for watching, remember to subscribe for your weekly dose of maker news.

Notable mentions

Hit me up @chalkers on twitter if you have any stories you’d like me to cover. If they don’t make it into the show I’ll include them as notable mentions in the show notes.

Hosted and Written by: Andrew Chalkley (@chalkers)
Produced by: Michael Poley (@michaelpoley)