That Maker Show Ep. 7

Intro

Hello World, and welcome to That Maker Show with me, chalkers, your host to all things new in the maker movement.

This week we’re talking about 3D printed hands, DIY Google Glass, a Raspberry Pi cell phone and an awesome kickstarter project.

$50 Cyborg Hand

The folks over at 3DUniverse.org have 3D printed a hand for a 53 year old man, who was born without most of his left hand. The cost of the material and parts comes to just about 50 bucks. Surprisingly he gives it a glowing review and said it performed better than a $42,000 device he already been using.

Even if you factor in the price of a “prosumer” 3D printer the cost of printing your first hand is far more cheaper than the traditional devices.

DIY Google Glass

Can’t afford Google Glass or are you a little freaked out by Google seeing everything you do? Why not make your own indie-style face-mountable wearable computer?

Over on the Adafruit youtube channel there’s a short video covering a tutorial. It involves disassembling a pair of video glasses and 3D printing a new enclosure that can even be affixed to your own prescription lenses! The DIY Glass can be hooked up to a Raspberry Pi in your pocket! Cool!

Raspberry Pi Smartphone

Dave Hunt has made his own cell phone, the PiPhone. He uses about 160 bucks worth of parts and is able to create a solderless smartphone. It may look a little bare right now and you wouldn’t want to take it out with you. It’s a bit of a challenge but you could print your own enclosure to have the peace of mind that you know exactly what goes in your smartphone!

Kickstarter of the Week

This week’s awesome kickstarter project is reflow soldering controller called the Reflowster.

It’s a smart outlet designed to instantly turn your toaster oven into a reflow soldering station. What reflow soldering is is a process to solder a whole PCB board at once by first applying paste to the board and parts and then baking it. This results in a finish seen on commercially soldered boards.

This is different to other DIY solutions out there because it requires no hacks to your toaster oven itself. Awesome! If this type of soldering is what you’re looking for in your projects back this Kickstarter now!

Outro

Once again, 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)