Everyone loves the look of Nixie tubes, with their glowing orange characters made of curvy filament. But we usually only see makers using Nixie tubes for one purpose: clocks. That’s unfortunate, because they have a lot more potential, as illustrated by Bob Cascisa’s Nixie tube slot machine game.

This is a really delightful device that puts the slot machine experience into a handheld form factor, with a beautiful Nixie tube display. It has a single button to spin the “wheels,” and seven Nixie tubes to show the action. The top three Nixie tubes represent the wheels and they cycle through distinct symbols. The bottom four Nixie tubes show the player’s balance to keep track of payouts.

The bottom Nixie tubes are IN-12 models, which are Soviet NOS (New Old Stock) models capable of displaying numeric digits. The top Nixie tubes are rarer IN-7 models that can display a handful of symbols that would be useful for lab instruments, such as ?. Cascisa chose those IN-7 tubes because their symbols have a more iconographic appearance than standard alphanumeric characters, which English-speakers would try to read.

An Arduino Nano board controls the gameplay. It plugs into a custom PCB that Cascisa designed to house all of the components necessary to drive the Nixie tubes — a difficult job compared to modern LED and LCD displays. It requires a power supply that can provide high voltage to the Nixie tubes. Power comes from an 18650 battery pack inside the simple enclosure, with a charging port on the side. 

By Vegas slot machine standards, the gameplay is pretty simple. But this unit’s Nixie tube display certainly looks much nicer than the retina-scarring graphics on those machines. 

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Cats may be adorable, but they evolved to be predators. Unfortunately, responsible owners keep their cats indoors to avoid decimating the local wildlife population and that means Mr. Whiskers and Ms. Socks don’t get much opportunity to express their hunting urges. That’s why Sascha at Small Batch Factory designed Gatoino, which is an automatic laser turret toy that lets cats hunt for red dots indefinitely.

Gatoino automates laser cat toy playtime, putting less strain on owners’ wrists and keeping the fun going for as long as the furry felines want to keep up the chase. It moves the laser dot in two axes and does so in an unpredictable (pseudo-random) way, so it will keep the cats on their toe beans. And an onboard control interface lets the human adjust the playing field size and the movement speed, along with session schedules.

An Arduino Nano board controls all of that through a custom PCB to keep the wiring tidy. It moves the laser using two small SG90 hobby servo motors in an arrangement similar to a mirror galvanometer. Those parts all fit into a simple 3D-printed enclosure that can be placed on a shelf or mounted onto a wall out of the way.

If you’re interested in building your own Gatoino, the design files and instructions are available for purchase on the Small Batch Factory website.

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Robotics is already an intimidating field, thanks to the complexity involved. And the cost of parts, such as actuators, only increases that feeling of inaccessibility. But as FABRI Creator shows in their most recent video, you can build a useful robotic arm with just a handful of inexpensive components.

This is pint-sized robotic arm that has some of the same features as big and expensive industrial robots, just on a smaller scale. Users can operate the four joints manually, but can also record a series of positions and let the robot automatically move from one to the next. That is a popular programming technique in many industries, making this robot useful for learning real methodology and for performing practical tasks.

The best part is that this robot is very affordable. All of the parts, with the exception of fasteners and electronic components, are 3D-printable. The electronic components include an Arduino Nano board and four SG90 hobby servo motors that can be found for just a couple of dollars each. FABRI Creator designed a custom PCB to host the Arduino, to provide power input, and to simplify the wiring. That PCB isn’t strictly necessary, but it results in a much tidier robot. 

The assembled robot is small, but has enough reach to be useful and enough strength to lift light objects. It is a perfect starting point for people who want to learn robotics basics on a budget.

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Starfield, a game set in the vast expanse of our galaxy, is receiving a new expansion called “Shattered Space” in which players can don novel weapons and gear to take on the latest challenge. As part of its release, the expansion’s publisher Bethesda Game Studios reached out to cosplayer Jonas Zibartas and tasked him with creating a pair of render-accurate helmets that could be worn all day at conventions.

Within the first couple weeks of nonstop designing and test fits, Zibartas had a helmet model that consisted of 130 individual parts and where airflow was a major priority. Similar to a motorcycle helmet, the inner layer is comprised of soft fabric overlayed on top of a rigid, yet porous, helmet shell. Two fans near the front bring in fresh air from the outside and help prevent the transparent visor layer from becoming too foggy due to the wearer’s breathing. Raised just above this shell is a secondary set of 3D-printed accent pieces that give the helmet its finer details/form.

In Shattered Space, these helmets have lighting accents both inside the visor and at various points outside the helmet which act as indicators or headlamps. Zibartas was able to embed all of these features thanks to a dense strip of LEDs and an Arduino Nano.

The meticulous process of constructing these incredibly detailed helmets can be found here in Zibartas’s YouTube video below!

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With roots in Africa, the kalimba is a type of hand piano featuring an array of keys that are each tuned for a specific note, and upon plucking or striking one, a pleasant xylophone-like sound can be heard. Taking inspiration from his mini kalimba, Axel from the YouTube channel AxelMadeIt sought to automate how its keys are struck and produce classical melodies with precision.

The design process started out with Axel determining the best mechanism for interacting with the small keys, and after hitting/plucking them using a range of objects, he settled on plucking individual keys with a small plastic actuator. Two servo motors were utilized to perform the action, with one motor sliding a gantry left-and-right, and the other moving a small plastic pick across the keys. Axel’s design underwent several iterations to get the sound correct since material thickness, the lack of a resonant backing, and a loud servo motor all contributed to reduced quality initially.

After perfecting the physical layout, Axel assembled the electronic components into a custom 3D-printed case, which includes spaces for the Arduino Nano, battery, charging circuit, and pushbuttons. The first two buttons cause the kalimba to play preprogrammed melodies, while the last one plays random notes with a random amount of delay in between.

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If you want to make PCBs at home and you don’t happen to own a CNC mill, then you’ll probably need to turn to chemical etching. Use one of several different techniques to mask the blank PCB’s copper that you want to keep, then toss the whole thing into a bath to dissolve away the unmasked copper. Unfortunately, the last step can be slow, which is why Chris Borge built this PCB agitator.

Alton Brown’s philosophy on “unitaskers” is wise when it comes to the kitchen, but things are different in the workshop. Sometimes a tool or machine is so useful that it is worth keeping around — even if it only does one job. That’s the case here, because Borge’s machine only does one thing: tilts back and forth. If a container with a PCB in an etchant bath is sitting on top of the machine, that action will slosh the chemicals around and the agitation will dramatically speed up the process.

On a mechanical level, this is extremely simple. It only requires a handful of 3D-printed parts, some fasteners, and a couple of bearings. The bearings provide a rotational interface between the stationary base (weighed down with poured concrete) and the pivoting platform. The electronics are even simpler and consist of an Arduino Nano board and a small hobby servo motor. The Arduino just tells the servo motor to move back and forth endlessly, tilting the platform and providing constant agitation.

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