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Community Feedback

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element14's The Ben Heck Show

Every month Ben, Karen, and Felix discuss top build suggestions submitted by viewers. If your build idea is mentioned you win a free Ben Heck T-Shirt!

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If your name was announced on Community Feedback you should have received notification following the announcement.  If not, or if you did not receive a Ben Heck Show T-shirt from an earlier announcement then send a message to with the shipping address you want it delivered to and one will be sent to you.

 

If your shipping address is located outside the United States please include a phone number where you can be reached as it is required information for printing out shipping labels through our delivery service.

 

 

Community Feedback 08
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Following a recent discussion on preferred Linux distributions, Felix weighs in on what works for him. Among the distros he discusses with Karen are Arch, OpenSuse, Ubuntu, and Debian. He talks about what it took to get him where he is and his transformation from Linux Evangelist to OS Agnostic

Community Feedback 07
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Ben and Karen answer questions from Community Members about Raspberry Pi.  Topics include the  use of differential signals such as PCI Express Lanes for adding a GPU; the GPIO, IO, and the Linux Device Tree Overlay requirements to power an old portable DVD screen with your Raspberry Pi.

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Congratulations you win a Free Ben Heck T-Shirt!

Community Feedback 06
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Community Members make suggestions to the team as they work on their mini pinball kit. Feedback includes a suggestion for making a two player pinball machine based on a model that uses a tabletop CNC router; suggestions for adding pop bumpers, slingshots, drop targets, spinners, ramps, and habitrails; and the use of Story Mode to reach a younger audience.

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Community Feedback 05
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Ben and Karen respond to feedback from Community Members give on their Super Glue Gun.  Feedback includes using a 3D pen to see how it moves the filament, using a worm gear motor from a CD drive and replacing the trigger with a solenoid actuator, using a dremel saw as a gear, and replacing metal parts with a simple post and a sleeve.

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Congratulations you win a Free Ben Heck T-Shirt!

 

 

Community Feedback 04
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Community Members make suggestions to the team as they work on their mini pinball kit.  Feedback includes using thin recesses on the table to make the ball change its directory, using an Arduino SoftTimer library for timing the PWM and bouncing, alternate ways of making the table such as taking a look at the mechanics on Stern's mini playfield for Family Guy/Shrek, and alternate ways of making the table such as optional posts between the flippers.

Community Feedback comes from , , and !

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Community Feedback 03
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Ben and Karen look through suggestions from anywhere on the element14 community on a segment called Community Feedback. This segment focuses on the Super Glue Gun Build after it just got started. Suggestions include putting a "do not try this at home" warning label when attempting to hook up mains to a breadboard in front of an audience, discussing different loads with their glue gun, and an excel sheet to deal with the non-linearity of thermistors.

Community Feedback comes from ,   and !

Congratulations you win a Free Ben Heck T-Shirt!

 

 

Community Feedback 02
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Ben and Karen look through suggestions from the community about the Logic Board Game. Suggestions include using connections similar to snap circuits to make junctions possible and magnetic clasp to make it easier to join circuits. Another suggestion involves using a simple wire matrix connected with push pins for the circuit connection.

Community Feedback comes from and !

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Community Feedback 01
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It turns out there is a lot more to pinball than whacking and hitting things so you can arbitrarily get points. There are actual storylines, evolving through gameplay, with angles and mechanisms more complicated than you might realize. The plan is to make templates that allow you to add your own customization. If you're not familiar with how pinball games work, go to your local arcade, find a pinball game you like, and look at the mechanisms that are in there that you enjoy.

 

Community Feedback comes from   and !

Congratulations you win a Free Ben Heck T-Shirt!

 

 

  • Is there any way to make a Wii disc drive connect to a PC over the Universal Serial Bus or Serial ATA? I was looking over legal ways to play a console game on PC, and realized that every mention of an illegal action involved making copies of (or extracting) the game that you want to play. I've checked with the Dolphin community and developers, who state that Dolphin cannot load an official Wii disc because Wiis use a different type of disc that cannot be read by standard DVD or Blu-ray drives. However, it will read backups, which are essentially the contents of a Wii disc, but copied to a DVD, Blu-ray, or CD.

     

    My situation is that I own a legitimate copy of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Wii, but I have grown more and more used to PC controls with games, and I think that gameplay could be improved with PC controls, and the rendering of DirectX 11 (which has better Anti-Aliasing and Anistropic Filtering functions that the emulator can supposedly use).

  • My Project Fail - you asked for feedback about our failed projects:

     

     

    You asked about our project fails.  I started a project a few years back to block telemarketers.  I built two prototypes, one I used, and one I loan out for beta testing with friends and relatives.  The project revolved around a Raspberry Pi early model B and a zoom USB powered modem.  I used a public domain program called JCBlock available through SourceForge and worked on Linux.  I asked the creator of the program if I could use it in my project and market it.  He said go for it and did not want any monetary compensation.

     

    The way it worked is it used a text file for a blacklist.  I wrote some custom software around it that included a GUI menu that displayed status, allowed you to search, add, and remove numbers from the blacklist.  If a call came in with the caller id that was on the blacklist, the modem would pick up the call and hang up after the first ring.  It worked well but here were the reasons why it was not a viable product and I abandon the project.

     

    1) I had issues with Raspbian OS that sometimes caused the software to fail and not recognize the modem.

    2) The telemarketers were using VoIP and spoofing the numbers, after they were blocked they simply spoofed another number, I even had my own number spoofed and I knew I couldn’t receive a call from my own number.

    3) I realized that many millennials use cell phones and do not have land lines.

    4) The cost of the project as low quantities was around $80.00 to build, making the resale price around $130.00 for a market price, which was on the upper limit of a viable product.

    5) I started to use NoMoRobo, a free service which has a better blacklist that is updated more frequently.

     

    Although the product worked well and I resolved the Raspbian issues by switching to a Raspberry Pi-2 and Ubuntu, I realized that it wouldn’t be a viable product.  I still use my unit and it does catch some calls that NoMoRobo doesn’t, I decided to retire the possibilities of marketing it.

     

    Russ DiBenedetto

    New Jersey