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Winners Announced:  Vintage Upcycling with Raspberry Pi or Arduino Workshop (Zero to Hero) Series (Win a Free Book and a Raspberry Pi or Arduino)!

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In the comments below let us know what piece of vintage tech you want to upgrade with a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino!

 

We will send 10 winners a copy of Enrico's book along with a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino depending on Your Project Proposal!

 

Upcycling is the act of taking something no longer in use and giving it a second life and new function. In doing so, the finished product often becomes more practical, valuable and beautiful than what it previously was.  This 3 part workshop will introduce you to upcycling, explore a series of projects that involve upcycling, and encourage you to build your own upcycling project. 

 

Join us for a hands-on workshop with Enrico Miglino, in support of his upcoming book, Vintage Upcycling with Raspberry Pi and Arduino.  We encourage you to follow along as Enrico will walk you through a series of upcycling projects and take youimage from Zero to Hero upcycling using the Raspberry Pi and Arduino.  Over the course of three sessions, you'll be introduced to the concept of upcycling, and we'll walk you through everything you need to know to get started on your own upcycling project.  No experience required.  After each workshop Enrico will be available to answer any questions you have as you work on your own upcycling project using something vintage. 

 

We will be giving away up to 10 copies of Enrico's new book along with either a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino depending on your project proposal. 

 

To win comment below to:

  • let us know what vintage tech you want to upgrade using a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino.
  • how you will use a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino in an upcycling project.
  • register and attend the workshop live or On-Demand

 

 

The Project14 theme for October is Recycle & Retrofit and begins on October 14th.  Old Radios and old game consoles come to mind but you are invited to take any unused appliance and upcycling it using electronics of your choice!  Attend this workshop to get ideas for your own upcycling project using a Raspberry or Arduino.  When you are ready to submit your completed project submit your project in the Recycle & Retrofit space (launches Oct 14th) in Project14 or a blog on the community and use the tag RecycleRetrofitCH. 

 

 

 

 

Dates and Register for Free:

 

Workshop:Dates and Time:

Session 1 - Pi Rotary

Thursday, 3rd of Sept 2020

 

2:00 PM CDT // 7:30 PM BST

 

Session 2 - Radio Magic

Thursday, 17th of Sept 2020

 

2:00 PM CDT // 7:30 PM BST

 

Session 3 - Pi Synth

Thursday 1st of Oct 2020

 

2:00 PM CDT // 7:30 PM BST

 

 

Featured Projects:

 

The Pi Rotary  by

 

 

The Pi Rotary
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Radio Magic: Sounds Nice? (part 1)  by :

 

 

Radio Magic
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The Nanodrone  by :

 

The NanoDrone
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The Presenter:

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Enrico Miglino, element14 Community Member

Born in Turin, Italy. I have always had a special interest in electronics and communication. I had the chance to start working in the era of the first Personal Computers, just few years before their massive introduction, and very soon I started acquiring knowledge about hardware and software. I developed researches, patented hardware and software-integrated technologies, wrote technical articles on several technical papers in Italy and more. During the last decade I developed software and firmware for embedded devices, new products for Android, Mac and Linux. Before the Android massive diffusion, I had been developing software as Nokia developer focusing my experience on the Qt development platforms on desktops and Symbian devices. My approach to Electronics and circuit projects involving hardware and circuit creation is strongly oriented to microcontrollers, from small devices to the computer-like micro as the well-known ARM processors family. I definitely avoid two things: redundance (i.e. making projects more complex than can be done) and excess of complexity (i.e. a great solution should be simple and cheap, otherwise it is not a great solution). For this reasons I frequently rethink projects or create new ones in order to make products and prototypes market-affordable and as cheap as possible without compromising quality. Five years ago I moved to Ibiza (Balearic Islands, Spain) where I currently live and work.

Parents

  • I have two interesting ideas. I have an old Optima typewriter, which has been produced since 1950 in the German Democratic Republic in Erfurt on the basis of the Olympia Büromaschinenwerke company. I want to breathe a second life into it and make it so that it can be connected to a computer or to another device such as a phone or tablet. I think the Arduino will be enough for this.

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    I also have an old Soviet film camera "Chaika", these cameras were produced in 1965-1974 by the Minsk Mechanical Plant named after SI Vavilov in Bellarusia. I want to make a retro digital camera out of it. I want to try to put a Raspberry PI and a camera module in it.

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Comment

  • I have two interesting ideas. I have an old Optima typewriter, which has been produced since 1950 in the German Democratic Republic in Erfurt on the basis of the Olympia Büromaschinenwerke company. I want to breathe a second life into it and make it so that it can be connected to a computer or to another device such as a phone or tablet. I think the Arduino will be enough for this.

    image

    I also have an old Soviet film camera "Chaika", these cameras were produced in 1965-1974 by the Minsk Mechanical Plant named after SI Vavilov in Bellarusia. I want to make a retro digital camera out of it. I want to try to put a Raspberry PI and a camera module in it.

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Children
  • in reply to maxpowerr

    Both are good Ideas. But about the typewriter, what do you want to do? I mean, what kind "connecting" it to something else? Without more details it is not easy to suggest what micro or embedded device is better.

  • in reply to balearicdynamics

    Hmm.

     

    RPI is better. You can have mechanical keyboards to a soft click keyboard, etc.

     

    A bluetooth typewriter?

     

    That wouldn't really be much better than a regular keyboard, not to say its weight and bulkiness.

  • in reply to hugohu

    Frankly, I always think to upcycle something to make something else useful. A complex but probably almost inexpensive project maybe reversing the use. And yes, the Pi may be a better option due to the complexity of the original device.

     

    Enrico

  • in reply to balearicdynamics

    Hugo Hu got it right. I am planning to make a bluetooth or wi-fi keyboard. The typewriter is really very heavy somewhere around 20kg. You won't move such a keyboard often. This is a thing for inspiration. You can select a small place in the house where you could put it, put a tablet or smartphone on top of it and print your story.

  • in reply to maxpowerr

    I have already explored in past some of the possibilities to connect a sensor to every key of the typewriter but every solution I found was too complex, in my opinion. Recently during last months, I had the opportunity to explore deeply the characteristics of the Cypress Capsense technology and maybe this is a new way to upcycle a typewriter with a lower impact, then adding a mechanic to the already existing typing mechanism. Still thinking on how-to.

     

    Enrico

  • in reply to balearicdynamics

    It isn't very complex actually. It can be done fairly easily, depending on how you do it.

     

    If you made a PCB with those silicone button things, that would be quite easy, in an array.

     

    Just hot glue a piece of the silicone switch onto the bottom, I'd assume.

  • in reply to hugohu

    Hugo,

     

    easy as like as removing all the keys and replacing with buttons. But one of the "must" is that the vintage stuff should remain quite the same. Else there is no game image

     

    Then, just about the gluing of the buttons, there are no this kind of touch buttons one by one, and these are built with several layers of plastic, not a real PCB. So you can't cut or separate them so easily as you think

  • in reply to balearicdynamics

    If you look at where the letter arms pivot out during a key press, you just need to measure the distance to the one that starts moving, so a single distance sensor might be enough for the whole keyboard.

  • in reply to dougw

    Unfortunately no, Doug, already tested this method. Dring the movemenrs, both the keys and the hammers move non-linearly. To is it a problem to be able to discriminate the correct key.

     

    There are two options that until now for me seems promising, based on the tests I have done.

     

    One is optic, with a sensor per lever (but complex to make) one is contact, replacing the traditional Pb hammers with a contact. This is the only point where every single character goes to a precise and unique position (the mid of the lever, I mean, just to make the different hammers to reach always the same point of the paper.

    It is a good idea to remove the hammers BEFORE trying with a tablet instead of the paper sheet.

  • in reply to balearicdynamics

    I have a typewriter in China, but I'm in the US so I can't think of stuff that might work.

     

    You say that most of the vintage stuff must remain, or else it's just replacing a 300mHz computer with a top of the line Xeon.

     

    I think I might have an idea.

    If I recall correctly, you have a bunch of small hammers hitting the paper. It will be a very small space but if you manage to cram some kind of sensor to detect the hammer hitting it, that would be nice.

     

    For the SHIFT key and other keys, well.... you could always add a button?