Samwise Makers' News
Sunday, July 26, 2026
Delta Pen Plotter Draws In Multiple Colors
András Vujovits built a pen plotter using a delta motion system — the same parallel arm geometry found in rapid 3D printers. The clever twist is a magnetic tool changer that holds Muji 0.5mm ballpoint pens in colored carriers, allowing the machine to swap autonomously between colors mid-plot. An Arduino Nano running GRBL provides motion control, while the magnetic tool change eliminates the manual pen swapping required by most desktop plotters. The delta geometry offers exceptional speed and precision across the build area, and the open-source project invites others to replicate and extend it with different pen types or larger formats.
Sources: Hackaday
Building A Fencing Scoring Box
When their club’s scoring rig broke, maker jc0025 built a replacement from scratch using the tools of the trade. The heart of the build is an Arduino Nano with an ATmega328P microcontroller, driving two 8×8 WS2812B addressable LED panels. Fencing socket blocks connect to each player’s lamé jacket, weapon, and guard, feeding hit signals to the Arduino. A colored light fires when a valid hit lands on the opponent’s lamé; a white light indicates an off-target strike; and a buzzer sounds for audio feedback. Everything is housed in a tidy 3D-printed enclosure and powered over USB-C — a practical, affordable fix for any fencing club.
Sources: Hackaday
Taking Tri-Camera True-Color Infrared Videos
Going by Project 326, this maker developed an unusual method for capturing composite infrared video using three ordinary USB webcams. Each camera has its built-in IR cut filter replaced by a specific dichroic filter — transmitting at 750nm, 850nm, or 940nm respectively — so each captures a different near-infrared wavelength band as a monochromatic video stream. A Raspberry Pi records all three streams simultaneously, then software composites them into a single false-color image where near-IR wavelengths map to visible color channels. The result renders vegetation, heat signatures, and reflective surfaces in vivid false color that’s invisible to the naked eye.
Sources: Hackaday
Add Sensors To Everything!
In his Beyond Measure column, Elliot Williams argues that strain gauges deserve a permanent spot inside the 3D printer hot end. By embedding a strain gauge on the heating block itself, the printer can detect changes in extrusion pressure with far more nuance than traditional end-stop or nozzle-contact approaches. The real-time pressure data enables smarter pressure advance algorithms — eliminating the need for separate calibration prints — and can even detect partial or full clogs before they ruin a job. Williams frames this as the natural next step for open-source firmware like Klipper: turning what was purely a mechanical extrusion system into a sensor-rich feedback loop.
Sources: Hackaday
ICCU Monitor Logs Data In E-GMP EV Failures
Maker broadwall tackled a well-documented flaw in Hyundai and Kia’s E-GMP electric vehicle platform: the Integrated Charging Control Unit, which converts the 800-volt drive battery down to 12 volts. These ICCUs have been failing at high rates, often leaving owners stranded with a dead 12V system despite a full traction battery. Broadwall built an OBD-II data logger specifically for ICCU health monitoring, capturing real-time conversion efficiency and thermal data that owners can use to predict failure before it happens. The work has contributed to public awareness of the issue, which Hyundai has since acknowledged by extending warranty coverage on affected ICCUs to fifteen years.
Sources: Hackaday
Repairing A RED Cinema Camera On The Cheap
YouTuber ALT CINE bought a damaged RED Komodo 6K cinema camera online for just £700 — a fraction of the several-thousand-pound new price. The camera showed only 3 hours of use in firmware, and the casing looked pristine, suggesting minimal wear. After disassembly, the culprit turned out to be a delaminated glass filter directly in front of the sensor, caused by overzealous cleaning that let fluid seep behind it. Simply removing the filter, cleaning and drying it, and reinstalling it restored the camera to full working order — an essentially free repair. RED’s official service would have charged $695 for the same work or $1,395 for a full sensor replacement.
Sources: Hackaday
Team Repair Breaks Things To Teach People How To Fix Them
Team Repair is a subscription service with an unusual pitch: every month it sends a deliberately broken device to subscribers, along with the tools and guides to fix it. The educational repair boxes target kids aged 8 to 14, working in partnership with iFixit to produce step-by-step guides for each device type. The model teaches electronics confidence by removing the fear of failure — the devices are pre-broken, so there’s nothing to lose. Subscribers develop real troubleshooting skills, not just button-pressing familiarity. Hackaday covered the service as part of broader coverage of the right-to-repair movement and hands-on technical education.
Sources: Hackaday
How Film Industry Data Website The-Numbers.com Got Mauled By Bots
Film box office data site The-Numbers.com, running since 1997, recently went offline for months after AI crawler traffic overwhelmed its infrastructure. Founder Bruce Nash spoke with journalist Stephen Follows about the ordeal: after steady human traffic for nearly three decades, a first wave of scrapers arrived in 2024, followed by a devastating surge in late 2025 driven by LLM training bots and prediction market crawlers from platforms like Polymarket. The automated traffic was orders of magnitude heavier than search engine indexing, driving hosting costs through the roof. Nash’s team had to completely rearchitect the site to survive, illustrating the unsustainable bandwidth burden AI crawlers impose on independent web publishers.
Sources: Hackaday
Top Crowdfunding
Kickstarter / Indiegogo
1. Gordix CNC — rail-free 3-in-1 CNC machine — $1,612,944 pledged, Kickstarter
2. Cardputer Zero — credit-card Linux PC (RPi CM0) — $1,642,166 pledged, Kickstarter
3. Hanboost T1 — pocket laser engraver, $89 — $540,888 pledged, Kickstarter
GitHub Trending
Makers & Hardware
1. AX.25 packet-radio chat (TypeScript) — 245★
2. os-tutorial “Create an OS from scratch” — 7.3k★
3. ungoogled-chromium — 4.9k★
Upcoming Events
Maker Faire Hannover — Aug 15–16, 2026, Hannover, Germany
Maker Faire Canada — Aug 29–30, 2026
Maker Faire Bay Area — Sept 25–27, 2026, Vallejo CA (20th anniversary)
Curated by JD · samwise.agency
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