AUSTIN DIXON'S SCIFI WORKSHOP
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Noisy Cricket

1/10/2025

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Woke up at 2AM and couldn't fall back asleep, so I spent all night making the "Noisy Cricket" from Men In Black.
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GLaDOS Animatronic

12/14/2024

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I’m a big fan of the Portal series, so I had to have a GLaDOS robot mounted on my pegboard. This is what I came up with:

The head is 3d-printed and hand-painted. The rest of the build is made of servos, metal brackets, a PWM servo driver, a QT PY ESP32, and a motion sensor.
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Pipboy Mini

12/7/2024

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I love Fallout’s Pipboy (wrist computer), but the truth is it’s too big and clunky to actually be a daily worn device. I wanted to see if I could make a smartwatch with a similar vibe, but in a form factor small enough to be worn daily in the real world.

I decided to build this around Adafruit’s ESP32-S2 Reverse TFT board. This board is fairly tiny, and it has built-in features that I needed
  • on-board wifi
  • tft screen
  • battery charging capability
  • accessible buttons

I designed, 3d printed, and painted a case for the board that I think captures some of the Pipboy aesthetic. It’s held together with heat-set inserts and allen screws. Inside is a rechargeable lithium battery and a tilt sensor. The tilt sensor automatically turns the screen off when you’re not looking at the watch in order to extend battery life. The USB port can be accessed on the side without removing the case. The case can be used with any 22mm watch strap, but I had some nice scrap leather, so I just made my own leather cuff band.

The way the watch works, is that on reset it gets the time and date from online NTP servers while connected to my home wifi. Then the ESP32-S2’s internal clock handles keeping track of time until the time is updated via NTP servers again. This seems to work well. (Traditionally, you would use a Real Time Clock or GPS module to keep accurate time, but that would have made the watch bulkier.) Likewise, I use OpenWeatherMap’s API to get weather data to the watch daily. I plan to add additional functionally in the future, but for now I’m happy with my Pipboy Mini.

CODE
Case STL File
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Zippo Screwdriver Bit Holder

4/9/2024

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My favorite EDC screwdriver is the Victorinox Cybertool, which uses 4mm bits. I wanted a way to carry around extra bits for it and I couldn’t find anything on the market, so I decided to design my own solution. This is what I came up with. It’s an insert for a standard zippo shell that utilizes a spring/hammer closing system similar to the original lighter insert. It even sounds and feels like a regular zippo.

You can find the STL file here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6570806
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  • About
  • Tech Projects
  • Code
  • Art
    • Traditional Art
    • Digital Art
  • Book Recommendations
    • Science
    • Art
    • Fiction
  • Links
  • Contact