3D-printed enclosure, looks like it's holding up pretty well—no leaks so far! 💧

Adult hobbies have a way of turning into projects with deadlines even when nobody asked for that. A detailed miniature, puzzle, drawing, or similar desk activity can be enjoyable precisely because the progress is slow, but unfinished work can also start to feel like one more thing waiting to be completed. The useful distinction may be whether stopping halfway still feels okay. For adults who stick with a quiet at-home hobby for years, what makes it easy to leave a project unfinished for a while without feeling like you’ve fallen behind?

computer vision reads your full-body pose in real time, calls out moves Simon-Says style, and a mechanical arm swings a padded glove when you hold the wrong pose or lag. cv for the pose classification, kinetic energy in springs and electromagnet release for the strike, foam hands so it bruises your ego not your face. happy to go into the detection stack or the mechanical aspect if anyone wants.

Hello, I have been messing with an arduino micro to get a hang of peripheral creation.

I have gotten it to work as a mouse and as a joystick independently of each other (with the mouse and Xinput libraries respectively), but I don't see a way to combine the two in a way that would get picked up by steam (such as with a PS controller), is there a way to do this with an arduino? If not maybe with a pi pico?

Thank you for any help

I forced myself to learn to solder so that I could bring a project to life.

In doing so I documented it all as a beginners guide for how not to solder

Let’s me know if there’s anything I could’ve done better.

What’s the worst mistake you made when learning to solder?

https://youtube.com/shorts/5Z1GvC2orD0?is=fjydkMsK6pfbcAEZ

Curious how you do this, because it's quite of a painful experience for me every time. Designing takes some time but it's at least kinda fun. Ordering from Chinese stores not really

So the design side is done. Schematic, layout and firmware are ready faster or slower depending on complexity, but AI helps quite a bit. Then comes ordering the components which is painful by itself (at least for my wallet 😄). Digikey for the MCU and passives, LCSC because some of it is half the price, JLC for the boards, Amazon for whatever I need fast. Either way there is a lot of searching, clicking and a 100 tabs open. Especially when ordering custom mechanical components, there is sending RFQs, waiting for quotes, ...

Plus every vendor has its own minimums and shipping, so I end up moving parts between carts to dodge a $20 shipping fee on a $6 order. Then something is out of stock and I'm back picking an alternate.

What does your actual flow look like? Do you stick to one distributor and accept the price, or handle it somehow differently?

P.S. I'm working at a startup - we don't have a purchasing dep to do it for me 😅

Figured i'd ask here. Local hardware stores sometimes have what I want, I'm not sure where the local metal suppliers are, sometimes I just want to order online. Figured I'd see what people here use.

This essentially just detects when someone is 6 ft away using an ultrasonic sensor for distance and a thermal camera so it doesn’t go off if you see a wall.

Hey all,

Like many of you, I've saved hundreds of "IKEA hack" and furniture build videos... and built exactly zero of them. The problem: the video shows the result, but never the measurements, the cut list, or where to actually buy the materials.

So I built Cutlist — you paste a TikTok/Reel/Shorts link (or upload a video), and it deconstructs the build into:

📐 A cut sheet with exact dimensions (metric or imperial), ready to hand to the saw desk at the hardware store

🛒 A shopping list grouped by store (IKEA, Leroy Merlin, Home Depot, Lowe's, Amazon) with quantities and price estimates

🔧 Tools list with beginner-friendly swaps + safety notes

📋 Phased step-by-step instructions, with a hands-free "workshop mode" (big buttons, keeps your screen awake, optional voice readout)

There's a free tier (1 deconstruction/month) so you can try it without paying anything. There's also a small catalog of pre-deconstructed IKEA hacks (KALLAX, BILLY, IVAR, BESTÅ...) you can browse right away.

Link: https://cutliststudio.com

What I'd love feedback on:

• Is the cut list output actually usable at the cutting counter?
• Are the material/price estimates in the right ballpark?
• Would you trust AI-extracted measurements, or would you always double-check?
• What platforms/creators should I make sure it handles well?
• It's early access, so expect rough edges — that's why I'm here.

Tear it apart. 🙏

Hello there. I am a fan/lover of Guinness World Records, i made a cardboard and a paper of GWR logo with a plastic tape that taped to the cardboard, and i used a glue stick to put the paper onto the cardboard. Anyways, can anyone ask me anything about Guinness World Records?

Will there be more? Are the ones who do unhealthy?

I don't know if this is the right sub to ask this, but I got this old zither at a flea market and want to work on it. As you can see it's pretty dirty, a lot of parts have rusted and there's some dirt inside. Also the wood seems to have a few chipped parts. And the bottom part is a bit loose, probably something to do with the rusted screws there.

Any tips for me? Literally never done something like this.

Hello everyone,
I’m curious on how / what you guys do to not make yourself “lazy” with AI? I’m an aircraft mechanic by trade and do lots of woodworking, fabrication, 3d printing, and just general tinkering in my free time. I’ve been trying to learn more about electronics and doing Arduino projects as well as messing around with trying to repair some old stereo systems lately. Long story short, I’ve noticed I’ve been using ai tools more and more over the past year and I feel like I’ve been maybe cutting a lot of corners in learning stuff by just going for the easy answer with ai. I’ve since gone cold turkey to it for about 2 months now, but I know it’s an amazing tool and wanna still get the benifits it offers. I wanna learn as much as I can as often as a can, but I’m busy enough already so I feel like I should take advantage of the time saving convenience it offers without crippling myself. Just curious on how you guys navigate this. Any responses appreciated.

I came across this "magnet adhesive" online and am trying to figure out if this is a real thing or just super glue. I tried googling and can't find any mention of magnet glue.

Hi there. Im looking into laser engravers and hoping for suggestions.

I do not need a large engraving area. Literally 2x4” is more than enough

My needs:

Adequate power - Im engraving dense wood. I dont want to be underwhelmed by the power

Quality - of both the machine and the engraving itself

Affordability - im hoping the non-requirement of a large capacity will allow me to find a machine that has power and quality but is affordable. I cannot spend $1k plus on this.

Thank you so much

I thought maybe a group of fantasy degens would appreciate this boycave project I just finished. It shows our league’s live fantasy scores (w/ a median line). It’ll also periodically show projected final scores.
There’s also screens with league standings, all matchups w/scores, top player scores, and live NFL scores you can flip through with the buttons.
Adafruit RGB LED 64x64 panel with Adafruit Portal S3 and 3d Printed housing and acrylic screen cover

I’m a complete novice when it comes to this so I thought I’d come here for help.
I’m working on an escape room at home for my son’s birthday. I’d like to have an element where there is a simple keypad that “disarms” something. The main thing I’d like it to have is a visible red light turning green.
Thats really my only requirement, I just have no idea if I would be able to build something like that myself (again, I’m a newbie), or if I could purchase something?

Hello! I'm searching for a relativelly cheap vacuum former that i could buy for some workshops at our fablab. The ones I've seen out there are around 2.000€ and it seems a little bit much for a machine that we are not gonna give that much use. We wanted to buy the mayku formbox but it seems to be discontinued. Have you tried any other alternatives? Thanks a lot!

Everytime i make a project or worse i dissasemble one i end up with a bunch of unsorted screws which i end up never reusing because i put them in the randoms bin. What do you guys do about this? any solutions?

This is for my school project , so answer the questions :-

If you were to buy a model made for you with your minecraft skin, with outfit pixels, will you buy it?

and what are your Minimum and maximum price expectations of hand painted and printed versions. Include your country aswell(optional)

Will you buy a keychain size miniature model of your own skin?

Or a 3d printed one? Include your price expectations here too.

On the left there is a hand painted version made with 400gsm cardstock and it's 1 year old On the right there is a printed version made with 180gsm glossy photo paper They have magnets in their hands for accessories.

Hey I'm a 14 yo from Germany and I'm a big Fan of everything Tech related and I wan't to get some tips for a project of mine.
I don't know if its the right subreddit but if anyone knows smth that could help I'm happy about it :)

Question:

Robot:

It's a little Robot based on "my" AI (I got a claude API and made it my Personal assistant) I have a Raspberry Pi with a small display (The face of the Robot) and that's basically the Brain of the thing (I didn't assemble it completely yet completly (Im shopping for big 3d printers if anyone has recommendations)) it controls the actions and the reactions (for the Code logic skip to AI) of the Robot its connected to an Esp32 that controls the motors (4 mecanum wheels on 12 V DC DC Motors ; L298N motor driver). I got it connect the PI connected to 3 Ultra sonic sensors (one at the back, one each on the sides, one directly looking forward, one each looking slightly to the side and the last on looking in front of it with a smth like 70 degrees from horizontal decline lookin down to spot pits or cliffs) That's the First Question: That's just like 2.8cm for the robot to think and stop immediately and I don't know if it's enough.
Then there's cable management I'm currently using tons of jumper wires to connect those components together and it's kind of a mess and I don't know how to make it better I'm using a External battery that is directly connected to the motors and with a 12 V to 5 V converter connected to the Pi.
Questions:

1. How do i solve cable management should I design a PCB for better sorting of the whole thing or should i get smth else.
2. I don't know but is there any trustworthy way to charge the battery without to unplug it.
3. Is there any accurate way to get to the Battery status of the Battery so it doesn't randomly lose juice or smth.

Software (AI):
I don't wan't to go that deep into the software end but it's basically the AI (claude haiku4.5) getting the spoken message processing it searching through a big library of commands

IF it finds one that would help with my request it'll execute it and say smth like A Mind-map was made or here are the recent news of the BBC.

IF it doesn't find any command then it does some AI shit and just talks with u
.
The robot gets a weakened down version of the AI it'll still have the same abilities just with less animation or everything that can make the processing power go down without any big positive impact. I'll have some "reflexes" installed like if the Ultrasonic sensors say an object is in the way etc.
Question: I don't have any question to the software end ,but I'm always open for improvement

Last Question:
The Robot doesn't have a name yet so i wanna ask U guys what i should name him.
(But please don't fill the comments with name recommendations cause I still wanna get some help)

Thanks :)