New Guide: Frozen-Inspired Temperature-Sensing Pendant

Elsa with her Gizmo

The latest tutorial from Erin St. Blaine will teach you how to make a Frozen II inspired pendant for your young maker friend (or for you and your own sweet style) featuring elemental images that change based on the temperature of the air. The TFT Gizmo inside the pendant will display a snowflake when it’s cold, a spinning leaf image when it’s warm, and a lovely purple flame when it’s hot. From the guide:

Discover your inner Snow Queen with this temperature sensing pendant. Invoke the elements of snow, air, and fire using your breath or body heat (or your Ice Queen Superpowers). The pendant will display a snowflake, a spinning leaf, or a lovely purple flame animation depending on the warmth of the air.

Inspired by the elemental spirits in Disney’s Frozen II movie, this pendant will be sure to inspire and excite any Queen Elsa fans, and add an element of magic to your cosplay or halloween costume.

This project uses Adafruit’s TFT Gizmo, a Circuit Playground Bluefruit, and a 3d printed case. There’s no soldering or coding involved — just a few screws to tighten, and a couple files to upload — so it’s a wonderful beginner project if you’re just starting out in the world of electronic cosplay, or if you have a young helper who’s getting interested in making stuff.

Check out the full tutorial on the Adafruit Learning System here: Frozen-Inspired Animated Temperature Sensing Pendant Guide

Researchers Recreate Hopping Disney/Pixar Lamp with 3D Printed Actuator

3D printing has previously been employed to create passive mechanisms and machines, as well as the actuators used to make them go. According to a new paper, titled “A Miniature 3D Printed On-Off Linear Pneumatic Actuator and Its Demonstration into a Cartoon Character of a Hopping Lamp,” using 3D printing to create actuators can speed up design and development, save on time and money, and allow for greater customization. Christian L. Nall from the University of Texas at San Antonio and Pranav A. Bhounsule from the University of Illinois at Chicago wrote and published the paper, which presents their work creating and fabricating a small double-acting, On-Off type linear pneumatic actuator with FDM 3D printing.

“In this paper, we explore the use of 3D printing to create a pneumatic actuator and its utility on a legged robot,” the pair wrote.

“The actuator has an overall length of 8 cm, a bore size of 1.5 cm, and a stroke length of 2.0 cm. The overall weight is 12 gm and it generates a peak output power of 2 W when operating at an input air pressure of 40 psi (