Maker Hacks
Ideas, news & tutorials for makers and hackers – Arduino/Raspberry Pi, 3D printing, robotics, laser cutting, and more
Marketing Director by day, maker, retro gaming, tabletop war/roleplaying nerd by night. Co-author of the Problogger Book with Darren Rowse. Husband, Dad, ?? Canadian.
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In the previous Discord article we set up a listener, but really that was just the foundation – enough to listen for “hello” and greet the user. Now we need a real-world example.
A Discord bot that only SENDS messages is all well and good, but really we want our bots to interact. We need to make them listen and respond.
Creality CR-10 MINI 3D printer kit - as good to review as the other 3d printers in the CR-10 lineup? Let's find out in this review!
I am on a mission to declutter my email. Once you get past the unsubscribe/filter stage, the next thing is to get the important information in a different way. Once I started down this path, however, …
Can your PC mine bitcoin? If you are interested in dipping your toe into cryptocurrency mining then fear not - it might be easier than you thought
A common complaint from Raspberry Pi owners is when running headless (no monitor or keyboard). If the Pi reboots then you lose your login session and often the previous IP address. Using …
Unix and Linux are a lot more powerful for automation than people from other operating systems know, that power is under the hood in Macosx (via the BSD Unix foundations) and that power is making its …
I am in love with a 3D printer and her name is Formlabs Form 2
Can I replace my 2012 iMac with a DIY PC that is at least as powerful? Can I do it for less than a new iMac would cost me? Will it run MacOSX?
I received a JG Aurora A5 to review. Unfortunately, there were a few issues. Fortunately, however, they were issues I was fairly sure would be resolved by the community-provided Marlin Firmware. Yes, …
Adding a GPU (graphics card) to your PC, but not enough space or full length slots available? a great solution is to use a "Powered PCIe Riser".
Lots of people ask me about IoT (“The Internet of Things”). It’s a currently warm, if no longer hot, buzzword. Problem is I find a lot of the instruction out there …
When I put together my brand new Virtual Reality PC I immediately encountered a problem. Wifi dead zone.
Formatting round-up posts takes a bit of effort so I have been looking for ways to make the non-creative work as automated as possible. One of these tasks is creating thumbnails. Turns out it is …
Recently I have come around to really enjoy the Grove sensors and displays from Seeed. They are so convenient!
In my research for my maker kids kits series, I came across a new gadget from Kano, the makers of the famous Raspberry Pi computing kit. It looked interesting so I bought one. Here are my thoughts on …
Should you get one big 3d printer or multiple, smaller printers? It’s a question I get asked a lot. Obviously, the question is usually answered with a question … or 5 … There is, …
We all know about Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but did you know about the equivalent with Chinese companies? It's 11/11 - a fantastic time for deals on 3D printers, laser engravers, and drones.
It must be building up to gift-giving season because I have been asked a whole bunch of times for ideas for what parents should buy their kids to encourage their interest in making – …
Ultimaker sent me an Ultimaker 3 for review, and to try out some projects on – exciting stuff (and from community reaction, I am not the only one who thinks so!). Since I posted my video I have …
Halloween is an awesome time for makers. Each year I like to beat my previous year’s builds. For Halloween this year I thought I would do something a bit special and create two projects. This is …
Prusa i3 Mk2/Mk3 and Creality CR-10 are the hot 3d printers right now under $1,000, but which should YOU choose?
Athorbot Buddy Couple Dual Extruder 3D Printer Review - In this article we cover the 3d printer build/assembly, some sample prints, how to get it running, and first Impressions after a week of use.
Creality CR-10 reviews are almost always about the regular sized 300mm x 300mm bed 3d printer (see my CR-10 review here) and reviews rarely talk about the big brother, the Creality CR-10 S5. I have …
3D Printer manufacturers are in my (non-lawyer opinion) abusing open source, profiting from the developers and the community while not complying with their wishes and the license terms.
Update, 2026. This printer is no longer on sale, and the shop links below died along with Gearbest. I have left the review up because the build notes and the general lessons still apply, but do not go …
Years ago I wrote a PHP script to download photographs from Flickr. That was the previous time the company changed hands, when it was sold to Yahoo! I am not sure I want to keep my photos on Flickr …
A Canadian filament company sent me a couple of spools to review but I can no longer support them so all references to the company are removed.
ABS gets a rough rap in the 3d printing community, so I wanted to give a small defence of ABS filament for your 3d printer consideration …
Nylon 3d printing filament is not as popular as PLA or ABS, but after giving it some serious use recently I wanted to implore you to at least try it.
Finishing is an important part of 3d printing, but how do you combine, glue, and bond your 3d printed parts to get a 3d printing result you can be proud of?
A scale model of the solar system, 3d printed in white Inksmith HIPS filament - how well does HIPS work and why would you consider it for your 3d printing?
Doctor Who, Raspberry Pi AND 3D printing fans will love this 3D Printed Tardis, powered by Raspberry Pi, that can play all the sounds effects from the show!
The Anet A8 is a $200 (or less!) 3d printer kit. In this review we answer the question how good could a sub-$200 prusa i3 clone 3d printer kit actually be?
In this beginner-friendly 3d cad tutorial, we are going to create a personalized maze puzzle in Tinkercad, ready for 3d printing!
Raspberry Pi remote access can be tricky. What can you do? How can you make it easy for you to remote access, but difficult for the bad guys?
Using Meshmixer takes your 3D printing superpowers to the next level. Find an existing STL file, modify it, delete parts, and then export for 3D printing - See how easy it can be in this tutorial and …
The ESP32 is the newest* super powered IoT/Arduino board you are going to want in your arsenal. I have long been a fan of the ESP8266, especially the cheap Chinese NodeMCU boards, so when I saw the …
Octopi is a fantastic system for running your 3D printers remotely, using a Raspberry Pi, including built in webcam and time lapse features. Installing Octoprint need not be a chore on Mac or Windows. …
Update, 2026. This printer is no longer on sale, and the shop links below died along with Gearbest. I have left the review up because the build notes and the general lessons still apply, but do not go …
