Important news about HackSpace

We have some important news to share about HackSpace: Issue 81 was the last issue of HackSpace as a standalone magazine, and HackSpace has become part of The MagPi, the official Raspberry Pi magazine. Starting with issue 145, We’ll be adding pages to The MagPi to make room for the stories and tutorials you’ve come to expect from HackSpace.

Post- apocalyptic terminal

By Ben Everard. Posted

We’re not quite at the level where we can walk into the house and control our home appliances with voice commands – though thanks to Pete Warden and Useful Sensors, who we speak to in issue 80 on page 38, that day is getting closer. Instead, the tech enthusiast has to come up with their own bespoke way to control their lights, music, heating, and suchlike. One such device is this wall-mounted terminal by Rick Pannen.

We can almost hear your incredulity through the page: “Wall-mounted! But that’s a CRT screen. It’ll weigh a ton!” Although this looks like it uses a heavy CRT screen, Rick’s achieved a similar effect by using a 7-inch LCD screen in the back with a Fresnel lens in front. It’s a brilliant visual trick, as is the way he’s ‘dirtied down’ the 3D-printed frame. First, some context. In the days before ubiquitous CGI, film and television used models to depict spaceships, space stations, and other non-real objects.

To show the effects of being exposed to space dust, model-makers would deliberately damage the surface of the models, making them look more realistic – a process known as dirtying down. Think of how ‘lived-in’ the sets and models used in, say Red Dwarf or Alien look, and compare them with those of Flash Gordon, whose director expressly forbade anything to be dirtied down, instead opting for a brand-new, pristine look that translates onto the screen as looking fake.

Anyway, apart from the Raspberry Pi 400, the screen, and the lens, the rest of this build is 3D-printed in PETG on a Bambu A1. It was designed in Fusion 360 and took 75 hours of printing time and 2.2 kg of filament. To achieve the weathered look, Rick used a mixture of acrylic floor polish and soil from his garden, adding years of wear and tear in just a few minutes.

Ben Everard

Ben is the editor of HackSpace magazine. He plays with electronics and grows mushrooms, but hasn't yet combined the two.

https://hsmag.cc

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