October Digest | Maker Forge

Pre-release Raspberry Pi 5

During October the team over at Pi Towers were kind enough to send me a new Raspberry Pi 5 to test with the Modular Biped project. This included the new Pi 5, the active cooling board, an SD card pre-loaded with the Raspberry Pi OS, a power supply capable of delivering the 5A required by the Pi 5, a keyboard and a mouse.

The goal is to upgrade the current project to use the new Pi 5 in the head, which will require an upgrade of the custom PCB as the active cooler is incompatible with the current PCB design. I also want to incorporate some of the newer features, such as the I2C to Neopixel driver and audio output.

I am currently in discussions with a PCB manufacturer to discuss a collaboration on this, so watch this space!

You can read more about the upgrade process for the modular biped project here.

Investigations into reinforcement learning and walking biped robots

I have been heavily involved this month in pre-work for a new phase of the Modular Biped project. This involves looking into reinforcement learning and how it can be used to teach a robot to walk. I have been looking at a number of different simulators and frameworks to see which would be the best fit for the project.

There will be challenges here around the mechanical design of the robot, as the current design does not allow for lateral hip actuation. The community and I are currently looking into ways to overcome this that can be 3D printed and accessible.

If you’re interested in joining those discussions or have some ideas, please feel free to join the discussion group

LINKMICRO Digital microscope review

I was contacted by the team at LINKMICRO who asked if I would be interested in reviewing their digital microscope. I was very excited to try this out as I have been looking for a way to inspect the PCBs that I have been designing and manufacturing.

Digital microscopes can be very useful for PCB inspection and soldering, as well as for inspecting components and other small objects. They can also be used for other tasks such as inspecting the quality of 3D prints.

I am in the process of recording a review video and accompanying article for the microscope, which I will be posting in the coming weeks. In the meantime, you can find out more about the microscope on Amazon.

Rebrand of GitHub Repository

The GitHub organisation hosting the community and project files has been re-branded from dmt-labs to makerforgetech. All links should have been updated, but if you have any issues accessing anything, please let me know.