Tag Archives | Craft/D&T

More Christmas Crumbling

By Daniel on December 19, 2018 in Crumble Projects

As we draw closer to Christmas, we thought that it would be nice to share a few festive ideas. If you end up at a loose end over the holidays, especially if you have kids, then why not give these seasonal makes a go? They’re a great use of any cardboard that won’t fit into your recycling bin!

First up, we have our uber-christmassy Crumble-powered Rudolph, complete with flashing red nose. A quick internet search brought up loads of different cardboard reindeer templates. After cutting out all of the pieces, we got to work on the nose. For this, we used a ping pong ball. We sliced part of it off, and then glued it to the nose. We wired up a Sparkle, and wedged it inside the nose.

We then secured the rest of our reindeer together, and wired up the Crumble. We stuck the components towards the back of the head which allowed it to stand up on a table.

There we have it, one quick Rudolph, ready to guide your sleigh.

🎶Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, had a very shiny nose, and if you ever saw it, you would even say it glows.🎶

Next up, we have another festive-favourite. If you, like the vast majority of people over Christmas, don’t need more cakes in the house, then why not have a go at a gingerbread-free faux gingerbread house? There is a wealth of inspiration to be had, just by doing a quick image search on the internet. Once your house is made and decorated, then we covered the windows with some tracing/baking paper, to diffuse the Sparkles inside. We then wired up our Crumble with a Sparkle baton, because you can never have too many lights – especially at Christmas!

Once it’s all wired up, simply program your required lighting sequence – we went for a flickering fire-like program (as seen here). Pop it inside the faux gingerbread house, and you’re all set!

If you have been inspired by any of these projects, or want to share something else awesome with us, then give us a shout on the forum or Twitter.

Add some Magic into your next Project – Magic Candle

By Daniel on October 12, 2018 in Crumble Projects

The leaves are turning, conkers are coating the path and the ground seems to be permanently wet. This can only mean one thing – it’s Autumn. This means that it is nearing Halloween, and Harry Potter can be found on the tv most weekends. Who doesn’t love a bit of magic, right?

We wouldn’t declare ourselves the biggest of Harry Potter fans, but, one of the team has decorated his downstairs bathroom with all things Potter… Anyhow, we thought it would be a perfect opportunity to perform a bit of magic with the Crumble!

You could do much more than a candle, we’d love to see some of your magic creations!

We have made a ‘Magic Candle’. Spoiler Alert: we have used a reed switch and a magnet to control the Sparkle!

As you can see from the photo, we’ve made our candle using a rolled up piece of white card. We’ve used a glue gun to add some ‘dripping wax’ too. Inside the top we’ve placed a Sparkle, and a reed switch. We then placed a piece of plastic over the Sparkle (we cut up a scrap of frosted polypropylene) and put it through the ‘top’ of the candle. We’ve used our laser cut wand (with a magnet in the end).

After making the candle, it’s really easy to program and control… ahem, I mean cast a spell, to light it up.

The program (code) for this is simple, once you get your head around it. The reed switch (as the name suggests) is a type of switch. This means that when a magnet is placed near it, it closes, and the current flows through to the Crumble. When the magnet is moved away, it opens and the current stops.

Our code waits for the wand to be waved, which will set A HI, then it runs a ‘flickering’ Sparkle algorithm. We set the Sparkle to random shades of Red, Orange and Yellow, and wait a few random milliseconds before changing it again.

Note: the wait 100ms allows you time to move the wand away from the switch again.

When the wand is waved again, it sets A Hi, waits again and turns the Sparkle off. Simple!

And there you have it! One ‘Magic Candle’ ready to mystify and amaze.

We would love to take credit for the magnet and wand idea to set off a reed switch, but that comes courtesy of Mike and Beckie at UKSTEM. (We are definitely bigger Harry Potter fans than they are, though!)

A Crumble-Powered Automatic RGB Nightlight

By Daniel on April 16, 2018 in Crumble Projects

Sometimes inspiration can be hard to come by. We have known for a while that we’ve wanted to make a nightlight, but didn’t know how to make it different from all the rest.

We stumbled across an interesting video on YouTube which peaked our interest and gave us the inspiration we needed. How awesome would this nightlight look if we added a whole heap of Sparkles (a Matrix display) and gave it a Crumble kick?!

The Crumble-powered RGB nightlight was born.

Although this post will be a whistle-stop tour of the process, when we have our finished Sparkle Matrix display, we will definitely work on some in-depth instructions and teaching resources.

We started off by preparing a cardboard box, by removing all of the sellotape. We then glued it back together, to make sure that it was sturdy.

We then cut the faces of the box off, leaving a border. This would give us the frame for our light.

After this, we drew some straight lines on a word document and printed off 5 copies. We then trimmed each sheet so that it could be glued inside the 5 faces of the frame.

When we had finished our light, we decided that we didn’t like the bare cardboard, so we used a silver permanent marker to give it a metallic look.

Wiring up the Crumble was simple enough. After connecting the Sparkles (inside the shade), we connected a light-dependent resistor (LDR). One end connected to a + output, in this case from the batteries, and the other end connects to an input (A, B, C or D). We used A.

It’s really easy to use an LDR with the Crumble. Take a look at the following program. When the analogue value of the LDR (we’ve renamed it to be helpful) is above 90, turn all of the Sparkles off, if it isn’t above 90, and therefore less than it, then turn the Sparkles on.

To get the nice RGB effect, we have cycled through the red, green and blue values. This graph shows how increasing or decreasing the different values gives us different colours. Doing it in this particular order gives us a lovely rainbow effect!

We have created variables called Red, Green and Blue. We then set the corresponding red, green and blue Sparkle values to our variables. We have cycled up/down the RGB values to give us our transition of colours. Each time the colour changes, we check to see the value of the LDR, and whether or not to turn the lights on/off.

And here is our RGB nightlight, in all of its glory! When the Sparkle Matrix gets finalised, we will create some more in-depth teaching resources for this project, as it’s easy to make and really satisfying.

Crafty Crumble Creations: A steerable buggy

By Helen Roberts on August 27, 2016 in Crumble Projects

We used:

1 laptop with Crumble software installed
1 Crumble controller & 2 Crumble-friendly switches
1 Crumble-friendly battery box; 3 AA batteries
A pair of motors (with croc-leads attached) & wheels
4 long & 2 short croc-leads and a micro-USB cable
2 K’nex wheels and an axle.
An egg box

The construction of the buggy is ridiculously simple: we pushed the axles of the motors through the sides of an egg box lid, as close to one end as possible, then attached the wheels. For the front wheels we pushed a K’nex axle through he other end of the box and attached a pair of similar sized wheels. (Lego technic would also work fine.) The Crumble and battery box then sit inside the buggy.

The motors are connected to the Crumble’s motor outputs (the bottom two pads on either side of the Crumble). Note that to get the wheels to turn in the same direction and move the buggy forwards, the motors actually need to turn in opposite directions (as they are arranged back-to-back). This can be achieved in software, by setting one to “forwards” and one to “reverse” or, as shown here, by connecting one motor in the conventional way (red wire to the positive pad; black wire to the negative) and the other motor reversed (red wire to the negative pad).

One of the switches was connected between the second positive output of the battery pack and “input A” on the Crumble (the yellow croc leads). The other switch was connected between the Crumble’s “power out” (top right) pad and input D (the green croc leads). The battery pack is connected to the Crumble in the usual way.

The Crumble program is shown below. If both switches are pressed (“A is Hi” and “B is Hi”), both motors operate and the buggy moves forwards. If only one switch is pressed, only the motor on that side of the buggy runs and the buggy turns. The green and yellow croc leads are long enough that our 3yr-old can walk behind the buggy and use the buttons to steer it.

NOTE: The motor power is set to only 25%. This ensures that the buggy moves at a slow walking pace but it can also help to reduce glitches (e.g. the motor LEDs on the Crumble flicker, but the spindles don’t turn) due to interference being picked up by the long leads to the switches.

Crafty Crumble Creations: A Haunted Castle

By Helen Roberts on November 1, 2015 in Crumble Projects

We used:

1 laptop with Crumble software installed
Crumble controller, Sparkle baton & single Sparkle
1 Crumble-friendly battery box; 3 AA batteries
Croc-leads and a micro-USB cable
A “line follower” module
Cereal box; egg box, empty wipes packet; cardboard; paint; paper; pens; pin, scissors
Sellotape, glue stick and adhesive velcro strip

Connecting the Crumble

A Sparkle baton was used to give the “spooky” green glow. Croc-leads connect the “+”, “-” and “D” pads on the right-hand side of the Crumble to their counterparts on the left-hand (input) side of the baton. Another single Sparkle was connected to the output of the baton. This will glow red when the Castle door is opened.

The Crumble and Sparkles are powered by 3AA batteries. Croc-leads connect “+” and “-” pads on the battery box to the power-in pads on the top left of the Crumble.

In order to detect when the castle door is opened and so trigger the red Sparkle, we used the CRV line follower module. These have optical reflective sensors at each end which contain an IR LED and a phototransistor. As well as detecting black and white they can, therefore, be used as proximity sensors. The module is powered by connecting the “+” and “-” pads to the second pair of pads on the battery box. The left output (“L”) is connected to the Crumble’s input “A”.

Programming the Crumble

The program uses 2 random numbers to give a flickering fire effect. The range of variable “t” is 2 to 255 and sets the brightness of the green LEDs. Variable “u” picks a random number between 0 and 7: the index numbers of one of the Sparkles in the baton. Thus, the brightness of all the green Sparkles is varying randomly.

Variable “v” monitors “Input A”, which is connected to the line following module. When the voltage from the module is higher than a certain threshold, the single Sparkle (index number 8) is turned to red. The Crumble software continuously updates the values of the variables being used (when the Crumble is connected) so we can investigate how opening and closing the Castle door changes “v”. We can then see what threshold is required in the if-block.

Making the Castle

The castle is made from a cereal box with the hinged lid of a wipes packet for the door. We cut holes in the cereal box for the windows, but then covered them with a sheet of paper which had the windows coloured in with black felt-tip pen. We used a pin to make small holes in the paper and create a green glow.

We cut a door out of cardboard, added some detail with a black pen, and glued it onto the wipe packet lid. Our 5-year-old drew a “zombie” behind the door and I used a pin to prick out his eyes and mouth. We put the Sparkle baton along the bottom of the cereal box and sellotaped the single Sparkle behind the zombie’s face. The line follower module was also taped behind the door, with a hole cut level with the sensor.

The rest of the electronics was placed inside the cereal box. A piece of adhesive velcro was used to stick the battery box close to the top so that we could easily unclip one of the croc-leads to turn the Sparkles on and off.

The roof is the bottom of an egg box and simply rests on top. The whole castle was given a couple of coats of grey paint and a “garden” to sit in. Finally, our five year-old added a sign to warn off the unwary! Happy Halloween!!

Crafty Crumble Creations: A “police” helmet.

By Helen Roberts on September 19, 2015 in Crumble Projects

Whenever our 2-year-old finds something with a flashing light on it, he holds it on top of his head and runs around shouting “nee-nah nee-nah”. I decided we would make a flashing helmet, using a variable to set the Sparkle colour and brightness in the Crumble Software.

We used:

1 laptop with Crumble software installed
Crumble controller & Sparkle
1 battery box with croc-clip attachments; 3 AA batteries
Croc-leads and a micro-USB cable
A switch/Switch Crumb
Plastic dome; glue; tissue paper; blue paint; cardboard; & sellotape

Connecting the Crumble

This diagram shows one way of wiring up a Crumble, battery box and switch. The switch is connected to Pad “A” on the Crumble and to the +ve terminal of the battery box. By default, the input pads are at zero Volts (“low”). When they are connected to the batteries they receive 5 Volts (“high”).

In this case, when the switch is pressed, input A is connected to the batteries. In the software, therefore, we can use the “Wait until A is Hi” block to tell the Crumble what to do when the switch is pressed.

The croc-leads on the right-hand-side of the Crumble connect to a Sparkle (see previous blog posts)

The photo, left, shows the Crumble and Sparkle connected with a standard push-to-make switch. There are a couple of problems with this set up, though. Firstly, 2 croc-clips have to connect to the top-left “power-in” pad on the Crumble. Also, the tips of the two croc-clips connected to the switch are very close (see right) and can easily short-circuit.

A tidier soloution is to use a Switch Crumb (the one pictured is designed and sold by 4tronix ). This has pass-through power lines, like the Sparkles, meaning it can be connected in line with the battery box and the Crumble.

A pad at the bottom of the Crumb connects to an input on the Crumble (the yellow wire in the picture), in this case to Input A.

Programming the Crumble

Within each Sparkle there are actually 3 LEDs: red, blue & green. Their relative brightnesses are varied to create any colour from the visible spectrum. The RGB Sparkle block (below) allows us to precisely control the colour, by setting each of the LEDs to a value between 0 (off) and 255 (maximum brightness). In this program we keep red and green at 0, only changing the blue.

The Crumble program used is shown above. It continuously checks to see if Input A is high (i.e. if the switch has been pressed). When it is, a loop is executed five times. This gradually increases the brightness of the blue LED within the Sparkle then decreases it (by incrementing the variable “t” from 0 to 200 then decrementing back to 0).

Constructing the Helmet

The plastic dome came from a supermarket package of profiteroles. A hole was cut in the top so the lid of a fabric softener bottle could be inserted. We glued bits of torn tissue paper all over the plastic (a la CBeebies “Mr Maker”) so that it could be painted blue.

The Sparkle was positioned so that it shone up into the the bottle top and the rest of the electronics was sellotaped into the dome then covered with a circle of card, leaving the switch exposed.

I was planning to construct some sort of headband, attached to the bottom of the dome, with the switch mounted on it like a badge. The two-year-old, though, had already decided we were done. After that, he was never still enough for me to take a better photo than this (see right), so I think I can claim the project was a success!

DISCLAIMER: Clearly this is not a “toy” that would pass any of the safety tests required to make it suitable for under-threes. The construction of the helmet was an afternoon distraction and our child was closely supervised at all times.

Crafty Crumble Creations: A flashing Christmas tree

By Helen Roberts on December 24, 2014 in Crumble Projects

In this project conductive thread was used to connect a chain of Sparkles together. This meant we ended up with far fewer trailing wires and bulky crocodile clips.

We used:

1 laptop with Crumble software installed
1 Crumble controller & 5 Sparkles
1 battery box with croc-clip attachments; 3 AA batteries
3 croc-leads (red, black & green); 1 micro-USB cable
A piece of evenweave fabric
Red embroidery cotton & tapestry needle
Conductive thread (available from Mindsets )
Green sticky-backed felt, glitter glue & stickers

First the Sparkles were tacked onto the evenweave fabric with standard embroidery cotton. This held them in place for stitching with conductive thread. The connections have to go into the left side of each Sparkle and out of the right side to the next Sparkle in the chain.

To avoid crossed wires (threads), the Sparkles were arranged with their connection pads forming a rough “spiral”.

The conductive thread needs to form a good contact with the gold pads so two or three tight stitches were sewn at each connection point. The evenweave fabric proved to be a good choice as it enabled the stitches to be sewn right on top of each other. A simple running stitch connects one Sparkle to the next in the chain.

It is important to keep checking that different pieces of conductive thread are kept separate. In the picture to the left, too much frayed thread has been left on the back of the fabric after tying off. Threads from two separate knots are touching, causing a short circuit.

Once all the Sparkle pads were connected with the conductive thread, the first Sparkle in the chain was attached to the Crumble with croc-leads. (For more information on connecting up the Crumble, battery box, and Sparkle see the previous blog post, or the Crumble “Getting Started” guide.)

The Crumble program is shown, left. Originally, I thought that Sparkle “0” would be the star at the top of the tree, which is why it’s gold, but in the end the shape wasn’t quite right. It would have been simple to re-program the Crumble to change the gold to green/red, but, shining through the felt, it looked green so I never got round to it..

Two matching Christmas Tree shapes were cut from the green felt and the Sparkles were sandwiched between them. Extra pieces of felt were inserted at the top, just behind the input pads of Sparkle 0. This stopped the front and back sticking together so the croc-leads could be connected and disconnected.

The Christmas tree was then decorated with glitter glue and stickers.

The battery box and the Crumble were concealed among Christmas cards on the mantelpiece and the croc-leads were sellotaped so that the ends dangled down. The croc-leads were connected to the Sparkle within the Christmas tree, so it hangs from the mantelpiece.

Crafty Crumble Creations: A colour changing lamp

By Helen Roberts on December 11, 2014 in Crumble Projects

This is the first in a series of posts, incorporating the Crumble Controller into simple craft projects, “helped” by my just-turned 5-year-old. The electronics aspect was a bit beyond him: he doesn’t yet have the motor skills to clip the croc-clips or to drag-and-drop the software blocks with a trackpad. He enjoyed working on the design of the lamp, though, and the whole project was completed quickly enough to hold his interest.

We used:

1 laptop with Crumble software installed
1 Crumble controller
1 Sparkle
1 micro-USB cable
1 battery box with croc-clip attachments; 3 AA batteries
3 croc-leads (red, black & green)
1 plastic shower gel bottle (washed & thoroughly dried)
1 cardboard box
1 sheet of black card; silver wrapping paper & stickers
Scissors, hole-punch & sellotape

The Crumble can be powered from the computer, via the USB cable, but the Sparkles need extra power. The red lead from the battery box was connected to the top-left pad of the Crumble (+) and the black lead to the pad below (-). Power passes through the Crumble to the pads on the top-right. The red and black croc-leads connect from the Crumble’s power-out + and – pads, respectively, to the top 2 pads on the left side of the Sparkle. The green croc-lead connects pad ‘D’ on the Crumble to the bottom-left pad on the Sparkle to send the data to the Sparkle. This is shown in the diagram, left.

The Crumble was connected to the computer, via the USB lead, and we began to experiment with setting the Sparkle colour.

The five-year-old was keen on red and green, but I managed to persuade him to go with a more muted colour palette of blue, violet and cyan. The next version of the Crumble software will include a “fade to..” command for Sparkle control which will allow a bigger range of colours to be used with smooth transitions.

The final program is shown to the right.

Once we had programmed the Crumble and were happy with the colours, we disconnected it from the USB lead and began to construct our lamp.

We found a box big enough to contain the battery box, crumble and sparkle and cut a whole in the top to stand the plastic bottle in. The sparkle was sellotaped inside the box so that it shines straight up into the bottle and the rest of the electronics were squashed in around it.

Meanwhile, the 5-year-old had found a hole punch and started making holes in a sheet of red paper. He turned this into a cylinder to cover the plastic bottle.

Aesthetically, I felt we could do a bit better. I wrapped the box in an off-cut of wrapping paper and replaced the red paper with black card. The 5-year-old had already worked out that it’s necessary to fold paper or card to make holes in the middle, so the cylinder became a cuboid. A few scattered silver dot stickers enhanced the random effect.

FINAL THOUGHTS: The lamp ended up looking better than I expected, given how quickly it was thrown together. The tangle of wires in the box, though, is not ideal: shorter croc-leads and a more secure way of fixing the Sparkle in place are required. A switch on the outside would also be useful so we could turn the lamp off and on without taking it apart.

Can you do any better? We’d love to hear about your Crumble projects!