[Adam Welch] has built macro pads in the past out of pre-fab key matrices and handfuls of Cherry MX clones. But all the stickers and custom keycaps in the world wouldn’t make those macro pads as versatile as a stream deck — those visual shortcut panels with tiny touchscreens for each button that some streamers use to change A/V settings or switch between applications.

Let’s face it, stream decks are expensive. But 0.96″ OLED displays are not, and neither are SMD tactile buttons. Why not imitate a screen deck on the cheap by making it so the screens actuate buttons behind them? [Adam] based this baby on the clever design of [Kilian Gosewisch]’s FreeDeck, and they ended up working together to improve it with a dedicated PCB.

The brains of the operation is an Arduino Pro Micro, which addresses each screen individually via two 74HC4051 mux ICs. Thanks to an SD card module, there’s no need to flash the ‘duino every time you want to change a shortcut or its picture. Even if this deck doesn’t hold up forever, it won’t break the bank to build another one. Poke past the break for the build video, which has all the links you’d need to make your own, including a handy configurator.

There’s more than one way to do a visual macro pad. Here’s one that uses a single screen and splits it Brady Bunch style to match the matrix.

Thanks for the tip, [arturo182]!

We’ve all been there. You’re manning the battle station, deep in the sim-racing or some other n00b-pwning zone and suddenly some loudmouth blows out your eardrums over Discord. It’s insulting to have to stop what you’re doing to find the right Windows volume slider. So why do that? Build [T3knomanzer]’s simple yet elegant multi-volume knob and stay zen in the zone.

It’s easy, just turn the knob to cycle through your programs until Discord comes up on the little screen, and then push down to change it into a volume knob. If you need to change another volume, just click it again. Since there’s no Alt+Tabbing out to the desktop, no checkered flags should ever slip through your fingers.

Inside the well-designed case you’ll find the usual suspects — Arduino Nano, rotary encoder, an OLED display, and an LED ring, each with their own place carved out.

This completely open-source knob looks great, and we love that it’s been made incredibly easy to replicate by standing up a site with foolproof, well-depicted, step-by-step instructions. Watch them take it for a spin after the break.

Want more than volume at your fingertips? Here’s a DIY USB knob that does shortcuts, too.

Those familiar with the Dragon Ball Z franchise will recognize the head-mounted Scouter computer often seen adorning character faces. As part of his Goku costume, Marcin Poblocki made an impressive replica, featuring a see-through lens that shows the “strength” of the person he’s looking at, based on a distance measurement taken using a VL53L0X sensor. 

An Arduino Nano provides processing power for the headset, and light from a small OLED display is reflected on the lens for AR-style viewing.

It’s not exactly perfect copy but it’s actually working device. Inspired by Google virtual glasses I made virtual distance sensor.

I used Arduino Nano, OLED screen and laser distance sensor. Laser sensor takes readings (not calibrated yet) and displays number on OLED screen. Perspex mirror reflects the image (45 degrees) to the the lens (used from cheap Google Cardboard virtual glasses) and then it’s projected on clear Perspex screen.

So you will still see everything but in the clear Perspex you will also see distance to the object you looking at. On OLED screen I typed ‘Power’ instead distance because that’s what this device suppose to measure in DBZ.

Print files as well as code and the circuit diagram needed to hook this head-mounted device up are available on Thingiverse. For those that don’t have a DBZ costume in their immediate future, the concept could be expanded to a wide variety of other sci-fi and real world applications.

[Ash] built Moo-Bot, a robot cow scarecrow to enter the competition at a local scarecrow festival. We’re not sure if Moo-bot will win the competition, but it sure is a winning hack for us. [Ash]’s blog is peppered with delightful prose and tons of pictures, making this an easy to build project for anyone with access to basic carpentry and electronics tools. One of the festival’s theme was “Out of this World” for space and sci-fi scarecrows. When [Ash] heard his 3-year old son sing “hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle…”, he immediately thought of building a cow jumping over the moon scarecrow. And since he had not seen any interactive scarecrows at earlier festivals, he decided to give his jumping cow a lively character.

Construction of the Moo-Bot is broken up in to three parts. The skeleton is built from lumber slabs and planks. The insides are then gutted with all of the electronics. Finally, the whole cow is skinned using sheet metal and finished off with greebles to add detailing such as ears, legs, spots and nostrils. And since it is installed in the open, its skin also doubles up to help Moo-bot stay dry on the insides when it rains. To make Moo-Bot easy to transport from barn to launchpad, it’s broken up in to three modules — the body, the head and the mounting post with the moon.

Moo-Bot has an Arduino brain which wakes up when the push button on its mouth is pressed. Its two OLED screen eyes open up, and the MP3 player sends bovine sounding audio clips to a large sound box. The Arduino also triggers some lights around the Moon. Juice for running the whole show comes from a bank of eight, large type “D” cells wired to provide 6 V — enough to keep Moo-Bot fed for at least a couple of months.

Check out the video after the break to hear Moo-bot tell some cow jokes – it’s pretty funny. We’re rooting for it to win the competition — Go Moo-bot.

If you’re hungry for more scarecrows, this isn’t the first we’ve seen.