Welcome to Voidstar Lab, my hardware
hacking workshop. I'm Zack Freedman and I... ...am a slob. [Crashing junk sounds] Sooo... I might be an augmented cyborg from the near future, but I'm still mostly
human, and like all humans, I can
procrastinate so thoroughly that my brain literally edits the task out of my
eyeballs. Case in point: > be me > drifting off into sleep > thinking I like my new job as a content creation
drone! It's neat that people are liking, commenting and subscribing and OH MY GOD MY PARTS BINS ARE IN EVERY SHOT AND I'VE NEVER TIDIED THEM UP. [Screeching, discordant horror-movie music] This. Ends. Now. [British computer voice] Today's project: organizing the organizers. [British computer voice] Hold onto your hiney, we're about to get tidy. My first workbench, circa 2012, was a desk in a closet in my childhood bedroom at my
parents house. The first thing I added were some RGB
LED strips because I... ...am a classy gentleman. The second thing
was a parts organizer from Harbor Freight. For you Canucks, Harbor Freight is Princess Auto except instead of sending you
rainbow Monopoly money, they send you coupons. For those outside North America, it's a hardware store, except everything is garbage. So I bought this parts organizer because
I had finally given up on a TERRIBLE Nerf ammo counter and I needed a place to put the remains. That's a story for another day, but trust
me - the ammo counter deserves its eternal damnation in my frame of shame. The parts organizer sucks. It's flimsy, the drawers flop around in the frame,
that stupid pull tab is too small to put a label on, and the parts fall out. So of course, i bought two more of them! I moved my workshop from New Jersey to the West Village of New York, then Chelsea, and then back to the Village,
and I schlepped these things and all the parts inside and never once did I think
of, y'know, checking if i still needed them. you can see the progression of laziness from big font labels to small font
labels to sharpie labels to no labels. what's funny is that this whole time i
started using more surface mount parts than through-hole parts,
and it never crossed my mind to put those parts into the parts organizers.
instead, i kept them in this pile of unsorted
trays like a filthy savage. the hypocrisy weighs heavily on my soul. that brings us here. the time has come to right my wrongs,
absolve my sins, and make the background of future videos
look way better. Today's project is going to be a double whammy. first we're going to take everything out of the old parts bins. we're going to
sort it out, pick what to keep, what to donate, what to
add. second, we're going to 3d print some
fancy new faceplates and then we're going to laser cut some
labels both to improve the fit and finish and to make it possible to actually, y'know, find what the hell i'm looking for. i think what makes staying organized hard is that the problems caused by
sloppiness are non-events. Like, you can remember that time you
spent forever fixing a bug or building a pile of something, picking
up the pieces when a project smashes on the ground, but you just don't remember the time you spend looking around for your wrench, or
trying to find a specific capacitor, or getting on a
subway to buy parts. gathering your parts doesn't feel like
part of the project; it feels like something you do on the WAY to the
project, but it still takes time, and eventually
that time will add up and kill the project.
the problem is it feels like life just got in the way,
not that those lost hours pushed your project beyond a deadline.
then there's the unsorted crap - the piles of resistors, the haystacks of leds, the
broken-out boards, assorted chips, trays of parts.. .
all in complete disarray, and only a few hours away from sorting.
an unsorted pile of parts, i think, is even worse than not having the parts at
all! like, you waste time rummaging through it
to hunt down what you're looking for and you might fail, because you can't take inventory of how many blue leds are in a big pile of
leds. you also waste money on redundant parts,
and then you make that pile bigger when you toss the leftovers into it!
it's never as hard or takes as long as you think to test and sort everything.
it takes that pile of parts from a massive time waster to,
you know, stuff that you can actually use! [Awkward laugh] for me, the more i do that, the harder it
is to keep parts, like, in case i need them. crimp connectors, x and y, capacitors 74 series logic;
like, it's just so unlikely i'll use these things in projects that
it's worth the few bucks to just buy a fresh set if i ever need them.
i just think the folks the fab lab could use them more than i could. for now i'll just use some blue painters tape to mark what goes where.
i'll just tear these off as i add the facades and nameplates.
so, my philosophy for where to put components
is the same as my philosophy for where to put tools. stuff i use often is always
within arm's reach, and that means the bottom right is primo real estate.
i'm going to start at the bottom and fill upwards, because i am short.
stuff i use really often, like hot glue sticks, zip ties,
etc. are all going into the bottom-right, really improve mah produc-tiv-i-tay.
i wanted something that would add a pop of color to the bins, would make them
easier to grab, and also open up more real estate for a
bigger label. i designed this facade in fusion 360 by
starting with reference photos taken from the top and sides.
i imported them, calibrated them... ...I gotta make a video about that.
i've made a facade that friction fit onto the bin and it's sized to fully fit
the bay. this keeps the bins from jiggling around
and also makes them easier to grab and pull out one-handed.
after a dozen or so prototypes, there we go! i added a bigger name plate,
a chunkier thumb hole, and the underside is [in a sleazy tone] ridged for her pleasure.
finally, i exported the outline of the label from fusion 360 and i imported it
into adobe illustrator. i created a label for every part, ran them off in the laser cutter on some scrap plastic, and there you go! we got fancy-pants labels for each and every part. look at
that matte acrylic. Ahh. it's so handsome. all right, let's
print the facades. small brain: buy three spools of the same
filament, run face plates off on my printer AND the fab lab printers
simultaneously, 15 per printer at a time, finish the job
in a day. big brain play: buy a spool of RAINBOW
filament, and make a pretty rainbow gradient of parts organizers.
i can only use one printer, but i can finish the job in three days. [Trippy techno music]
GALACTIC BRAIN: buy that rainbow filament, print each one
ONE AT A TIME to make an even prettier rainbow and waste an entire week. you bet your ASS i took the galactic
brain option. so i printed sequentially, which allows
the colors to smoothly fade from bin to bin, instead of that plate of 15 all being the same color. downside: when printing sequentially, i can only fit five per plate. any time that i gain by not moving the head around is completely obliterated by
having to move it anyways, so that i can take these fancy pants time lapses.
Fun fact: this is 12 gigabytes of photos. the project just hits different when
you're on quaran-time. i also numbered the back of the facades,
in case an organizer falls off the wall and spills bins everywhere.
it's never happened, but Murphy is a cold mother[REDACTED]. the nameplates friction fit into the
facades, and i added these access holes in the side so i can poke
them out if i ever need to rearrange the furniture. all right! time to put the name plates onto the facades, time to snap the
facades to the bins, and finally... let's see if this was worth waiting
eight years to make. [high five noises] [Trippy techno music] i've never recorded a project from start
to finish before, and i think this one turned out great.
It is SOOOO satisfying to see the entire thing come together in time-lapse
montage-o-vision. this project took WAAAY more effort
and work than i expected it to, but i think it really paid off.
Voidstar Lab is still a new channel, and i'm still, like, trying to figure out what
types of videos you guys like to see. this one came out a bit more chilled-out than technical - did you like seeing the project come together, or should i stick to talking about AI and mixing drinks and stuff? let me know what you think. i want YOU to
finish more projects, and the best way i can think to do that
is by bringing you MORE open source technology, MORE
tutorials, MORE fun facts, more hardware hackery, fresh and new, right here in Voidstar Lab, every single monday. not everything i
build makes it onto youtube! you can see even more projects by
following me on instagram @zackfreedman. there's no food pics or dog
pics; just all projects all the time. there is the occasional Quagsire, but if
you got a problem with Quagsire you got a problem with me, and i suggest you let that one marinate. Voidstar Lab is looking better than ever, and there is
way more to come. thank you so much for joining me, and i will see you...
in the future. [BZZZT] who's ready to play a round of... Does Zack Remember
What His Own Chips Are? 74165... is it an inverter? [Brooke] it is a parallel to serial multiplexer. Goddammit! all right! next up, the ltc4080. this is a switching regulator. [Brooke] That is a lithium-ion battery
charger with a 1.8 volt output. [REDACTED] [sheepishly] i guess it's sort of a switching
regulator? TLC 5916... is this a shift register? [Brooke] it is a constant current LED driver. [REDACTED].
[REDACTED]! the ULN2801... this is a half h-bridge
driver, right? [Brooke] it is a darlington transistor. [REDACTED] 14081.
there seems to be some kind of bug dead in here... is this a nand gate? [Brooke] it is a quad dual-input NOR gate. Uuuuuuuuuuuuuugh! Uhh, 754410.
this seems like it has too many numbers. i think i got three right. [Brooke] You are a failure.
