3D Hangouts

3D Hangouts is a live stream from Adafruit built on a simple pairing: a 3D print plus DIY electronics, turned into a project that other people can pick up and extend. It goes out every Wednesday at 11 a.m. Eastern on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitch and X, and the chat gathers in Adafruit's Discord server. Noe Ruiz, a designer at Adafruit, introduces each stream alongside his brother Pedro, a creative tech at the company. The two are relaxed together, with the odd Spanish aside and a joke about their 'AI nonsense.' The projects are the draw. One is a minimalist MP3 player styled after a retro radio. It has a three-watt speaker, and its look comes from a Pinterest board of fifties and sixties radio design. Another is a jukebox prototype that hides a full-color sensor behind a printed cover plate with built-in standoffs, so it can read a Duplo brick. On air, it is still untested whether the sensor can read well through that opening. That unfinished quality is much of the appeal. Viewers see parts before they fit, cross-section views of a model, and the reasons behind each design choice. A dreidel built around a NEMA 17 stepper motor becomes a small lesson in designing around a component: the gears push the shape toward something bulky, and the workaround becomes the talking point. When a color-sensing music player is on the bench, the conversation turns to what else its electronics could do. Ideas include a sound effect when the player is shaken, music that changes with the time of day through a real-time clock, and internet radio through an AirLift FeatherWing. Chat questions come in live: one viewer asks how loud a speaker plays, and another asks where a design's look came from. Episode titles show an even wider range, naming suncatchers, a blooming rose, an origami heart box, a sea slug, polished metal prints and a mechanical hand. Adafruit's own hardware gets airtime too, like the Fruit Jam and its emulators for NES, Sega, Game Boy, DOS and classic Apple systems, plus CircuitPython for custom games. Liz Clark has appeared as a special guest to talk through projects of her own. Streams set aside time for store business, with free gifts on bigger orders and a coupon code good for 24 hours. Even the production setup gets a mention, with a shout-out to StreamYard, the streaming software that replaced their old Wirecast setup. Some stretches refer to what is on screen, so the video fills in details the audio cannot. Streams end with a nudge toward Show and Tell that evening and the familiar parting line to make a great day.