Twirly Shirley the Pico-powered precision turntable

VEEB Projects, creators of this Super 8 Cyberdeck and revivers of this ancient Teasmade, have now decided to take down Lazy Susan by introducing Twirly Shirley, a Raspberry Pi Pico W-powered precision turntable.

This turntable lets you precisely rotate objects using a remote control on your smartphone. VEEB wanted to build this one to help them make fancy stop-motion videos of things spinning because that is how they choose to spend their time and we support it.

Icing cakes and toasting marshmallows

As suggested by the makers in their build video, you could also use this for cake icing (can confirm, trying to twizzle a cake stand with one hand while operating a bulging piping bag with the other is hard). They also suggest you may want to use it as a desktop marshmallow toaster, but we’re going to go ahead and advise you don’t have flames of any kind near your laptop. Trust us. We learnt the hard way.

VEEB uses theirs to video a rollerskate lit by a disco ball

How does it work?

The entire build cost around $50 in parts, including the Raspberry Pi Pico W ($6), an original Lazy Susan bearing, and some 3D printed parts. The whole thing is programmable in MicroPython and you can set the turntable to move in any pattern of timed steps you like.

The original Lazy Susan bearing is the silver ring-shaped thing on the right

A stepper motor is rigged up to move the original Lazy Susan bearing, which physically supports the rotation of the turntable. The Raspberry Pi Pico W is controlled by a smartphone connected to the same Wi-Fi network. The smartphone app has the control buttons for the turntable; pressing them makes the Pico W instruct the stepper motor to move the turntable accordingly. The motor is able to do its job thanks to the cleverly designed 3D printed gears slotted inside the turntable bearing. This project makes use of Chris Spencer’s open source gear generator in OpenSCAD.

All the gubbins stuffed inside the turntable before before the lid goes on

VEEB has posted all the code, build instructions, and 3D print files in their GitHub repository so you can create your own Twirly Shirley.

History lesson in kitsch

VEEB Projects always turn out gorgeous build videos, and this one is no exception. Our favourite bit is the history lesson at the 00:30 mark where we learn the origins of the Lazy Susan Server, which inspired Twirly Shirley’s moniker. If you didn’t know what the Teasmade I mentioned at the top of this blog was, I imagine you will need an explanation as to what on earth a Lazy Susan Server is. Every day is a school day.