Start a new project in Adobe Illustrator. You can create vector work with a blank canvas or upload an image to create vector artwork.

To upload an image, drag and drop it onto the Illustrator workspace or use the File > Open menu.

Now it’s time to create your vector artwork. This step can be easy or time-consuming depending on the project you have ahead of you.

There are many ways to go about creating your vector artwork. I highly recommend familiarizing yourself with the Pen Tool—once mastered, it can be used to create professional-looking details.

If drawing from scratch isn’t on your agenda, you can always try tracing an existing image. Check out our guide on how to trace an image in Illustrator. I’m tracing a picture of my cat for this guide.

Be sure to give your artwork a once-over before saving. This is a good opportunity to clean up your line art and add final details to the design.

When you’re ready to export your design, be sure to save it as a vector supporting file type. Avoid using formats like jpeg, png, or bmp. These create rasterized images that lose quality when scaled. I recommend one of these three:

1. SVG – An SVG file supports vector graphic images. SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics. To make an SVG file, save your vector art in Illustrator as a .svg file type.
2. EPS – An EPS file supports vector graphic artwork, but also contains a rasterized copy of the artwork for quick viewing. It stands for Encapsulated PostScript. To create an EPS file, save your Illustrator work as a .eps file type.
3. AI – An AI file supports Adobe Illustrator files and vector graphics. It stands for Adobe Illustrator and is the default file type for Adobe Illustrator projects. To create an AI file, save your work in Illustrator as a .ai file type.

Congratulations! You’ve created an original piece of vectorized work. You may want to go a step further and check out our guide on how to add a transparent background.

Open the image you want to trace in Adobe Illustrator. You can drag and drop the image file on to the workspace or open it using the File > Open menu. You may want to adjust the artboard size before you continue—read more about how to use the artboard in Illustrator here.

Choose a tool to trace the image with. You can use the Pen Tool to create lines, the Shape Tool for an abstract approach, or even the Brush Tool. Each tool has its own benefit. You may enjoy using a combination of tools to achieve a specific effect.

Images can be traced using a cursor. Any accessory will work—a mouse, a trackball, or even a trackpad on a laptop.

1. Create a new layer just for the traced linework.
2. Select a tool to trace with.
3. Set a color for the lines.
4. Trace the image.

If you own a graphics tablet, you can use it to trace the image in Illustrator.

1. Drag the Illustrator window over to the tablet screen.
2. Create a new layer for your tracing lines.
3. Select a tool to trace with.
4. Choose a color for the lines.
5. Trace the image with the tablet pen.

When the tracing is complete, remove the original image by hiding or deleting the layer.

With the original image removed, minor mistakes are more visible. This is a good opportunity to clean up your linework and add final details.

Save your tracing with File > Save. You can use other applications, like Photoshop, to apply final touches. Take your finished work a step further by including a transparent background.

Measure your ingredients using the chart below. You can easily double or triple the amounts using the ratios used here.

Make sure to measure your rice using dry measuring cups, and measure your water using liquid measuring cups. Using the correct tools is much more precise, and when it comes to perfect rice, precision is everything. You can easily double or triple the ratios used here.

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Dry Measuring Cups

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Liquid Measuring Cups

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These handheld strainers are my favorite tool for rinsing rice or draining pasta. The holes are small enough that rice won’t fall through, and they take up much less kitchen space than a large colander.

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Fine Mesh Sieve

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Rinse rice under cool running water until the water runs clear. Don’t skip this step! Rinsing rice washes away any excess starch from the exterior of the rice–an essential step for fluffy, distinct grains. In addition, the extra water from rinsing is key to the precise water to rice ratio used in this method.

Add water and rice to the inner pot. Add salt to taste. You can also add a tablespoon of oil or butter for a richer flavor.

Close the lid. You will hear a beep indicating it has closed all the way. Make sure the steam handle is turned to Sealing.

DO NOT use the Rice button on your Instant Pot. This is an automatic program with mixed results. You’re much better off manually controlling the time and pressure.

Press Pressure Cook (or Manual on older devices) and increase/decrease the time using the +/- buttons on the control panel. Select the cooking time using the chart below:

The screen will display ‘On’ while it comes to pressure. Once it has come to full pressure, the float valve will seal and the timer will start.

When the cooking time is complete, the Instant Pot will issue several beeps. A new clock will be displayed counting up the minutes of pressure release. If after 10 minutes, the float valve has not dropped (indicating all of the pressure has been released), you can manually release pressure by turning the steam handle to Venting. The steam released will be very hot, so I recommend you use a wooden spoon or an oven mitt to turn the handle.

I love utilizing the Keep Warm function on my Instant Pot. Instead of stressing about having all of the components of a meal ready at the same time, you can start the rice when you begin cooking and allow it to keep warm until you’re ready to serve. Tap the Keep Warm button at any point in the cooking to use this feature.

Do not stir cooked rice–it will turn gummy and mash up the perfect, distinct grains you achieved. Fluff lightly with a fork and serve!

Beat softened butter and powdered sugar together for a few minutes until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and buttermilk and continue beating for another minute.

Pipe or frost cupcakes, add sprinkles if desired, and serve.

Use the table above and diagram reference to connect your i2c LCD screen to the Raspberry Pi. Note: I’m using a backpack module to make the process a little easier. You can connect the LED to either the LCD itself or the Pi for custom control options.

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I2C LCD screen

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Raspberry Pi 3 B+

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We’ll be creating our Raspberry Pi alarm clock on top of Raspbian. Make sure the Raspbian OS is installed—visit our Raspbian update guide to get started.

To use our LCD screen, we’ll need to enable i2c. Access the Raspberry Pi configuration menu:

sudo raspi-config

Under Interfacing Options, select the option to enable I2C. Confirm the change and restart your Raspberry Pi.

We need to see which I2C address our LCD is using. To do this, we’ll be installing a package called I2C Tools. Run the following command:

sudo apt-get install i2c-tools

Install the following SMBUS Python library:

sudo apt-get install python-smbus

Restart the Pi and run this command to find the I2C address.

i2cdetect -y 1

This will return a table full of addresses. Jot down the number used by your LCD screen, mine happens to be 27. Update i2c_driver.py with the address number your screen is using on line 6.

Next we’ll need to install this Python i2c driver. On the GitHub repository for this project, we’ve added a driver that you can use! It’s basically just a refactor of a driver provided by DenisFromHR on GitHub.

Installing the driver is pretty simple. Just make sure you’re in your home directory and use wget.

cd ~ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Howchoo/smart-alarm-clock/master/i2c_driver.py

Now it’s time to set up the RPLCD library. Begin by installing PIP:

sudo apt-get install python-pip

Once complete, install the RPLCD library package. Run the following:

sudo pip install RPLCD

It’s time for the fun part! We need our LCD screen to give us some kind out output. The following script will display the time and date on our LCD screen. You can get creative with output settings.

display.py

#!/usr/bin/env python import I2C_LCD_driver import time mylcd = I2C_LCD_driver.lcd() while True: mylcd.lcd_display_string(time.strftime('%I:%M:%S %p'), 1) mylcd.lcd_display_string(time.strftime('%a %b %d, 20%y'), 2)

Save this python script to a file and drop it in /home/pi. I’ve named my file display.py.

Note: I’m from America so I prefer my date with the Month in front. However, you can use this opportunity to adjust the output however you like. Visit this Ubuntu page for more information on clock output customization.

In our display.py script, Python’s time module will output the current time in whatever timezone is set on the Raspberry Pi. So, in order to see the time in our local timezone, we’ll need to configure the timezone.

We’ve written a detailed guide showing you how to set the timezone on your Raspberry Pi (tl;dr sudo raspi-config).

Test your script by running the following code:

sudo python display.py 

Note: Replace display.py with the file name you chose for your python script.

Find a sound to use for your alarm clock. I’m using a file labeled alarm.wav. Drop it in the /home/pi folder.

The alarm script requires a scheduler to work properly. Run the following script to install the scheduler:

pip install schedule

Create a python script to initiate our sound file at a specific time. Below is the script I used to schedule my alarm (for 7:00AM).

alarm.py

#!/usr/bin/env python import schedule import subprocess import time def job(): subprocess.call(['aplay /home/pi/alarm.wav'], shell=True) schedule.every().day.at('7:00').do(job) while True: schedule.run_pending() time.sleep(1)

Make sure the alarm script is running the alarm when scheduled. Plug in your speaker and run the following script. Replace alarm.py with the name of your alarm script file.

sudo python alarm.py 

Note: If you have trouble when testing your alarm, try scheduling it for at least 5-10 minutes into the future. Sometimes the Pi needs a few minutes before will work.

Open the crontab file with the following command

crontab -e

At the end of the file, add the following two lines of code. Be sure to replace the ‘display.py’ and ‘alarm.py’ with your custom display and alarm scripts.

@reboot nohup python display.py & @reboot nohup python alarm.py &

Save and close the file. Congratulations! Every time your Pi restarts, it’s going to tell you the time and schedule your custom alarm.

Now let’s get to the good stuff. To make our alarm clock a smart alarm clock, we’ll be using AVS. Visit our guide here to learn how to set up AVS on the Raspberry Pi. Using Alexa, you can create commands and even trigger custom python scripts!

Here are a few example ideas to get you started:

• Set alarms using voice commands
• Check the weather
• Program reminders for future events

If your Pi has an internet connection (see our guide on setting up WiFi on your Pi), the time should remain perfectly in sync. Where you take the project from here is up to you. Congratulations! Your Raspberry Pi is now a completely functional alarm clock.

Obviously, you’ll need to open VSCode.

Show the [bottom] panel by navigating to View > Appearance > Show Panel.

From the right sidebar, drag the search icon into the header area of the bottom panel. A | pipe character will indicate its final position. I chose to move it all the way to the left.

As you can see the search pane is now at the bottom of the VS Code window, where it will stay until the devs decide to change this again. If that happens, I’ll update this guide—so feel free to bookmark or favorite it.

Open the image you want to edit in Photoshop using one of two methods: drag and drop the file directly onto the Photoshop workspace or import it under the File > Open menu.

Select the background using the wand and lasso tool. I don’t want to make this process sound easier or harder than it is—the amount of work depends on the image you’re trying to edit. There are many tools in Photoshop that can be used to select areas of an image.

The Wand Tool

The magic wand tool is designed to automatically separate objects. The software tries to automatically detect the edges of an object to create the selection. This tool works best on areas with solid color and little texture.

Select it in the left-hand toolbar or press W on your keyboard.

The Lasso Tool

This is my favorite tool—by far. The Polygonal Lasso tool lets you draw a selection by clicking the mouse to drop points. The regular Lasso tool is used to freehand draw custom selections.

Select it using the toolbar on the left or press L on your keyboard. Hold Shift while using it to add to a selection and Alt to subtract from it.

If you want to avoid hard pixels around your foreground object, I recommend refining the edge of the selection. There are many ways of going about this. One quick method is to feather the edges of the selection slightly:

1. Select an area of the image.
2. Open the Select menu at the top of the screen.
3. Go to Modify > Feather
4. Set a pixel number. This will determine how far inward the feathering will be applied. I usually start with 1px and make adjustments in 1px increments.

This is one of many ways to go about cleaning up a selection in Photoshop. You may want to check online for more tutorials if you don’t like the way this looks.

There are several ways to apply a new background color. You can use the fill bucket in a new layer to create a solid color.

Another option is to adjust the hue of the existing background using the Hue/Saturation menu. Open this menu with Control + U for Windows users or Command + U for Mac users. The hue and saturation of the background can be adjusted with the sliders on the tool that pops up.

When the background is set, save the changes or continue with your project.