June 30, 2009
links for 2009-06-30
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Interesting bit of hardware that adds GPS and environmental sensing to a homing pigeon to then map the city.
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The fix to the problem I had recently on the second Bubblino, where it doesn't work when not powered by USB.
June 23, 2009
links for 2009-06-23
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Great idea to work out ways to overcome the myriad little problems that face organisations when trying to take advantage of new Web2.0 tools and social media
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An essential tweak if you're using the Arduino IDE on Windows on a machine with Bluetooth. I used to have to wait around half-a-minute whenever I clicked on the "Tools" menu as it tried to connect to all the Bluetooth devices setup. With this fix the menu appears instantaneously!
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For future reference if I end up doing some detailed air monitoring.
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"In 1986 Barnsley Council adopted an energy efficiency policy with a target of reducing energy consumption by 15% in 5 years. They actually achieved a reduction of 20% in 4 years." Well done Barnsley Council for showing the way forward.
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Info on identifying and reusing stepper motors (after salvaging them from printers or floppy drives, etc.)
June 20, 2009
links for 2009-06-20
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How to use the three-pin temp sensors like the LM35
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Another Arduino and other bits supplier, based in Kent and selling solar panels to use to power your Arduino projects (although maybe only low current draw projects and maybe only 3.3V Arduinos like the Pro?)
June 17, 2009
New Ways of Working
As part of their Climate for Change season, FACT held the unSustainable unConference, an unconference about sustainability.
It was on Saturday 9th May and I'd just returned from a chaotic week in Germany. It was full of passionate people trying to work out what could be done to help sustainability, but by the end of the day I was getting rather frustrated with how we were defining the Manifesto for Change by what we were against, rather than looking for aspirational and more positive directions to channel our energies. Sadly I was wiped out after my week away (where I'd also acquired a cold) and so wasn't up to engaging with my fellow attendees, so I just retracted into my digital shell and heckled them electronically.
Before reaching that point, however, I did present some thoughts about the growing co-working and hackspace scenes. The flexible working and community-building that seems to come with such spaces could fall easily into a more sustainable way of working. And to meet my aforementioned aspirational and positive approach I even ended with a rather grand vision for how such a movement might evolve here in Liverpool.
I'll leave anyone interested to find more details by reading through my slides, but by all means get in touch if you'd like to know more...
There are notes with the slides, but they don't seem to have come out in the Slideshare presentation. If you download the Powerpoint deck for the slides you'll be able to get an idea of what I was talking about when giving the presentation.
links for 2009-06-17
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Nice project by Landon Rohatensky, who's modified my Alertuino perl script to trigger his Arduino controlled teasmaid. It picks up the type of tea from a tweet, and that sets the time that the tea steeps before it is dispensed into the cup, ready to drink.
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It turns out that a bike left unlocked in the centre of Liverpool lasted longer (nearly four hours) before being stolen than any of the other locations they tried, including London and Norwich
June 08, 2009
Howduino, How Did It Go?
On Saturday 23rd May, a collection of about thirty geeks, coders, artists and complete novices took over the Gallery 1 space at FACT for a day of learning about hardware hacking and working on interesting projects to fuse computing power with the real world.
Howduino was an event hatched up by Thom Shannon and me, and the space at FACT was a perfect location for it. There was a big screen where I ran my "Getting started with Arduino" talk, and plenty of big work tables where people could spread out their tools, soldering irons, laptops and projects as they worked on them.
We weren't quite sure what to expect, given the wide range of abilities from the attendees (from the architecture students who had no knowledge but lots of enthusiasm, to the similarly enthusiastic but much more experienced Aaron from .:oomlout:.) but after a quick run round the room for everyone to introduce themselves, people seemed to find groups to work in and share knowledge.
I think our use of the wiki before the event was vital, as it meant that people had an idea about what projects were available to be tackled, which helped us organise people into groups - we had a quick "hands up if you're interested in X" for each project on the wiki, and then people could find each other afterwards to get started. It also meant that people could work out what components they'd need beforehand, and so come prepared.
By mid-afternoon there was a real buzz in the air, as people helped each other out, traded parts and some real progress was being made by on the projects. It seemed a shame to break up such a productive community, which meant that we left it a bit too late to start wrapping up the day. That was my biggest regret - we didn't get chance to share what everyone had achieved during the event, but it's been great to see the blog posts filtering out over the following weeks as things get finished.
That also meant it was hard to work out what to do about the prizes we had. The guys from O'Reilly who I met at Maker Faire had very generously sent us some book vouchers, t-shirts and an i-Sobot robot, and initially we'd planned to have a number of categories for "Best project", "Most ambitious project", "Most components killed in the pursuit of hardware hacking", etc. However, as most projects were group efforts, and the groups were formed by people who'd only met on the day, it seemed a bit hard to work out who would get the prize; so in the end we held a raffle amongst all the attendees. It seemed to fit the collaborative, helping-each-other-to-achieve-cool-things vibe to the day.
It also means I don't have an easy way to run through what was built on the day, so I'll just list them as I remember them (and include links where I can). We had...
- Bristlebot art
- Twitter racing cars
- A drawbot
- Stockmarket watching Panda
- Dancing robots
- The Location Clock
- A line-following Mini
...and there are photos from Nikki, Tim D, and Thom, and blog posts from Nikki and .:oomlout:..
What could we have done better?
The biggest problem with any hackday is the amount of time you have. Ideally we'd make Howduino a weekend event, as that would give people time to get something significant finished. I'd also see if there's a more hands-on way to get people started wth Arduinos. Maybe I could give a shortened version of my talk, so people could get the basics and then get started on a project; but also have a longer, more practical session for people who wanted a bit more hand-holding through getting things working. And maybe run a "driving motors with H-bridges" session, as lots of people were trying to do that, and possibly combine that, or run it just after, a session to harvest stepper motors from old printers or floppy drives.
Thanks again to Thom for helping me organize it all, Sophie for the excellent logo, O'Reilly for the prizes, FACT for a great venue, and attendee Stewart Dunn for the robot kits.
So, will there be another Howduino day? Definitely. We don't know where, or when, but keep an eye on the wiki or follow @howduino on twitter to find out when there's more news.
June 07, 2009
An Awesome Cornish Group Holiday Destination
We're just back from a fantastic week's holiday on the north Cornwall coast. A group of thirteen of us (ten adults, two kids, a baby and two dogs) rented Trelawny, a gorgeous big old house right on the coast in Widemouth Bay.
Apart from a day-trip to the Eden Project, the furthest we ventured all week were the ice-cream parlours of Bude, a couple of minutes drive up the coast. The rest of the time was spent chilling out at the house, over the road (literally) on the beach, or indulging in a spot of sea-kayaking.
The house swallowed us all with ease, even though Rebecca and I were on the sofa-bed in one of the lounges, and there was still plenty of space for people to do their own thing without it getting at all claustrophobic.
Highly recommended if you're looking for somewhere for a big group holiday.
links for 2009-06-07
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All sorts of electronics and hardware goodness.
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A great idea endeavouring to make different ways of getting together to achieve things easily legal. Hopefully will offer a simple menu of choices to make it easy to form co-ops, collectives and collaborative businesses.
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"[tinkering] is resolutely human-focused: you don't make things 'better' in some dry technical sense, you make them work better for you"