I’ve recently received a few awesome LoL Shield projects in my inbox, and I thought I should share. The first one was Pete’s awesome white block clock. He painted the inside of a plastic box white, so that the LEDs would have to shine through. It looks amazing, and you should check out the post. He’s unfortunately not ready to release the code just yet, but I’ll make sure to update this post once he does.
The second thing I got was Matt Mett’s sprite converter. Above you can see a neat animation, that was generated from a python script converting this simple 9×14 pixle animation. That will make frame by frame animation a good bit easier.
http://www.cibomahto.com/2010/08/lol-processing/
Update: Matt also put up a really cool processing sketch to send serial data to the LoL Shield, which he has been using to scroll “The Time is Now [time]“. Matt has been traveling with Mitch and I on this trip, and has been a great help with the LoL Shield library releases.
This third thing I got was Eric’s phygame graphic library, that can send live graphics to the LoL Shield. The possibilities here are endless, and it’s a great way to get graphics quickly to the LoL Shield through the serial cable.
At the moment I’ve got my LoL Shield inventory with me in the mid-west hackerspace tour, but I’ve added two new colors. You can now get the LoL Shield in Blue or White. The only way to get them from me at the moment is in person at one of the hackerspaces. After this tour they will be online. If you are fine with green or red, you can get them from Make, Sparkfun, Oomlout, and now Adafruit!
I was recently at Maker Faire Detroit, which was a blast. Mitch Altman and I, along with some great volunteers, taught around 1,500 people to solder during the event. It was really great, and I always love Maker Faires. People are always just so excited to be there, and love to make things.
Since we were in the area, we’re going through the mid-west, and even up into Canada for a short stint. At the moment we are in Toronto, and will be running two workshops in the next two days. Mitch has posted a full schedule up on the Noisebridge blog, but here it is as well:
Hacklab.TO – Toronto, ON — visit on 3-August Site3 — Toronto, ON — workshop on 5-August Kwartzlab – Kitchener, ON — workshop on 6-August OCD — Detroit, MI — workshop on 8-August Mt. Elliot Makerspace – Detroit, MI — workshop on 9-August I3 — Detroit, MI — workshop on 10-August A2 MechShop — Ann Arbor, MI — visit on 11-August AHA — Ann Arbor, MI — workshop on 12-August LVL1 — Louisville, KY — workshop on 14-August Hive13 — Cincinnati, OH — presentation on 17-August Hive13 — Cincinnati, OH — workshop on 18-August BloomingLabs — Bloomington, IN — workshop on 19-August Arch Reactor — St. Louis, MO — workshop on 20-August KC Mini Maker Faire / CCCKC — Kansas City, MO — Hardware Hacking Area at Faire on 22-August Quad Cities Co-Lab Hackerspace — Quad Cities, IA/IL – workshop on 24-August PS:1 — Chicago, IL — workshop on 25-August Madison BarCamp — Madison, WI — talk on hackerspaces on 28-August Sector67 – Madison, WI — workshop on 29-August
I will be dipping out after Chicago on the 25th to go to the Road Island Maker Faire, but other than that I will be at all of them. If you are around any of the spaces, you should swing by.
I will be giving a talk on circuit bending at the Next Hope conference this month. The talk will be Friday night at 9:00pm on Saturday. I will then be running a circuit bending workshop immediately afterwards. It will be from 10-ish PM till whenever in the hardware hacking village. To attend the workshop, you will either need to pre-register here ($25, includes everything), or show up with an Easy Button and $15 in hand. I’m only going to bring about 10 Easy Buttons over the pre-registration, so I can’t guarantee you’ll get one. I will have all other parts needed for as many people as the hardware hacking village can hold.
The talk will cover not only a bit about what circuit bending is, but what it has been, and what it will be in the future. I will also go over some common exploits so that attendees will be able to leave the talk with a solid understanding of where to start, as well as what parts are needed. I will also be going over what toys to look for, and how to find ones that are ripe for exploits.
UPDATE:
It looks like I only managed to get a grand total of 11 Easy Buttons from Staples. Also, since there is a bending concert on Saturday night, I’m not going to hold the workshop afterwards. That would just be unfair to the people who want to go to the concert (like me The new time will be Sunday from 13:00 till you finish.
Your best bet is to either pre-register here or show up with an easy button and $20. I would suggest you go outside of Manhattan, as I’ve already bought all of the ones near the conference center. Although, there are supposedly 6 in the Staples in Pen Station, but I couldn’t find it, and nobody seemed to know where it was located. If you can find it, then you’ll be all set.
I really should put this up on my blog I suppose, but I’m the current artist in residence at AS220 for the month of June. What all will I be doing? I’ll be working in the AS220 Labs some days, teaching classes on others, and generally working on my own projects. The point of this month is to get me to do stuff, help out the community at large, and make progress with my own art. In many senses I really do believe what I am doing is art, some of it anyhow. So if you are around Providence, then drop me a line, or swing by during one of the project nights.
One of my personal goals is to actually post to my blog more frequently. I’ll actually be in one place for more than a week, so that will hopefully help out with things. I’m hoping to finish up some of the LoL Shield and Open Heart software stuff. I also want to do some instructional videos of basic soldering, circuit bending, and things like that. Anything specific people are interested in seeing from me?
I’m going to be running an introduction to circuit bending at the MIT museum this coming Monday, May 17. I will be teaching the basics of circuit bending, what to look for, and how to find interesting points. You will then circuit bend a Staples Easy button with the tools provided. You will also have access to my cache of parts to fully customize your toy. You can leave a comment, or send me an email if you have any questions.
At the recent PAX East conference here in Boston, I happened to have three Open Heart kits in my backpack and an Arduino. It hit me suddenly that this should be quickly turned into a life meter. I already had code to run three hearts simultaneously, you can see the post here. So it was a matter of just doing the animation.
I’ve been running soldering workshops for a few years now, and along with Mitch Altman, we’ve taught thousands of people to solder. I’ve used everything from $1,000 re-work stations to $1 irons bought off of eBay. I get asked quite often what people should buy for themselves, or what they should be buying for their hackerspace for running workshops. Honestly, once you get above a certain quality level of iron, it doesn’t matter for through-hole soldering. You can get good soldering joints from irons that cost less than $10 quite easily. I do however have a few suggestions. [click to continue…]
Wow, what a crazy month this has been. Mitch Altman and I just got back from a 3-week long hackerspace tour through the UK and Ireland. We even had T-shirts printed (see above), that were designed by the talented Matthew Borgatti. The schedule was crazy. I had planned on blogging while over there, but we [...]
Today I started playing around with the new Open Heart v2.0 based off a project that came up at 26C3. My friend Alex wanted to run three Open hearts as a life meter on one of his tactical corsets. I loved the idea, and said that it should be possible to do that with just [...]
That will make frame by frame animation a good bit easier.
Pre-register here.
The new time will be Sunday from 13:00 till you finish.
