We got together last week at Techliminal and some great presentations and then played around with some art cards.

First Andrew showed off a key chain wind up LED light.

You can find them if you Google “crank LED flashlight”. Andrew got his at the Exploratorium Gift shop. Then Mike showed is Pelteir can cooler.

He did all the machining and welding himself. However he said that he could not draw heat way from the Peltier unit fast enough so in fact he ended up with a heater. He is working on a new design with better heat sinking that should take care of the problem. Hopefully when he is done he can come back and show us the results.

After that Sam, our speaker for that evening, described the MakerBeam.

MakerBeam is attempting to create an open hardware mini-T system. It is like 80/20 but at a smaller scale and is for quickly making frames for PCB boards and other equipment. Eventually they want it to be flexible enough that you will be able to make robots using the system. The funding for the project came through Kick Starter. It is a really cool website for funding all types of projects from art and books to crafts etc. Check it out if you have project of your own that you need funding for. Currently MakerBeam has alpha prototypes and are in the process of redesign for the betas. They have lots plans for the future so keep an out eye for them.

After that we had some fun playing with some art cards including voices recorders.

We are having another meeting on the Tuesday the 9th at the reMake Lounge where Maker Beam will do another demo and we will have more art cards. For those of you who have not had a chance to see this stuff I hope you can come!

More action was on hand at the ReMake Lounge last night where we had our second race in the Bristle Bot Grand Prix. All of our racers made a bristle bot.

After testing all the bots developed some interesting refinements including various antenni, motor, and battery locations

Then there were some fast and furious races (or at least circles). Check out some of the videos below.

Lets Race!

The Championship

After the blazing action of last week, the Bristle Bot Circuit comes to the reMake Lounge in San Francisco. Come make your own bots. Test them on our state of the art track and then race!

RSVP and info on our Meetup Calendar

Tuesday night a group of toothbrush hot rodders got together for some illicit racing deep in the heart of down town Oakland. The key skill seemed to be to be precise trimming for both speed and stability.

Check out the Bristle Bot Racing Finals to see culmination of night heart pumping action. Hat tip Evil Mad Scientists for the instructions.

Calling all Makers! Come show us the cool stuff you are building at the Schroeders Dec 8th. This month we are doing Maker White Elephant. Wrap up the junk that has been sitting around in your garage for years and exchange it for other junk! Get stuff to make your next awesome project.

Rules
- you must have brought something to participate
- the stuff you want to exchange should be wrapped
- choose a number out of a hat to see who goes first
- the first person chooses a present and unwraps it
-(a) the next person can either steal a unwrapped present or unwrap a new present
-(b) if a present is stolen three times it becomes locked and can not be stolen again
- repeat steps (a) and (b) until all the presents are opened

RSVP and info on our Meetup calendar

Holiday soft circuits and projects demos. Come see cool projects, network with other Bay Area Makers and get feed back on your own projects. Meetup page

On January 7th SparkFun is have a free day. $100 worth of stuff for the first 1000!

Check out the link below for more details.

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/news.php?id=305

I wanted to pass this notice on for a cool art exhibit going on at the Berkeley Art Museum (Thanks! Sean).

Ellen Fullman is a local maker, musician, and composer. For this concert, she has stretched metal strings about 100 feet across the Berkeley Art Museum’s largest gallery, and she will play it along with other musicians.

There are a few details about the specifications of her instrument here:

http://www.ellenfullman.com/TechRider.html

and videos:

http://www.ellenfullman.com/Video.html

There will a concert on December 4th. Should be amazing and it’s a mere $5.

Trying to figure out the instructions on a wearable text display

Had  a great meeting at Tech Liminal in Oakland. It was the kick off for Electroween. They will be meeting every Tuesday night in October. Stop by and work on your costume, or other Electric Halloween projects.

I took a vacation up to Folsom California for my birthday. My wife thoughtfully planned in a trip to The Folsom Powerhouse.

Abstract
The Folsom Powerhouse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (1981) as being significant in the areas of engineering and industry on the national level. It has been said that it represented a momentous advance in the science of generating and transmitting electricity. In 1895 the facility brought high-voltage alternating current over long distance transmission lines for the first time. It is also a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark (1975), a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark (1976) and is designated as California Registered Historical Landmark No. 633 (1958).

You could really see how it was made and how it works… I suppose it was back before they everything in a metal box.

Control panel

It was pretty neat to see, and a great Makation!

I took a few photos

Have suggestions for other Makations? Send them to “meetings at make sf dot org” or click the link above.