We had a great turn out in April. Thanks to all the people who came!

First we had the fine people from Ace Monster Toys speak about their hacker space.

Ace Monster Toys is located in Oakland and has been around for about a year now. They are the first East Bay hacker space and they have a bunch of cool equipment that members can use. There are lots of smart people there everyday to help with anything you want to do. Also there are ongoing collaborations including a book scanner so if you want to get into something bigger that is possible as well. AMT has a general meeting at 7:30pm Thursdays that is open to the public so go check them out!

Then Andrew demoed making a parametric shape Processing and outputting an STL file that you could print on a 3D printer.

Oooooh geometry

A parametric shape is a mathematical defined shape. Generating these shapes is much easier and quicker than using a 3D modeling program like Solid Works so it is a good place to start when you are getting into 3D printing.  To generate the shape we used the demo code from Local Guru which and the unlekker library  made by Marius Watz. This library can convert a shape made in Processing into an STL file. Marius was the first Artist in Residence at MakerBot Industries and made some really cool parametric shapes while he was there. With the STL file you can use Replicator G to process the STL file and control a 3D printer to make the part.

We had a great meeting in March. Eric Maundu gave a great over view of the chemistry and system used in aquaponics. Basically it consists of a fish tank and a growing bed. To keep the tank clean water is pumped to the bed where bacteria break down the fish waste and feed the plants. Then the water is pumped back into the tank and the cycle repeats itself. Eric explained how this flow matches what nature already does only on a much smaller scale. For more information on Eric’s projects go to Kijiji Grows

 

Eric Maundu talks about the aquaponics cycle at Tech Liminal

Then Rik Kretzinger demoed his Arduino automated unit. The cycle starts with a pump that fills the grow bed. The water level is detected by a media probe.  When the signal from the probe is big enough the Arduino shuts off the pump and then waits a set amount of time. Then it activates a gravity feed valve that empties the tank. When the media probe signals the tank is empty the Arduino waits a set amount of time and then starts the cycle over again. All of which is pretty neat

For more information see Rik’s page on the The Aquapanics Gardening Community.

Rik demos his aquaponics system at the Tech Shop

Then we did our soft circuits miniproject and people went home with some great LED bracelets. This project used conductive thread to connect a battery to a LED. When the bracelet was snapped together it would close the circuit and light up the LED.

This month we had a great turn out to see Because We Can speak and to make EL wire at Tech Liminal on July 6th and at The reMake Lounge on July 13th.

As always our members showed off their cool projects. At The Remake Lounge Steve showed his progress with his EEG controlled robot. He has now integrated a new headset from NeuroSky with the Mindstorm. His next step is getting to the raw EEG signals so he can do his own signal processing. Be sure to check out his website for all the details

Because We Can spoke about “Turning Pro: Becoming a Professional Maker” The ideas that stood out for me were “Good Ideas are Useless, Good Execution is Priceless” and “Fail Often, Fail Better”. They also were realistic about running a business saying that you will only spend 20% of your time working on the things you love to do and that you should not start your own business if you are in it for the money.

Then it was onto EL Wire with the kits coming from Cool Neon.

After choosing colors and some delicate soldering….

It lights up!

After that you can make anything light up including your hat!

We had a great time and we can wait to see you all in August!

We had a fun time this week at Techliminal. First we Esperanza Pallana speak about urban farming. She has a treasure trove of knowledge and has a very scientific approach to the whole enterprise. For example she a has found a chart that you can use to map the daylight a point in your garden will get. If you are interested in getting more information you can contact her at Pluck and Feather.

Then we made some music with the Drawdio mini-project.

The kits came from Adafruit. They also had some really good instructions.

Everyone was able to get theirs to work and we were able to create some cool sounds.  We still have more kits that you can buy. Contact Anca at Techliminal if you are interested. Check out the rest of the photos on Flickr.

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

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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!

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.