We’re not always hacking at NYC Resistor: sometimes we play with exothermic reactions that turn liquids into solids! Here is a timelapse of me casting some RepRap Extruder MKII parts to play with.

Smooth-on Timelapse from Zach 'Iowa' Hoeken on Vimeo.

Here’s a fun little video of me soldering a new RepRap kit, the Opto Isolator v1.0

Opto Isolator v1.0 Timelapse from Zach 'Iowa' Hoeken on Vimeo.

Arduino Programming 103: Sensory Overload

Saturday, 1pm-3pm

During this class, we will explore the many different ways of gathering information from the outside world. The NYC Resistor Learner shield has many interesting sensors including a light sensor, a temperature sensor, a knock sensor, and some sliders. We will be examining each of these sensors and showing you how to use them in your programs.

An Arduino and Learner Shield will be provided to each student, but please bring a laptop if possible.

Instructor: Zach Smith

Soldering 101: Basics

Saturday, 4pm-5pm

1 hour, all parts will be provided.

Using a simple electronics kit the student learns the basics of through hole soldering to a circuit board. At the end of the hour, the student will take home an LED blinky of their own construction!

Taught by Jon Santiago

We have tons more classes coming up as well!

One of my side projects I’ve been working on lately is a fully self-contained Arduino shield. I originally started making it for the arduino classes i’m teaching. Today, I finished up the design and did a sanity-check prototype by printing out the board on paper, putting it on foam, and sticking the major components into it.

The board itself is a whole bunch of cool inputs and outputs. It has 3 sliders (with integrated LED’s… each connected to PWM). It has a temperature sensor, a light sensor, and a piezo wired as a knock sensor. It has 3 buttons, 2 PWM leds, a 7 segment led hooked up via a shift register, and a piezo buzzer. I set out to max out every Arduino pin, and I did it! I ordered the boards today, and I’m getting super psyched about it. Not only will this be a fun board to learn on, but I’m excited about using it to do all sorts of fun stuff. The possibilities are really off the charts.

The manufacturer now has my design. More pix on flickr.

I’ve been working a lot on the RepRap code lately and I recently got it to the point where segment pausing is drastically reduced. This RepRap is driven with Arduino based electronics running a GCode interpreter firmware. Woot!

Segment Pausing Fix from Zach ‘Iowa’ Hoeken on Vimeo.