During Hackday I worked on a display for the Stabby ID.
I have six or so HDSP 2111 units lying around. They also come in green and red led models.
Read on for Schematic and Demo Arduino Source
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May 302010
May 252010
Video of our presentation at Hackday:
In the video,
Ben Combee is speaking, Max Henstell is working the stabster’s pneumatics and Mark Tabry is standing by to protect bystanders, and I am off camera to the left looking pretty for the cameras.
Not in the video is Bill Ward, Charles Pax, as well as the original Max.
* Special thanks to my friend Adam from Twilio who provided us with some assistance in the effort.
For the blow by blow of the event check out our time lapse. Trust me it was 24 hours of tedium just as grueling as watching this 2.5 minute clip.
As you can see this was an pretty large effort by NYCR and a hell of a lot more went into this project than is readily apparent. Just getting the equipment there was an event all its own. Max and Charles worked tirelessly to repair Stabby’s pneumatic stabber arm. Max also worked on wiring up the actuators and accompanying arduino code to link up with Ben, Bill, and Marks twilio interface code base. I worked with Mark on a display that showed debug info from the arduinos ( blogarythmic cred ) as well as caller ( aka stabber ) id when stabbing.
We finished up about 5 minutes before time was called… literally. Came down to the wire. Stabby was awarded a runner up award, and supposedly will be on display at Tech Crunch on Wednesday some time during the day.
We had a hell of a lot of fun, and were excited to present a functioning project ( a first for me =P ). Even more exciting was winning a runner up award in a contest that didn’t actually have runner up awards. I guess they were afraid of being stabbed.
May 042010
How do you keep an iPhone running for long periods of time when you are off the grid? You can’t change the battery in the phone, so carrying a spare isn’t an option. Devices like LadyAda’s excellent MintyBoost use AA batteries and can keep you going indefinitely, but unfortunately the MintyBoost and several other similar products don’t work with the iPhone 3GS. And anyway what I really wanted was a device that would take power from the high capacity 12V NiMH rechargeable pack that I use to power my portable ham radio gear. I could have re-purposed a charger meant for use with cars, but many of them use linear regulators and are therefore very inefficient, or aren’t compatible with the 3GS; plus they are overpriced. So instead I built a charger to suit my needs: the MintyBuck.
Apr 112010
I gave Zach several months to post this. And he hasn’t. I am not sure why, but it’s probably because he’s too busy advancing his skills and the capacity of his makerbots to take the time. A few months ago we hosted an amazing hackathon at NYC Resistor. During that event Bill was hard at work getting to grips with how the model 15-ro teletype, that I bought on e-bay for a dollar, operated.
It turns out the teletype only has 2 electromechanical parts… the motor and an actuator. Everything else is mechanical. All the amazing engineering and mind blowing beauty aside… that makes it very difficult to debug the device. So while Bill was struggling to step the device through it’s instructions Zach was building and perfecting yet another makerbot.
As the two of them conversed about their trials and tribulations Zach set out to use his makerbot to help Bill out. He designed a gear that bill could use to manually advance the main rotational shaft in the device and thusly step through instructions. Moderately simple little thing, but obviously designing these obvious components is… somewhat harder than it looks.
The amazing part to me isn’t the component made by zach, or the teletype. It’s the fusion of a prototyped component made using 2010 technology used to solve a problem on a 1930s machine. Just because two guys working on very different projects just happened to be sitting next to each other when they worked on their respective contraptions.
To me the image of this one new component on this amazing piece of antiquity is a thing of subtle beauty. A clash of cultures, a contrast of design, and a community of exceptional craft all there in one simple photo. Sometimes a thousand words simply isn’t enough to describe it.
Anyways, I hope you guys are seeing something as amazing here as I am.
Apr 082010
Our friends over at Tekserve in Manhattan are hosting an eWaste recycling event April 10th, 2010 from 10am to 4pm. Find out the full details here, especially WHAT YOU CAN BRING: http://tekserve.com/recycling
A sample of the stuff they’ll take: computers, monitors, fax machines, printers/copiers, televisions, DVD players, VCRs, radios/stereos, telephones, cameras. No bulk-drops from businesses though. NO home appliances like fridges, microwaves, stoves, or air conditioners either. They’re also raffling off a Macbook. Check their link for the full scoop.
Apr 062010
NYC Resistor was invited to exhibit our old Teletype Model 15 at Eyebeam’s MIXER event last March. To make life interesting, we used a small Python program to grab tweets from Twitter matching the “eyebeam” keyword. Watching a 50+ year old device once used to bang out the news of the day turn to printing the trivialities of the moment seems to echo the fate of professional journalists as the world’s attention span dwindles. To make things more interesting, we used a sentiment analysis algorithm to parse incoming tweets for positive or negative sentiment. The results were reflected on an old chart plotter. Positive sentiments moved the mark left. The middle of the paper represented neutral sentiment. Click the image for more photos and a video awaits after the break.
Apr 042010
The venerable and highly esteemed Mr Stabby. An orphan robot found upon the streets of new york, and eventually dropped off at NYC Resistor has found a home in our hearts. Luckily we’ve kept him thus far from plunging a knife into that home. We did however decide that since Mr Stabby means so much to all of us, that we’d celebrate his birthday. This year stabs got to take out a pinata shaped like a penguin.
Here’s a video of stabs showing us that even the surliest robots can sometimes find a home full of love, and support if hackerspaces are willing to open their doors to them.
Stabs… this one’s for you man.
(Updated: Photos from the event posted to Flickr)
Feb 082010
A lot of you folks may not know this but, I went to high school ( and graduated from there ) in Brazil. One of my friends from there currently is living in New Jersey. He’s been running powerlabs.org since high school ( probably earlier ). Sam has also just recently sold his soul to facebook here
Above is a video of him test firing a 100 KiloJoule rail gun. And I cannot stress this enough… THIS IS FREAKING AMAZING. Sam’s fairly famous so some of you may already know of some of his past exploits, but if not… by all means check his stuff out. Sam’s been inspiring me with his insanity for years.
Nov 162009
We’re excited to promote The Parts and Crafts Collective! Kids and young adults are the future and we love knowing they’ll be exposed to hardware hacking with William Macfarlane and his team of super teachers. The Parts and Crafts Collective is hosting kids classes around NYC, check out their eventbrite page for details and registration.
Oct 262009
So at the end of last year and into the beginning of 2009, the folks at the extreme craft blog were soliciting for submissions for their 1000 ideas for creative reuse book. And since creative reuse is the very essence of hacking, I decided to submit my ( at the time new ) mp3 grenade project. It got into the book! So my idea is idea number 579 of 1000 fairly amazing ideas. Review and more after the click!