NYC Resistor

Join us for Dan Steingart’s class on batteries. He’s a battery researcher at City College and is giving a free class about batteries at NYC Resistor this Wednesday, 8/18 7-9pm. Here’s how he describes it:

You’d like to sever that USB cable and let your device into the wild, but how will it survive? On batteries, of course! But before you let your little one go, spend a little time at Resistor and learn exactly what is going on inside the battery and how to make the best of it.

You’ll learn:
- What voltage really represents
- Why batteries are not getting much lighter
- How to maximize cycle life
- When to use primary vs. secondary cells
- Why batteries heat up
- Why batteries stop retaining charge
- How to mate batteries with energy harvesting devices
- What a battery looks like on the inside

Please bring questions!

Dan

–
Dan Steingart, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Chemical Engineering
City College of New York

http://puredata.info/community/NYCPatchingCircle

We are reviving the New York City Patching Circle and making it a monthly thing! Every third Sunday of the month, we’ll be meeting at NYC Resistor. Last month we worked on Gem and laid plans for an object based on Mac OS X’s IOSurface to allow different programs like Pd/Gem, Quartz Composer, etc. to share textures in the GPU.

We spend enough time alone staring at our computers; we are proposing to work together. So often issues that arise when working can be solved with a quick two minute discussion that would take hours to solve alone. We have Dorkbot to see people’s work, we have Share where anyone can play, we have workshops and universities to learn from. This is a meeting where we all can come to work.

This is an informal gathering of patching and patchers (Pd, Max/MSP/Jitter, and even vvvv, Eyesweb, Labview, etc.). Beginners and Experienced welcome. Open to everyone, students, the public, etc. Work on school projects, personal projects, ask for help, help others, or just patch quietly to yourself, in a room full of other people patching patches and helping other people patch.

Time/Date

Every third Sunday of the month, so this Sunday, July 18th!
noon-6pm

Directions

NYC Resistor

87 3rd Avenue, (between Bergen and Dean), 4th Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Tel. +1.347.850.4872 or +1.347.586.9270

2/3/4/5/B/D/Q/N/R to Atlantic/Pacific
LIRR to Atlantic Terminal
F/G to Bergen

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.

If you’re near Manhattan this weekend, stop in to Eyebeam for their MIXER event Friday and Saturday nights (Mar 13 and 14) from 9PM to 2AM.  NYC Resistor will be one of the presenting artists with our “Color Commentary Teletype” a restored 1930′s era Model 15 serial printer, along with a sentiment analysis chart recorder!  MIXER is a huge party, with music, art, and performances.  It’s going to be awesome!

Check out the details at Eyebeam!  Now!

MIXER:Olympiad

htink will be hosting a Linux tutorial, today Tuesday, Jan 26 2010. Both Ben Combee and Myself have volunteered to assist. This will not be at NYC Resistor however, look for it at Bug Labs ( your friendly neighborhood purveyor of fine open source micro-controllers ). I do not work for British Telecom =P.

If you’ve ever wanted some guidance in the Unix world, this is a tremendous opportunity. The folks that will be available to you are all very talented. If you’re interested, more details HERE!

Mitch Altman is in town next, and will be giving one of his famous workshops at NYC Resistor. Mitch has taught thousands of people to solder and make cool things with microcontrollers at his workshops at hacker spaces and hacker conferences and schools almost everywhere. He can teach you, too, if you like.

If you have ever had any curiosity about making something with electronics, then please join us. Anyone and everyone can learn to make cool things. And it’s fun. And easy! You can learn to make something cool with electronics in one workshop, and take your cool project home with you!

*What*: Make Cool Things With Microcontrollers! workshop.
*Where*: NYC Resistor, 397 Bridge Street, 5th Floor.
*When*: 8pm, 29-January, Friday. (It is totally OK to come late.) Stay as little or as long as you like. Most projects take about 1 to 2 hours.
*Who*: It is fun to make things in the friendly community of NYC Resistor. Come join us. All skill levels. 18 years old and up. Everyone is welcome.
*Cost*: Instruction is Free! If you use any kits, reimbursment for kit price is requested ($10 to $20, depending on kit). There will be plenty of cool kits available to build, including:

TV-B-Gone (turn off TVs in public places!)
Brain Machine (Meditate, Hallucinate, and Trip Out!)
LEDcube (cool cube of blinky lights!)
Mignonette Game (play fun games!)
Trippy RGB Waves (interactive colored blinky lights!)
MiniPOV (more cool blinky lights!)
MintyBoost (charge your USB enabled gadgets!)

and for the more advanced:
microcontroller programmers (program all your AVR family chips!), Arduino clones (make just about anything!), and more.

More info on most of most of these projects is available on Mitch’s website: http://www.CornfieldElectronics.com (click on the “maker faire” tab). If you have your own project, please bring it by and make it with us in the friendly community of NYC Resistor.

Mitch is the brains behind Cornfield Electronics, and one of the co-founders of Noisebridge hackerspace in San Francisco. Mitch is best known as the inventor of TV-B-Gone, but his list of great hacks and cool electronics includes a lot of other great projects. When he is not at Noisebridge building awesome and amazing things, he is on the road from hackerspace to Hacker-Con and back again, sharing his love of electronics.

Courtesy Zach Hoeken's Flickr Stream. CC'ed

Every tech blog on the planet is covering CES. I’m not. I don’t get to spend a week in vegas hanging out and seeing the new technologies. I have to go to work. I cry, and sometimes I wonder what the whole point of it all is. But, at least some of our members aren’t confined to this special weekday hell that I am.

Makerbot Industries, co-founded by three of our members is manning a booth at CES!

I hear a lot of the technology this year is related to 3D. I guess a 3D printer is right up their alley. Personally, I’ve been pretty turned off to the whole 3D thing since Zaxxon. But, I try not to judge.

Also I heard there was some form of polar bear television on display there. Not sure why they’d want to encase a visual display device in the horrific visage of one of the worlds most infamous killing machines. I guess I’m just not up on what people want out of their electronics these days.

Today NYCResistor will be a temporary co-working space. It’s a thing called Jelly and it’s fun. Sign up and swing by and pull up a chair and get some work done on your laptop from 9-5. At 2pm there will be a talk about hackable hardware and platforms and if you don’t make it over for the talk, you can tune in online to listen to the talks and join the conversation.

Last weekend we had a party to celebrate Awesome August. I am sure some folks missed it. That really sucks for them, because it was probably the best party we’ve ever thrown. A great deal of awesome was experienced by all. Awesome beer, awesome projects, and awesome events… all with awesome people. I’ve tossed up a time lapse of the event. Sorry about the flag getting in the way near the end, that’s just bad planning on my part. I promise to do better next time, in fact next time pretty much everything will be better. So look forward to the the next event, it’s going to be epic.

Justin had a really fun project setup using the Spooky Box from last Halloween. Check out the twitter feed from the party here. Source code for this project is coming!

The Lite Bright also built by Justin, ( and a team of dedicated individuals ) was there and enjoyed by all. Here is a shot of it early in the evening before people went crazy with it.

Charles had a station set up with approximately one kilogram of Crayola Model Magic. Guests were encouraged to grab a hunk and make something of their own.

Charles also brought a Wimshurst machine he picked up at a school physics lab and repaired. In this shot we study the effects of electricity on George Washington’s head.

Also making an appearance was Ranjit’s automated piano working together with Eric Skiff’s Monome to produce a really awesome interactive piece.

Jared posted his Photos : Here

We also had a live DJ, and a few other projects I failed to mention. I know I missed a lot. Send me a note and I’ll add it.

Taken on iPhone generation 1

So a group of artists flying under the banner of “Ad-hoc Art” has renovated a row of empty store fronts around the corner from NYC Resistor. These buildings were bought out for a building project that never happened, and with the economic downturn may never happen. It’s great to see that someone has taken advantage of that and brought us something truly great.

So if you are coming by Resistor for a class, or for our party Saturday. Stop by. These things are amazing, and my iphone camera does not do them justice.

But for those of you far away in distant lands, here’s a flickr set from my iPhone.

Thanks Ad-hoc Art team. Your work is awesome.