Register for the 48 Hour Hackathon!

 Events  2 Responses »
Feb 062010
 

Don’t forget to register for the hackathon! It’s totally free, but we’re asking folks to sign up so we can get an idea of how many people to expect!

NYC Resistor’s first 48 hour hackathon will run from 6pm Friday, Feburary 12 to 6pm Sunday, February 14. At the end of the hackfest there will be time to share your projects as well as exciting prizes for the most awesome hacks.

You can work by yourself or with a team, and if you don’t have a team/project we’ll assign you to one. Projects we’ve heard buzz about include:

  • Re-enabling the 1930′s teletype
  • Building props to do a trivia quiz. Buzzers, lights, etc
  • Subway wifi radio station aka “Radio Free MTA”

The format is open, you’re welcome to come and go as you please. We’ll keep the Club Mate flowing and follow a loose schedule of demos and workshops to help spark your imagination. PS, interested in giving a demo of some sort at the hackathon? Contact Kelly!

Friday, Feb 12

6pm – 8pm: Intros and whatnot. There’s no formal registration, but it would be nice if folks introduced themselves and what they’re working on

8pm – 12am: hack hack hack hack hack

Saturday, Feb 13

12am-4pm: hack hack hack hack

Afternoon-ish: Makerbot demo! Watch as Widget produces widgets with his magical printing device!

12pm – 2pm: Soldering lab! Practice your soldering skills. We’ll have some of the TV-Be-Gone kits on hand for folks who want to learn to solder (or just irritate employees at Best Buy)

4pm – 6pm: GO EAT SOMETHING. We’ll need to make space for the Audio Fun with Coils class from 4-6, so it’s a good excuse to get some food, take a shower, reunite with your kids, etc.

4pm – 12am:  hack hack hack hack hack

Sunday, Feb 14

12am – 5pm: hack hack hack hack

7am: Late night breakfast. We’ll strike out for food before the valentine’s day brunchers are even awake.

5pm: PRESENTATIONS! Everyone will get a few minutes to show off what they did. We promise this won’t be long and painful.

5:45- 6pm: We’ll award awesome awards, tidy up, and have you all home in time for Valentine’s dinner.

Linux Learnfest TODAY!

 *NIX, classes, Event, Events  No Responses »
Jan 262010
 

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!

 Posted by at 12:53 am

48 Hour Hackathon

 Events, Hacks  2 Responses »
Jan 192010
 

Time To Hack Binary LED clock

NYC Resistor is saying goodbye to our old space, and what better way to wrap things up than with 48 hours of nonstop hacking?

Ok, maybe the real impetus is that we don’t want to have to move all this Club Mate to the new space. But regardless of our true intentions, it’ll be a great time to come and hack. We’ll have a plethora of electronics bits and bobs for scavenging, demos, and even a soldering lesson or two.

The awesomeness starts at 6pm on Friday, February 12 and goes until Sunday, February 14. We’ll end the event with a brief show and tell as well as PRIZES for the best hacks.

Participation in the hackathon is TOTALLY FREE, although donations are always super appreciated. Due to limited space, we are asking that folks RSVP, so click here to sign up for the hackathon.

Stay tuned for a more information! Additionally, we’re looking for a few good sponsors to help us provide snacks and other hacking necessities. If you or your business would like to be an event sponsor please contact Kellbot!

NYCResistor is Moving!

 Events  15 Responses »
Jan 182010
 

We’re at the end of our 2 year lease at NYCResistor. We’ve grown out of our space. Classes are almost always full, the heat isn’t on on the weekends, and the walls are stacked high with projects. It’s been time to move for a while and now it’s official. We’ve signed the papers and given notice and we’re moving to an awesome new space.

The new space is really awesome. It’s about 10 blocks away from our current location and two blocks from the Atlantic Street station which is convenient for pretty much every train ever. It is almost 3x the space with two main rooms and a bunch of smaller rooms. There is a place for a kitchen although there is no kitchen in that place. We will have our own bathroom. The laser gets its own room. There is a loft already there and an archway. There is a stage with lots of room for presentations and probably an audience of 100-150. The ceilings are tin. There will be more room for more awesome.

The downsides are that there is no passenger elevator (only a very old freight elevator) and that the space needs a lot of work to get to be the cozy space we want it to be. There aren’t concrete floors like our current space, but there is a fire escape and sprinklers in the event of an emergency which is an upgrade from our current space. We get to control the heat, but we have to pay for it.

We’re excited about the possibilities and freaked out by the amount of money it is going to cost us to move so stay tuned for a fund-raising post. Over all, we’re thrilled to make more space for more hacking in 2010! We have to be out of our current place by the first of March, so expect the last two weeks of February to be a little busy in terms of our schedule. If you’ve got questions, drop them in the comments and we’ll try and answer them!

Mitch Altman’s Electronics Workshop! 1/29 8PM

 classes, Event, Events, Projects  3 Responses »
Jan 152010
 

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.

Video Stills from The Pocket Cube Project

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.

NYC Resistor CES Coverage

 Event, Events, NYCResistor, Reprap  No Responses »
Jan 072010
 

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.

 Posted by at 12:06 am

MakerBot in the Bits ‘n Pieces show at Material Connexion

 Events  2 Responses »
Nov 022009
 

bits

MakerBot grew out of the friendships forged at NYCResistor and is going to be in the best art show of the 21st century. It’s called Bits ‘N Pieces and it’ll be at Material Connexion starting on Thursday.

DATES: November 4 – December 4, 2009
HOURS: Monday – Friday, 9am – 6pm
LOCATION: Material ConneXion 60 Madison Avenue, 2nd Floor New York, NY 10010 T. 212-842-2050
NEAREST SUBWAYS: #6 at 28th and Park / NRW at 28th and Broadway.

Bits ‘n Pieces is a traveling exhibition of work by international designers, architects, computer scientists, and material and technology researchers. It will showcase projects still in their development stage, as well as furniture, architecture, jewelry, graphic design and products that anticipate the next phase of the digital revolution, focusing on how society is imbued with, shaped by and shapes technology. This new era will be marked by increased awareness about, and accessibility of, continuously advancing technologies and materials and the changes that we will be making in our lives through them will be not just formal but structural, not merely aesthetic but substantive, changing how we actually think about, design and build our objects and space. What will life look like based on changes that are sometimes visible to the public and sometimes invisible?

Read on for the conceptual essay. (It’s good) Continue reading »

Last weekend’s Interactive Party round-up!

 Awesome Awegust!!!, electronics, Event, Events, Hardware, NYCResistor, Party, Projects, Video  3 Responses »
Aug 282009
 

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.

Adam Cyborg

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.

Foam Stuff

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.

 Posted by at 12:27 pm

Ad-hoc Art Invades Metrotech!

 Event, Events, In the News, News, photography, photos  No Responses »
Jul 102009
 
Taken on iPhone generation 1

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.

 Posted by at 8:57 am
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