NYC Resistor

When it comes to hacking, I tend to enjoy practical projects the most.  The Arduino is like physical computing “duct tape” that gives one the ability to “duct tape” things that need constant attention or action. If you need a plant watered, or your fish tank pump monitored, or your bikini-clad friends to set off a musical instrument with just their bodies then the Arduino is just the tool you need. So what about fire?

Close-up of the UV TRON Sensor Tube

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So during the Thursday craft night we received a request from one of the hackerspace folks for some time lapse videos of the space over a 24 hour period. They are working on a project that will no doubt be stupendous and magnificent. However this spawned a quick project.

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Ok maybe it’s a little smaller than life-size, but it’s a hella fun way to play Katamari.

More details on how it’s put together can be found on my blog, kellbot.com

Widget and Hans stayed up til 2am hacking up some iPod sequencers at NYC Resistor. We are using pdPod on iPodLinux. You can hack your own iPods too, as part of the re-ware project, we are trying to make it easy: http://re-ware.org

Thanks to Bre Pettis for his camera work.

Noah Zerkin, is a regular at NYC Resistor events and craft nights. Also pretty well known in the local community for his DIY augmented reality work. In fact he gave a quick talk ( his first ever =P ) at IgniteNYC 3. He just posted this video ( saw it via twitter ). I am reposting it so people can get super excited by the work he is doing. It’s amazing stuff. And it can best be described as…. Nintendo eat your heart out.

Or for fans of the wizard… “It’s soooo baaaad…”

My parents recently visited my aunt and uncle in china, and while there they picked up some rather nice high end watches direct from the factories. Most of the time, my father prefers his digital, and only wants to wear the watch he picked up in china when he’s in more formal dress. Thing is, the watch he bought is autowinding, so it’s always either dead, or at the very least really wrong every time he puts it on. So he asked me to come up with a crazy contraption to wind his watch. This is what I came up with:

Check out the pipetastic mad whack watch winder.

This is an image of actual Cray Super Computer Memory… each of those little rings, is one bit of visible read once memory.  Man has electrical engineering come a long way since then…  The opportunity to photograph this epic piece of electronic history was brought to me by my friend phar, who bought this on I think ebay.  Just thought I’d share the history.

Learn about the Reware project, see how to easily install GNU/Linux and Pd on your Palm TX, and see some example projects.

We’ve been working since July on making it easy to hack old devices and run new software on them. Coming soon, a image for running Pd, Python, and Lua programs on PDAs, as well as a HOWTO for making Pd patches for 1-5G iPods. The key idea is to turn old PDAs, mobile phones, etc. into something like an Arduino, where you can easily upload your own code to the device.

For more info, check out our Reware dev site

Ever wanted to grow grass in your cubicle? I did. But the grass kept dying. So I made a custom grow light out of LEDs, and now I have the nicest lawn on my block. Build photos, schematic, sourcecode, etc. are on the project page.

Several of the Resistors made it out to Bug Labs for Alicia’s Open Haus.

Zach (and Jen,) Max, Bill (and Melody,) and Alicia, of course (she’s a Resistor) made it over to Bug Labs for their open haus.  Alicia has arranged a delightful little space with excellent hardware (oh, the joy of corporate sponsorship and a Sparkfun account!)  If you want to go hack there, just contact them and set up some time.  They have all sorts of goodies, like Zigbee boards, Bluetooth transceivers, motion sensors, distance sensors, wire, breadboards, Arduinos, Gumstix, Beagles…  Lots of toys!

We had a good time hanging with the Bug Labs kids!  It’s a fun group and if you’re in New York City it would be worth stopping by.

Now if we can just convince Alicia that Bug Labs really wants Resistor to do a “review” of the stuff.  You know.  That would be real cool… you know…  Alicia?  Hellooooo???