NYC Resistor

We headed to Orchard Street on the island last night, planning to check out the Gizmodo Gallery. It was late when we got there and the gates were down. We were just about resigned to pressing our noses to the glass and gazing longingly at the lego death star when we spotted the time traveling DeLorean wedged up to the sidewalk. Josh Haldeman traded it for his Honda. Clearly he made the right choice. We jumped in the machine with every intention of hacking in, but had insufficient time. The fearless owner had to quit the Lower East Side for a game of Extreme Connect Four.
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Adam Mayer is a friend of mine and fellow resistor who may be the most prolific person I know. When he decides to do something, he commits totally. Check out one of his previous obsessions documented in the Things video series: the teletype.

Recently he got into gears and gearing and spun that interest into a rad project to make cards with planetary gears embedded in them.

He’s uploaded the plans for the geared card and the geared planetary card to thingiverse so you can make your own!

Adam may be the best kept secret on twitter. If you’re not following him, you should do so now. He’s at http://twitter.com/phooky.

If you like this video, head on over to my blog at brepettis.com/blog where I’m sharing a video every single day for as long as I can stand it!

Edith Kollath is a Resistor who is at the crossroads of art and microcontroller technology. She made the most beautiful books that breathe.

Besides being beautiful objects, this show is also about the TSA. On a trip home to show the books in Germany, the TSA detained her and took the books from her. The story is bizarre and strange and reflects the very weird times we live in today.

Edith is showing the books until December 14th in the damstuhltrager gallery and if you’re in NYC, go see the show and if you collect contemporary art or are just as stunned as I am by their breathing, buy them. (you’ll have the most wonderful breathing bookshelves.)

Here’s a pdf you can download and an earlier article she wrote over on the NYCR blog to read more about her experience

Devon Jones needed a robot to do his bidding and so he made a computer controlled dremel. He found an instructable by Stuart McFarlan and created it using a mix of aluminum stock, an inexpensive wood called MDF, and skate bearings.

It now works so he’s going to be able to use the subtractive process, which means he can take away all the parts of the material that are not his thing, to create whatever he can imagine.

I’m publishing a video everyday. Catch them all over on my blog.

Processing 1.0 launched today! Congrats to Casey Reas, Ben Fry and everyone else who has been instrumental on the project. You can get the new, fancy, 1.0 version at http://www.processing.org/download. I was lucky enough to meet with Casey on my last trip out to UCLA and as we chatted about the Processing and the upcoming 1.0 launch he said: ‘You know the best part about launching a 1.0? It means that we get to start working on 2.0′.

This past Saturday, I stopped in at NYC Resistor looking to really start learning how to program electronics using the Arduino platform. I’d taken Zach’s Intro to Arduino “If funky get loopy” course (he says there will be more after the new year!), but hadn’t really made any of my own projects. Figuring that Raphael’s twitchie kit had some good servos and a little Ardunio based board in it, I started taking apart.

It turns out that Bre was already in the middle of a similar project, and had fashioned a DIY robotic arm out of servos, a twitchie board (which uses the same firmware as the Lilypad) and Popsicle sticks. We joined forces and put together this amazing little thing:

Things - Eric Skiff and Bre Pettis created a Popsicle Stick Robotic Arm from Bre Pettis on Vimeo.

We hacked an old Atari joystick to control the arm, and each servo is manipulated in turn as you press the red button. It really was a ton of fun to bring this project together, and I’m amazed at what we did in a few hours. Huge thanks to Bre for having the hardware all set to go and to Raph for his awesome Twitchie kit and all his advice along the way.

If you’d like to embark on a similar project, here’s the code for SuperRobotArm v0.2.

Bre is debating keeping the popsicle stick aesthetic or making a slick laser-cut body, and is taking votes via comments on his blog. Let him know what you think!

By the way - this video is part of Bre’s excellent “Things” series, where he features a new awesome thing each day. You can check out the archives at bre.blip.tv, or Subscribe in itunes to get new episodes as they come out!

As Eric Beug (pictured above with me) put it so well, ‘XBee Sunday. XBee is the new football.’ NYCR was full of lots of hackery today including Bre’s laazzzzooorrr class, Zach’s ‘peristaltic pump’ and Phooky’s ‘crawling deathbot’.

Thursday nights are open to the public from 6-9pm for Craft/Hack night!
Bring your projects people!

Craft/Hack nights happen every Thursday with the exceptions of the following:

Thanksgiving: Nov. 27th

Xmas: Dec. 25th

New Years: Jan 1st

I know that this is late notice by now, but I’d like to invite you -as a follow up on my post about my confiscated breathing books - to our opening tomorrow:

Come to see the evidence and have a drink with us this Saturday, Nov 22nd in Williamsburg at Dam, Stuhltrager Gallery (38 Marcy/corner of Hope, www.damstuhltrager.com)

Breathing books by Edith Kollath and creepy creatures by Raphael Abrams.

Readings by Teju Cole, Carey Wallace, Wah-Ming Chang & Madhu Kaza at 9pm.