NYC Resistor

Looking for a unique gift for a friend or loved one? Why not consider giving them the gift of learning at one of NYCR’s great classes.

We have some really great classes in the upcoming weeks, click descriptions for more info:

December 18 – FIRE THE LAZZZOR ORNAMENTS* -
Last chance to make an ornament or small gift for a relative:
January 14 – FIRE THE LAZZZOR -
Our standard handy rapid-prototyping LASER CLASS
January 15 – NYCR Arduino/Soldering 101 -
Make your own Arduino and Learn to Program it!
January 22 – Soft Circuits -
Learn to make soft, flexible and washable electronic circuits embedded right into common textiles! We’ll cover conductive thread,…
January 28 – Intro to Adobe Illustrator -
Are you curious about how to make vector graphics?…

*Also, as an FYI– the material covered in the Dec 18th LAZZZOR CLASS will be the same overview as in our standard FIRE THE LAZZZOR classes, and your attendance will qualify you for future laser use at our laser nights.

This time of year our laser gets pretty busy, so we’ve opened up an additional laser night on Wednesdays. Tonight through December 21st, come by on Monday or Wednesday from 7:30-10:30 to fire the laser!

And another thing…

Because it’s such a popular time of year for lasing, we ask that you prepare your cut files so they can be broken up into smaller batches. That way instead of one person monopolizing the machine for hours, we can rotate through. So if you have an army of 100 Christmas ornaments to make, prepare your file so they can be cut in 2 sessions of 50 or 3 sessions of 33.3333.

Tonight at 21:00 eastern (02:00 UTC) Make:Live’s Hackerspace roadshow II visits NYC Resistor and other hackerspaces. From NYC Resistor you’ll see Alicia, Catarina and Shelby’s electronic art book, Mimi’s RFID blocking wallets, Charles’ TV-B-Gone gun and other cool projects by NYCR members.
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Adam and I upgraded Hexascroller to control 5 m of Adafruit RGB LED strip through a spare serial port connected to a Teensy 2.0 that drives the strip via SPI. Now when a new message is displayed, the accent lights switch to a bright flashing mode to attract attention, then they will return to soothing, slow color changing mode.

Click the “Read more” to see additional photos of the installation and setup. Read more

There will be no craft night this Thursday, November 24th, on account of some ridiculous human “h0l1d4y”. Do not show up at NYCR that night, as all our Greeter Drones and HappiBots will be offline.

We’ve had a few knitting machines rattling around the space over the years, but when fellow gadget lover Josh dropped off the lace carriage for our Toyota K747 knitting machine, I figured it was time to take it past basic stockinette stitch and explore the machine’s punch card mechanism.

Like most decades-old machines, a layer of dried oily gunk coated many of the moving parts. There are also a few broken/missing pieces. I’m in the process of cleaning / fixing the machine, and trying my best to document it as I go along. I got a hold of the K747 Service Manual, and started diving in. It’s oiled up now, and the next steps are to repair the broken needle selector and write up a program to generate punch cards for the laser.

 The picture above shows the offending broken lever. These 12 little blue levers tell the machine which needles to push out for the patterning, but lever #3 is broken so it never engages. Getting in to replace it is a bit daunting, in fact just getting to that lever in the first place was a bit of an event, I’m going to attempt to fix it with Sugru first. If that doesn’t work, then I’ll be makerbotting a replacement and praying I can get it all back together after dismantling it.

Since the machine is loud and takes up space I generally only work on it during the day when there’s more room, but if there’s sufficient interest I’d be happy to demo it at an upcoming craft night.

You can see more shots of the inside of the machine over on my blog: Knitting Machine Teardown Part 1 and Part 2.

New Work City is a fantastic co-working at Broadway and Canal in manhattan. If you’ve never checked out a co-working space, it’s a lot like NYC Resistor, except instead of gathering in the evenings to hack on projects, it’s a place for freelancers, entrepreneurs, and anyone else who works for themselves to get stuff done.

It’s also a great source of community and connections, and as New Work City starts ramping up their own classes, we’re doing a bit of cross promotion. We think many of the classes will be interesting to the NYCR community!

Upcoming Classes at New Work City:

• Winning Negotiation in Three Steps
• Supercharge your WordPress Site
• Website Bootcamp for Creative Professionals

Check out their full class roster for dates, and sign up for their newsletter to get updates!

Earlier this week I went to MICA in Baltimore (and last month to CDI in Winston-Salem) to meet with a diverse group of very forward thinking individuals on the topics of art, science, education, innovation and all the ancillary things that get wrapped around that, in other words: the whole universe.

Folks from the NSF, NEA, several academic institutions, hackerspaces, and industry came together to start a discussion about advocating for an educational system that reminds us art and science do not need to be taught separately; and that formal and informal educational spaces have benefits of working together and sharing their research, be it citizen scientists and tenured professors, k5 to grey, cats and dogs, and other predetermined groups that result in mass hysteria. Creativity happens everywhere, in every subject matter, as does science – this is something we’ve witnessed at NYCResistor from the amazing projects people bring in every Thursday night at craft night. Our tagline at NYCR is we learn, share, and make things – not unlike the goals and missions of academic institutions.

The group has been given legs from a joint effort from the NSF and NEA and has yet to choose a name and website to point to, but is called NSEAD (Network to support Science, Engineering, Arts and Design) under the grant proposals. I am hopeful in the initiatives we will all be able to accomplish together. Members of this group previously have founded the STEM to STEAM initiative, including Art in the STEM curriculum and held a congressional hearing along these efforts. The discussion is just starting, and is being seeded with thoughts of innovation without walls, economic development, open research, art/science mashup exhibits, and even elephants. I’m honored and excited that the DIY community and hackerspaces have a place at this table.

Stay tuned, tell me your thoughts, and hack on – whatever your day job is.

-pip

Using Darrel Tan’s Programming the ATTiny10 instructions and a SOT-23 breakout board by Raphael, I was able to flash one of these very small MCU chips. Given the small package, these programmable devices can be dropped just about anywhere on a circuit that a transistor would be used.

Unlike Tan, my FTDI breakout cable does not have DTR, so the reset pin on the chip needs to be pulled low manually to put it into programming mode, and the pinout adjusted. Full instructions after the break…
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C’mon out this Saturdaytonight at 8pm for our monthly first Saturday party. It’s our excuse to get the place cleaned up and in party shape. It’s a BYOB chill and chat extravaganza!

Update: I hear barbot may be making an appearance.

Update 2: Witness the firepower of the fully armed and operational BarBot (and other photos from the party):