Voltage, amperage, current, ohms. It’s enough to make your head spin if you’re just getting started making things with electricity. Electricity .01 will give you a handle on the big three of direct current and how to trade them off. After this class you’ll understand voltage, current and resistance, though not why they’re abbreviated E, I and R. We’ll be making electricity from scratch two ways, messing with multimeters, and rocking out with resistors. We will not, alas, be blowing anything up.

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Sunday, November 16
1 1/2 hours, taught by Max Whitney

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I recently updated my arduino ambient orb to use some boards I got cut at a boardhouse in Colorado, and handed off a few of the finished products off to various friends of mine.  Well, my good friend John Erickson tossed together an awesome script for the election returns tonight. The orb starts off dark, and the script periodically checks the election results. As the results come in, the orb will gradually get brighter and brighter blue or red based on who is pulling in the EVs.

I grabbed his script and a spare board I had with me at the office, and used a plastic cup to whip up a quick electoral ‘orb’:

Obama wins!	McCain wins!

I can’t wait to see the results tonight!

You can get the code for the electoral vote script from here and the full code and eagle schematics for the orb here.

I’m creating a video a day for every weekday in November and I kicked it off by making videos through the weekend as well I’m posting them to my blog everyday. Subscribe in iTunes and you wont’ miss any of them!

Remember that part of Tron when the Master Control Program digitizes Flynn with a laser? Raphael Abrams is making a low resolution probe in which he will basically do the same thing with a few components! Learn more about this probe thing!

Have you ever wanted a box that could control anything? Justin Day created the spooky box as both a physical and virtual interface for working with processing, a programming language popular with artists. Learn more about the spooky box thing!

Adam Cecchetti wanted a chess set and he wanted it now so he rapid prototyped one using inkscape to design it and a lasercutter to cut it out of acrylic. Learn more about his chess set thing!

Stay tuned for more!