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.
Last year I made my nearly annual journey to Cleveland Ohio for one of my personal favorite conferences, Notacon. Notacon has never been a purely “tech” conference, but instead focuses on the areas where tech meets art and creativity. As a result it wasn’t long before someone attempted to bring back what is now a lost art for the most part in the United States… The demo scene. Block party is the demoscene event that occurs at Notacon. I was literally blown away by several of the entries last year. Of particular notority was Jeri Ellsworth’s Custom FPGA board. I am looking forward to going again this year, but I thought I’d post about it for everyone else’s benefit. You can read more about the events here:
We have a pretty neat class coming up this Saturday. It’s a beginners look at powering small devices with very small energy sources. Not only will you be saving the world, but you’ll learn a thing or two about electronics along the way! From the class description:
Using the most basic components, you too can gather electricity from a light breeze or a tiny solar cell. We’ll cover generating power from wind, from simple bike generators and from light, and we’ll each build a simple boost circuit to convert small voltages into useful power. Gather year-round data on the top of a mountain! Make an immortal LED throwie! The possibilities are endless!
Taught by Raphael Abrams, Saturday from 1 to 3 at NYCR
Sign up here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/235889552
Once again we are offering our basic soldering class. But for the holidays we’ve dropped the price from $35 to a mere $20. This is insanely cheap. We have gone insane.
This Sunday at 2PM: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/234648841
The awesome teaching team of Kate Hartman and Rob Faludi ran a workshop today on Wireless Wearables. They covered what wireless is and isn’t (“calling it wireless is about as accurate as calling it tomatoless”), how to choose materials for soft circuits, and common problems when configuring the XBee. They rolled out the new Lilypad XBee mount, designed specifically for radio communication on your personal area network. Now your hat can tell your shoes what’s going on up there.
Folks paired up and got wireless morse code working with just a Lilypad, an XBee, a 9v battery and one LED. No microcontroller required. The circuits were stitched into gloves for secret chatter among hackers: the perfect communication method for CW conversant ninja HAMs.
You can watch two test circuits light each other up and check out a closeup of the Lilypad Xbee after the jump.
Continue reading »
Bill (KD4ISF), Diana (KC2UHB), and I (W2VV) spent a couple of hours at the shop this afternoon building a dual-band Yagi antenna for working ham satellites. Yes, believe it or not, there are multiple satellites orbiting the earth right now that are dedicated to amateur radio. All you need is a license, an inexpensive portable radio, and a weird looking antenna to use them. As of 3:00 pm today, we only had two out of the three, but by 7:00 we were on the roof listening to two different “birds”, SO-50 and AO-51.
We’re just getting our feet wet with this, so stay tuned for future updates as we improve our equipment and skills. In the meantime, why not get your license so you can join in on the fun? All you have to do is read this book (or visit one of the free online study guides) and then take a test given by your local club.
Jeff of Snyderphonics dropped in the other day to lazzzor up some silicon gaskets for the Manta. He was beset by a crowd as soon as we noticed what he had. The manta is a 48 pseudo-pressure sensitive interface with two touch sliders across the top. It’s built into a freaking gorgeous wooden box.
Jeff and his cohort use it as a music interface. Me, I’d run my magical mansion of the future off of it.
Continue reading »
You’ve got your Processing in my Arduino! No, You’ve got your Arduino in my Processing!
Come learn the glory that is hooking up real space to code space. We’ll take apart my Spooky Box, learn how it works, and you’ll build your own. We’ll learn about the Serial interface in Processing, and how to use it efficiently to talk to Arduino.
Act now for my Special Holiday Special! Just choose “Starving Student” to get in on the fun for only $25.00!
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.
Continue reading »
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