Maker Faire Bay Area 2011 - Arduino - Massimo Banzi

My older son & I hit Maker Faire in the Bay Area this past weekend. I intended to blog from there, but there was SO much to do that we decided it could wait until we were home...

We've used the Arduino platform in quite a few projects, and I gave my son his "own" Arduino for prototyping on his last birthday. He was excited to hear from Massimo Banzi, the most visible member of the Arduino team.

Massimo covered "The State of Arduino" which really was an overview of the community (web stats) and "official" board sales...

He also covered the opening of the Arduino store (open now), the release of the Arduino ethernet (June 17th) - has POE support, Arduino wifi shield (July 4th) - sounds like the processor is hackable leading to custom protocol support without adding code to the host Arduino, the MegaADK for Android (June / July?), then Arduino 1.0 in September (sketchy details...)

After the big update, my son went up to talk to Massimo. He couldn't fight off the Arduino fanboys though, and after about 10 minutes of waiting, we bailed. It was one of the few times he didn't get to talk to a maker or speaker, so I don't think it had a lasting impression. Maker Faire isn't just kid-friendly, it is KID-ENABLING.

Maker Faire - Friday night

Hanging out in LAX with George

A FAMiLab member and great guy, Dave hooked us up with super VIP passes to get in on the setup night and see a few things before the crowds on Saturday...

Colossus is COLOSSAL!



"I have super strength!!"




This swing had lots of crazy stuff at the top, but it wasn't powered up, so he enjoyed it the old-fashioned way...



Two guys pedaling to power it, one guy playing sit-up but what is it?

May 20th: Off to Maker Faire!!!

I'm flying to Maker Faire today with the 11 year old. This should be quite the adventure...

Want to know more about Maker Faire? Visit www.makerfaire.com, or check out the mini event guide (the full one is >60 pages)!

We will be blogging from the road...stay tuned!

What is a Maker?

As I'm heading to Maker Faire in California this week, I've been asked a few times - "What is a Maker?"

This article from the NY Times explains it well - The Kitchen Table Industrialists

Excerpt from the article:

If you lived in Detroit in 1961 and watched Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” at a drive-in, you might have caught a 30-minute trailer called “American Maker,” sponsored by Chevrolet. “Of all things Americans are, we are makers,” its narrator began, over footage of boys building sand castles. “With our strengths and our minds and spirit, we gather, we form and we fashion: makers and shapers and put-it-togetherers.”

Fifty years on, the American maker is in a bad way. Such is the state of American industry that waste paper is among the top 10 exports to China, behind nuclear equipment but far ahead of traditional mainstays like iron and steel. Manufacturing employment has fallen by a third in the last decade alone, with more than 40,000 factories shutting down. More Americans today are unemployed than are wage-earning “put-it-togetherers.” But the American romance with making actual things is going through a resurgence. In recent years, a nationwide movement of do-it-yourself aficionados has embraced the self-made object. Within this group is a quixotic band of soldering, laser-cutting, software-programming types who, defying all economic logic, contend that they can reverse America’s manufacturing slump. America will make things again, they say, because Americans will make things — not just in factories but also in their own homes, and not because it’s artisanal or faddish but because it’s easier, better for the environment and more fun.

What makes this notion something less than complete fantasy is the availability of new manufacturing machines that are cheap, simple and compact enough for small companies, local associations and even amateur hobbyists to own and operate. What once only big firms with hulking factories could fabricate can now be made in a basement or by e-mailing a design to an online factory-for-hire. These machines can produce all sorts of things, including plastic pencil holders, eyeglass frames and MP3 players.

Makers, as they call themselves, can’t compete with the long, orderly rows of workers from the poorer provinces of China or India who cut, stitch and solder bras, shoes and cellphones for pennies — or even with the hundreds of billions of dollars a year worth of stuff that continues to pour out of large, old-fashioned American factories. Their method involves creating “hacker space” cooperatives, where a few dozen members share a 3-D printer, a laser cutter and an oscilloscope and engage in collaborative manufacturing projects. Makers have created companies like Shapeways and CloudFab, which for a fee will manufacture small runs of products that you design. They are becoming kit makers like Bdeir, manufacturing building blocks that allow others to create things.

Neil Gershenfeld, an M.I.T. physicist who is an intellectual godfather to the maker movement, suggested to me that the new tools would over time change global industry as we know it. He predicts a wave of new competitors for the megacorporation that designs, makes and sells products all under one brand. Instead, Gershenfeld imagines a consumer of the near future downloading a design for a mobile phone through an iTunes-like portal; buying an add-on from another firm that tweaks the design; and having it printed at a neighborhood shop in a plastic shell of your choice.

The new personal factories may seem like crude toys for only the most die-hard D.I.Y.-ers. But in technology circles, they are talked about as a looming revolution that could change the way people work and create new opportunities for millions. Personal factories can perhaps be compared to the earliest personal computers — versions of their giant counterparts that are drastically cheaper but also slower and more clumsy. This futuristic vision is the one that the White House endorsed in a recent report on personal manufacturing: “Within a generation, you will have a hard time explaining to your grandchildren how you were able to live without your own fabber,” it said, using a popular word for the new manufacturing tools. “Personal-fabrication technologies present an opportunity for our nation to continue to lead the rest of the world in manufacturing, but in a new way.”

Of course, I can't say all that to people when they ask, so I typically answer - "Garage Inventor" - people who explore the possibilities of what they can dream up and build using their minds and tools, and the minds and tools of their friends...

If they are still paying attention at that point, I _attempt_ to explain that a Hackerspace is not a den of evil...

2011 Central Florida Scout Show - Pics from the Scout Show

My boys & led the design and operation of this years Pack 6 booth at the Central Florida Scout show.

Given that we are self-proclaimed geeks & gear-heads, doing a booth about gears seemed only natural.

I've previously posted about our adventures building a 3-speed Lego NXT robot-based transmission with clutch, building a mini mobile billboard, and laser-cutting some souvenir gears- now for some pics of the big day...

Get out a camera, and watch what happens...this is the view from the backside of our view. Candy is playing treasurer for all the fundraising cards & my older son and our Pack's Committee Chair are hanging a banner...

He's crossed over into the Troop, but he was HUGE help to the Pack (and ME!) at the Scout Show

Big dude showing off the transmission...

Little dude showing off the transmission...

Big dude has a future in sales...

Big dude answering questions...

My younger son doing his part to demonstrate the different kinds of gears...he even noticed that one of the gears was a combination  helical and spur. He was so proud when he ran over to tell me!

The transmission ran CONSTANTLY that day. I finally gave up on the rechargeable batteries and wired it to my bench power supply that I'd grabbed on the way out the door.

This bent binder clip saved the day when I decided to ditch the batteries and run the NXT transmission off the power supply. I _should_ have pre-built this, but luckily I made it work at the show. Thanks to Paul for having a binder clip!

2011 Central Florida Scout Show - Laser-cut Gear Souvenirs

I've been wanting to learn to use the laser cutter at FAMiLab, and the Gears theme for our 2011 Scout Show booth was a PERFECT excuse to cut some acrylic.

I was shopping for acrylic rod for the FAMiLab GGHC project, and when I asked, the nice people at Laird Plastics gave me some scrap acrylic to use for the Scout Show.

I downloaded a gear design from thingiverse, then added "PACK 6" and "2011" to the gear. Each gear is approx two inches across. The pics here show them with the blue protective backing still on the gear. If I'd had more time & knowledge, I would have engraved the text, but my first try took >30 minutes to do 6 gears and I didn't have the  or 3 days it would have taken to cut the 100+ gears that I wanted.

In the end, we cut just over 100 gears in the 4 hours we were at the lab. We gave them to the Pack 6 Cub Scouts that participated, their parents, and people that were very interested in gears. You should have seen their faces when we said - "we cut them with a LASER" :)

I think my helper for the day liked them too - he kept 10 or 12 of them for his efforts...and I couldn't talk him out of them.

This is the Full Spectrum Engineering 40w "hobby" laser cutter we used at FAMiLab..

You can see the design file on the screen. Since I had thin strips of scrap and a 12" bed length, I could only cut 12 at a time.

Cutting acrylic STINKS and so we both wore respirators, and were ventilating the space...

2011 Central Florida Scout Show - Building a Mini Mobile Billboard

For the Pack 6 Scout Show booth about Gears - we built a Mini Mobile Billboard - aka a sign on a remote control car :)

You can see the car on the table here - we used it to keep our Scouts amused and to draw visitors to the booth during some of the slower periods of the day... 

We started with a cool remote control car - its has 4 wheel drive, and the wheels pivot flat instead of turning left to right. (See the last pic) It has a clear bottom and a LOT of gears are visible - PERFECT for a booth about gears.

We cut some foamcore, put blue tape on the car and then hot-glued the foamcore to the blue tape. The "hot glue to blue tape" trick is getting lots of use around here lately...then we made a powerpoint slide with gears on it, and varied it for the curvature of the car body on each side of the sign. 

The car was a bit hit, and brought people to the booth every time. More pics below...

2011 Central Florida Scout Show

My boys and I are participating in the 2011 Central Florida Scout Show on April 30th at UCF Stadium.

If you live in Central Florida, you've likely seen the billboards, or bought fundraiser discount cards from a Cub or Boy Scout.

My boys & I are running the booth for Cub Scout Pack 6 - the booths are intended to show Scouts and local visitors about the Scouting experience. I'm a big believer in the educational side of Scouting, and love that they have science and engineering in the program very early. With that in mind, our Scout Show booth will be all about GEARS! To make it appealing for this age group, we will be teaching about gears using LEGO GEARS and LEGO ROBOTS!

I'll use this blog post for updates since the show is a week away and we are now in execution mode.

Yesterday, we used some family time to create a 3-speed transmission with a clutch using the Lego NXT set. We used the plans and code from nxtprograms.com - if you have a Lego NXT robot, you MUST check out this site - we've had many awesome building sessions with their plans.

Here are some pics of my older son building the transmission with his grandfather & me. We used our normal system - I stage parts by section number, he builds. I generally only get to build if he gets really stuck - he takes great pride in being the Lego Master of the house...

More soon...

A nice little diversion...

Just when I thought I had my spring projects planed out, I met a group of local "maker" types at a group called FAMiLab. The people at FAMiLab run the geek spectrum from "makers" to networking guys, artists, etc. I went to meet them a few weeks ago since they have a reprap and while I was there, they were discussing the Great Global Hackerspace Challenge (GGHC) sponsored by element14. I'm not a huge fan of the term "Hackerspace" since the general public still thinks that "hacking" is an illegal act, but the wikipedia definition for Hackerspace captures the right spirit:

A hackerspace or hackspace (also referred to as a hacklab, makerspace or creative space) is a location where people with common interests, usually in computers, technology, science or digital or electronic art can meet, socialise and/or collaborate. A hackerspace can be viewed as an open community labs incorporating elements of machine shops, workshops and/or studios where hackers can come together to share resources and knowledge to build and make things.

I started brainstorming with the FAMiLab group one night on their project for the GGHC, and well, now I'm part of the team.

There are ~30 worldwide hackerspaces entering projects. The primary requirements for the project are:

• Supports education
• Uses a microcontroller
• Uses a portable power source

There are some other judging criteria that include:

• Reproducibility
• Cost of the design
• Documentation
• Creativity

Three semi-finalists will be closen the week of May 2nd, and then these three semi-finalists get to present their device to a panel of celebrity judges at...Maker Faire :)

Rather than explain what it is here, check out the new website (its a work-in-progress) at www.sensingplatform.org.

We also now have a git repo, and some slideware here.

I'll use the space below to capture some of the things I've learned on this project:
1) Writing Arduino Libraries

• This seems very simple, but it will test your C++ skills. Specifically the Wire library uses callbacks, and doing the callbacks into member functions of my library class...ug.
• #includes - they don't work in libraries in the Arduino build environment. Why is beyond me, but they don't work. Your end sketch must have your library includes AND any includes that your library needs as well.
• Your library code must be in ../[arduino-ide-folder]/libraries to be compiled and included. This makes working using a source repository like git a little more complicated. I used windows symlinks to create a folder under libraries that pointed to my rep library folder.

2) Git - I know about version control, but rarely work on software with others. It is pretty awesome to be able to work on shared source without having to email and play the "did you make changes" game.

3) ...more to come

April 17th: Indy Racing Experience

My family gave me the Indy Racing Experience for Christmas... I scheduled it for this weekend hoping for nice weather, and it was VERY nice.

The whole family went along, and they let the boys right by the car as I was getting strapped in...

All suited up!

Sure looks fast...

Posing for the picture that you KNOW you are going to buy at the end of your "experience"...

The sun was in their eyes - they were excited...

"Is now a good time to tell you I need to go to the bathroom?" :)

On my extra lap - apparently the instructor didn't see the checkered flag, so we took one more spin...

Done soooo soon...

So in the end, it was a LOT of fun. Very exciting even at only 135 mph max speed. I averaged a little over 105 for all my laps - you follow the instructor and he slows down if you get too close - and I did a few times :)

I was a little disappointed to hear that its a motorcycle engine, not a de-tuned INDY motor. The biggest surprise was NO SHIFTING. They were breaking clutches too often, so they start you in 5th gear and give you a push... Oh well...at least I didn't have to worry about screwing up the gear...

It was an awesome present, I'm a very lucky man :)