baltimore's makerspace for hackers, makers, diy and crafters

Open Hack rundown, 2010 April 8

Not because I’m the secretary now, but because I was there and saw it happen.

  • Some folks loosely (or formerly) associated with MICA stopped by. I didn’t get names and stories (because I’m a-social), but it sounds like they’ve got a two wheeled, self-balancing skateboard project in the works. We’ll have to keep in touch with them.
  • Jon and Matt did some planning for the robotfest project, the pneumatic stomp rocket device. They’ll be purchasing materials for the build this Saturday. Drop a line on the open discussion list if you’re interested in helping.
  • Speaking of the pneumatic stomp rocket device, we may get to bring that out at Betascape, the BmoreSmart-led tech-focused adjunct to Artscape. The Node running crew will be focusing on DIY-tech. The vision of what that includes is very vague right now, which could be awesome. We’re not scared.
  • I built an AVR programming circuit on a breadboard to write code to my attiny85’s (example from the AVR Freaks forum, ArduinoISP). It seems to work, but I haven’t written a sketch test that the 85 is running what I expect it to be running. That’s phase 2.
  • We attached my Atari Punk Console to the oscilloscope and I pushed all the buttons. There were lines and fuzz on the screen. Not sure that we got any useful information out of it, but the circuit was so noisy I wasn’t expecting much. This was an opportunity to play with the scope, not to do useful work.
  • The donated TV was de-shelled in preparation for mounting in the frickin’ sweet MAME cabinet. By the way, in case you didn’t know, we have a full-sized arcade cabinet in the process of being MAMEd.
  • Some light discussion of a possible move in the next six months. That discussion is happening on the member’s mailing list. It’s all speculation at this point, so don’t go worryin’ or anything.

A good time was had by all.