Hardware Into Art: TVIC/Geekosystem Crossover

What will this become?

Come to The Valley in Christchurch this week (Tuesday!) and don't just find out, make IT/ART happen!

Here's some of the details, check out the event announcement for more details:

The Valley In Christchurch February dinner and hack events

When: 6:00pm Tuesday 19th February 2008
Where: The China Kitchen, on Hereford St, opposite the Flight Centre

And then join us post-dinner for a special TVIC-exclusive Geekosystem session:

When: ~7:00pm—10:00pm-ish
Where: The Physics Room, Second Floor, 209 Tuam Street, Christchurch

Rumour is that some pizza and beverages will be provided while you work on your hardware hacking masterpiece.

Thanks to Adam and the Physics Room for organising this special after-hours session for us!

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The photo above (courtesy of Adam Hyde) shows some of the "raw materials" that will be on hand. <h4>Tending Networks: The 5th Aotearoa Digital Arts Symposium</h4>

As it happens, the Geekosystem coincides with the The 5th Aotearoa Digital Arts Symposium produced by The ADA Digital Arts Network.

Self-described as "New Zealand/Aotearoa's only digital artists' network. ADA was born of the observation that although new media artists were often highly networked in terms of both their own practice and their professional relationships, there was no national organization drawing together those with a common interest in digital art."

The symposium is an opportunity for New Zealand's digital/new media artists to meet face to face. Check out the upcoming weekend's programme.

I've actually been invited to present a brief overview of some of my Arduino hacking to the group during their "lightning talk" session on Saturday afternoon. A pleasant parallel to the symposium topic is my most recent project has been an ethernet expansion shield for the Arduino. I must write some more on that. <h4>Foo Fruition</h4>

Speaking of needing to write more... My presentation at the ADA Symposium and the TVIC/Geekosystem crossover are a direct result of my attendence earlier this month at Kiwi Foo Camp 2008 (a.k.a. Baa Camp) and some people I met there. I must write some more on that. :-)

Syndicated 2008-02-17 17:12:07 from follower

That tall transmitter tower in San Francisco

Ever since I saw it, I'd wondered about the tall transmitter tower in San Francisco. Turns out it's the "Sutro Tower" and supports radio and television antenna. It can seem quite a menacing structure as it towers over the hill.

Further Sutro Tower details can be found—unfortunately it seems no live web cam views now exist. The view from the top must be pretty awesome and somewhat freaky, I would imagine. It is possible to find some links to "satellite" views of the structure on various mapping sites.

Actually, I also just found a construction photograph: (Yay for libraries! :-) )

It's all very Triffid/Tripod-ish... <h4>Kite Photographs</h4>

I happened to be looking for the Sutro Tower after I found a reference to this famous picture of San Francisco damage after the 1906 earthquake—apparently taken from a kite-mounted camera:

I'd been intending to track down the photographs after I read of their existence in Adventures from the Technology Underground but then they were featured on Digg.com which saved me the trouble of looking for them.

Syndicated 2008-02-12 15:30:00 from follower

Belated Ponoko Update

In case you were wondering, no, i haven't been waiting for my Ponoko package since December. The package arrived within the estimated time—I think it was about a week, but I can't recall exactly now. My blog post delivery has just taken a bit longer.

Here's the puzzle design:

(The reflection in the puzzle pieces is because I took the photos outside.)

And here is the bracket for the WIZ810MJ with a RJ45 in place:

For thoses interested, check out more Ponoko "unboxing" pictures.

Overall I think this has been a successful experiment and hope to be able to use Ponoko again in the future—I think the "personal manufacturing" revolution is only just beginning...

Syndicated 2008-02-11 01:00:00 from follower

Summer hacking

Last week I caught up with Marek and the elusive Phillip (finally!) and showed off my Arduino connecting to IRC:

It turned out jandals and shorts weren't actually the best wear for the weather on the day but still good to catch up.

Syndicated 2008-01-09 22:10:00 from follower

Playing Geppetto at Ponoko

A couple of nights ago I placed my first order at Ponoko to take advantage of their free shipping in November offer:

Since I originally didn't have anything specific in mind to produce I thought I'd try my hand at designing a simple 2D "fit the pieces together" puzzle. I created the design in Inkscape and the final puzzle version (the piece on the left) can be seen in Inkscape's outline mode here:

The smaller "P" will be a "Heavy Raster" etch while the other lines in the design will be cut through. (Feel free to assume the "P" stands for Philip or Ponoko... :-) ) Here's a sample of the "Heavy Raster" effect on the black acrylic the puzzle will be produced from:

I ended up selecting 4.5mm thick acrylic but it would have been around 25% cheaper in the 3mm thick variety—because I'm not sure of the rigidity of the material I decided to try the thicker option.

The rest of the order is made up with some mostly test designs, including the piece on the right which is designed to make a 3D "L" shaped object that includes a slot to hold the RJ45 adapter from a WIZnet WIZ810MJ module. <h4>Impressions</h4>

According to the Ponoko Manufacturing FAQ the turnaround time is "between 5 to 10 days" with shipping time on top. We'll see what happens!

The free shipping was the major motivator for trying this now, though it meant I probably spent more on cutting/materials than I would have...

My overall impression of Ponoko is it has a lot of promise but is still rough around the edges. While the site graphic design is impressively slick the design/price/order process doesn't flow very easily. If you're price-conscious and frequently want to know what a particular design change will mean to your cutting cost the upload/quote process is down-right tedious.

It would be great if Ponoko could produce plug-ins for the supported design packages to allow you to calculate the cutting cost from within the application. If I didn't already have multiple projects on the go I'd probably consider moving this from the "nice idea" stage—but I don't envisage that happening any time soon... <h4>Puzzled?</h4>

My unsolicted Ponoko marketing suggestion of the day: Produce a bunch of puzzles with the Ponoko logo and brand them with "Make it yourself at Ponoko" or something... Bonus points for 3D...

Syndicated 2007-12-02 14:10:00 from follower