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01/11/10--21:29: Three Hearts, one Arduino (chan 1333392)

Today I started playing around with the new Open Heart v2.0 based off a project that came up at 26C3. My friend Alex wanted to run three Open hearts as a life meter on one of his tactical corsets. I loved the idea, and said that it should be possible to do that with just [...]


03/30/10--08:30: UK Hackerspace Tour ‘10 (chan 1333392)

Wow, what a crazy month this has been. Mitch Altman and I just got back from a 3-week long hackerspace tour through the UK and Ireland. We even had T-shirts printed (see above), that were designed by the talented Matthew Borgatti. The schedule was crazy. I had planned on blogging while over there, but we [...]


04/01/10--13:48: Soldering Setup for Workshops (chan 1333392)

I’ve been running soldering workshops for a few years now, and along with Mitch Altman, we’ve taught thousands of people to solder. I’ve used everything from $1,000 re-work stations to $1 irons bought off of eBay. I get asked quite often what people should buy for themselves, or what they should be buying for [...]


04/07/10--09:08: Life Meter for the Open Heart (chan 1333392)

At the recent PAX East conference here in Boston, I happened to have three Open Heart kits in my backpack and an Arduino. It hit me suddenly that this should be quickly turned into a life meter. I already had code to run three hearts simultaneously, you can see the post here. So it was [...]


05/11/10--07:12: In Town (chan 1333392)

I’m going to be running an introduction to circuit bending at the MIT museum this coming Monday, May 17. I will be teaching the basics of circuit bending, what to look for, and how to find interesting points. You will then circuit bend a Staples Easy button with the tools provided. You will also have [...]


06/03/10--13:34: AS220 Artist in Residence (chan 1333392)

I really should put this up on my blog I suppose, but I’m the current artist in residence at AS220 for the month of June. What all will I be doing? I’ll be working in the AS220 Labs some days, teaching classes on others, and generally working on my own projects. The point of this [...]


07/10/10--02:08: Circuit Bending Talk and Workshop At Hope (chan 1333392)

Pre-register here. I will be giving a talk on circuit bending at the Next Hope conference this month. The talk will be Friday night at 9:00pm on Saturday. I will then be running a circuit bending workshop immediately afterwards. It will be from 10-ish PM till whenever in the hardware hacking village. To attend the workshop, [...]


08/05/10--08:57: Mid-west Hackerspace Tour (chan 1333392)

I was recently at Maker Faire Detroit, which was a blast. Mitch Altman and I, along with some great volunteers, taught around 1,500 people to solder during the event. It was really great, and I always love Maker Faires. People are always just so excited to be there, and love to make things. Since we were [...]


08/06/10--11:51: Next Hope Talk is up (chan 1333392)

I’ve updated my Next Hope circuit bending talk page with some additional info. Basically they’ve released the audio of the talks, and you can get those here. This is a direct link to a high quality MP3 of my talk. You may want to follow along with a PDF of my presentation, or the outline. [...]


08/12/10--09:25: LoL Shield Projects (chan 1333392)

I’ve recently received a few awesome LoL Shield projects in my inbox, and I thought I should share. The first one was Pete’s awesome white block clock. He painted the inside of a plastic box white, so that the LEDs would have to shine through. It looks amazing, and you should check out the post. [...]


02/01/11--15:51: February Project Month (chan 1333392)

Like many folks on the interwebs, I’m going to be doing a sort of project a day thing. It’s mostly to get me back into documenting my work, and posting new content to my website. It came around when one of my roommates, Keith Simmons, quit his job and started hacking full time as well. [...]


02/02/11--13:57: Base 12 Clock (chan 1333392)

So I couldn’t let the whole clock thing be after my perceived failure yesterday. This time I went with a conceptual clock that I would write the display myself. What I came up with is a fairly good indicator of time at a glance, but takes a bit to get the exact time down. The [...]


02/03/11--13:38: Updated LoL Shield Video (chan 1333392)

Since it’s been a while since I updated my LoL Shield stuff, here is a new video explaining it a bit. It’s mostly for the official LoL Shield page. Basically, my project for the day is doing stuff I should have done quite a while ago. Kind of lame for a project, but it’s something [...]


02/04/11--15:56: Ten Second LED Belt Buckle (chan 1333392)

The Diavolino from Evil Made Science is hands down my favorite Arduino clone. It’s the only one I sell at workshops, and it works extremely well with the LoL Shield. So much so, that it is my official recommendation as THE Arduino to use with the LoL Shield. Why do I love it so much? It’s [...]


02/05/11--14:51: Dice Tower (chan 1333392)

I didn’t want to do another LoL Shield project today, mostly because my whole front page is nothing but LoL Shield posts. So I decided to do something I’ve been wanting to design for some time, a dice tower. I have thrown it up on Thingiverse. The image above is just a quick render in [...]


02/06/11--18:51: Modular Dice Tower (chan 1333392)

I totally failed to get a post up today by 7pm (that’s what I get for taking a “nap” at 5pm). I also failed to finish anything substantial, as I was hanging out with a good friend all day, and only spent about an hour in sketchup before taking my “nap”. I did come up [...]


02/10/11--15:45: Open Source Hardware Definition 1.0 (chan 1333392)

The Open Source Hardware definition has reached v1.0! I’m proud to say that all of my kits fully comply with the definition, and will continue to do so in the future. I feel very strongly about the free culture movement, and believe that it is the best way of going about things. Knowledge and digital [...]


02/10/11--17:43: Sing-A-Ma-Jig is a creepy toy! (chan 1333392)

Holy crap, I can’t believe they make this thing for kids! Even without the molestache(which I printed out), it’s still creepy.  It’s also quite ripe for bending. The thing is called a Sing-A-Ma-Jig, and I got mine at target while in NYC a few weeks back. I even opened it up that night and [...]


02/10/11--18:15: Triggering the Sing-A-Ma-Jig with a 555 (chan 1333392)

Wow, just wow. The 555 worked like a charm. I didn’t even need a transistor for it, which I mentioned in the previous post. I used a simple 555 timer to get it to loop. Turns out that Btn1 just need to be dropped to ground, and then it signals a button press. Luckily, the [...]


02/11/11--14:49: Quick 555 PCB for bending (chan 1333392)

I started working on a schematic for the 555 looping circuit, and I ended up doing a PCB for it as well. You can download the files here. My plan was to hopefully etch and test out the board today, but those plans got delayed. I’ll probably give that a shot tomorrow. I’ve gone [...]