guest post by Burstein!

The hackerspace Noisebridge is one of San Francisco’s cultural and artistic gems. Its members have contributed a wide variety of art, hacks and local culture.

Noisebridge is a space for sharing, creation, collaboration, research, development, mentoring, and of course, learning. Noisebridge is also more than a physical space, it’s a community with roots extending around the world. We help people build neat and awesome things.

On Friday, October 2nd, these über-makers and geeks are having an open house for their one year anniversary that will show off what they have done and can do. This alone is worth the price of admission, which is free. Things to see include:

The Brain Machine (which you can learn to make at noisebridge)

A Compass Vibro-Anklet (which you can learn to make at noisebridge)

A Makerbot Robot (which can be used at noisebridge)

Also at the event will be the Reverse Engineering Bar with only the geekiest of drinks and music by DIY-band Corpus Callosum and Cally McMorrow, circuit bender of legend.

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Here are a few short videos that I shot this year at Maker Faire 2009.

Calliope by Neverwas

Soma by Flaming Lotus Girls

Mark Frauenfelder of Boing Boing plays his cigar box guitar

kid vs. robot in a chess match

Cupcake CNC by MakerBot Industries

Geneva Wheel, part of 10,000 Year Clock Project by The Long Now Foundation

Hand of Man by Christian Ristow

R2-D2

Jacob’s Ladder by Omega Recoil

Skull by Alameda County Computer Resource Center (ACCRC)

Video Gallery: Maker Faire 2009

Here are my photos from Maker Faire 2009.

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Here are my photos of Maker Faire 2009, which took place Saturday, May 30th and Sunday, May 31st at the San Mateo County Event Center.

Photo Gallery: Maker Faire 2009

Here are the videos that I shot at Maker Faire 2009.

photo by Scott Beale

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guest post by Aaron Muszalski

Adafruit Industries, the New York City firm founded by noted electronics maker and DIY evangelist Limor “Lady Ada” Fried, is releasing a series of merit badges that recognize a variety of electronics skills. 

The first one is “learning to solder” – if you’re new to electronics, we’ll have a special bundle of tools, a kit and limited edition “badge” to show the world you’re proficient in soldering, once you complete the tutorials and kit that is!

We will have a variety of badges, the first is soldering – others include:

Arduino
LEDs (with conductive thread & real LED!)
Open source hardware
TV-B-Gone’ing
Reverse engineering
Dumpster diving
Laser cutting
WaveBubble

I’m especially looking forward to the LED merit badge, with conductive thread and a real LED. A micro-electronics project in patch form. Nifty!

Incidentally, Limor takes her “nom de souder” from Lady Ada Lovelace, aka Augusta Ada Byron, daughter of the infamous poet and libertine Lord Byron. Lady Ada is now known as the “first programmer” for having written, in 1842, a set of instructions to calculate Bernoulli numbers using Charles Babbage’s (unrealized) Analytical Engine.

See Previously:

- Nerd Merit Badges

- Laughing Squid Embroidered Patches

photo via Adafruit Industries

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guest post by Jackson West

Bre Pettis along with friends Zach Hoeken Smith and Adam Mayer have started a new company, MakerBot Industries, “to bring rapid prototyping and 3D Printing to the masses.”  Here’s more on the launch from Bre, NYC Resistor and investor Jake Lodwick.

MakerBot Industries creates open source robot kits that transform your digital designs into physical objects automatically.

The kits are modular, modifiable, and built to be hacked.

The initial product: The CupCake CNC for the incredibly precise, computer-controlled frosting of cupcakes.  And if buttercream isn’t your sculptural medium of choice, there’s a plastic extruder as well .  The bot takes up as much desk space as a printer, and can make stuff about the size of a Rubik’s Cube.  The company plans to start shipping next month, though pre-orders are available, and it’s priced at $750 (with discounts available on bulk orders).  Though individual parts can be ordered if you want to hack together something yourself.

Jonathan Coulton posing with the MakerBot at SXSW Interative 2009.

illustration by James Provost & photo by Bre Pettis

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In these times of economic hardship, it’s important that we gather together our nearest and dearest and make a concerted effort to support the things that really matter.

This of course means robots that serve cocktails.

Austria’s RoboExotica made its maiden foray into US territory last spring, with their first annual RoboExotic-US, a screamingly successful conference and meditation on the human-machine interface in the form of the cocktail robot.

A good time was had by all, at least according to those who actually remember the event.

The plan is to bring the whole shebang back this year for a West Coast tour (Maker Faire, RoboGames, and of course another RoboExoticUS).

For this mission of mercy and philosophical understanding to come to fruition, RoboexoticUS needs YOUR HELP! They have set up a pledge page on Pledgie to gently entreat you to send in your pennies to aid the robots’ journey across the ocean.

Donate a buck or two, and reap the rewards when they arrive triumphant through the gates of SFO, slinging rum, insults, fire, beer and the satisfaction in knowing that if it’s done right, science can really hurt the next day.

See Previously: Roboexotica USA Photos & Video

Thanks Scott Beale for the photo of El Espanol Borracho!

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Following my tour of Etsy last week, Bre Pettis took me over to NYC Resistor, a really cool electronics and hardware hacker space in downtown Brooklyn. They host a bunch of great events and classes and are home to several really interesting projects.

Here’s my full set of photos from the NYC Resistor space.

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guest post by Johannes Grenzfurthner

“KRFTWRK” is a socio-political statement and an ironic comment on current problems like the production and waste of electricity in industrial states, as well as the obesity and lack of exercise of their populations.The aim of “KRFTWRK” is to create a consciousness with regard to these topics by artistic measures.

The project consists of actions taking place in real as well as in virtual space. The most important elements are the staging of a company, the internet-based simulation of a global electricity network, and the realisation of power producing sculptures.

“KRFTWRK” is planning and realising a new generation of industrial plants, which produce electricity by means of muscle-power and chemical processes in the human body. For example, special workout devices operate generators and at the same time depict usable sculptures. Additionally, a community will be founded, which communicates and supports the content of the project. “KRFTWRK”, a work in progress since 2006, is situated in the fields of architecture, digital media, and the fine arts.

“KRFTWRK” will be featured at the Paraflows Festival in Vienna, Austria.

photo via “KRFTWRK”

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guest post by Aaron Muszalski

The brainchild of Lorin Edwin Parker and his wife Sarah Seeling, Electric Western is ”Dedicated to the creative use of technology from tubes to germanium & steam to solar.” Saving the world from flat digital sound and pretentious audiophilia.” Thus far, their eclectic inventions – all entirely hand-built – include a steam-powered synthesizer, a fully vintage re-creation of Leon Theremin’s original 1919 Theremin, and such unclassifiable oddities as the ElectroSparklavier, an instrument in which “sound is generated by the ionization of gases within the neon bulbs and thyratron tubes and mixed in various computer triodes.”

In addition to creating Electric Western, Mr. Parker (born, according to his website, in “1877, Idledale Colorado”) is a musician and audio engineer who currently teaches sound design at the Art Institute of California in Los Angeles. He is also a noted Proponent of the Moustachio, and the creator of an interactive drag-and-drop mustache game. Mr. Parker describes the unifying vision behind all these pursuits thusly:

Parker’s aesthetic is an anachronistic confluence of the cultural and technological past, present and future. He draws extensively from Victorian and Edwardian culture and design, blending his historical tilt to re-contextualize modern technology and arts. … 21st century art should be progressive, fun, accessible, even humorous. My art is not meant to be selective or exclusive — it is viable conceptually and as pure entertainment.

Current Electric Western projects include research into the ionic acoustics of plasma, chemo-electric synthesis and ion energy exchanges, further historical instrument reproductions (Ondes Martenot, Trautonium) and a DIY electric car conversion. Excelsior!

photo by Electric Western

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Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories have recreated “Tennis for Two” a historic video game using an oscilloscope orginally created in 1958 by physicist William Higinbotham at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. It was one of the first electronic games to use a graphical display and predated Pong by 14 years. Here’s their write-up on the project.

EMSL gave me a sneak preview of “Tennis for Two” at Foo Camp last weekend.

photo by Scott Beale

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guest post by mikl-em

A friend and I at work started talking about weird speakers, so… here’s the results of a couple hours of surfing and gawking.

First let’s start with the affordable, I noticed these on a Korean site, but actually Scott has covered them before:

.

To paraphrase Monty Python: These are the biggest earbuds you’ll ever see! They cost like $50. Let’s move quickly on…

Then there’s iPond. Yes, of course, it’s a “portable aquarium-speaker”. What else?



Best line: “The iPod speaker that comes with built-in tuna“. Somehow Scott hadn’t blogged this before, I am incredibly grateful.

The Ice Cream Sundae speakers will run you $1250 per pair–sweet deal!

From SG Custom Sound who carry a bunch of wild designs. Now let’s go waaay upmarket…

The Nautilus from B&W runs $60K and it’s Cephalopodonous so it gets points for that!

The Muon speakers from KEF were designed by Ross Lovegrove, are made of aluminum, weigh 253 pounds, and are 7′ tall–see Engadget for more details.

They had an incredible launch event for these at the Milan Furniture Fair 2007–check the video. They cost $140K and they only made 100 pairs. For some reason I can’t find any of those pairs for sale on eBay at the moment. :((

And last to mention are the Grand Enigma, a one-of-a-kind set by Kharma, which cost $1,000,000. I won’t even show you a picture cuz they are bigger than they are pretty. And you can’t have them anyway.

Poking around on this theme I found several pages dedicated to cataloging Weird Speakers, enjoy:

• freshome.com recently posted 17 Cool Speakers Designs that Look Better than They Sound
• from CNET Asia
• from HigherFi.com
• Audio Junkies’ 15 sexiest speakers

See Previously: 500 XL, Desktop Speakers in the Shape of Giant iPod Earbuds

photos by (in order) old valve mic, tnarik, My Friend., SG Custom Sound, X Ge and kaitlin_lo

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guest post by mikl-em

If you’re like me, you have memories of your parents or grandparents collection of Consumer Reports–maybe in the same room as their rows and rows of perfect-bound National Geographics? These were magazines as reference books. Before the web there was a thing called “looking it up in the encyclopedia”. And making a library of magazines comes from the same mindset.

But back to the old CR. Those rows and rows of black or red dots comparing the merits of every conceivable product from electric shavers to popcorn poppers and chocolate bars to nasal sprays, were at the time a wonder of the world of buying stuff that awaited me. Like the thinking man’s Price is Right, here was the racing form for the consumerism derby. CR is really the predecessor to the Engadgets and Gizmodos of the world, as well as car review sites like Edmunds.com and the like.

But unlike their followers, Consumer Reports has a strong policy of impartiality. They do not accept any ads in their magazine or allow their reviews to be used in commercials of any kind. So in a world of planned obsolescence where widgets that are more expensive are not necessarily more better, CR is an un-bribeable auditor of all the suitors for your hard-earned dough. And if that weren’t cool enough, they are also based in Yonkers!

But on top of this great service they provide us in navigating the treacherous terrain of capitalism they also give us hour(s?) of idle fun with an incredible gallery of photos of product testing throughout their history. The images are arranged by decades, so for example the “permanent wave” testing apparatus shown above from the 1930’s. Or, shimmying ahead to the 60’s, the Car Record player shown below.

And Consumer Reports are still at it, both in print and digital. Here’s a recent Brownie Bakeoff review. Of course subscribers get much more content–CR has to pay the bills somehow. Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports, has a fascinating history which is an interesting read. Finally here’s The Consumerist’s pix of a tour of the CR Yonkers labs.

photos via Consumer Reports

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Tech Connect: Robots takes place Tuesday, May 20th from 6-8:30pm at the San Jose Museum of Art as part of the current exhibition “Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon”.

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Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories have proudced a cool new kit called “Peggy”, which is an open-source LED pegboard display that functions like a classic Lite-Bright.

This is an easy way to drive a lot of LEDs– up to 625– in a big matrix. You can make an LED sign for your window, a geeky valentine for your sweetie, one bad-ass birthday card, or freak the holy bejesus out of Boston. Your call. It’s a versatile, high-brightness display.

See Previously: 01-31-07 Memorial Kit by Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

photo by Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

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