Open Hardware Summit 2011 takes place September 15 at the New York Hall of Science in Queens.

The Open Hardware Summit is the world’s first comprehensive conference on open hardware, founded and chaired by Alicia Gibb and Ayah Bdeir. The Open Hardware Summit was be a venue to discuss and draw attention to the rapidly growing open source hardware movement. Speakers at the Summit include world renowned leaders from industry, academia and the DIY community. The summit focused on hardware as a system through a series of discussions and panels on BUSINESS, LAW, MANUFACTURING, SCALING, DESIGN and EDUCATION. The one-day Summit sought to empower companies, large and small, to produce electronic objects in an open source fashion.

The DOTKLOCK by Andrew O’Malley is a digital clock running on the open source Arduino microcontroller. In its standard form, it displays the time and various animations and abstract designs. But because of its open source nature, the DOTKLOCK can be programmed to the whims of its owner.

The clocks are available for purchase on Etsy.

See Also:
- Arduino The Documentary

photo by Andrew O’Malley

Mitch Altman gives KQED QUEST a tour of Noisebridge, the amazing hackerspace he co-founded in San Francisco.

via Boing Boing

Make: Live is a new live web show by Make Magazine hosted by Becky Stern and Matt Richardson. The first episode, which focuses on the Arduino revolution, debuts today at 6pm PT/9pm ET. Clips from the show will be archived on the Make YouTube channel.

Arduino The Documentary, a short documentary by Rodrigo Calvo and Raúl Alaejos about the Arduino open hardware project and community.

via Make

The MakerBot Botcave, a retail store focusing on open source hardware, will be open in Brooklyn from November 26th through December 24th.

You have a special hardware enthusiast in your life who talks about arduinos, MakerBots, and 555 timers in their sleep. You want to get them something for the holidays. What would be the best present? Besides MakerBots and Arduinos, the MakerBot Botcave™ will have a selection of kits from Adafruit, Evil Mad Science, Jimmie Rodgers, Sparkfun and Liquidware.

The 6502 microprocessor is 35 years old as of September 16th. Introduced in 1975 at WesCon in San Francisco, the chip cost $25. Many early, hugely-popular home computers and gaming consoles sported it, including: Apple 1 & ][; Commodore PET & Vic 20; Atari 2600, 400 & 800.

The 6502 came into being when a Motorola team led by Chuck Peddle and Bill Mensch started designing a low-cost competitor Motorola’s own 6800. It was a rogue project as far as the executives were concerned. So, out came a memo: Shut.It.Down. In retaliation, Peddle and Mensch’s entire team left the company to join MOS Technologies where they designed and manufactured the semi-conducting super-star.

Peek and Poke anyone?

A menu allows the user to select which kind of virtual cookie they’d like to consume while holding a uniquely marked “augmented reality cookie” and wearing a special helmet. Cameras on the helmet track the cookie, with a heads up display overlaying the appearance of the desired cookie. The head/cookie tracking system triangulates the position of the cookie in 3D space, as the helmet’s aroma injectors produce the cookie’s simulated aroma and strength relative to its distance from the user’s nose. The system’s “palette” is capable of “displaying” chocolate, almond, tea, strawberry, orange, maple, lemon, and cheese cookies.

“Arduino: The Documentary”, a film by Rodrigo Calvo about the Arduino open hardware project.

via Jason Scott

For those of us who secretly (or not so secretly) love the Hipstamatic app on the iPhone [iTunes link] and upgraded to the newly released iPhone 4, we were sad to discover that the current version is laced with oddities and a crash or two.

There was some debate as to what was going on, so I decided to take it upon myself to dig deeper and get down to what the potential causes are.

The company behind the app, Synthetic Corp., just released a new photo booth app, IncrediBooth [iTunes link], to simulate the bar-o-liscious photo booths people tend to get drunk and make out in.  Now you can do it all with the front facing iPhone 4 camera in your own living room.

It seems that their energy was spent creating this new app instead of updating Hipstamatic to be iPhone 4 and iOS 4 compliant.

I go into great detail into how I debugged the current issues of using Hipstamatic on the new iPhone 4 on my blog:

Hipstamatic on the New iPhone 4

(Click to see my Flickr set of test images used to write this article.)

Make and Craft present Maker Faire 2010, the world’s largest DIY festival, which returns to San Mateo County Expo Center for its 5th year on Saturday, May 22nd and Sunday, May 23rd.

Maker Faire is a two-day, family-friendly event that celebrates the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset. It’s for creative, resourceful people of all ages and backgrounds who like to tinker and love to make things.

Here are my photos from Maker Faire Bay Area 2009.

This year there will also be a Maker Faire in Detroit (July 31st & August 1st) and New York City (September 25-26).

The folks at PC World had… a bit of fun, while also researching the durability of Apple’s new iPad for the benefit of us all.

For a more graceful iPad dissection check out the iPad Teardown from iFixit.

photo by Scott Beale

In a wonderfully detailed, video-rich post, Lifehacker goes Lady Gaga for Ladyada and our friend Phillip Torrone guestblogs on what makes Limor Fried Lifehacker’s MacGyver of the Day. It’s impossible not to be impressed and awed; after reading the post we think Fried is a tenacious and prolific genius who’s cut a powerful swath for women engineers, designers and makers. Watch only half the videos in which mastermind Fried explains from her secret underground laboratory the many ways you can create your own doomsday devices life simplifying gadgets, and you’ll see why we think she’s more like the woman MacGyver would run crying to for help like a little girl should he actually be caught in a tough spot and needed to, say, make a cell phone jammer. Limor (Adafruit Industries) is quoted saying,

“In contemporary Western society, electronic devices are becoming so prevalent that many people find themselves surrounded by technologies they find frustrating or annoying. The electronics industry has little incentive to address this complaint (…) By building functional prototypes that reflect equal consideration of technical and social issues, I identify three attributes of Noir products: Personal empowerment, participation in a critical discourse, and subversion.”

The post is like a “best of” Ladyada’s most effective and slightly subversive designs, explained in step-by-step DIY terms and gifted to any and all as open source projects. In addition, the videos featuring Fried and Torrone creating and experimenting with the edgy electronics are nerdy and subtly hilarious, making them fun to watch even if you can’t solder your way out of a paper bag. However, if you did want to learn how, we’re pretty sure they’ve got a humorous video tutorial. Don’t miss her fantastic weekly “ask an engineer” show.

Bre Pettis and MakerBot Industries are on the cover of volume 21 of Make Magazine.

Enter the world of desktop manufacturing with MAKE! Issue 21 offers the know-how you need to make three-dimensional parts with inexpensive computer-controlled manufacturing equipment. Perfect for individuals and small groups, these detailed how-to articles cover the use of both additive (RepRap, CandyFab) and subtractive (Lumenlab Micro CNC) systems.

On a recent tour of Joss, I was introduced to the Incinolet toilet, also known as The Turbo Shitter, used in locations such as Antarctica outposts where other toilets that rely on Roman era sewer technology just won’t cut it.

Imagine dangling your bits & bum over an inverted Pacman who has a viscious electric yawn at 1200°.  It lays waste to your waste by burning all of the refuse your GI was unable, or unwilling, to burn along with the required paper lining, toilet paper, and anything else you need to destroy in your biological evacuation process.

INCINOLET uses electric heat to reduce human waste (urine, solids, paper) to a small amount of clean ash, which is dumped periodically into the garbage. INCINOLET remains clean because waste never touches the bowl surface. A bowl liner, dropped into the bowl prior to use, captures the waste, then both liner and its content drop into the incinerator chamber when the foot pedal is pushed. You can use INCINOLET at any time-even while it is in cycle. – Incinolet.com

Slim Goodbody, who is currently on tour (yes, really), could probably teach us a thing or two about how our body burns calories by some well placed Bristol Stool Type 4 feces wrapped in spandex showing the corn hidden inside.

It is also not recommended that you try to flush any contraband into The Turbo Shitter as the exhaust pipe does not have the Crack Smoker Nonstick Coating™ needed to keep your facilities clean & burnt lip free.

If your Bristol Stool Type is 1 or 7, The Turbo Shitter™ will burn it down to a clean & powdery Bristol Stool Type Zero!

Artist Jeremy Mayer creates striking representations of human anatomy using only typewriter parts. Mayer doesn’t weld or glue any of the components, preferring rather that the pieces hold together naturally. The resulting biomechanical artwork transcends “steampunk” aesthetic and clicks neatly into place among surrealists like H.R. Giger and Zdzislaw Beksinski. You can follow Jeremy Mayer on Twitter (@jeremymayer) or view a live webcam feed from his Palo Alto studio here.

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.

Repurpose is a great doucmentary short by Jack Oatmon about hardware hacking and hackerspaces. The video focuses on the Montreal hardware hacking community, including Foulab.

Why are more and more hobbyists experimenting with hacks and circuit bends? What relationship does this imply about consumer society and technological advancement? Is this a real-world analog of ‘user generated content’?

via Bre Pettis

Make and Craft present Maker Faire 2009, the world’s largest DIY festival, which returns to the San Mateo County Expo Center for its 4th year next weekend, Saturday, May 30th and Sunday, May 31st.

Following on President Obama’s call to “begin again the work of remaking America”, Maker Faire 2009 will be organized around the theme of Re-Make America. Held in the San Francisco Bay Area on May 30-31, Maker Faire celebrates what President Obama called “the risk takers, the doers, and the makers of things.” The fourth annual Maker Faire will showcase individual creativity and grassroots innovation in the largest festival devoted to DIY culture and technology in the country.

Here are my photos from Maker Faire Bay Area 2008.

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

Zach Hoeken and Bre Pettis have just launched Thingiverse, a place to share digital designs for physical objects. Fred Benenson of Creative Commons wrote about their various of licensing options, referring to Thingiverse as “Flickr for the Maker set”.

Thingiverse is a place for you to share your digital designs with the world. We believe that just as computing shifted away from the mainframe into the personal computer that you use today, digital fabrication will share the same path. Infact, it is already happening: laser cutters, cnc machines, 3D printers, and even automated paper cutters are all getting cheaper by the day. These machines are useful for a huge variety of things, but you need to supply them with a digital design in order to get anything useful out of them. We’re hoping that together we can create a community of people who create and share designs freely, so that all can benefit from them.

photo by Nick Farr

Open hardware company Bug Labs has a really cool series of promo videos for their BUG series of programmable electronic modules. Here’s their teleporter.