Orlando Mini Maker Faire and FamiLAB, Orlando’s Hackerspace (Community Lab) have partnered to create “Makerships” to help 3 deserving recipients create (or finish)  amazing projects to be displayed & demonstrated at Orlando Mini Maker Faire 2012, held on May 26th at FamiLAB in Longwood, FL.

Makership Award Recipients will receive $CASH$ and three months of FamiLAB “Maker” level membership in order to make their project idea a reality.

Two Recipients will receive a $100 Project Stipend and 3 Months of FamiLAB Membership at the “Maker” Level ($150 value!), while one recipient will receive a $300 Project Stipend and 3 Months of FamiLAB Membership at the “Maker” Level ($150 value!)

For more information, or to apply for a Makership, please visit the Makership page of the Orlando Mini Maker Faire website.

The first accidental meetup of the Sunday Morning Code group. We discussed binary operations.

Butterfly Swap – swap two variables without using a third temporary variable, using only binary math

Setting and unsetting bits in a byte — use masks!

Zane is looking for interest in a software event every Sunday morning. Feel free to email classes@familab.org if you want to know when we’re meeting next.

We built the Radio Shack Flashlight kits (thanks again to Radio Shack for their donation of the kits!) and then spent the next 20 minutes seeing spots as they were all tested

We also discussed Orlando Mini Maker Faire 2012 and how the Young Makers are automatically accepted into the Faire to demonstrate whatever they build. One father + son team are planning to build a robotic lawnmower!

If you or your child love to make things, and need some support to make even bigger or more awesome things – or just want to show off what you’ve made, please join us for a future Young Makers meeting. Watch the FamiLAB calendar, or you can join the FamiLAB Young Makers mailing list.

The FamiLAB Young Makers program is having its next meeting on Thursday, January  26th from 7pm to 9pm at FamiLAB.

We will be discussing Orlando Mini Maker Faire 2012, and how our Young Makers can participate and show off their creations.

There is no cost for this program or class, but an RSVP email is required due to limited space – please send it to youngmakers@familab.org

Check out the FamiLAB Young Makers page for more information on the Young Makers program. If you haven’t already signed up for the mailing list, you should!

Special thanks to Da3v, waterbury, f00bard, and Matt for their help with organizing, teaching, and taking pictures!

TC74 wired up over I2C to an Arduino Uno

The readings came back quickly, and we were able to measure the temperature of FamiLAB using our I2C sensors. Pretty toasty in the classroom that night at 80 degrees Fahrenheit. There were a couple hiccups with the I2C address of the sensors; the datasheet was incorrect, but we were able to use the Bus Pirate to get the correct address. Also, between Arduino 22 and Arduino 1.0 there were some changes to the Wire library so we had to modify our demo code a bit.

After the workshop, John and I started to tinker with Xbee radios using the Digi Xbee development boards John brought in. We set up a basic two-way chat demo and tested the range of the Xbee Series 2 modules. I was able to walk outside the lab, into the field, and out to the tree line without losing connectivity.

Xbee development board ready to go.

We ran into a small issue getting started with the development boards, as we didn’t have any instructions to go from. Apparently the Digi development boards ship with a loopback jumper in place. This prevented us from being able to read the firmware and configuration from the Xbee modules. Once we had that sorted out, everything just worked!

Xbee connected over serial receiving a message from another Xbee across the room.

With a lot more space to work recently, Chris Purola and Tony Morris have been working on the 3D printers.  Chris’ printer, Breepbroop, now has solid state relay controlled heated bed with a 115v heater pad for heat.  It’ll also have the hot-end moved to a cartridge heater as soon as we get a heater block to throw it in.

The other 3D printer, Phineas, Ians makergear prusa is also making lots of headway.  While there were some connector issues causing the hot end to heat whenever it felt like it, we eventually got it figured out and phineas is now printing at a 0.24mm layer height.  There are still some things to tweak, like bridges and filament retraction, but it’s good enough to be printing parts!

There is also another yet-to-be-named reprap joining the family, and with the help of Breepbroop & Phineas, it has 75% of its parts put together already.  In the spirit of an amazingly limited budget, this is not part of a kit.  It doesn’t look nearly as pretty as the other 2 repraps, but it’s getting there!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXn4x8LFu24

There are also reports of the Mackerbot running nicely, and the reprap Dave Casey owns is starting to push out some prints as well!  One day we’ll have to pose for a family picture!

This blog post is about the very long process of how I came to make a box that could dynamically dim AC bulbs via computer control. The main purpose being to react to music. View this as a documentation on how I came to make this box, and my thought process throughout. I will be providing code, and some schematics, and I hope other beginning hobbyists will find this post useful.

(If you’d like just to find out about the box, simply start at page five)

First, a brief history.

My desire to make lighting that would react to music largely began in late 2003. A Perfect Circle released their album, Thirteenth Step. Upon first listen of the song, Blue, I pictured a series of lights reacting to the music, and blue shifting upon the chorus line of “She’s turning blue.” At the time, the original Xbox modding and hacking scene was huge, and I had jumped onto the bandwagon. Prior to this, I soldered here and there, but had no real experience with electronics or hardware design. Nor did I know where to begin. I knew I desired the skills, but was still a hardcore n00b. I found datasheets at the time to be highly overwhelming. During this same period of time though, I was learning tricks here and there mainly due to the large number of hardware hacks being performed on the Xbox.

As the years went by, I was doing IT work, and learning about other technical skills, but I was slowly putting my (limited) electronics hobby to the back burner. Flash forward to 2007, and I read a blog post of how Xbox-Scene moderator, Twisted Symphony, had made a circuit that would allow the use of a Sega Saturn pad to play Xbox 360 games. As I was a huge fan of the Saturn pad, I wished to replicate this design, and to possibly improve on it.

Twisted Symphony, as I would come to learn, had used a PIC16F690 Microcontroller to break out the Saturn controller’s serial data into Parallel data that was fed into an xbox 360 pad. I began to research PIC Micros, but ultimately ended up buying just a breadboard, and playing around with simple circuits due to my limited disposable income at the time,.

Then came February, 2008…..