We’re doing another session of our Soft Circuits class! Learn to make functioning electronic circuits using conductive threads and fabrics. You will leave with samples of the materials we use in the class and a warm glow in your heart. Or in your pocket. Beginners welcome!
(CORRECTION! This class is on SUNDAY, not saturday as originally written here.)
Our most popular class, Arduino and Soldering 101, is running again this Sunday (Dec 12th), and still has a few spaces left. If you’ve been curious about electronics and Arduino at all, this is where to start.
Make your own Arduino and learn how to use it in the same class!
Description:
This is your friendly introductory class to soldering and
micro-controllers. In this three-hour class we will:
When you leave, you’ll have a micro-controller, a mini-USB cable, a power supply and a few programs to play with.
The class will be taught by NYC Resistor members Liz Arum and Charles Pax.
Please bring a laptop with the Arduino environment on it. It’s available at http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software.
Hilary and I will be speaking at the Y+30 meetup this coming monday at the 92nd street Y as part of a panel that will be discussing how people will communicate with machines (and vice versa) and with one another through machines.
The Y+30 meetup examines how various aspects of our lives might look in 30 years, and this panel should be very interesting! For my part, I’ll be bringing my experiments with openFrameworks, openCv, and some very raw Kinect hacking (thanks Widget!) as well as my monome.
Event link (note, this is not at NYC Resistor!)
http://www.meetup.com/BLKNY30/calendar/15581753/
Event Excerpt:
As technology continues to evolve and innovate at breakneck speeds, we’ve seen human behavior upended in a miraculously short span of time. Not only has our manner of communication changed, but the very notion of communication and the communicative abilities available to us are completely different. How people relate to one another professionally, socially, and artistically are different than even ten years ago, and will likely be much different thirty years from now. This panel will examine these ideas from multiple perspectives, including digital art, policy, social media, human- computer interfaces, and more. A diverse collection of technologists will speak on the subject, and there will be demonstrations of gadgets and interfaces from hack collective NYCResistor and an art installation piece from digital media institute Harvestworks.
Tickets for this event are $10 and are available through the 92Y Box Office and Venmo.
This Sunday, December 12th, we’ve got another Arduino/Soldering 101 class — you’ll learn soldering techniques by building your own Freeduino board, then you’ll get to learn some basic programming. This is one of our most popular classes, and it’s always a great time.
Then, the following Saturday, the 18th, is our first Build a MIDI Percussion Instrument class. We’re going to be making computer-controlled noisemakers using solenoids then doing a nice jam session with a sequencer running all the devices. This should be a lot of fun.
Join us Thursday Dec. 16th at 7pm for a screening of BETWEEN THE FOLDS with director Vanessa Gould for an in depth look into the world of origami. Following the screening will be a paper folding craft night (we’ll supply the paper!).
Origami may seem an unlikely medium for understanding and explaining the world. But around the globe, several fine artists and theoretical scientists are abandoning more conventional career paths to forge lives as modern-day paper folders. Through origami, these offbeat and provocative minds are reshaping ideas of creativity and revealing the relationship between art and science… BETWEEN THE FOLDS chronicles 10 of their stories. PBS
Thursday, December 16th
7pm
NYC Resistor
RSVP
This Sunday, December 5th, why not take a break from holiday shopping to learn how to make microcontrollers do amazing things! This is a repeat of an excellent class from earlier this year called Beyond Arduino: Using Microcontrollers Directly. In this class, you’ll build a shield for an Arduino that can be used to program other ATMega chips from 8 to 28 pins. Then, you’ll build your own circuit on a breadboard using at ATMega328 and a ATTiny85. You’re getting a lot of nice gear and experience with making creations that don’t need a $30 board.
Get details and sign up at our Eventbrite page for the event.
Make your own beer right here!
A few weeks ago, Google approached us to see if we’d be interested in throwing in a DemoSlam entry using the QR Code Waffles that we’d previously attempted. (hat tip to Foxx, who came up with the idea at a craft night)
After some successful experimentation with hand-drawn QR codes I put out a challenge to the rest of NYCR: The team that makes the most righteous, edible QR code that actually recognizes using google googles wins the prize.
Naturally, the prize started with “W” and ended with “affles” 🙂
As always, the amazing creativity and ingenuity that Resistors brought out for this project blew me away! Check out the video below, and lots more info on the various projects after that
Our slam came out great, but it’s impossible to show all of the amazing projects in the short span of the video. Here’s a roundup of all of the amazing hacks:
Ranjit’s awesome QR Code Tortilla took home the prize for being an amazing and edible food hack that recognized.
Raph put the new milling machine to work on a custom waffle iron, milling out the tiny blocks of the QR code. Unfortunately the milling didn’t quite work out, so no QR code waffle maker (or cattle branding) for us, but the iron itself recognized when it’s recesses were filled with flour, and the thing just looks gorgeous.
Jeff not only made a custom cast QR code icon, he also brought a ton of tiny jello “jiggler” cubes and made a beautiful QR code in google colors.
Zach got a Makerbot frostruder going and printed a working peanut-butter QR code on a slice of cheese
Adam said “om nom nom” as he ate his mashed-potatoes and gravy QR code, and also lead a crew using the laser to each out the QR code from a pancake
Chris, Nick, Ryan, and Ben assembled a QR code out of cheese-its, EZ-Cheese and posterboard.
Charles attempted a QR code out of microchips (chips are edible, right?)
And finally, thanks to Liz, Jon S, Jon K, and Herb, we actually got the QR code waffle to work, after lots of slicing and splicing and some judicious use of chicklets and chocolate chips.
It was an incredibly fun night, and huge thanks to everyone who threw a hack into the contest, helped put them together, and to everyone who was friendly to the crew as they joined us in the space for the shoot.
Now… Who’s hungry for waffles? 😀
PS: You can check out the rest of Trammel’s awesome photos here
PPS: Huge thanks to LuckyNY for doing the shoot and being generally awesome to work with!
(For anyone curious about the music, it’s one of my 8-bit tracks “Underclocked” from “Resistor Anthems” which you can download free under a CC-BY license here: http://ericskiff.com/music)
The 555 Timer IC is a classic from the days of analog electronics tinkering, hacking, and other good clean fun. Learn how the 555 can measure time! Blink an LED! Play music! Control a Servo motor! Output PWM! Wireless IR link to Arduino! Think of this as your Grandfather’s Arduino. The workshop will cover the basic configurations of the chip and what’s going on inside. Then we’ll explore more custom circuits and learn about how resistors and capacitors work together to control charge, and time events. You will get a kit with all the parts needed, a 9V battery and a breadboard. If you have your own servo, please bring it in.
This class is taught by Joel Murphy. Click here to sign up.
All NYC Resistor classes are for people 18-years and up. Sorry, no minors.