ARRL Field Day is June 26-27th, it is a national event during which radio operators promote ham radio by setting up stations and transmitting in parking lots, open fields, etc. To celebrate, we are throwing a ham radio party where we will be making contacts, giving demos, and dancing. Remember, hams were some of the original hackers.

When: June 26, 8pm-1am
Where: NYC Resistor, 87 3rd Ave., 4th FL., Brooklyn, NY
Cost: Free
Drinks: BYOB
RSVP: http://n2ycr-fieldday.eventbrite.com/

Preparty Class:
6pm-8pm: Learn to Solder by Building an Arduino Morse Code Oscillator, cost $90, register http://hamsolder.eventbrite.com/

Demos:
8:00pm – 1am: Transmitting on the HF Bands
TBD: Talking to Satellites
8:30pm: Old School Radio Goes New School Digital
9:15pm: Scanning Fun, listening on local fire departments, police departments, zoos, parks, lifeguards, and airport frequencies
10:00pm: Powering a Lightbulb with Radio Waves
11:00pm-1:00am: Ham Radio Dance Party, Dj Eric Beug will remix beats live out of transmissions made by ham radio operators sitting on the stage

Sorry kids, unfortunately for insurance reasons we can only allow guests ages 18+ and NYC Resistor is not a handicap accessible space.

Door Prizes:
Like all ham events we will be giving away awesome door prizes from MakerBot Industries 3-D printers, Adafruit Industries, and Make Magazine. Our sponsors will also be offering special Field Day discounts for ham radio operators.

Adafruit’s Ice Tube Clock Kit is just one of the prizes up for grabs. In honor to Field Day, Adafruit will be offering a 10% discount on their kits from June 26-27 for all licensed hams. Just enter code “HAMS” at check out and in the comments include your call sign. MAKE Magazine is offering a 20% discount off of everything in the MakerShed. From 6/25-6/27 enter discount code “HAMHACKER” and your callsign in the comments (one time use, not combinable, no minimum purchase). MakerBot Industries MakerBot is offering a 5% discount on MakerBots. Email your callsign this weekend to [email protected] to get the discount code.

Dear People of the Lazzzor,

We’ve created a new mailing list for discussing all things related to lazzzoring! Go join the discussion at [email protected].

Sincerely,

Justin

PS: There’s only one spot left for Saturday’s laser class, grab it before it’s gone!

Did you do a fun hack you’d like to share? Do you have a cool new logic analyzer everyone should know about? Have you found the perfect pair of tweezers? Do you have anything you want to show and tell about? If yes, this is the event for you.

Come hang out with interesting people and share whatever you like as we re-explore Show and Tell from a hacker perspective.

Each attendee will be given a few minutes (depending on the number of speakers) to show and tell. We’ll even provide a projector! Non-presenting spectators are welcome, but everyone is encouraged to share something. This is a non-formal event, so feel free to bring drinks, cookies, and friends. You’ll have to leave the kids at home; nobody under 18 years of age.

Sign up begins when the doors open at 7:30 PM. Show and Tell begins at 8:00 PM. If you come late, there may not be enough time to get you one stage, so come early and reserve your spot.

It was only after hours of searching that I finally came up with what I was looking for: a way to take a polygon mesh (OBJ or similar) and convert it into a blueprint for building LEGO sculptures.

Don't get me wrong, there are tons of tools out there for LEGO CAD. But strangely none of them mention being able to go from a mesh to a LEGO layout. It's surprising, since it seems like such a natural fit. The rise of 3D printers has rejuvinated interest in voxels, voulmetric pixels, and as evidenced by all the LEGO sculpture artists we seem to be in a golden age of LEGO. 

Armed with Blender and a giant LEGO collection, I set out to get the computer to do the hard work for me. I used Blender, graph paper, a pencil, and of course lots of LEGOs.

Step 1: Voxelizing a Utah teapot

Let me preface this by saying that the Blender UI is not for the faint of heart. I took classes on Rhino and 3DSMax in college, and thought to myself "how different could it be?" The answer: very. If you're new to blender, don't fear the manual. You're going to need it, particularly the parts on installing/using python scripts.

To voxelize the teapot I used a script called Add Cells which covers the surface of any object with any other object. First I imported the teapot, and scaled it up a bit. Then I created my "fundamental unit" of LEGO. LEGOs have an aspect ratio of 6:5, so I created a 1×1 LEGO, a 0.6×0.5×0.5 rectangular prism in Blender.

Selecting both the teapot and my 1×1 lego I ran the Add Cells script (go to the Scripts menu –> Add -> Cells). I chose the Teapot for my object to be voxelized and the 1×1 LEGO as my voxel model.

Tada! A blocky teapot!

Step 2: Graphing each layer on paper

In order to make the build process easier, I went through layer by layer and drew a map of each layer on graph paper. This way when building with LEGOs I could shade in with a pencil each voxel I'd built. It sounds redundant, but when things all start looking the same after a few minutes and something isn't lining up, it's very helpful.

To see one layer at a time in Blender I went into Sculpture Mode, side view, and used ctrl+shift+right mouse to select and hide all but the layer I wanted to see. Then I switched to Top view and copied the layer onto my graph paper. By the end I had a sheet of paper full of wobbly circular outlines.

Step 3: Building it with LEGOs!

The completed model uses 244 LEGOs, many of which are tiny 1×1 and 1×2 bricks. The model is hollow, but the walls need to be fairly thick to be able to support the top. As it is I probably should have made things a little thicker; putting the last two layers on was a delicate operation.

I built each layer sequentially. There were a few overhang pieces near the bottom which I had to append to the layer above them, since they couldn't anchor to anything below.

Overall the project took about 4 hours, with a break in the middle for breakfast, church, etc.

Total LEGO count for the project was 244 individual bricks, distributed thusly:

• 44 2×3 Bricks
• 46 2×2 Bricks
• 58 2×4 Bricks
• 27 1×2 Bricks
• 17 1×3 Bricks
• 8 1×4 Bricks
• 8 2×2 L shaped Bricks
• 33 1×1 Bricks
• 1 2×8 Brick
• 1 2×6 Brick
• 1 1×8 Brick
   

Video of our presentation at Hackday:

In the video,

Ben Combee is speaking, Max Henstell is working the stabster’s pneumatics and Mark Tabry is standing by to protect bystanders, and I am off camera to the left looking pretty for the cameras.

Not in the video is Bill Ward, Charles Pax, as well as the original Max.

* Special thanks to my friend Adam from Twilio who provided us with some assistance in the effort.

For the blow by blow of the event check out our time lapse. Trust me it was 24 hours of tedium just as grueling as watching this 2.5 minute clip.As you can see this was an pretty large effort by NYCR and a hell of a lot more went into this project than is readily apparent. Just getting the equipment there was an event all its own. Max and Charles worked tirelessly to repair Stabby’s pneumatic stabber arm. Max also worked on wiring up the actuators and accompanying arduino code to link up with Ben, Bill, and Marks twilio interface code base. I worked with Mark on a display that showed debug info from the arduinos ( blogarythmic cred ) as well as caller ( aka stabber ) id when stabbing.

We finished up about 5 minutes before time was called… literally. Came down to the wire. Stabby was awarded a runner up award, and supposedly will be on display at Tech Crunch on Wednesday some time during the day.

We had a hell of a lot of fun, and were excited to present a functioning project ( a first for me =P ). Even more exciting was winning a runner up award in a contest that didn’t actually have runner up awards. I guess they were afraid of being stabbed.