MakeNYC held it’s 10th meeting at NYC Resistor last evening. Phil Torrone the editor of Make Magazine stopped by and dropped off some freebies. We held a timer challenge in which 4 teams worked tirelessly throughout the night to construct awesomely unique devices that would be able to be initiated on command, count to 10 seconds, then ring a bell. The results were awesome. The winning team won 4 bottles of club mate (courtesy of me). Much fun was had by all, and we are looking forward to an even more awesome event next time. Thanks to all who showed up, and the continual support we’ve received throughout the DIY and hacker communities. You guys are awesome.
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One cold day in november members of NYC Resistor received a nondescript box… There were no markings on the box that could identify any specific member at NYC Resistor to which it had been sent. They opened it to find what appeared to be 4 hand gr3nades.
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Nicolle from Pumping Station One, a hacker space initiative in Chicago visited NYC Resistor today.  Pumping Station One does not have a home yet, but has begun organizing their paperwork for a 501c3 application.  The project has been going since November, and seems to be off to a terrific start.  We worked with Nicolle to laser cut the P.S. One logo.  We wish these guys all the best.  If you are interested in starting your own hackspace, checkout hackerspaces.org.

Last year I made my nearly annual journey to Cleveland Ohio for one of my personal favorite conferences, Notacon.  Notacon has never been a purely “tech” conference, but instead focuses on the areas where tech meets art and creativity.  As a result it wasn’t long before someone attempted to bring back what is now a lost art for the most part in the United States… The demo scene.  Block party is the demoscene event that occurs at Notacon.  I was literally blown away by several of the entries last year.  Of particular notority was Jeri Ellsworth’s Custom FPGA board.  I am looking forward to going again this year, but I thought I’d post about it for everyone else’s benefit.  You can read more about the events here:

www.demoparty.us

www.notacon.org

So a month ago or so was my older brother’s wedding. I needed to get him a card, but I always felt that the canned card approach to events like weddings especially for direct family members was a bit… too impersonal. So I decided the night before the wedding to put together a card. That attempt failed… largely due to time constraints… Though I did actually pump out the entire 280 LED matrix that night as well as mount the controller chips.

I showed some pictures of the project to my brother on his wedding day and he’s been getting updates when I am in town with time and inclination to finish the card. Today I finally got around to completing the wiring of the card and took some video of a test pattern. Still some bugs left to work out…. but I like the results to date.

Using 2 MAX6952 LED array driver chips from Maxin, and a Boarduino to control the card. Got 500 or so 3mm LEDs from MPJA.com for the array. The back of the array was hand soldered using the LED leds and lead free solder. The faceplate was cut on our laser… and the DXF for it is available on thingaverse (OMFG DOX DROPPED).

Anyways I think DIY greeting cards should be a big part of the coming holiday season… especially with times as they are.

Anyways enjoy the LEDs.