Mitch Altman, well known for making TV-B-Gone (a keychain that turns off TVs in public places), and also the co-founder of Noisebridge, a really cool San Francisco hackerspace, is coming to Southampton to teach you How To Make Cool Things with Microcontrollers! In Mitch’s words:

You do not need any tools, or any experience to come to the workshop.

The workshop is free (including our time) — we do this because we love teaching people to make things.  We ask to be reimbursed for any parts you use from us.  Cost of the parts is between £5 and £20, depending on the project. It is totally fine to bring your own parts and projects for the workshop.

Here is a list of projects that I’ll be bringing; I’ve included the prices for the parts:

Mignonette Game kit @ £20 each
– a way fun, way low-resolution hand-held computer console that you can use to create your own games

Trippy RGB Waves kit @ £5 each
– waves of colors follow your hand as you wave it over these

TV-B-Gone kit @ £15 each
– turn off TVs in public places from up to 50 meter away!

USBtinyISP kit @ £15 each
– a programmer for AVR microcontrollers

MiniPOV3 kit @ £15 each
– display messages of your choice through the air you wave this through

Brain Machine @ £15 each
– hallucinate beautiful colors and patterns while you drift off into fabulous meditation

MintyBoost kit @ £15 each
– with 2 AA batteries you can charge anything with a USB charging input (such as an iPhone)

Drawdio @£15 each
– fun and annoying noiseamaker that changes noise as you draw on paper

LEDcube @ £15 each
– 3×3x3 cube of LEDs with animated sequence

DC BoArduino kit @ £15 each
– Arduino clone kit

FTDI cable @ £15 each
– this is not a kit — it is required to communicate with the BoArduino (and many other open-source projects)

TripGlasses @ £25 each
– this is not a kit — it is a ready-made version of the Brain Machine (hallucinate beautiful colors and patterns while meditating!)

EU TV-B-Gone @ £15 each
– this is not a kit — it is the ready-made keychain to turn off TVs in public places (with a stealthy batman-like look)

NA TV-B-Gone Pro SHP @ £30 each
– this is not a kit — it is a ready-made version, the size of an mp3 player, that turns off TVs in public from up to 150 meter away!  One model for the entire world!  Comes with built-in rechargeable batteries and a charger

Info on most of the above is available on my website: http://www.CornfieldElectronics.com “maker faire” tab

Jimmie will be bringing Open Heart kits, LOL Shield kits, Atari Punk Console kits, and some cool circuit bending stuff. Jimmie’s website gives more info on his projects that he’ll be bringing: http://jimmieprodgers.com/

More details can be found on the groups – please let us know if you intend to attend.

This is the beginning of a post from about:benjie. If you’ve written a blog post you think would be useful to SoutHACKton members, please get in touch!

I’m working on a new project, I’ve got a 8×8 dual colour dot matrix display (£2.50 delivered from Earthshine Design) and I want to power it from the Arduino. One way of making a chip like that (which has 2×8×8 = 128 LEDs) would be to have a common ground and an additional 128 pins – one for each LED. This, I think you’d agree, would be a nightmare, so instead they’ve basically gone for an 8×16 grid for a total of 24 pins. This raises two main problems:

1. You can’t turn 2 arbitrary LEDs on at the same time unless they are on the same row/column. (Doing so would actually draw a square of LEDs.)
2. My Arduino doesn’t have enough digital input/output pins

Point 1 is easily solved – we simply update just one row at a time, letting Persistance Of Vision (POV) do the hard work for us. Point 2 is the subject of this post – multiplexing, combining multiple individual signals into just one signal. I will not be using this dot matrix display in this post, instead I will simply be powering normal LEDs. I wanted to find out if the Arduino is fast enough to multiplex the data through just a few pins in order to power this display. The answer (one of my favourite answers!) is: “Yes, but not without some hacking.” Read on…

Read the rest of this entry on about:benjie »

Sunday 4th October 2009, 10:30am-6:30pm, Steamshift HQ

As the Arduino meeting was such a success, we’ve already booked our next meetup – a Hack Day – again kindly hosted by Steamshift at their HQ in Eastleigh.

What is a Hack Day?

It’s a day where everyone brings along their current projects (if any) and can work on them in the presence of other like-minded individuals. Just starting out with Arduino? Putting the finishing touches on your latest life-size robot? Planning to build a water jet-pack? Hacking electronics into clothing? Hacking together the components necessary to make a new GNU/Linux distro or media centre software? Join us!

What if I don’t have a current project?

Come along anyway – help with someone else’s! Skilled or unskilled, knowledgeable or not-so-knowledgeable, all are welcome!

Why is it so long?

The idea is that people can turn up when they want for however long they want – pop in for just a couple of hours or come for the whole day – it’s completely up to you! We anticipate that the busiest time will be 12:30 until 4:30.

Why so early? (Also: what about lunch?)

We thought it would be nice to have lunch together (at around 1pm, though the timing is up to the individual) – some of us will probably order pizza, others may bring lunch with them. However, we didn’t want to cut into two meal times so we’ve aimed for “after breakfast and before dinner.” Everyone is responsible for bringing/ordering their own food and drink.

Where do I sign up?

This will be another free (no cost) day, all you need to do is turn up. We like to know how many people are coming though, so please join the Google Group and drop a short message in this thread.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

This event is kindly hosted by Steamshift.

Steamshift develops creative solutions to technical challenges primarily in the fields of web application development, flash AS3 programming and linux hosting. They work closely with their design and branding partners to deliver an end-to-end solution.

At 2pm Saturday 29th of August, on an otherwise uneventful bank holiday weekend, a varied group of men and women met at Steamshift HQ. Their purpose – to get down to business and HACK! Some arrived with projects in mind – disco lights, energy usage monitoring, laser mazes – while others turned up with little equipment but an eagerness to get their hands dirty. At the full height of the meet, there were around twenty people there, playing around with Arduino and PIXACE boards.

The meet was organised and hosted by Andy Bennett and Steamshift as part of SoutHACKton – a group of like-minded Solent residents who all want to kick back, take stuff apart and build new things out of the resulting mess.

And that they did – sometimes clusterd in small groups, working away on personal projects, sometimes coming together in larger groups to admire a piece of someone else’s handy work. Projects that drew particular attention were Ruzz’s walking robots (a hit at our last meet too), Andy T’s LEDs (Did I mention he has 4,000 LEDs?) and my own project: Lou Lou the Furby. I hope to hook Lou Lou up to the PC and tell me when I get new email. Maybe she’ll get her own twitter account one day. For now, she’ll just have to be happy playing sounds from my eeePC through an Arduino.

Our next meeting, Hack Day 1, is on 4th October. Click here for details.

This event was kindly hosted by Steamshift.

Steamshift develops creative solutions to technical challenges primarily in the fields of web application development, flash AS3 programming and linux hosting. They work closely with their design and branding partners to deliver an end-to-end solution.

Saturday 29th August 2009, 2pm, Steamshift HQ

Steamshift have kindly offered to host our next meeting which is targetted at introducing us to the Arduino and similar development boards.

No prior knowledge is necessary, but if you already have an Arduino/Freeduino/PICAXE/etc board, please feel free to bring it along, and if you like you can even teach the rest of us about it. Andy from Steamshift will be bringing a number with him, and there are a number of people on the groups who will be bringing theirs too.

I don’t feel knowledgeable enough to tell you much about Arduino, so instead, I suggest you go to Wikipedia, or the Arduino website:

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.

Arduino can sense the environment by receiving input from a variety of sensors and can affect its surroundings by controlling lights, motors, and other actuators. The microcontroller on the board is programmed using the Arduino programming language (based on Wiring) and the Arduino development environment (based on Processing). Arduino projects can be stand-alone or they can communicate with software on running on a computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, MaxMSP).

The boards can be built by hand or purchased preassembled; the software can be downloaded for free. The hardware reference designs (CAD files) are available under an open-source license, you are free to adapt them to your needs.

Arduino received an Honory Mention in the Digital Communities section of the 2006 Ars Electronica Prix.

Please, if you have any friends who you think might be interested, spread the word! Arduino is a very flexible platform and can be used for hardware hacking, home automation, robotics, and millions of other things.

Bring as much of the following as you can (all are totally OPTIONAL):

• Laptop with a free USB port
• Arduino/Freeduino/PICAXE/etc boards (I suggest marking them in some way so they don’t get mixed up!)
• Components: breadboards, LEDs, resistors, capacitors, Arduino shields, light dependant resistors, proximity sensors, speakers, buzzers, switches, …
• Cash (in case a quick trip to Maplin might be required, or in case you want to buy an Arduino board/some components off of someone else)
• Camera/camcorder to document the day!

If you can make it, please let us know in the group or by commenting on this post so we know how many people to expect.

My thanks go out again to the guys at Steamshift, especially Andy, for making this next meetup possible:

Sunday 28th June, 3pm

I’ll be hosting the event at my flat, the address is on this page (members only – it only takes a moment to become a member).

If you’re coming, please comment on this post/post a message to groups/email me so I know how many people to expect.

ABSOLUTELY NO KNOWLEDGE REQUIRED. Fun for all the family!

Come and make some noise and eat some pizza with us! Just go down to your local charity shop/poundland/etc and buy some very cheap noise producing electronics (such as press and talk/ speak and spell/ my first electric keyboard/etc) and bring them along. Your task will be to expose the electronics and see what noises you can make by shorting connectors with your wet finger. “Lick it and see!” The coolest noises/tunes from the cheapest electronics win. Strictly battery powered devices only. (I’d recommend buying a few devices as some will be more hackable than others.)

Looking forward to seeing you!

ABSOLUTELY NO KNOWLEDGE REQUIRED. Fun for all the family!

Come and make some noise and eat some pizza with us! Just go down to your local charity shop/poundland/etc and buy some very cheap noise producing electronics (such as press and talk/ speak and spell/ my first electric keyboard/etc) and bring them along. Your task will be to expose the electronics and see what noises you can make by shorting connectors with your wet finger. “Lick it and see!” The coolest noises/tunes from the cheapest electronics win. Strictly battery powered devices only.

When are you free during 28th June – 7th July? Please fill out your availability on Doodle – its very simple and no registration required. (Just enter your name and tick the boxes.)

http://doodle.com/33wnk67nmzz9×8ds

Please enter your availability as soon as you can and tell your friends!

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• Documentary about hardware hackers (boingboing.net)
• Flashback: Circuit Bending (makezine.com)

Do you enjoy tinkering with software or hardware?

Got a cool project you want help with, or want to help with some cool projects?

Live in or around Southampton?

Join us for our first meetup at 5pm on 13th June at The Crown Inn, Southampton!

We’re trying to start a regular meeting of people who enjoy creating or modifying software and/or hardware and want to meet other like-minded people. Experience is unnecessary – interest is all we require! Topics that we’re already interested in include: home automation/augmentation, robotics, circuit bends, programming, computer interfaces, wiimote hacking, Arduino, gadgets, mobile computing, PVR creation/improvement, programming, augmented reality, … so if you’re interested in any of these topics, or have another interest you want to share, why not join us?

SoutHACKton

Visit this group

If your interested in SoutHACKton, introduce yourself on our google group:

http://groups.google.com/group/southackton/

Wouldn’t it be great to have a “Hackerspace” in Southampton? A space hobbyists can go to do software programming and hardware hacking. The attendees could all share knowledge and help each other out in a fun and innovative environment.

The ultimate goal would be having an “office” somewhere in Southampton where members can drop in any time (within reason) and get to work on their project/just hang out with fellow hackers. (If you work from home you could potentially even work form the Hackerspace directly – it wouldn’t be so lonely!) This, however, is likely to take a while to set up as we need to get a number of interested people, not to mention the office space!

In the mean time, we’re looking at setting up a regular meeting of like minded people. If you’re interested in attending or helping us (sponsorship, coverage, office space, …), please get in contact. [UPDATE: You can now do so via our google group.]

There is no required skill level – whether you are a beginner, an expert or anywhere in between you are welcome to attend!

If you’re interested – get in contact!