Our Hackathon started strong at 5pm with a load of rice krispy treats cookies and pizza. It was a great success with people working on a range of projects. reprap repair, wireless mesh networking, life streaming apps, powerbolt board design, giraffe creation with a laser cutter, prop design, 555 based dice, some custom board design. We are looking forward to our next meet up on February 25th. Bring your ideas and projects.
A few of us drove down to Talladega, AL on Saturday January 14, 2012 to put the Safety Orange rocket through some flight tests at the model rocket launch event. Dmitriy’s flight computer altimeter worked great. It was able to pop the parachute at the perfect altitude so that it almost landed directly on the launch pad it took off from. It was very windy that day and even blew some of the tables over where people were preparing their rockets for flight. You can hear by the videos we took just how much wind there was for the rockets to deal with. There wasn’t a single cloud that day from what I remember so it made it easier to see as soon as the rockets would open their parachutes and watch it glide to the ground. I recommend going to any of these rocket launch events to anyone especially if you already have a similar hobby like RC airplanes.
Video 1 (someone’s egg-nosed rocket): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLCeSg5HIjg
Video 2 (Dmitriy’s Safety Orange flight 1): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpgSovuLzow
Pictures: https://plus.google.com/photos/116575142518321294189/albums/5697765429049993249
For Tim’s birthday we gave him a chocolate chip cookie cake. They thought Jennifer was crazy when she asked for a blank cookie cake with no icing on it. Instead of using icing to write the standard “Happy Birthday” message we used a LASER CUTTER to etch a complicated graphical image on the cookie. We were surprised at how high the resolution could show on something edible. We will post the specifics on our wiki page later on the exact settings and details for the laser so anyone can do this too.
Go here for the full album including video of the laser doing it’s work on the cookie!
https://plus.google.com/photos/116575142518321294189/albums/5686573042061102209
Show & Tell was last night and although it was overshadowed by our looting of another small shop in town, it went well. Brimstone showed off the 96×96 pixel display we just acquired. Justin and he had it displaying text within days of getting it. There are big plans for this display so stay tuned for that.
Thanks to those who came out. We will be doing it again in a couple weeks. So keep hacking and get prepared for the next Show & Tell.
Thanks
Nathan
I got a dockstar about a year ago because it seemed like an interesting device. It was designed to be a simple NAS for personal use, backups, media files, etc. It was mainly interesting because it ran a stripped down version of Linux as it’s stock OS and with a few commands, you could change out that version of Linux with one of your own. A few months back I learned about the Piratebox Project. I looked around and noticed that I had most of the parts to make one of my own already. I found a 3×5 card box at Walmart for the first design, but when I found a book box featuring a pirate ship on the cover, I knew I had to finish this project. I ordered a battery off Amazon along with the tiniest switch you’ve ever seen and I had all of the parts. A few minutes, some Velcro and double stick tape at the shop and I had assembled a battery completely wireless filesharing device. If you happen to have a cat5 cable, it could serve everything over that too. Details after the break.
