DorkbotPDX people doing strange things with electricity

Straightforward ATmega328 Peripheral Controller Board via Laen's combined PCB order. Arduino-ish, though 20MHz. Isolated power supplies for logic and servo/peripheral outputs. No SMD, but then, this is my first.

Eagle CAD schematic and board GPL'd and GitHub'd.

Not likely to appear at the Portland meet-ups, I'm afraid: bit of a drive from the Midwest.

Tonight I...

• ...rode a bicycle across two bridges.
• ...was approached by a man and a woman (both strangers) and was told "we wish to join the cult".
• ...witnessed a man tapping a plastic pad connected to a tangle of circuits and wires and causing a drum sound to be played.
• ...saw a pair of multicolor robot eyeballs glowing on a tabletop
• ...witnessed a middle-aged man covered in a mass of glowing LEDs and EL wire.
• ...listened to the sound of a cello convolved with the impulse response from a wooden door.
• ...helped a woman field test a subversive, covert anti-television teddy bear implant prototype.
• ...watched a slot car adjust its speed in response to a computer's system load average.
• ...was in good company.

Dorkbot. <3

A simple peak holder circuit, for interfacing piezoelectric transducers to AVR analog inputs. (thanks to Laen's PCB group order!)

The analog circuit amplifies the signal (gain of 2), and the output capacitor holds it. The AVR should discharge the cap after reading a peak, by momentarily turning the pin to digital output.

Since there's a lot of interest within DorkbotPDX in laser cutters, I wanted to pass this along. Although this is far from a cheap, easy project, you might find it inspiring. http://www.instructables.com/id/CO2-laser-that-cuts-sheet-metal/

Who will be the first Dorkie to build an actual laser cutter??

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to create images, animations, and interactions. During this workshop we will explore this environment and make some fun graphics! This workshop is aimed at people with little to no programming experience who want a playground to explore programming and graphics and for experienced programmers that just want an overview of what processing offers.

For those of you who expressed interest in my home-made ZigBee radios, I've now posted all the project details (parts lists, board design, SW , etc.) on the AVR Freaks site in the Projects area. You have to sign up to access it, but you know you should anyway. Great for all things AVR.

Here's the link: http://www.avrfreaks.net/index.php?module=Freaks%20Academy&func=viewItem&item_id=2812&item_type=project

Enjoy!

When: Friday, November 12th, 2010, 6:30pm to 9pm.
Where: bRainSilo Hackerspace, 611 N. Tillamook, Portland, OR 97227
What: A night of wearable electronics and eTextiles

Come meet up for a discussion of eTextiles and wearable electronics with Lynne Bruning (http://www.lbruning.com), coordinator of the Maker Faire eTextile fashion shows. Lynne will have some stuff to show off. If you have something, feel free to bring it!

http://www.instructables.com/member/Lynne+Bruning/
http://www.talk2myshirt.com/blog/archives/1387

Here's my latest PCB design. It's a breadboard-mount DC/DC converter. I run many of my projects off a big 12V battery because 1) I have one; 2) it holds a lot of energy; 3) it can put out a huge amount of current if I ask it to (this can also be bad -- I've smoked several devices when they weren't hooked up quite right and the battery did its thing.)

In their new book, Domain Specific Languages, Martin Fowler and Rebecca Parsons demystify the creation of small languages by decomposing the practice into four-dozen carefully-named essays (patterns) offering solutions to every problem one might encounter. What would they call Txtzyme? They'd call it Delimiter-Directed Translation with Embedded Interpretation.