Dublin Mini Maker Faire 2012

This is a quick update to let you all know we are switching our blogging activity to Youtube from now on.  Blogger is great for activities in which a strong text-based narrative is important for putting your story across but everything we do is video-clip based.   The uploader app on my smartphone is a bit clunky as well which is a bit infuriating and worse still it strips out the text I upload when updating the Youtube channel meaning that our Youtube channel has no sensible text description for each clip.  I am going to slowly over the next few months write description text for all the old videos.  I am hoping this will be a fun reflective exercise in which we can look back and remind ourselves of some of the fun design'n'makes.  Our youtube channel is here
http://www.youtube.com/user/NUIMMakersClub
Please subscribe to it.  The first video I have uploaded directly is the Dublin Mini Maker Faire launch with the SG, TOG and Irish Robotics Club.

So progress on sonification of EEG continues. Damien has created some useful pieces of code that can now produce some artificially generated musical arrangements. This is really nice do far.

Tomas

Damien has found a processing based program for activating music from brain waves. And we wanted to write our own :(
We will have to think of something even more 'out there'.

Tomas

Producing audio with the Arduino

Aodhan and Rory demonstrate sound with Arduino with a view to building a physical computing based drum synth. It's easier than guitar! Step one was just getting the Arduino to make some rich sounds. So far so good.

Tomas

EEG over TCP. Cool!

Tomas

Conors intern projects

In the maker lab this week we found Conor - a transition year student who has been doing fabulous work for John Malocco . Nothing to do with the Makers club but had to put it on the blog as he did such a great job of programming autonomous Lego mindstorms robots to track a ball for robo soccer purposes.

Tomas

Sarahs minecraft idea for Maker Faire

Sarah shows us her great idea for conveying the story of the Dublin Maker Faire through the wonderful medium of Minecraft. We re at the back of the envelope stage still but it should be fantastic if she builds it.

Tomas

PCB ready for the tank

So we can see the photoresist removed and the tracks clearly now so it's time to etch.

Tomas

More PCB development

Developing the PCB so it's ready to etch.

Tomas

Building a guitar compressor pedal - PCB

Jon is building an Orange Squeezer compressor pedal. It's based on the Dan Armstrong design. Here we begin the PCB etch process.

Tomas

PCBs

I forgot to video anything last week as I spent the last hour watching Joe's PCB etch at its leisurely pace in the tank. It was an exciting week as we learned that we received grant support from the Dublin - European City of Science 2012 committee towards organising the first ever Dublin Maker Faire with the great people at the Science Gallery (Ian, Alison) and David McKeown. We now have to get busy building an exhibit good enough to make the day itself.

Study week this week so a quiet time. After a while wrestling with third party libraries Anthea hacks together a basic theremin using the Kinect. This is a great start integrating it with Processing as we now can add in all sorts of combinations.

Tomas

John built at home a really nice distortion pedal. Nice finish. Great sound.

Tomas

Arduino beginnings

Mark and Danny - music tech students have just joined the club. They are building new spatial audio controllers starting with the Arduino.

Tomas

First meeting of the new term

Thanks everyone for turning up today. We had a great turnout and more to turn up next week when the real hacking begins! Remember to send me your emails!

Tomas

Welcome back!

Hi everyone,

We will be launching the NUIM Makers Club for the new academic year on the 14th October 2011. The venue is room 2.07 in the Engineering Building. This year's theme will be music and we will devote energy and effort into the development of new forms of musical creation, synthesis and performance. I am hoping that we can put on a live musical performance using our creations towards the end of the academic year. It should be a lot of fun. Come to Room 2.07 on the 14th October to learn more and enjoy a slice of pizza or two.

Cheap and affordable eye tracker

Julien and Jean Alain put together this fun eye tracker based on the eye writer project. It uses a wireless Sony ps3 camera some nir LEDs and some free software. It works really well. Well done guys.

Tomas

Arcade machine launch

It's end of term and the last exam was today so we had our get together with students and staff. It was the perfect opportunity to launch the arcade. As you can see it went down very well. This is the end of regular makers club until next term. I think we ended on a high and a really fun make.

Tomas

Cabinet closeup

It's all in the finishing touches - arcade machine close up. Darren found a great graphic online which we will acknowledge once we get the creators name.

Tomas

Mame Cabinet in situ at Students Union

Aodhan, Darren and Kevin playing street fighter on their complete Mame build. It looks great. Details coming up in the next clip.

Tomas