Mark and Wendy of CRASH Space and FlipBooKit have put together a truly unique exhibition called Kinetic Show: LA at ARENA 1 Gallery in Santa Monica, featuring a ton of tech and kinetic art. This is well worth checking out! What’s more, both of my Hexachords are on display to see, hear, and play. The Arduino-powered Hexachord has some shiny new code under the hood. Tonight is the opening, and it’ll be running through October 6th, so make sure you get out to see all of the fun!
Hard deadlines are good in many ways. I’ve been involved enough with this project to spend all my “free time” on it, but when I set the deadline to have a working version done by Maker Faire, it really lit a fire under me. Regular Crashspace meetings to show my progress kept me accountable, lots of checklists kept me on task, and limited time available to use the woodworking tools made me organize very efficiently.
It is endlessly frustrating to find that you have a couple hours free at home and the tool you need is at the hacker space and unavailable. So I scheduled my home work time as prep for working at Crashspace. Need to cut something at the space? Spend time at home calculating, measuring, and marking so that you can jump right into it when you get those couple hours at the band saw. Want to use the drill press? Leave it for the end of your time at the space, so if you need to leave early, you can still use a hand drill at home. Cut all necessary pieces for the hinges quickly, and then assemble them later.
And make sure to set aside a little time to socialize.
I designed my Hexachord to have removable parts. The hinges are bolted on, so a sound chamber can be easily replaced or removed for transport. The face with the motor and pick arm is held securely with removable pegs, so that I can change the face to one that has multiple pick arms for playing more than one sound chamber at once.
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The motor was salvaged from a video cassette rewinder. It came with a convenient belt and wheel, to which I attached the plectrum arm base – a hand-cut wooden gear I’d made a couple months before and was dying to use. My original thought was to drill into the gear at an angle and secure the arm into that, but it wound up being more feasible to build a structure from bamboo sticks that would support the position of the arm. For one thing, it was easier to adjust, and for another, I just plain like building with bamboo skewers.
The knobs were stained to match their associated sound chambers, and all were placed on the same side so that the Hexachord could be played by one person standing in the same place. Each converted their rotary motion to the yoke mechanisms placed behind each sound chamber.
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I unveiled the completed Hexachord at Maker Faire as planned, it was well-received, and I got to drive home with the lovely view of an Editor’s Choice ribbon hanging from my rear view mirror.
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Here are the promised videos: one of my interview at Maker Faire, and one of the finished Hexachord in a quieter environment!
Thanks to the wonderful folks at MakerEd, I got to be involved with the Intel Experience Popup Store this holiday season. I was one of three “Tech Disruptors” at the Venice store (think Makers-in-Residence), who took apart old electronics and built new inventions from the parts. We came up with some fun gadgets on our own and in collaboration with people who came into the store, especially kids. There’s a special joy when children who have never seen the inside of a computer or car stereo crack into one for the first time, and it’s great to witness shy kids come out of their shells. It’s so hammered into us that you Do Not mess with technology, you Do Not void the warranty, that breaking the taboo is wildly freeing. Even the most rule-abiding is willing to join in when exclaim gleefully, “I want to see what’s inside, so I’m going to take this printer down to nothing. Want to help?” We’re curious by nature, it’s how we learn, so why on earth should we keep kids from it?
One great thing from this experience was getting to know my fellow Tech Disruptors Carlyn Maw and Jen Fox. The store’s run has ended, but we’re just getting started working together. (Last Friday I introduced Jen to the fun that is shrink plastic, and she did little else the rest of the night.)
In any case, here are some of the things we came up with:
– Circuit Board Christmas Tree. Made from some of the many circuit boards we had on hand. The dremel and I became very close during this process, we’re now BFFs. It’s created from six half tree shapes, strung together with some old wires. The colorful component ornaments were largely the work of guests and other employees at the Intel store, who all got very involved with our projects. As a final touch, I charlieplexed some LEDs and plugged the whole thing into an Arduino. A proximity sensor made the lights blink more quickly when you got up close. I’m pretty proud of our result.
– Hard Drive Bird. It occurred to me that the actuator arm of a hard drive looks a bit like a bird’s head, so I carved up some wings/feathers from multiple colored circuit boards, and added a wire foot and peacock feather that I had lying around. I swapped out the hard drive’s motor for a different stepper motor, and rigged up a belt made from gaff tape that transfers Arduino commands from the stepper to make the bird’s head twitch. See the video!
– Gear Noisemaker. This is something that evolved over the course of my time there (and is still evolving in a current project, which I’ll get into in another post). It started out simple – a VCR motor and a cardboard gear, but quickly accumulated colorful electronic components for the gear’s face, and a plastic knife that would spin and hit whatever items we surrounded the gear with. Among the noise items: parts from a 3.5″ floppy disk, a broken cd, random metal machine bits, copper wire strings, and old wind chimes. By the end, I’d mounted the whole thing to a PVC frame, some guests added more strikers to the gear, and we incorporated it into the big Cause & Effect Machine.
- Cause & Effect Machines. Each of the Tech Disruptors was challenged to come up with and put on an event. Rube Goldberg machines are so much fun, I thought it would be an interesting challenge to try to create one. I built a seven-foot PVC pipe frame for us to build on and went nuts at dollar stores, and off we went. The first day doing this project saw the creation of a dog waterer, and when we brought the activity out for our final showcase, Jen and I made a chain reaction that used a wooden skewer marble run, a lever triggered by jenga blocks, and two big metal enclosures attached to alligator cords that closed a circuit and started my noisemaker running. Watch the videos!
Check out the full photo set on my flickr. Carlyn made very detailed posts from her time at the store, and she has a lot on her flickr stream as well.
I am a big fan of ginger beer. You can keep your timid ginger ale, I like drinks that kick back. An Aussie friend of mine brought me this really strong ginger concentrate that’s not available in the states (twice, bless her), and ever since I’ve been on the hunt for a good, truly strong brew.
It’s remarkably difficult to find something good, and even harder to find something to my taste without high-fructose corn syrup, so I decided to try my hand at making some. Goodness gracious, the whole place smelled strongly of it, though I suppose that’s to be expected when you start with this and soak it in an open container for a day:
I’ve finished my first batch, and it’s… interesting. Needs a little work and a little more sugar, and it seems to work best when cut with sparkling water. I’m perfectly fine making it extra strong and using it as a concentrate. But one of the best parts was listening to the yeast at work in an open container. So enjoy the recording below, and if I manage to make ginger beer that’s worth presenting to the public, I’ll let you give it a try.
Ginger beer brewing (0:24)
