With tools like a laser cutter, 3-D printers, soldering stations, and a large woodworking shop, one of its members described it as a YMCA for geeks.
The Hack Factory is what's known as a "maker space." Operated by Twin Cities (TC) Maker, the Hack Factory is a community-shared workspace that offers a cornucopia of tools and machinery for members like Harrison to take their do-it-yourself urges to the extreme.
TC Maker is one of two such operations in the metro area. The Mill, in northeast Minneapolis, opened early this year.
"Mouth Factory" is a series of functional machines specifically designed to be operated by the mouth of the user, Which includes Chewing drill, teeth lathe, tongue extruder, mouth breath rotational molding and vacuum form machines.
I found a frosted glass globe replacement thing for a wall sconce or lamp or something. It looked cool, wasn’t too large, and screamed to have a bunch of LEDs stuffed inside it. I was at Home Depot for something else, of course, but I bought the globe, anyway.
In labs people have been experimenting with computer vision for a long time, like being able to track a body. We can go back almost 20 years and find examples of that at the MIT video lab, designing interfaces that track someone's arm or hand. It's really only with the release of the Sony iToy where that became something that was more public. And now with the Kinect, it's become massively public. So that's an example of the technology changing.
Bilibot, from the German word 'billig', or cheap, is a sophisticated robotics platform at an affordable price. A Bilibot consists of:
* a powerful computer
* an iRobot create
* a Kinect sensor
* mounting hardware to put it all together
* the ROS Robotic Operating system, with research contributions from roboticists all over the world!
I’d like to make a piano which spews light, cleverly, depending on what keys are pressed. It should be fairly seamless and not overt, so the workings need to hide inside, but the basic premise is:
Someone plays the keys -> Some magic processing happens -> The music is interpreted, tastefully, in light form and slips out from above the keybed, over the top of the piano and beyond.
Chu Moy designed a very popular headphone amplifier that’s easy to build, and it can be built small enough to fit in a pocket, power supply and all. It’s powerful enough to drive very inefficient headphones to thunderous volumes from even weak sources, and it sounds excellent considering that you can build a bare-bones CMoy amp for just US$20, and a pretty nice amp for under $50. Considering that the cheapest of the worthy commercial amps is $100 and most of them are in the $200+ range, this is a very worthwhile cost difference.
why is the Leonardo different? Because it uses the ATmega32u4. This processor has built in USB communication which eliminates the need for a secondary USB to serial converter. The ATmega32u4 creates a virtual (CDC) COM port on your computer every time it runs its bootloader. Since it’s virtual, it can also behave like an HID (Human Interface Device) meaning the Leonardo can “act” like a keyboard or mouse, opening it up to a whole new range of projects. This processor also has additional I/O capabilities, allowing pins 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, and 12 to be used as analog inputs (12 total vs.
Twine is the simplest possible way to get the objects in your life texting, tweeting or emailing. A durable 2.5" square provides WiFi connectivity, internal and external sensors, and two AAA batteries that keep it running for months. A simple web app allows to you quickly set up your Twine with human-friendly rules — no programming needed. And if you're more adventurous, you can connect your own sensors and use HTTP to have Twine send data to your own app.
