Hi Future Brunels! See the video below for instructions.

Matt and I will try to print everything that’s uploaded by the end of the month (max 2 per person please!) – make sure that your designs have a flat bottom and don’t overhang too much otherwise they might not come out too well.

Here’s the presentation I used.

Great to meet you, happy making!

This is a project from 2011 that I wanted to get documented – unfortunately there are very few images from the event!!

The festival was ‘Cock and Bull Festival‘ – a fundraiser for Jamie’s Farm, an awesome charity. My friend Alex the Dinosaur Ranger wanted to go as a jellyfish “because I’m graceful, elegant and I hurt everyone around me”!!! And what makes a fancy dress costume awesomer than LEDs?!

Alex found a cheap white dress from Primark and already had a clear plastic umbrella, which we taped a bunch of bubble wrap strips to for tentacles. We put some cheap glowing LED bath balls from Maplin in the brolly too. The dress was the challenge – an RGB LED strip from China was bought via eBay, and we cut it into lengths and re-joined them with wire so it could be spaced evenly around the dress, which acted as a not-too-bad diffuser. The sewing took ages! The controller came with a 12V supply, but seemed to tolerate a 9V battery rather well.

The absolute best thing about the costume was that the LED controller came with a little remote control – so Alex’s friends could walk around after her and change her colour and pattern!

The strips were definitely on the budget end and were not designed to be flexed, so we had a few fatigue-related connection issues later in the night, but for the price it was a great outfit! Alex was the highlight of the parade and really shone in the late-night afterparty. If I was going to do it again with a bigger budget then some conductive thread and sewable RGB LEDs would make it perfect.

pic via @JasonBradbury

She’s a pretty special person – a Dino Ranger at Bristol Zoo! Not sure there’s anyone else in the world with her job title and skill set… palaeontology, science, teaching, presenting… look her up!

I was inspired by record clocks on etsy, but there was nothing that was just right for her, and they were expensive! DIY-making to the rescue! In the past I’ve ordered stuff cut at online services, but now I’m lucky enough to have access to a laser cutter at work! This is my first self-cut laser project, and the tutorials at Adafruit gave me some confidence to get started – but what to make?

I had an image of my friend running her first tour at the zoo, next to their giant t-rex animatronic dino! Tracing her and the beast in Inkscape gave me a vector file for the cut:

A swift trip to the market found me a couple of records for not much money. I was really upset that T-Rex – the band – just used a generic studio label for their records, but Van der Graaf Generator was an appropriately geeky second choice. The laser cutter needed a bit of fine tuning to get the power and speed right, hence the second record.

Finally, a quartz movement finished it off – the spindle hole on the record was already the perfect size! I’m really happy with the finished product, which cost a grand total of 2 records, a cheap clock mechanism, and a packet of biscuits for the technicians at work (plus a bit of time learning and tracing!). She loved it and it now has pride of place on her wall.

Came across this just now and thought it needed sharing.

Inventor Saul Griffith asks whether engineers fully realize how big their influence on the world can be. He challenges all engineers, designers and makers to stretch their notions of what is possible, and to tackle environmental challenges with rigor and ingenuity. He encourages us all to treat everything in life as a little engineering problem: to keep moving, thinking, and dreaming up big ideas.

via Adafruit

To-Do

Your task is to make something that does something. We’re providing some structure and suggestions below, but feel free to go completely off-track if the feeling takes you. We’ll be here to support – just ask!

We’re providing some electronics and materials for you to use. Here’s some guidelines to help you get started.

If you’re not attending the workshop, you can still follow these instructions. Great Arduino starter kits are available from Proto-Pic (who are providing kits for the workshop) and Oomlout (who make the great instructions I’ve linked to below).

Arduino

The Arduino is “an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software…intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments”. Basically, it is a piece of electronics, and an associated programming environment, that helps you to make things do things. Anything from a pretty blinky light (or a hundred of them), to an automated chicken coop door, to a bot that blows bubbles when it hears its name on Twitter.

There have been ways to make things do complex things for a long time, but recent developments, such as Arduino, have lowered the barrier to entry – no longer do you need custom electronics and programming devices, or detailed knowledge of tricky circuit concepts.

Part of this workshop will introduce you to the Arduino and how to make it do stuff. The tasks below will help you program your Arduino – we have printed breadboard layout sheets for you to use, ask if you can’t find them!

Task 1: Blinky

Blink an LED – an easy starter to show you how things work and make sure you’re set up ok. The LED is an example of an output - your Arduino can influence its surroundings in a variety of ways.

• Task 1 instructions
• Extension – can you make it blink a different pattern?

Task 2: Button

You can use inputs as well – your Arduino can react to its surroundings. A button is a digital input – it’s either on or off.

• Task 2 instructions
• Extension – use some of the code from task 1 to make the LED blink when the button is pressed.

Task 3: Servo

You can use physical outputs as well – a servo is an example of an actuator – it makes something happen.

• Task 3 instructions
• Extension – make it go faster/slower/further/less far?

Task 4: Photoresistor

Some inputs are a little more complicated than a digital button. A photoresistor allows electricity to pass more easily when light shines on it. It’s an analog sensor, with a continuous range of resistance – sensing this with the Arduino  is a little more involved.

• Task 4 instructions
• Extension – make the LED do the opposite – get brighter when the photoresistor gets darker.

Task 5: Your turn

So you’ve had a go at following instructions – you can go a long way with that, but real creativity comes when you begin to remix ideas. You can use code and circuits from the above examples to do a great number of things – try pasting different parts from different tasks and seeing what you can come up with.

• Task 5 – there are no instructions!
• Ok, here’s an idea if you want a push along the way… how about making a servo move when a shadow passes across a photoresistor? What’s the purpose? You tell us… maybe you could attach something to the servo, make it hide or peek out.
• Short cut: here’s some example code to do just that.

Some other links – Arduino ideas!

• Arduino Learning – these are all included with the Arduino software – click on File…Examples…
• Sylvia’s Simple Arduino Projects
• Oomlouts full list of tutorials

Good luck!

Photo: The Arduino! by Mahela Munasinghe

This site is intended to be a collection for and of things I make and do. Part portfolio, part instruction manual, I’m going to document projects that I work on and ideas that I have, aiming to give enough info that other people can recreate, take inspiration from, and generally hack about.

Maybe it’ll go somewhere.

Photo: ’Robots only eat old people‘ by Mark Strozier.