Category: Making things

I enjoy making things a lot. I don’t get enough time to do it though. When I do make stuff it takes all sorts of different forms, like electronics, fixing stuff (with Sugru etc), using conductive ink, conductive textiles, and the list goes on.

New Ototo sensors and some thoughts on the board itself

Posted by on in Making things, Sounds, TechLeave a comment

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I really like the Ototo board from Dentaku. It’s fun for trying things out and experimenting with ideas. I’ve just bought three new sensors for it, an additional light sensor, a pressure / force sensor, and a ribbon sensor. They’re all very nicely made and to the same high standard as the ones I already have, and, they’ve already been very useful.

But using the board has made me start to think about other aspects of the board. In the Dentaku faq about Ototo it mentions that they’re looking into a way of changing the sounds on the board itself. I think that this would be very useful indeed, as would being able to map the different sensor inputs on any given sound as well. I think it could be done with a simple app either for the desktop of mobile, but it would make the board a lot more useful.

Finally starting to do something with my TouchBoard

Posted by on in Making things, TechLeave a comment
TouchBoard up and running
TouchBoard battery
Back of the TouchBoard
TouchBoard in packaging

I backed the TouchBoard on kickstarter, but ever since I got it I haven’t either had the time to do anything proper with it, and haven’t had any ideas of projects to start with it either. But the other day I started having a few ideas of things I wanted to try out. So I got the box out and started to investigate what was in there as I hadn’t looked in ages.

It’s a nice kit, and everything works or at least seems to work just fine even though I haven’t touched it in ages. I’ll hopefully get to use it for a couple of projects soon enough.

A little development log of sorts

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So as you know I’m always tinkering about with Palm OS stuff, and usually talking about it on Palmorama too. However, I thought it might be interesting to start off a little development blog of sorts for my latest creation, Seq1. I’ve started it off here as a page on the site, and I’ll be adding to it over the next few weeks and months.

It’s time that littleBits started to play nicely with others …

Posted by on in Making things, RoboticsLeave a comment

IMG_5205

So having carried out a number of experiments using the Romo I’ve decided that a more musical robot is needed, and that will require something more bespoke. So I’ve chosen Mindstorms as a starting place, but of course for the musical side, littleBits is ideal. Connecting the two will now be easy, because of the above.