someone who's doing some things
I do like electronics, I’m not sure I understand a lot of it, but I do like it.
I thought I’d take a look at the stuff that was made at this event to see if there was anything of interest. There was, and this was the most interesting of all. As I’m both a littleBits user and a Pebble Time owner this is of especial interest to me. I hope that they do release their app to the Pebble store as I’d really like to tinker with this. However, even if they don’t I’ll be looking at their videos to see what they’ve done and how.
Well my littleBits MIDI bit arrived. I’ve been meaning to get one of these for a while now.
It’s interesting to see these two devices side by side and compare the quite startling differences between them. It isn’t just size, it’s build quality and finish, and, basically, everything!
Quite amazing really. It’s a shame the Romotive seem to have now vanished off the face of the earth.
It’s a real shame. I went last year and the year before, and I was so sorry to find out that this year it wasn’t happening. According to their site it seems they weren’t able to get sponsorship for the event. It makes me sad because when I went last year there were so many people having a great time there. It was packed. All those people won’t get the chance to go again this year. It’s sad.
But there’s the Brighton Mini Maker Faire that’s happening on the 5th, and I’m planning to get along to that for a few hours if I can. It’s not as convenient as the Elephant and Castle, but it’s ok.
I hope that the E&C faire comes back in 2016. It would be a shame for it to stop for good.
I’d sort of forgotten about funding this on Kickstarter until it arrived. I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with it. I did have a couple of ideas, and I’m sure I wrote them down somewhere, so I’ll have to look them out and see what I can do with it.
I’m sure it’ll find a place and I’m sure I’ll have some fun with it too.
I really can’t get over how lovely these little kits from Boldport are. The attention to detail and design are just beautiful. I do think they’re amazing.
I got this after a meeting with Boldport (with whom I was really impressed by the way), and just love the design behind it completely. So I had to share a couple of pictures.
I went to a workshop today on weaving with conductive thread. Not something I’ve done a lot of before, but something I’ve had a previous taste of when I did a workshop of making interactive clothes. However, I’ve never done anything with weaving at all, but it always seemed like a fun thing to try.
So the idea was to weave something small and introduce a couple of conductive thread elements in that could be attached to a microcontroller board like a TouchBoard. In fact, it was a TouchBoard in this instance and that was very straightforward to use as it is nice and easy to connect up.
Well the weaving was ok, in fact easier than I expected although I made a few mistakes. Introducing the conductive thread was simple enough, and as you can see I managed to create a little piece of stuff at the end of it. It worked too. I connected it up to the TouchBoard and it worked a treat. In fact, when I got home I connected it to my Ototo board and that was fine too.
So what’s next? I’m not sure actually. I don’t know quite how I’ll take this forward if at all. There are a few possible applications to it, a few ideas bubbling around, but I need to think about them a bit more first.
Let’s see what happens.
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.
What a lovely thing. I’m so glad that I kickstarted it. I’ve been using it quite a bit recently and it’s great for just making interesting contraptions, and for tinkering, but best of all for having fun.
What else is there?
I am Ashley Elsdon 