Postponing SHDC#4 - vote on a date!

[Simon Ford]

I think it's best to find another date for this one...

Most people ended up not being able to make this, and Rob just had to
cancel too (sounds like a suprise birthday treat! happy birthday
rob!), so it seems best to postpone it and find a date more people can
make.

Dates that currently work for me:

Nov 24th (but not prefered)
Dec 1st
Dec 8th

Get voting!

Simon

[Tim Thornton]

I think the 1st would work best for me - unless there's a surprise birthday treat for me that weekend... :)

 

Happy birthday Rob!

 

[Robert Jason Meerman]

Heh, thanks all :)

I also vote for 1 Dec. Sorry I bailed at the last moment - as you guessed it was sprung on me as a bit of a surprise! :D

[Simon Ford]

Dec 1st is looking good for me too (gf away :o)

Anyone else fancy a SHDC on December 1st?

Simon

[Leif Lindholm]

On 27/10/2007, Simon Ford <simon....@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Dates that currently work for me:
>
> Nov 24th (but not prefered)
> Dec 1st
> Dec 8th
>
> Get voting!

I'm afraid I'll be a few timezones away for the first two dates, so a
late vote for 8/12 from the smurf.

/
Leif

[Simon Ford]

I'm going to go with the 1st December for this one then! (sorry Leif)

Put it in your diary and bring your hacker friends!

[Kieran O'Neill]

How many of us are software hackers versus hardware hackers?

 

Kieran

 

[Tim Thornton]

Aren't we all both? ;)

[Kieran O'Neill]

'Course, only asked because all of the projects I've seen are hardware based. I managed to get out to the SupperHappyDevHouse #19 in San Francisco a few months ago and everybody there was doing software hacking projects. Just curious! :)

 

K

 

[Simon Ford]

I think a mix of mecahnical, design, hardware, software and web
hackers would be great; some awesome things could come out of that!

I assumed softies/web hackers were more accustomed to doing this sort
of stuff (as you saw with SHDH San Fran), hence starting with the
hardware focus to ensure that was not lost. But my idea was a place
for real cross pollinated projects (my current pet project is real
world mashups i.e. mixing the physical and internet worlds ;o)

I tend to play more with hardware/software/web but never really pulled
off any good design or mechanics. So, any good mechanical, robotics or
product designer hackers out there?!

Simon

[Paul Crouch]

I've tended to be more hardware focused, but generally feel you need to be able to do at least a bit of mech, elec and some of that soft stuff to play with the good toys. Web enabled projects seem to be the latest thing but so far I've not got round to (needed to) messing in that area. My current, all-consuming project is a "high brightness LED" bike light designed for off road night riding. This covers electronics (in the driver-controller), software (in the controller) and mechanical (machining and metalworking for lamp body). It's version two, but info on the prototype can be found here: www.outsider.plus.com/bikelights.html, if anyone's interested. I've designed my own driver-controller for this new version, which has a lot more features.

When I get finished with the lights, I want to get back on to my robot. I've made my own air muscles and designed and tested a low cost method of proportionally controlling 4 air lines feeding 2 air muscles (2 fill, 2 vent, on opposing muscle pairs) using just a RC servo (some more info, also on my site).

So it seems that I am a bit of an odd-one-out here. I tend to start with the mech and finish with the s/w. For this reason and the fact I'm always busy, but can never seem to finish anything, is why I am (usually) quiet on this group. Am I alone?

Simon, what does your mash-up project involve?

- Paul C


Simon Ford wrote:

I think a mix of mecahnical, design, hardware, software and web
hackers would be great; some awesome things could come out of that!

I assumed softies/web hackers were more accustomed to doing this sort
of stuff (as you saw with SHDH San Fran), hence starting with the
hardware focus to ensure that was not lost. But my idea was a place
for real cross pollinated projects (my current pet project is real
world mashups i.e. mixing the physical and internet worlds ;o)

I tend to play more with hardware/software/web but never really pulled
off any good design or mechanics. So, any good mechanical, robotics or
product designer hackers out there?!

Simon




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[Robert Jason Meerman]

I never seem to finish my projects either, I always have too many things I want to play with.

Although I'm a software guy by profession I tend to start with the HW side of things because it's the biggest unknown / risk in a project because I don't have any real training or much experience in HW, so it's the area that the most interesting and new. I'm fairly confident I can hack up some software to use the hardware later.

Actually I'm finding that the main obstacle to my current project (a bike sensor array) [1] is working out how to fix all the sensors I want to my bike in a way that is unobtrusive to cycling and easily removable, so I don't have to leave loads of crazy components on my bike when it is parked in town. Being unobtrusive is probably a simple case of deciding where things ought to go, with the problem of how to fix them there. My mechanical / machining abilities are practically limited to tape and blu-tak.

I've heard that fibre-glass is good to work with, and I have a nice butane soldering iron which comes with a knife attachment, so cutting plastics ought to be viable. Any suggestions or anecdotes on this side of things would be very appreciated!

- RobM

[1]: A really over-ambitious bike computer which logs sensor data from any sensor I can get my hands on (ultra-sound for ranging between myself and overtaking cars, so I can count incidents), wind-speed and ground-speed so I can work out how much it really affects my speed. Accelerometer to measure the inclination of my current road. Pedals / back wheel RPM measurements so I can work out what gear I am in and when I start/stop pedalling. Sensing when the brakes are used to remove "pedal-stop" events from the general statistics gather. Probably need a real-time-clock as well so I can see if I am quicker at a specific time of day. And, of course, a colour GUI using a Game Boy Advance. I told you it was over-ambitious.

[Paul Crouch]

Rob,

That's a neat project, seems totally over the top, but it's kinda cool!
I agree with your comment about doing h/w first. I think you could spend a lot of effort doing s/w, only to find you can't get the h/w to play ball.

Paul C


Robert Jason Meerman wrote:

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[charlton]

I vote for Dec 1st - that works for me....

[Simon Ford]

> I vote for Dec 1st - that works for me....

Excellent! Consider it on for then.

Any ideas what you might have planned to be playing with?