First Friday Booth - March: Ideas?

[Bill Tomiyasu]

Yes, the Ideas of March... ;)

SYN Shop has booth space at First Friday downtown into the foreseeable future and we want to get more of our community involved in participating.  Up until now, most of what we've been showing at the booth is from our original founders and a few guests who have shown interest and have cool projects to show off.  

Since we've opened up our downtown space, the focus has been on getting up and running.  First Friday for March is coming fast and we would like to get some different projects to show off at the booth.  We have a lot of space (20x20 booth), tables and can get several power feeds if we need them.

If you're interested in showing off something you've built (even if it's not done yet), let me know on this thread or email me directly.  Let's make stuff awesome!

--BillT
bi...@synshop.org

[Monera Mason]

The squishy circut seemed popular should I bring some dough. Do we have leds left over.

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[Bill Tomiyasu]

Hi Monera,

We're not in the Kid's Zone anymore (location has been moved to Colorado/Casino) although we might get younger folks earlier in the event.  FF hours are currently 5pm - 10pm.  Do you want to do the demo for a couple hours early on and see how it goes after 7pm?

--BillT
bi...@synshop.org

[Monera Mason]

Sounds good. Do we have leds and battery connection ir do I need to track those down. Thanks.

[Bill Tomiyasu]

Probably need to track them down.  Let me know what you're missing though and I'll see what I can get.

[Monera Mason]

Field trip.

[Dataman]

I bought 1000 red LEDs recently.  I could easily see to part with a few.  

What kind of battery connectors?  9v tails?  I've got those as well.

Sent from my iPhone 5!

[Andrew Morrow]

I gave easily 200 LEDs yesterday so if we can find where my parts went we'll be in good shape.  I also lent a couple motors and a couple buzzers.    Does anyone know where they ended up?

Andrew

[Bill Tomiyasu]

I'm not sure anyone inventoried after the event. 

--BillT

bi...@synshop.org

Sent from my iPhone

[Andrew Morrow]

Not a problem.  Nothing I couldn't afford to lose, but if they can be found it would likely help!

Andrew

[Monera Mason]

I assume they are not lost and went home with either Trish or Patrick.  

Monera Mason Brand Storyteller Mobile: 415.336.4245

[Nathan Bryant]

Yeah, I brought in about 75 LEDs (red, yellow, and green) as well. It would be nice if they made their way back to the shop, even if we segregate them into a "kids outreach" box.

[Matthew Dey]

You know what would be fun?

Raspberry Pi Game station with arcade buttons and arcade joystick using gertboard or gpio.  Program a simple version of asteroids or the like to accept input from that stuff and set up a tv. Make sure the wires are exposed somehow so people can see what powers the whole thing.

What would be truly sexy (and worth bringing it to first friday) is to make it coin operated.

Like using this usb one.

http://www.happmart.com/Pro_Details.aspx?id=358&px=10&sid=44

Or perhaps using a regular one if we can easily get/make software for it.

At any rate I don't expect coin operation to be an easy thing but it would make it really cool.

But that is just my hog wild ideas.

[Monera Mason]

I love hog wild ideas . . . I wish there was a place to go where I can get some more Raspberry Pi information. 

[Matthew Dey]

Like what? Like this?

http://www.newsdownload.co.uk/pages/RPiMameGpioJoystick.html

Or perhaps stuff like this?

http://www.casino-software.de/coin-validator-pc-adapter/coin-validator-pc-adapter.htm

[Pawel Szymczykowski]

This is my favorite source:

http://learn.adafruit.com/category/raspberry-pi

On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 3:25 PM, Monera Mason <mon...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Joshua Paxton]

In my opinion:

It would be really cool to show what the shop is about at first friday: 

Idea one: It would be amazing to do a hack-a-thon at the event. Everyone showing up, and throughout the night building something in front of the crowd. 

Idea two: It would be really cool to have a class at first friday. Intro to Intro to arduino, or maybe how to use some power tools. Something that shows that the place is not only for experienced builders, but a place to learn no matter what experience,

Idea three: we should do a group build, and show it off at first friday. Film it like the red bull hacker comp, and show the video of everyone working on it together. 

[Bill Tomiyasu]

Hi Charley,

Can you get with Monera and find out what she needs?  It's probably what she had at HacKIDemia yesterday.  I appreciate it!

[Bill Tomiyasu]

Hi Matthew,

That sounds really cool.  FF is a great venue to show off these types of ideas and projects.  If you're willing to build it, we will make space at the booth to show it off.  Let me know if you can put it together.  It doesn't have to be at the March FF event since we're committed for the foreseeable future.  

[Bill Tomiyasu]

Hi Joshua,

What are your thoughts about a hack-a-thon?  To pull it off, we'll need a lot of community participation.  That's the relevance of this thread.  Would you be willing to throw out a couple of concepts for a build or a class, provide parts or help organize?  First Friday is a venue we can utilize for these things and I'm looking for people to help make the best use of it.  Monera has another thread going about our Dream Classes for SYN Shop.  I would love to mesh the two in some way to showcase what we can do.  Let me know if you want to help set this up.

--BillT
bi...@synshop.org

[Monera Mason]

I have thought that a rube goldberg build at first friday would be really cool. Or it might have to be an install that we set off once an hour.   

[Bill Tomiyasu]

That sounds interesting.  Not sure if we can get one done before the end of the week since there's so much going on at the shop.  Let's discuss it though.  Maybe we can make it an installation at April's FF.

[Joshua Paxton]

I will email you privately, but i will share light on why i feel that we should agree with me. I brought a friend to the maker fair. I had to explain to him what a hacker space was before he showed up. After, i had to explain that he could be apart of this world. I realized that the booth shows what people do, but doesn't show how they get to that spot. I feel that this shop is more about the process than the concussion. If we want to show the community why we are important; we have to show them the process, and the conclusion.

[Bill Tomiyasu]

Andrew, are you bringing something to FF this week? (March 1st is Friday)...

[Bill Tomiyasu]

Yeah, we've all been dealing with trying to explain what a hackerspace is.  It's a small percentage of people who know what it means.  We play a lot with the term "maker space" too, so that it has less of a connection with "hacker", but most of us like hackerspace best.  Brian Munroe coined the term "Citizen Engineer" recently to try and make it less difficult to explain.  Ultimately, since it's not a common term, we will always have to explain it to someone or have them tour our downtown space.  Someday, hackerspaces will be ubiquitous, but they aren't there yet.

--BillT
bi...@synshop.org

On Feb 25, 2013, at 2:28 AM, Joshua Paxton wrote:

I will email you privately, but i will share light on why i feel that we should agree with me. I brought a friend to the maker fair. I had to explain to him what a hacker space was before he showed up. After, i had to explain that he could be apart of this world. I realized that the booth shows what people do, but doesn't show how they get to that spot. I feel that this shop is more about the process than the concussion. If we want to show the community why we are important; we have to show them the process, and the conclusion.

[Andrew Morrow]

Sorry, all. I can't make it to this one.I can lend the 1D pong game to the effort, though!

[Bill Tomiyasu]

That works!  I'm at the shop every night this week except Wednesday, or you can leave it with one of the other guys.  I appreciate your consistent support at all these events.

--BillT
bi...@synshop.org

[Andrew Morrow]

no worries. I'll be by soon I'm sure.

[Aakin Patel]

I thought what someone suggested earlier about the Rasberry Pi mamebox was awesome. We should set up a few different mameboxes, so people can see them, and play games on them. And have flyers about classes on learning how to build your own.

- Aakin

- Aakin

[Bill Tomiyasu]

Matthew Dey suggested it earlier in this thread.  How many Raspberry Pi boards do we have access to?  How difficult would it be to make a couple for this Friday?

[Krissy Houston]

Perhaps to make this goal easier, we should have a big sign that says something along the lines of "Join us in making things" "We can teach you to do cool stuff" "Something about everyone is welcome to do this" Right now there's a big sign with our name and logo, but people don't really know what that is. If there was another big sign with a sound bite about what we are, it could go a long way towards bringing people in.

Krissy

[Bill Tomiyasu]

That's a good idea.  We need a catch-phrase... Thoughts?

--BillT
bi...@synshop.org

[Andrew Morrow]

Should they be needed, I've got two rpi's I can lend to the group.  

Andrew

[Krux]

Make stuff awesome.


perl -e 's==UBER?=+y[:-o]}(;->\n{q-yp-y+k}?print:??;-p#)'

Bill Tomiyasu <bi...@synshop.org> wrote:


That's a good idea.  We need a catch-phrase... Thoughts?

--BillT
bi...@synshop.org

On Feb 25, 2013, at 11:48 AM, Krissy Houston wrote:

Perhaps to make this goal easier, we should have a big sign that says something along the lines of "Join us in making things" "We can teach you to do cool stuff" "Something about everyone is welcome to do this" Right now there's a big sign with our name and logo, but people don't really know what that is. If there was another big sign with a sound bite about what we are, it could go a long way towards bringing people in.

Krissy

On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 4:03 PM, Joshua Paxton <jo...@paxdesigns.net> wrote:

In my opinion:

It would be really cool to show what the shop is about at first friday: 

Idea one: It would be amazing to do a hack-a-thon at the event. Everyone showing up, and throughout the night building something in front of the crowd. 

Idea two: It would be really cool to have a class at first friday. Intro to Intro to arduino, or maybe how to use some power tools. Something that shows that the place is not only for experienced builders, but a place to learn no matter what experience,

Idea three: we should do a group build, and show it off at first friday. Film it like the red bull hacker comp, and show the video of everyone working on it together. 

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[Monera Mason]

Make cool stuff with syners

[Krissy Houston]

How about "You can make stuff awesome" It conveys that the person reading the sign can make stuff awesome, not just the people in the booth.

[Bill Tomiyasu]

Awesome!  I haven't played with these boards yet.  Is there a tutorial somewhere on how to make a mame box out of one?  Does anyone want to put one (or two) together for the FF booth on Friday?  Thanks!

[Shawn Looker]

I have one (maybe  two) I can loan the shop for Friday.   I'd definitely be interested in helping with the mame project, as my raspberry pi project is to make a mame/pi controller that just has an HDMI plug to a TV.

shawn

[Shawn Looker]

Here's a good guide on it:  

http://www.newsdownload.co.uk/pages/RPiMameHandHeld.html

This is how to wire up your own buttons and joy stick and everything, which seems kind of awesome.  This was what I was planning on using, although I'm not clear on how an 8 way joystick would work with that.

This is obviously for a small hand held one, which may not be a good idea for First Friday (since they can easily walk off) but should be a good guide for putting together a larger version connected to a normal tv.

shawn

[Shawn Looker]

I'd love to put one together for FF but would like some help as I suck with electronics. ;)  Anyone interested?

[Aakin Patel]

I'm not so great with electronics either, but if you drag it down to the shop, I'd be glad to try and work on it with you.

- Aakin

- Aakin

[Shawn Looker]

Sounds good.  I've got a scout thing tonight, but I'm down for Tuesday and Thursday evening?

[Aakin Patel]

I have plans for tomorrow; let's aim for Thursday.

- Aakin

[Shawn Looker]

Sounds good.  I'll start playing with putting together the sdcards at least so that we can focus on the hardware.

shawn

[Bill Tomiyasu]

Thanks guys!  I'll be at the shop for the Shapeways thing.  Does anyone else want to help out with this project?  What other parts are needed to make it happen?

[Shawn Looker]

If we don't use a pre-built controller (I've got a SNES style one I'll bring to try out), we'll need buttons, a joystick, an HDMI cable, and some sort of monitor that supports HDMI.

shawn

[Bill Tomiyasu]

Cool.  Does anyone have any of these items to spare?  I might have an HDMI cable somewhere, but I'll have to dig it out.

[Andrew Morrow]

I've got (and will bring - sorry it has to be a loaner, but I need to back!) a great arcade joystick (4-way) and two arcade buttons.  we will just need to laser cut a place to mount them.

I should be able to bring them tonight. I'll put them in a cardboard box clearly marked RPI MAME

[Bill Tomiyasu]

Thanks Andrew!  Can you put it near the ShapeOko project?  That way, I can find it easily since I'm working on it.  I may have the ShapeOko ready to go for FF (no guarantee though since I have to go through the software learning curve).  

[Andrew Morrow]

absolutely.   And good luck with the ShapeOko.  I'm seriously impressed with how good it's looking right now.   Those are a bugger to put together!

[Matthew Dey]

Why a hdmi monitor? Get a cheap tv.


Sent from my Samsung smartphone on AT&T

[Shawn Looker]

Sorry.  It could be a monitor, tv, or anything else with HDMI :)

[Andrew Morrow]

It actually doesn't have to be HDMI.   The rPI has an RCA out :)

[Shawn Looker]

Ah, that would work too then.    Sweet.  

[Bill Tomiyasu]

Soooooo, are we good on parts?  Do you need a cheap tv?  Can something be put together before Friday?  Let me know as I need to confirm our participation with the FF management by end of day today.

Let's recap... Monera is going to bring electric dough, Charley has donated a few LEDs and 9v battery pigtails to the effort; Aakin and Shawn are going to work on a Raspberry Pi mame project, Andrew is going to let us borrow a joystick and 2 arcade buttons, Shawn is loaning out 2 RPis to the effort; Andrew is going to loan us his Pong game from Mini Maker Faire.  I am going to try and get a demo set up with the ShapeOko.  I haven't heard back from the board if anyone is going to offer to bring a 3D printer or any of our usual stuff.

On the future front for the next few FF events, Joshua mentioned putting together a hack-a-thon based around a 2-D photo booth concept; Ryan is retrofitting his electric DeLorean with a new battery pack and is willing to show it off when it's done.  Apparently, May is "Tech Month" at First Friday so we may have to come up with a few interesting things.  

I'm still taking ideas for future events and I would like to keep this thread open for the rest of the week.  If anyone has something killer that they would like to show or do, add to this thread or contact me on my email below.  I would like the FF booth to be our point of contact with the rest of the LV community.  Let's show this town what we can do!  (...add applause and feel-good music here...)

[Shawn Looker]

Two cheap tv's would be good, assuming we can get the two pi's up and running mame stuff with the joystick.

[Bill Tomiyasu]

We have some monitors at the shop but they need an HDMI to DVI converter to work. Also Andrew can't find his joystick. 

--BillT

bi...@synshop.org

Sent from my iPhone

[Pawel Szymczykowski]

The C64 monitor works on RCA. I can provide a joystick and buttons as needed.

[Bill Tomiyasu]

Sweet!  Thanks Pawel.

[Pawel Szymczykowski]

I will drop off the stuff with Mr Looker tomorrow. The C64 monitor is already at the shop. I can help if you guys run into any wiring troubles.. we did a full joystick + button setup on a Pi for Zoltar (which I really want to document some time). I think I also have an old coin mech for quarters laying around if you want to get fancy. It's nothing more than another microswitch to hook up.

[Shawn Looker]

If you can let us borrow the microswitch that would be great.  I don't know if we'll have time to get it working, but we'll make the attempt!

shawn

[Shawn Looker]

Pawel hooked us up with stuff.  Do we have any clear acrylic we can whip out a case for joysticks and a few buttons?  That would make for a really cool setup where we could show off to everyone how the joystick and buttons work, which I think would be super awesome.

shawn

[Pawel Szymczykowski]

If you guys have time (or on a future iteration), it would be cool to wire up LEDs to the microswitches so that you can see, for example, that an arcade joystick is really just made up of 4 microswitches and that a diagonal is really just two of them being hit in combination.

[Shawn Looker]

That would be pretty awesome!  We'll see what sort of time we have after the first iteration.   I think it may be cutting it close for this one, but we'll see.

Can you send me the info about where you picked these up locally?

shawn

[Pawel Szymczykowski]

http://na.suzohapp.com/contact.htm

^-- those guys. Also, was thinking that rather than doing MAME (which is easy with RetroPi, but legally questionable) it might be better to go with a hacked up version of nibbles for PyGame or something.

http://www.pygame.org/project-Yellow+Snake-2033-.html

[Bill Tomiyasu]

There might be some scrap material at the shop.  I'll look tonight.  How big does it have to be?

--BillT
bi...@synshop.org

[Shawn Looker]

I'll be there tonight, so we can chat about it.  I left some scrap wood that we can build most of the case out of, then we can do a plexiglass bottom if we want.   That would minimize the clear acrylic we need.  

[Shawn Looker]

Oh... the short answer to your question is "I don't know".  :)

[Krux]

As long as it gets replaced, I have a full sheet of 1/4" clear acrylic at the shop for my tesla coil project that can be used.  I won't be working on that until I have the access control system working.


perl -e 's==UBER?=+y[:-o]}(;->\n{q-yp-y+k}?print:??;-p#)'

[Bill Tomiyasu]

Will the Home Depot clear acrylic work?  I have to stop by there today anyway.  I can pick up a small piece.

--BillT
bi...@synshop.org

[Krux]

As long as it's acrylic and not lexan.  Also the plastic coating is pvc so you have to remove that prior to cutting!

perl -e 's==UBER?=+y[:-o]}(;->\n{q-yp-y+k}?print:??;-p#)'

[Shawn Looker]

An 8"x12" piece should be more than big enough, Bill.  I'll be happy to give you cash for it this evening.

shawn

[Bill Tomiyasu]

Shawn's mame project is coming along with the joystick and buttons Pawel loaned him.  The ShapeOko is almost ready to test out.  Also, I got confirmation that we've got a 10x10 booth  at Casino Center and Colorado for Friday.  The event starts at 5pm (load-in is from 3pm) and goes until 10pm.  If anyone has other projects to show, let me know.

Monera, Charley gave me a bag of LEDs and 9v battery tails for the squishy circuits.

[Krux]

Do we want to have people at the shop in case someone wants to come check it out?

[Matthew Dey]

Does Shawn still need a game or has that been covered? If you need me to throw a pygame thing together you'll need to let me know so I can work on it all tonight and some tomorrow. How is the joystick connected and stuff? I am off of work today and tomorrow but as usual I'm stuck at work on Fridays and Saturdays. If I can find a way to leave early I'll try but they have me working afternoons on the weekend.

[Bill Tomiyasu]

The idea for First Friday is to showcase members projects and to drive traffic to the downtown space either the same night or invite them to the Saturday hours.  I'd like a couple of extra hands at the booth (any takers?) and it would be great to have the shop open too.

--BillT
bi...@synshop.org

[Bill Tomiyasu]

I think Shawn and Aakin are still looking for a game.  Pawel had a lead on some non-copyright games, but I'm sure they could use a hand.  Can you contact Shawn offlist?  shawn looker <ev...@curs.es>

--BillT
bi...@synshop.org

[Nathan Bryant]

I'm not going to be able to be there to set up this time. I'll be at the shop tomorrow evening and I'll help get some of the stuff we need staged. 

[Shawn Looker]

I won't be able to get there to setup either, but I'll be there as soon as possible after work.

[Aakin Patel]

I should be able to help setup. 

[Bill Tomiyasu]

You guys are killing me... where's the love?