Soldering is Easy workshop report

Ter­ri­fic night yes­ter­day @ altlab!
The workshop star­ted with an intro to elec­tro­nics lea­ving the atten­de­es anxi­ous to get down to soldering.
Des­pi­te that, everyo­ne was focu­sing their atten­ti­on on what was being said.
Half an hour later the sol­de­ring irons were plug­ged in and the fun started.

Soldering is Easy!
Hands-on and having fun!

Kit Pisca-Pisca
Blin­king LED KIT


A new Hac­ker is born ! @Ricar­do Castelhano


Here is the final result, everyo­ne lea­ves with their own blin­king gadget.

More pho­tos @flickr

Mini-workshop “Motores de Passo”

(scroll down for English)

Vamos pegar ale­a­tó­ri­a­men­te num motor de pas­so e ten­tar des­co­brir que tipo de motor é, dese­nhar um dia­gra­ma sim­ples do mesmo.
Depois vamos pegar no fer­ro de sol­dar (não há que ter mee­e­e­e­e­do :)) e mon­tar um cir­cui­to que per­mi­te con­tro­lar esse motor a par­tir de um Ardui­no ou qual­quer outra pla­ca base­a­da num microcontrolador.
Todo o mate­ri­al é for­ne­ci­do e fica para os par­ti­ci­pan­tes, sen­do ape­nas neces­sá­rio tra­zer fer­ro de sol­dar e mul­ti­me­tro (ou espe­rar que algu­ma alma cari­do­sa vos empreste).

O núme­ro de par­ti­ci­pan­tes é limi­ta­do pelo que, se dis­se­rem que vêm, con­ta­mos MEEESMO convosco 😉

Para ins­cri­ções e pedi­dos de infor­ma­ção: workshops /arroba/ audienciazero.org
Lota­ção máxi­ma de 10 participantes
Sába­do 13 de Mar­ço de 2010
AltLab em Cacilhas
14h00m
5€


Let’s each of us pick up a ran­dom step­per and try to find out what kind of step­per it is, draw a sim­ple diagram.
Then pick up the sol­de­ring iron (have noo­o­o­oo fear :)) and assem­ble a cir­cuit to con­trol that motor from an Ardui­no or any other micro­con­trol­ler-based board.
All mate­ri­als are sup­pli­ed to the par­ti­ci­pants and everyo­ne gets to keep them; you’­re just requi­red to bring your own sol­de­ring iron and mul­ti­me­ter (or wait a ran­dom amount of time to bor­row some­o­ne else’s).

The num­ber of par­ti­ci­pa­ti­ons is limi­ted, the­re­fo­re, if you tell us you’ll come, we’ll REEEALLY be wai­ting for you 😉

For regis­tra­ti­on and infor­ma­ti­on requests: workshops /at/ audienciazero.org
Maxi­mum of 10 participants
Satur­day, Mar­ch 13 2010
AltLab @ Cacilhas
14h00m
5€

PAPERduino’s design

This is a fully func­ti­o­nal ver­si­on of the Ardui­no. We eli­mi­na­ted the PCB and use paper and card­bo­ard as sup­port and the result is.. the PAPERduino 😀

This is the the first ver­si­on of the layout design, next we will try more designs, and other mate­ri­als. You just need to print the top and the bot­tom layouts, and glue them to any kind of sup­port you want. We hope that you start making your own boards. If you do, ple­a­se sha­re your pho­tos with us, we would love to see them 😉

The­re is no USB direct con­nec­ti­on, so to pro­gram the paper­dui­no you will need some kind of FTDI cable or adap­ter. One of this pro­ducts will be fine:
FTDI cable from Ada­fruit Industries
FTDI adap­ter from Sparkfun

Down­lo­ad PDF

Com­po­nents list:
1 x 7805 Vol­ta­ge regulator
2 x LEDs (dif­fe­rent colors)
2 x 560 Ohm resis­tors (betwe­en 220oHm and 1K)
1 x 10k Ohm resistor
2 x 100 uF capacitors
1x 16 MHz clock crystal
2 x 22 pF capacitors
1 x 0.01 uF capacitor
1 x button
1 x Atmel ATMega168
1 x soc­ket 28 pin
Fema­le and Male headers

Ins­truc­ti­ons:
Use a nee­dle to punc­tu­re the holes for your components.

Don’t rush, pla­ce one com­po­nent after another and do all the sol­der work carefully.

Fol­low the con­nec­ti­on lines.

And this should be the final look of your paper­dui­no connections.

openMaterials :: research project

openMaterials
My dear fri­end Kisty Boy­le and I recen­tly laun­ched open­Ma­te­ri­als — a col­la­bo­ra­ti­ve rese­ar­ch pro­ject dedi­ca­ted to open inves­ti­ga­ti­on and expe­ri­men­ta­ti­on with DIY pro­duc­ti­on methods and uses of mate­ri­als. In the spi­rit of the open sour­ce soft­ware and hard­ware move­ments, we hope to pro­mo­te mate­ri­als to be rese­ar­ched and deve­lo­ped in a public, col­la­bo­ra­ti­ve man­ner. We see mate­ri­als as an open resour­ce, and wish to esta­blish an open pro­cess for explo­ring and sha­ring kno­wled­ge, tech­ni­ques and appli­ca­ti­ons rela­ted to mate­ri­als science.

I’ll be con­duc­ting most of my hands-on rese­ar­ch right here at AltLab. We’d love for you to be invol­ved if you are wor­king in the­se are­as or inte­res­ted in lear­ning more about smart materials.