Tag: repurpose

makerbot as microscope: what we learned

Joel Belou­et has been wor­king on an art pie­ce invol­ving micro­or­ga­nisms and nee­ded a sup­port struc­tu­re for his micros­co­pe came­ra. It turns out the Maker­Bot sit­ting on our table was the solution.

At first Joel atta­ched the came­ra to the z axis and the sli­de res­ted on the build plat­form, but it soon beca­me cle­ar that it would be much bet­ter to have the sam­ple remain still and the came­ra move ins­te­ad. Inver­ting the posi­ti­ons meant atta­ching the sli­de to the bot­tom of the z axis plat­form in order to pre­vent the came­ra lens from bum­ping against it. This setup also allowed him to use the z crank as a focus mecha­nism. Con­ti­nue rea­ding “maker­bot as micros­co­pe: what we learned”

First Soft Circuits Open Lab

soft circuits open lab

This Sun­day we’­re hol­ding our first Soft Cir­cuits Open Lab at the Scho­ol of Fine Arts in Lis­bon (FBAUL — Facul­da­de de Belas Artes de Lis­boa). The­re is no pre­de­fi­ned struc­tu­re for the event. We will meet for the cour­se of one day with the pur­po­ses of sha­ring kno­wled­ge, expe­ri­men­ting fre­ely, advan­cing on-going pro­jects, and just having fun wor­king together. Some of the peo­ple atten­ding will be spe­ci­a­lists in elec­tro­nics and others in tex­ti­les. Bar­camp sty­le impromp­tu pre­sen­ta­ti­ons are very welcome.

Altlab will pro­vi­de some basic tools such as pli­ers, scis­sors, sol­de­ring irons, iro­ning board, etc. But par­ti­ci­pants must bring all the mate­ri­als and addi­ti­o­nal equip­ment neces­sary for their own projects/experiments (inclu­ding lap­tops). Here are some sug­ges­ti­ons: any kind of fabric, nee­dles and thre­ad, yarn, t‑shirts, con­duc­ti­ve and/or resis­ti­ve fabric, con­duc­ti­ve thre­ad, con­duc­ti­ve and/or resis­ti­ve yarn, knit­ting and/or cro­chet nee­dles, LEDs, coin cell bat­te­ri­es, bat­tery hol­ders, EL wire, strands of fiber optics, cop­per foil, cop­per adhe­si­ve track, alu­mi­num foil, resis­ti­ve foam, regu­lar foam, ardui­nos (lily­pad or any other kind). If you’­ve never wor­ked with any of the­se mate­ri­als and don’t have them handy, come anyway, you can help some­o­ne else with their pro­ject and learn along the way.

For more infor­ma­ti­on on soft cir­cuits tech­ni­ques and mate­ri­als, check out the Soft Cir­cuits Resour­ces sec­ti­on on the open­Ma­te­ri­als wiki.

This open lab will take pla­ce on Febru­ary 21st, from 10:30 to 18:30, at the Scho­ol of Fine Arts in Lis­bon, room 307, 1st flo­or (sin­ce our own spa­ce is still under cons­truc­ti­on). All are wel­co­me, the­re is no fee nor regis­tra­ti­on, but ple­a­se do let me know if you are plan­ning on coming: catarinamota(at)audienciazero.org

Dissecting old hardware

The last two ses­si­ons at Altlab have been a tre­men­dous fun!

We had been col­lec­ting lots of old hard­ware (pc’s, modems, mothe­bo­ards, cd-roms, prin­ters, etc)  to give it a new pur­po­se! Finally we deci­ded to start to take pro­fit from it.

Basi­cally in old hard­ware trash, the­re are lot’s of inte­res­ting things that still work very well (like motors,  leds, scre­ens) and can be re-uti­li­zed in other projects.

Here we have some pic­tu­res of this activity :

One of the results, a box full of motors :

So if you have in your pla­ce some old elec­tro­nic equip­ment sto­red that you are no pla­ning to use it any­mo­re, you can bring it to AltLab and we’ll take care of it! 😉

More pic­tu­res in our Flic­kr Pho­to Stream