Maker Night #4

A quiet night last night – I think we were all feeling the effects of the muggy weather!

Maker Night 3

A mix of returners and new faces, but all aware that there are only 2 Maker Nights remaining as part of this series at The Public, talk turned again to what made the sessions valuable and what should happen after Many & Varied depart.

We covered a lot of other subjects too including: LibraryBoxes, being able to see Saturn (or not), Iridium flares, harmonographs and giving the rugby-types at school electric shocks.

A nice phrase that came up a few times was “being a bit crap”: the importance of having a space in which you can make the mistakes you learn from; a place where you don’t have to be perfect.

Pi-Lite shield for the Raspberry Pi

A Furby shell awaiting a new face.

For the next session (6th of August) there is talk of Big Red Buttons.

There’s also a general call out for people who may have experience of working with touchscreens – do you know how to programme them? We also have someone who’s interested in using either ethernet or wi-fi connected Arduino for home automation – if you have any experience with either of these and can feed into his thinking that would be great.

Maker Night #3

For the third Maker Night at The Public we had a nice mix of returners and new faces.

I remember looking up from the middle of a stint at trying to figure out some code and being very impressed at the range of activities going on around the table: drawing, mask-making, traffic control (a nice Arduino model of some traffic lights with a pedestrian crossing), illustration, morse code and aspirations for tai-chi tracking kinect sensors!

traffic control

20130709_195201

We’re starting to get some nice link-ups between people’s projects too: with inspiration and know-how flowing in different directions. Another recurring theme is how Maker Nights are proving to be a really nice ring-fenced space that people are using to get on with the creative activities that they normally don’t get around to.

We’re halfway through our run of Maker Nights as part of our stint at The Public. The next one is on Tuesday the 23rd of July, drop-in and join us any time between 5 and 9:30pm.

Jamboree feedback

Just gathering a few bits of feedback from the day…

It all went swimmingly. Or at least as swimmingly as things can go without anything getting wet. Which was in itself an achievement, given the amount of indoor cycling.

I can now correctly identify the absence of birds from a field; various people now appreciate whole new linguistic dimensions to beer-spilling; my Macgyver-spec swiss army knife no longer bears the blunt (see what I did there) of two decades of impromptu wire stripping, while Macgyver himself saved the world from sulphuric acid and terible 80s shoes. I smoothed dead vegetables without the aid of abrasives; got improvisational with XLR cables; wished I’d brought an oscilloscope; introduced various people to the Dark Side; successfully picked some locks (one of which was a fiddly bastard); ate the correct number of poppadoms[1]; received a hands-on practical demonstration of harmonic oscillation from a two-year-old; got oil on my head; somehow managed to acquire a Rasperry Pi and at no point fell out of a hammock.

Really, what’s not to like?

[1] Too many

Lots of interesting stuff going on, and a great space to invade for the day.

[…]we went to the Big Skills Share Jamboree, on Saturday, and it was great fun. Morgan was kept busy playing with the other two kids who were there, plus beanbags and squishy balls and giant lego, so Mom & Dad got to do some interesting things. Was nice to not just be teaching locks all day! I did an hour session and taught 7(?) women how to open a basic lock, and one lady opened all the way up to a 6 pin lock in short order!

9/10 – Would definitely recommend. Could have been easier to find the place, and the car parking, but that’s not Nikki’s fault – who puts up the road signs from the dual carriageway, then doesn’t put one up at either of the last 2 roundabouts?!

I really enjoyed it as well! I was too engrossed in my circuit bending to get involved with other stuff, but even then I had lots of fun and help from some great people!

and possibly my favourite from someone who missed out:

Holy shit thats amazing! …there’s loads of stuff I need to know in there, shame I’m busy all day tomorrow. Never even knew stuff like this existed

The Great Big Skills Share Jamboree

<-- This way to the skills

We did it!

I’m not going to attempt to list all the things that happened, all the skills that were shared and all the new things that were discovered, as I would inevitably leave too much out – there was a lot!

The Great Big Skills Share Jamboree

The photos are probably worth the several thousand words that would be required…

Many, many thanks to all the people who came and contributed in their own unique ways. (Also those who supported the event from afar.)

We’ll be doing this again at some point!

Maker Night #2

Coming in the same week as The Great Big Skills Jamboree, the write-up’s been a little slow, however here are a few photos from our 2nd Maker Night at The Public…

The first wave of Makers get started:
Makers

After a quick lesson in how to solder, one chap (sorry, I can’t remember everyone’s names!) embarked on this project – a shield for a Raspberry Pi computer:
soldering project

Antonio’s on a mission to learn how to glitch visuals through sound input. Here are a few of his early experiments using live images from a webcam and tone generated through PureData:

glitch patches

Many & Varied Maker Night

Many & Varied Maker Night

The second wave of Makers wanted to do some drawing. So they did!

drawing

This is, I think, the key thing about Maker Nights – they are what you want them to be. Bring whatever you’re interested in along on Tuesday the 9th of July and join us for the next one!

Preparing for the Skills Jamboree

knots

We’re very excited about The Great Big Skills Share Jamboree; here’s how it’s shaping up in terms of the menu of skills offered and requested so far…

Skills on the share list:

  • Basic electronics
  • computer programming
  • bicycle maintenance
  • British Sign Language
  • aperture, shutter speed and ISO numbers for the photographically challenged
  • greenwood carving / knife skills
  • chemistry
  • making clay animals and figures out of self hardening clay
  • WordPress
  • editing Wikipedia
  • identification of garden birds
  • using Linux and unconventional methods to create generative art
  • soldering
  • microcontroller programming
  • hardware reuse
  • lockpicking

Skills on the requested list so far:

  • Juggling
  • knitting
  • magic / card tricks
  • Arduino
  • Raspberry Pi
  • becoming a billionaire
  • making music using either hardware or software
  • sewing
  • playing guitar
  • learning another (human) language
  • interfacing electronics to the real world, radio (xBee) remote control
  • British Sign Language
  • soldering electronic components

How cool is that?!

So if anything on either of those lists takes your fancy, or if you’d like to contribute something completely different, OR if you’d just like to come and soak it all up, you’d be very welcome to join us!

The day will evolve around who comes along and what direction our interests and curiosity take us, so don’t feel you can’t contribute, because being there and getting involved is really the only requirement…

It’s a free event, this Saturday, 10:30 for an 11am start, finishing at 6:30 followed by an optional curry and MacGyver session afterwards.

Register at: http://skillssharejamboree.eventbrite.co.uk/

See you there!

Our first Maker Night

We’ve just got back home after our first Maker Night at The Public: a night that involved story-telling catalysts, learning to solder, spaceblanket interfaces for jumping monkeys, “ooh! Do you remember when we did that!” devices, a TOP SECRET project, and, importantly, not letting the mains get into your cup of tea. That last one’s important – never let mains electricity get into your cup of tea.

Here are a few images from the evening – more can be found in this Flickr set.

The early-birds settle in for a night of making.

The early-birds settle in for a night of making.

A short time later the thinking faces and solder-sucker come out...

A short time later the thinking faces and solder-sucker come out…

A story-telling catalyst - his son tells a story and touches the different foil strips to trigger the noises he wants.

A story-telling catalyst – his son tells a story and touches the different foil strips to trigger the noises he wants.

Learning to solder in a totally non-competitive manner.

Learning to solder in a totally non-competitive manner.

Ian thinks he's won with this abstract expressionist sculpture capturing the physical immediacy of metal, plastic and the juxtapositions inherent in contemporary Western society...

Ian thinks he’s won with this abstract expressionist sculpture capturing the physical immediacy of metal, plastic and the juxtapositions inherent in contemporary Western society…

...but then Anne made this really nice butterfly!

…but then Anne made this really nice butterfly!

Taking a break from carpentry.

Taking a break from carpentry.

Trying out the MaKey Makey. First impression: but a keyboard is so much easier! Changing to: this is a lot more fun than a keyboard!

Trying out the MaKey Makey. First impression: but a keyboard is so much easier! Changing to: this is a lot more fun than a keyboard!

Serious discussions about interfaces, play and discovery.

Serious discussions about interfaces, play and discovery.

Seriously! You don't want the mains getting into your cup of tea!

Seriously! You don’t want the mains getting into your cup of tea!

Thanks to everyone who came – we had a great mixture of people learning skills like soldering and basic electronics for the first time as well as more practised folks bringing in their interesting projects. By the end of the evening we had made various sculptures, some code that talks to Flickr and numerous blinky lights.

At least two people are now remembering broken things they have at home and thinking “if I bring that in next time, I can fix that!”. Here at Many & Varied we consider that to be a very big win!

The next Maker Night is on the 25th of June.

A smörgåsbord of skills

This post lists the skills for people coming to The Great Big Skills Share Jamboree. We’ll update it as new people sign up – in the meantime, use it for inspiration and for spotting interesting sessions you’d like to see happen. Let us know what you think in the comments…

Name:
Nikki
Skills I might like to share (if I wasn’t going to be busy hosting this event!):
intro to soldering ~ WordPress wrangling ~ happy to say encouraging and periodically useful things whilst people learn to juggle ~ contribute to a collective sharing of basic Japanese
Skills I’d quite like to learn:
how to say the Welsh alphabet ~ unicycling ~ sign language ~ how to whistle LOUD (that way where you put your fingers in your mouth) ~ bike maintenance and route planning

Name:
Kim
Skills I might like to share:
Basic electronics, computer programming, bicycle maintenance, British Sign Language, sanding wood, etc.

Name:
Natalya
Skills I might like to share:
British Sign Language, Print & Web accessibility

Name:
Charlotte Barnes
Skills I might like to share:
Cabin Doors to Manual: How and why you should operate your camera on modes other than “P” and “Auto” – a hands-on introduction to Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO numbers for the photographically challenged.
Greenwood carving, based around knife skills. It’s beyond the scope of a 60 minute long session to teach anyone to carve a spoon, but I’m confident I can teach the basics of how to use a knife in this time. Types of blade, the main grips and how not to cut yourself.
Knife sharpening: The Scary Sharp System – using abrasive paper and flat boards to sharpen and then strop simple blades.
Campfire building and lighting 101. Although if we’re indoors, probably best to leave this for some other time…
Skills I might like to learn:
Juggling Knitting Magic / card tricks

Name:
Kevin
Skills I might like to share:
Chemistry
Skills I might like to learn:
Arduino, Raspberry Pi

Name:
Glenda
Skills I might like to share:
Making clay animals and figures out of self hardening clay.

Name:
Mark
Skills I might like to share:
WordPress
Skills I might like to learn:
Arduino/Raspberry Pi

Name:
Andy Mabbett (@pigsonthewing)
Skills I might like to share:
Editing Wikipedia (Sign up for a Wikipedia account in advance); identify garden birds
Skills I might like to learn:
Become a billionaire

Name:
Antonio Roberts
Skills I might like to share:
Using Linux and unconventional methods to create generative art – mostly utilising Pure Data, Processing, command-line utilities and broken and/or obsolete hardware (Please bring anything that can make noises!)
Skills I might like to learn:
Making music using either hardware or software

Name:
Rob A
Skills I might like to share:
Electronics, Soldering, Microcontroller Programming, Hardware reuse.
Skills I might like to learn:
Sewing, Guitar, Learn another (Human) language.

Name:
Matt
Skills I might like to share:
Cycle maintenance

Name:
Nigel
Skills I might like to share:
Locksport, mostly [lockpicking -Bring a lock if you’d like us to (try and) open it!]. Tonnes of other stuff if need be – invention, prototyping, CAD, making, how to determine if your idea is worth going ahead with.
Skills I might like to learn:
Interfacing electronics to the real world, radio (xBee) remote control

Name:
John Naughton
Skills I might like to share:
Competitive lockpicking.

Name:
Crinklylion
Skills I might like to learn:
British Sign Language

Name:
Steve Green
Skills I might like to share:
Bicycle Maintenance
Skills I might like to learn:
Soldering electronic components, Raspberry Pi and Arduino

Name:
Stuart
Skills I might like to share:
Computering, making electronic music, photography, photoshop
Skills I might like to learn:
Drumming

Name:
Oscar Byrne
Skills I might like to share:
C++, general physics, game of go, basic knowledge of ableton (music production)
Skills I might like to learn:
basic german, generative art

Name:
Richard Fitzgerald
Skills I might like to share:
Programming, general physics

Maker Night #1

Our first of six Maker Nights is on Tuesday night.

Blank canvases are always a little daunting, so we’ve seeded a few things for you to think about and get your creative juices flowing: basic skills in Arduino and soldering, as well as leaping around like a crazy leapy thing (see below). You are of course welcome to work on projects of your own devising too!

Basic skills: Arduino

One of our Arduino kits available for you to use.

One of our Arduino kits available for you to use.

Our background is in the hackspace movement and interactive art, where Arduino is a nifty little computing device that can link the digital and physical worlds. It makes it very easy to do amazing things even if, like us, you’ve never had any formal programming training.

Check out the Arduino section on Instructables for a few examples of what’s possible. On the page as we type are step-by-step instructions for projects like a capacitive touch piano, an Iron Man costume, a morse code generator, robots, blinky lights and a hacked Roomba.

Arduino projects on Instructables

Arduino projects on Instructables

We’ve got 2 Arduino kits available for you to use at Maker Nights to try out and learn the basics. Bring a laptop with the Arduino software installed on it and we’ll help you get some LEDs blinking as the first step towards your mad inventions!

If anyone feels like making a Loud Noise Device that we can use for The Great Big Skills Share Jamboree, that would be most appreciated. We’d like something fun (and LOUD!) we can use to time participant introductions and the skills-sharing sessions.

Basic skills: Soldering

There are lots of kits around for cool things that you can make yourself. To do this you’ll need to be able to solder. Again, we have 2 soldering kits for you to use and we can teach you the basics so you feel comfortable to work independently on your projects.

Leaping around like a crazy leapy thing

MaKey MaKey board

MaKey MaKey board

We bought a couple of MaKey MaKey kits to use for the upcoming BANANAS! event in August.

We gave them a quick test yesterday:

First MaKey Makey test

First MaKey Makey test

It’s a lot of fun!

Basically you can connect up different things to the board and then use these to simulate keyboard button presses and mouse clicks.

For our first attempt we sliced up some space blanket, gaffa taped it to the floor, connected the MaKey MaKey and loaded up a game featuring a jumping monkey. It may have had us jumping around a fair bit too…

Your mission:

  1. Find a fun-looking online game that needs only simple key presses to play (out of the box the MaKey Makey supports left/right/up/down cursor arrows, space bar, mouse click, W, A, S, D, F and G).
  2. Make a note of the URL so you can find it again.
  3. Bring in some things that might make interesting interfaces. The instruction booklet says “Anything even slightly conductive should work”. Tin foil, coins, graphite pencils, silverware, humans, plants, fruits, water, marshmallows, Play-Doh…
  4. Combine game, objects and MaKey MaKey to invent a game that’s crazy silly and fun to play!

The Youth Orchestra will be downstairs with their tuck shop, so there’s easy access to calories and additives to fuel this process!

Tuck Shop

So: see you there!

We’ll be up on the 3rd floor in the Long Room. If you go to the reception desk near the main entrance the staff will give you directions. Drop in any time between 5 and 9:30ish. The Maker Nights are free, as is the wi-fi.

Please note: The main café closes at 4:30, but you should be able to find somewhere selling food on the nearby high street if you need to.

Travel and accessibility information is available on this page.