Pumping Station: One

Our fellow hackers at i3Detroit came up with a great idea: the Unusual Musical Instrument Jam Session. The premise is simple: you come to the hackerspace and bring anything you have that makes noise, whether it was intended for musical purposes or not. You get together with everyone else who has also brought their favourite noise-making objects, and improvise some music together!

They’re hosting this event at their space on the evening of January 8th–and suggested that we do it synchronously with them. So, we shall!

You are invited to join the Pumping Station: One Cacophony Club at 7:00pm on Friday, January 8th for the Unusual Musical Instrument Jam Session! Bring anything you have that makes noise: Arduino concoctions, your voice, circuit-bent toys, traditional instruments, synthesizers–if you can create sound with it, it’s welcome! We’ll jam out, goof off, and show our friends at i3Detroit (as well as each other!) what we can do with objects that may or may not have been designed to make music in the first place.

This event is free, and open to members and guests alike.

(CC licensed image from Collin_Mel on flickr.)

On December 3, Jeff rebooted Transistor Thursdays with a “Solder Your Own Freeduino” class.  I had never played with an Arduino before, so I excitedly took the class.  I soldered it together, jumped for joy when the tests worked, and did the classic Arduino “hello world” of making an LED blink.  I played around with that for a little while, and then I got other ideas.

As anyone who has seen me play with my Commodores knows, I enjoy getting things to make noise.  Blinky is fun, but for me, loud is even more fun.  I went to my locker, cut a speaker off of a circuit board that I had already harvested for a few other parts for other projects, and hooked that up to the Arduino.  I then started familiarizing myself with the music coding commands…and didn’t stop until I had my Arduino playing something that was guaranteed to inspire people to throw ping pong balls at me.

The fact that the Arduino code loops over and over again until you cut the power meant there was only one song I could possibly choose for this:  The Song That Never Ends.

My flex resistor jacket is finally finished. After a month and a half of failures and a whole bunch of setbacks, the PS:One logo is finally embedded with twenty big LEDs which are attach to a circuit board and a flex resistor. The LEDs only light up when the right elbow is bent to a certain extent. It runs off of two AA batteries held along with the circuit board in a pocket on the left shoulder.

The jacket was premiered (sort of) at Digital Breakdown on Dec. 18th to help promote PS:One. Bunches of recently printed stickers didn’t hurt either. Luckily, the jacket is perfect for dancing.

Thanks to Jeff Kantarek and Jordan Bunker for their huge amounts of help on this project. Without their expertise this jacket would not be glowy.

PS:One Server Racked and Loaded

You may have noticed that our humble, digital home is looking a bit different. Last night Ryan and myself burned the 4am oil to rebuild and transfer our website to a new server due to the load issues we have been experiencing. Not only have we made our design so fresh and so clean, but we’ve also switched over to WordPress to ease the blog authoring blues our membership has been experiencing and racked her in a shiny new datacenter with plenty of bandwidth.

If you notice something missing, have no fear! It will return, but possibly in a different location as we are also making some efforts to organize all of our information and additional content to reduce clutter and help our membership contribute more effectively. If you notice any glaring (or minor) issues, please comment and let us know so we can clean up our mess.

I’ll be presenting another edition of my speed reading class on January 16 at 5-7pm (right before the Hackathon).

You will learn:
3 common bad habits and how to stop them.
7 good habits to promote.
Note taking, productivity, and comprehension boosters.

Cost is $30 for nonmembers, $25 for members.
Please bring with you: a pen or pencil for note taking and a non fiction book, magazine, or article for in-class practice.

Space is limited, please purchase tickets via EventBrite here.

Go ahead! The link below this post will take you to V1.1 of the PDF How-To to build one yourself, with step-by-step instructions and a pretty exhaustive materials list. Also some pictures, but perhaps not as many as there should be. Regardless! Is the PDF confusing or vague? Any questions? Go ahead and e-mail me at eli.skipp@gmail.com so that I can update the PDF and so that your questions can get answered. Happy hacking!

Fabric Light Bright PDF

[EDIT!]: This project is under a Creative Commons license!

Fabric Light-Bright by Eli Skipp is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Pumping Station: One has been invited to join a bunch of other local startups this Thursday at Black Rock Bar for a festive meet and greet.  Stop in around 7:00 PM to visit us and all the other great organizations listed below.  Ugly sweaters, as Rule #118 would suggest, are encouraged.

Hosts & Sponsors:

• Windy Citizen
• Centerstage Chicago
• Outside the Loop Radio
• Chicago Carless
• Lake Effect News
• Chicago Foodies
• The Urbanophile
• Backgarage
• Driftglass
• Pumping Station: One
• What’s a Boy to Do
• Windy City Wine Guy
• Fun Sherpa
• Chicago Bar Project
• Making Chicago Home
• Sound CitizenLoud Loop Press
• Chicago Tumbls Too
• Chicago Dining Examiner
• Chicago Culture and Events Examiner
• Exploring Chicago Examiner
• Chicago Cubs Examiner
• Gals Guide
• Buzzflash.comWindy City Watch
• Chi Town Tattler

Rebooting Transistor Thursdays with a “Solder Your Own Freeduino” workshop was a huge success.  Huge thanks to NKCelectronics for helping us track down the package in time for the class.  Starting this Thursday we’re going back to basics.  We’re going to be making home made electronic components the same way Georg Ohm, and Alessandro Volta did when they were exploring electricity in the 1800s.

We’re going to have another solder your own arduino workshop next month for those of you who couldn’t get a ticket.  The next workshop is going to be on a weekend and have some portions tweaked and retooled.  Thanks again to the first group who helped us out with some great feedback for this first dry run.  Stay tuned to the blog for more details.