Thanks to all who showed up on Monday night (Feb 18th, 2013) for the signal processing class.  It was a lot of material to cover in one night, but I hope everyone at least learned (and retained) something.  I was asked by several people to post my lecture notes online so people can review them.  It took me awhile to go through my notes and clear them up (somewhat) for someone besides me reading through them.  Also, I had to erase and rewrite a bunch of stuff because they were too close to the edges and were being cut off by my scanner.  So that’s why it took so long.  Anyway, here are the notes, the notes for the pre-class Math Review, and the 8-page info packet that I passed out during class:

Analog_Signal_Processing-SK

ASP_Class_Packet-SK

ASP_Math_Review-SK

Now that the class is over, the next thing to do is figure out what class to teach next.  I noticed that many of the attendees enjoyed the filter design example we went over.  Perhaps we could do a short class on some practical Analog Filter Synthesis?  Some people have “thumbsed-up” the idea for doing a class on learning how to use LTSpice to build schematics & simulate circuits.  Recently, I’ve been reverse-engineering schematics from double-sided printed circuit boards in older consumer electronics.  I could demonstrate some techniques on how to do that.  Another idea is moving directly past the Analog Signal Processing class and going right into Digital Signal Processing.  All the same topics from analog appear in digital such as convolution, impulse response, frequency response, & transfer functions.  Except most of the integrals become discrete summations when in the digital domain.  There are neat topics specific to digital such as FIR filters and sample rate conversion, which I think are the most interesting.  Actually, the website Coursera just started a DSP class this week.  If you were at Monday’s class, the Coursera course should be much easier since most of the topics are similar, like I described above.  Check it out.

If you have any feedback on Monday’s class, ideas for other electronics classes, or any other comment, then please let us know.  If you see me at Pumping Station: One and remember what I look like, then feel free to talk to me in person.

Dale Sulak, Dwayne Forsyth and friends from 2DKits will be in for a night
of blinkie building fun!

This is where you get to build one of those LED flashing things.

You start with the kit, use the tools we have in the room. When you are
done, you will have a working blinkie. We have blinkie Techs to help you
debug any problems.

The folks at MuseCon are sponsoring their “Atomic Musecon” kit for
attendees for FREE! We have have the full range of 2DKits from
beginners to advance including the 4x4x4 RGB Cube, ranging from $5 to $80.

We do allow and encourage children to build their parent’s blinkie,
but the parent has to stick around and learn about the process.

When: Friday March 1 , 6:30pm to 9:00pm
Cost: Free
Open to the public: Yes

Speak-n-spell + RockBand guitar. Seen at http://gizmodo.com/circuit-bent/

This Saturday, join Patrick McCarthy and Chicago area circuit benders for a fun approach to learning electronics.

For Beginners:
Merging music, art, and electronics, Circuit-bending is a hands-on, gratifying way to hack circuits by which you can transform a sound-emitting toy into an alien musical instrument. All you need is a battery-powered electronic toy and a few basic tools. Make sure the device you bring has lights or sound, and can be triggered easily. A sound effects box or a toy piano are good choices, a game that must be played is not. Do not bring anything that uses AC voltage.

If you’re an experienced circuit bender and want to show off your work, please attend and bring your instruments!

There is no fee for this event.

This NERP, Drew Fustini will show us how to WebIDE to program the Raspberry Pi. WebIDE is free from Adafruit. Put simply, “The Raspberry Pi WebIDE is by far the easiest way to run code on your Raspberry Pi. Just connect your Pi to your local network, and log on to the WebIDE in your web browser to edit Python, Ruby, JavaScript, or anything and easily send it over to your Pi.” Drew will use a Pi Plate RGB 16×2 character “Pi Plate” as the output device.

At the 1/28 NERP, we announced that the Adafruit Industries community grants people intended to send us a care package with Raspberry Pi goodies. The package arrived last week, and rather than opening it right away I thought it would be nice to share the surprise on Monday. It’ll be fun to see what kinds of ideas come out of the box and what kinds of projects they might inspire.

As always, if you have a NERP related project that you’d like to share, bring
it along!

Find NERP and Pumping Station:One
at http://www.meetup.com/NERP-Not-Exclusively-Raspberry-Pi/
and http://pumpingstationone.org

NERP meets at 7pm 2-11-13 at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago. NERP is free and open to the public.

This is going to be one of the odder events held at Pumping Station: One so far. It’s a 6 hour hangout from 8PM CST to 2AM CST (yes, timezones are crazy!) with people physically located in Taipei, Taiwan; Chicago, USA; San Francisco, USA; Wisconsin, USA, and probably a few other places!

The purpose is to bring people together from all over the world to show the people of Taipei what a hackerspace can do for them, and why it’s so cool that one is coming to their city very soon!

I’m personally giving a talk for a few minutes about how life changing finding hackerspaces can be, and how important their social aspects are. It’s a tall order to talk after the other two speakers, and I hope I can even remotely compare to them. Inter-space social activities like this and so many other things online allow our culture to transfer amazing ideas from far across the globe with so very little friction.

Hackerspaces globe by Joe Walnes

Below is the description by Taipei Hackerspace, the event’s organizer.

First Hackerspace event – (and accidentally Groundhog Day too)

The purpose of this event is to get people interested in joining the first ever hackerspace in Taipei. We will be gauging interest in the hackerspace to help us select a large enough space that we can afford to open. This will also be a chance for the organizers to meet people that can help us find the perfect space. Our goal is to have the space ready for a Hack the Hackerspace event by the time Maker Faire Taiwan arrives in May.

Schedule
======

10:00am Doors open
10:30am – 10:50am Speaker: Mitch Altman – The Philosophy of Hackerspaces
10:50am – 11:10am Speaker: Ben Heck – 3D Printing and Hardware Modding
11:10am – 11:30am Speaker: Eric Stein – Creativity in the Hackerspaces
11:30am – 12:00pm Speaker: Open floor – Hackerspace members answer questions
12:00pm – 16:00pm Learning stations open
16:00pm Doors close

Format
=====

Google+ Hangouts
The will be a main G+ Hangout that hackerspaces from around the world can join as a group. This will be displayed on the main screens at the event as well as smaller screen throughout the event. Local people will be able to interact with the members of the hackerspaces. This hangout will also be broadcast On Air.

Learning Stations
Each of the 4 learning stations will have a public G+ Hangout so anyone can join in to learn or teach. Each station will cover one topic that can be completed in about 30 minutes. Each station will have room for 4-6 local participants. The topics will be “Learning to Solder”, “Getting started with Arduino”, “Clothes Hacking”, and an open topic for the last station.

Introductions
—————-

The Speakers
========

Mitch Altman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_Altman

mitch@cornfieldelectronics.com (PUBLIC)
A co-founder of Noisebridge, a hackerspace in San Francisco, and a pioneer of Virtual reality. Mitch has been featured many time is Make: and many other magazines.

Benjamin Heckendorn

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Heckendorn

benjamin.heckendorn@gmail.com (PUBLIC)
Console modder, internet celebrity, pinball enthusiast and designer, host of the Ben Heck Show. There are so many publications about Ben, I can’t even begin to count (Although Google say 3.9M hits!)

Eric Stein
Programmer extraordinaire and insatiable hacker. Eric discovered the hackerspace PumpingStationOne when he was transplanted to Chicago. He immediately took an active role in the community and is now president of the space.

The Organizers
==========
Gergely (Greg) Imreh
imrehg@gmail.com
Ex-pat living in Taiwan and founder of Taipei Hackerspace. He has been driving the online presence of the group.

Tom Haynes
TaipeiHackerspace@tomhaynes.net (PUBLIC)
Recently relocated to Taipei from San Francisco. After discovering Gergely through hackerspaces.org, they joined forces to found the physical space for Taipei Hackerspace.

The Media
======
Brian Song
Make: Magazine Taiwan

Amber Yan
Editor with Make: Magazine Taiwan

Caroline Hsu
Head of Google Communications, Taiwan

Lan Chang
Google Public Affairs Senior Associate, Taiwan and Hong Kong

Location
=====
Google Taiwan office, Taipei 101, Floor 73
Meeting at Taipei 101 Ground Floor

Of course, don’t go booking plane tickets! That’s what the Internet is for. We’ll be posting the G+ hangout information here, but for the best experience come down to Pumping Station: One for the event, we’ll have the live video up on the projector… and maybe our in-house brewed Pumpkin Ale on tap.

Nitty Gritty

* What: Meet people from all over the world, talk about your projects, and see speeches by Mitch Altman and Ben Heck! You’ve probably heard me talk already, so that’s not the fun part for you.
* Where: Pumping Station: One, 3519 N Elston Chicago IL
* When: Fri Feb 1, 2013 at 8PM to 2AM Saturday (no, you don’t have to stay the whole time!)
* RSVP: not required, but add yourself on Facebook if you like.
* Who: Any member of the public for the first hour and a half (through 9:30PM) and perhaps later, but no guarantees unless I can get someone else to take over hosting the event.

Bring  your favorite games over to Pumping Station: One this Saturday, the 2nd, at 7pm and play the night away! As usual, all games are welcome [even cuddle dice, though you may have a hard time finding people to play with], homemade games are extra awesome!

See you there!

Raspberry Pi hands-on workshop

NERP is Not Exclusively Raspberry Pi, but Monday, 1/28, we’ll be all Raspberry.

Pumping Station:One and NERP are excited to be included in Adafruit Industries community grants of cool hardware for the Raspberry Pi.  Adafruit is sending us a care package of Raspberry Pi gear we can use to make projects. The exact contents of the package will be a surprise.

On Monday Jan. 28th at 7pm, we’ll get into the swing of making cool Pi things by doing a hands-on workshop on basic controlling and sensing with the Pi. Bring your Pi, keyboard, monitor, etc, and try out a couple of demo projects from learn.adafruit.com . The parts cost should be about zero since the projects don’t require much external hardware. PS:One′s Electronics area will provide tools and parts to get started.

We’ll learn how to turn on a simple LED (or anything else) using Python. Then we’ll explore two example projects on learn.adafruit.com :

http://learn.adafruit.com/basic-resistor-sensor-reading-on-raspberry-pi/basic-
photocell-reading

http://learn.adafruit.com/playing-sounds-and-using-buttons-with-raspberry-pi

Find NERP and Pumping Station:One
at http://www.meetup.com/NERP-Not-Exclusively-Raspberry-Pi/
and http://pumpingstationone.org

As always, if you have a NERP related project that you’d like to share, bring
it along!

NERP meets at 7pm 1/28/13 at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago. NERP is free and open to the public.

“Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn’t want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn’t want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world. ~A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto by Eric Hughes, 1993”

Cryptoparty is a group that works to educate and share information on privacy and the crypto tools that allow it. The main meeting should get started around 5PM with general discussions and mingling before and after. Experts and beginners alike welcome. Learn how to protect things like email, IM, SMS, files and  how to use anonymization dark and lightnets. Cryptoparty is open to the public, this will be their second or third meeting, hosted at PS:One. BYOB/BYOSnacks, Chez PS:One has pop for $1.

Read more at their wiki here: https://cryptoparty.org/wiki/Chicago

Bring your favorites!

Anyone got a cool new game to play this holiday season? Wanna play it with a bunch of other gamer geeks? Got any awesome new minifigs, counters, or gaming dice sets that you want to show off to people for some geek cred? Just wanna hang out with some fun people and play games, drink beer, and eat some tasty snacks?
Bring  your favorite games over to Pumping Station: One this Saturday, the 5th, at 7pm and play the night away! As usual, all games are welcome [even cuddle dice, though you may have a hard time finding people to play with], major gamercred to homemade games.

See you there!

Image from http://gcode.joewalnes.com/

The second Wednesday of the month is rapidly approaching, which can mean only one thing: AUTOMATION NIGHT!

Be a part of the automated manufacturing revolution! Get together to discuss, repair, and build numerically controlled machines (3D printers, CNC routers, laser cutters… anything automated by a computer). All experience levels from complete beginner to seasoned professional will be present. Come one, come all!

• WHEN: Wednesday November 14th, 7pm (show up early if you want a tour)
• WHERE: 3519 N Elston Ave, PS:One electronics lab (2nd Floor)

Typical schedule:

• 6:45 tour for new people
• 7:00 introduction round-robin
• 7:10 guest speaker
• 7:30 schmoozing, demos, projects etc.

Our guest speaker this month is Bart Dring: mechanical engineer, veteran open source CNC designer, and creator of buildlog.net. He’ll be discussing the process of turning designs into gcode for use with subtractive CNC machines using his PS:One longboard project as an example.