Pumping Station: One

I’m starting a company that makes campfire scented cologne, and to solve a problem in my production process, I built a transmissometer.  Here is the video Aaron Kowalski and I made with Element 14‘s support:

Transmissometer from Pumping Station: One on Vimeo.

Here are more details on the device, including photos, schematics, and source code.

Thanks to everyone who helped out with the build and filming!

We’ve been posting our progress on our element14 blog, but I thought I’d do a quick round up.  The EKG and other sensors are coming along, slowly but steadily, and Drew got his Arduino to talk to his computer over bluetooth.

We also posted a little intro video.  

The most excellent Mitch Altman, co-founder Noisebridge & TV-B-Gone inventor, is in town to speak at Flourish Open Source Conference at UIC this weekend.

Mitch Altman presents ‘Hacking Cool Things with Microcontrollers’ at Maker Faire Detroit 2010

Mitch loves hackers, so he’s coming by our space for a special Thursday edition of the our bi-weekly Circuit Hacking Wednesday: Circuit Hacking Fun Night!

Come get your electrons & solder on with Mitch and other friendly hackers on Thursday, April 7th, 7pm-9pm.

Inspired by Noisebridge’s Circuit Hacking Monday, any experience level is welcome. Beginners can learn to solder and make cool stuff in a couple hours. DIY electronics kits from Cornfield Electronics (Mitch’s company) and Adafruit Industries will be available for cash sale.

And remember: Soldering is Easy!

For those of you who may not know, we at Pumping Station: One are participating in the Great Global Hackerspace Challenge organised by Mitch Altman and sponsored by Element14.  They’re giving $900 to 30 hackerspaces around the world, and giving us 5 weeks to design something awesome for education.  There are hackerspaces from five continents participating! (Scroll down on this page and check out this neat map with all the participants.)

Our project will be to create a biosensor array that will allow students to learn more about their bodies and do some DIY biology.  We’re going to have heartbeat sensors, temperature, CO2 levels, EKG and more!  I’ll be re-posting updates here, but we’ll be posting directly on the project blog on the element14 site.  (Feel free to follow us there!)

Due to the upcoming holiday busyness Circuit Hacking Wednesday will be canceled for the 28th of December.  Circuit hacking will continue on January 11th.  There will be kits to solder, circuits to bend, and fun will be had by all.

Also PS : One movie night will be moved from January 1st to January 8th.  I will be taking requests for screenings until the 3rd if anyone has any good suggestions.

With the kind assistance of our members Patrick, Tim, and Jim, I’ve built HolidayBot.

Here’s a quick intro video:

For more details, go here (this link will be updated as more details on HolidayBot goes live).

Who doesn’t love a good zombie hunt?  The Transistor made what looks like  a carnival style shooting game to the style of Shaun of the Dead.  Wonder who their crack shot is?

That’s the last of the 5 Contenders in this hackerspace challenge, but there’s still at least one more video where Mitch Altman will be crowning the coolest project.

iFixit CEO, Kyle Wiens, is in town and will be stopping by Pumping Station: One on Tuesday, October 19th, to talk about DIY repairs at 8:30pm (following the weekly meeting).

Checkout the iFixit website for more info on DIY repairs: http://ifixit.com/

This week our friends at NYC Resistor open up the competition with their drink dispensing slot machine.  The amount of polish they were able to put into their project is impressive, especially the mouthy monochrome LED display in the drink dispenser.

Stay tuned for next week for Pumping Station: One’s feature episode where we ask, “Would you like that á la mode?”

A quick note: my open source Scanning Tunneling Electron Microscope project has been mentioned in the MAKE blog.