LVL1ers had an awesome time at Hive13 (Cincinatti’s Hackerspace) this weekend. Hive13 did a great job hosting a Sumobot competition. The competition was staged in an actual boxing ring at the gym next door to Hive 13! A big thanks to the owners of the boxing gym. What a great venue. Many bots competed, but the LVL1 bots rose to the top. Jose won with “Lessor”.
Here is the actual video of the rounds.
I would like to sincerely thank Hive13 for hosting this event. It is fantastic to get to know you all. It should also be noted that Hive13 made an excellent web app that organizes Sumobot competions – check it out http://sumobots.hive13.org/. LVL1 will be hosting our second Sumobot competition in the Fall of 2011, probably October. You have 6 months to build your next Bot! All competitors are welcome, especially other hackerspaces (Lexington, Dayton, Indy, Bloomington, Nashville…). Hope to see you there!
Dale Dougherty, Make Magazine publisher did this nice Ted talk on Makers. If you are ever looking for a good way to tell people what LVL1 is all about, have them watch this video. BTW, Dale is from Louisville and visited our Hackerspace last summer.
We are having a Car-B-Gone workshop at the space this afternoon. Sorry we did not get the Eventbright announcement up. Just show up to build your very own Car-B-Gone tonight at 8-ish. If you do not know what a Car-B-Gone is… it is another fine Mitch Altman project. Read about it here
Following the Car-B-Gone workshop will be the ever popular Beer-B-Gone workshop. Hope to see everyone there.
February Freeduino Frenzy is a workshop that will happen on Feb 13, 2011. It will consist of several experiments that will teach the student how to do basic circuits and coding on the Freeduino (Arduino) platform. Some of the projects will closely follow the Spring Training from the Spring of ’10, some of the projects are brand new! Sign up and lean valuable skill on how to use and program your Freeduino.
You will need to bring a laptop and a Freeduino or Arduino or clone. Do not sign up if you do not have a laptop or Freeduino! You will need the laptop to program the Freeduino.
If you can, please download and install the Arduino Programming Software on your laptop as described here. That would save some time.
BTW – this is called a Frenzy because I know I have too much stuff packed into an afternoon. All of my instructions will remain online so you can revisit them whenever you want. I hope we will make it through everything – but no promises.
Just in time for the holidays! Build a small & simple, but very powerful USB charger for your iPod, iPhone, mp3 player, camera, cell phone, and just about any other gadget you can plug into a USB port to charge! Perfect holiday gift! Only $35 – cheap!
Sign up for the class here: http://wiki.lvl1.org/MintiBoost
We had a fantastic weekend at LVL1. Not only was LVL1 at an awesome Actors Theater event, we also had some important visitors at the space on Saturday! On Saturday, Mitch Altman (of TV-B-Gone fame) and Jimmy Rodgers (of LOLshield fame) presented a soldering workshop. There must have been 50 people around! Also Matt Mets and Dale Dougherty were here from Make Magazine. Big thanks to Mitch, Jimmy, Matt and Dale for being part of the LVL1 experience. Our doors are always open to you!
During the soldering workshop, I built at LOLShield. Nice kit – lots of LEDs to solder. Jimmy was really good at making his LEDs come out in neat little rows – mine, not so much. Here is my video
I came upon this post and decided to make an animated LOLShield LVL1 logo. I had to download python 2.6 and the PIL library and the script ran perfectly. I created an animated gif using Gimp. Set up an image to be 9X14 in grayscale. Then draw your picture (zoomed in) and animate it using multiple layers. When you save as a gif, Gimp will make the layers into a animated gif. It is not hard. Here is my gif…
It is tiny! Next run the script in the command line and then cut and paste the code. Here is the Arduino program I am using.
/*
Basic LoL Shield Test
Writen for the LoL Shield, designed by Jimmie Rodgers:
http://jimmieprodgers.com/kits/lolshield/
This needs the Charliplexing library, which you can get at the
LoL Shield project page: http://code.google.com/p/lolshield/
Created by Jimmie Rodgers on 12/30/2009.
Adapted from: http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Code/BitMath
History:
December 30, 2009 - V1.0 first version written at 26C3/Berlin
This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU Version 3 General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation;
or (at your option) any later version.
This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
Lesser General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
*/
#include //AVR library for writing to ROM
#include //Imports the library, which needs to be
//Initialized in setup.
int blinkdelay = 100; //Sets the time each frame is shown
/*
The BitMap array is what contains the frame data. Each line is one full frame.
Since each number is 16 bits, we can easily fit all 14 LEDs per row into it.
The number is calculated by adding up all the bits, starting with lowest on
the left of each row. 18000 was chosen as the kill number, so make sure that
is at the end of the matrix, or the program will continue to read into memory.
Here PROGMEM is called, which stores the array into ROM, which leaves us
with our RAM. You cannot change the array during run-time, only when you
upload to the Arduino. You will need to pull it out of ROM, which is covered
below. If you want it to stay in RAM, just delete PROGMEM
*/
void setup() {
LedSign::Init(); //Initializes the screen
}
void loop() {
DisplayBitMap(); //Displays the bitmap
}
void DisplayBitMap()
{
boolean run=true; //While this is true, the screen updates
byte frame = 0; //Frame counter
byte line = 0; //Row counter
unsigned long data; //Temporary storage of the row data
//Here we fetch data from program memory with a pointer.
data = pgm_read_word_near (&BitMap[frame][line]);
//Kills the loop if the kill number is found
if (data==18000){
frame = 0;
data = pgm_read_word_near (&BitMap[frame][line]);
//run=false;
}
//This is where the bit-shifting happens to pull out
//each LED from a row. If the bit is 1, then the LED
//is turned on, otherwise it is turned off.
else for (byte led=0; led<14; ++led) {
if (data & (1<
LedSign::Set(led, line, 1);
}
else {
LedSign::Set(led, line, 0);
}
}
}
//Delays the next update
delay(blinkdelay);
frame++;
}
}
I had to adjust the code to keep it from blinking at the end of the animation.
As mentioned at the meeting last night, my model airplane club will
have a charity airshow on June 5 and 6. We have about 15 invited
pilots from around the country that have won many championships in
various categories of RC flying.
As of the moment, we will have several aerobatic demos with aircraft
wingspans exceeding 10 feet. We have one turbine powered jet that has
a true speed of 199 mph (not scale but actual radar detector speed).
We expect to have a national champion aerobatic helicopter and a
turbine powered helicopter. Also we will have a candy drop for the
kids and an egg drop for teens and adults. (Wear an old shirt for this
one.)
Details:
When: Saturday and Sunday, June 5 and 6 11 am to 5 pm. (Saturday is
the best day b/c out of towners leave early on Sunday)
Where: Tom Sawyer Park. 1/2 mile south of Westport on Hurstbourne
Parkway.
Cost: suggested donation is $3 per person (Hundred dollar bills are
welcome) All proceeds go to Kosair Charities.
