Arduino meetup Thursday 12/8. Featured: The Chronotune’s guts

We’re kicking off i3 Detroit’s new Arduino meetup series with a show-and-tell project that’s near and dear to our hearts: The Chronotune, (as previously covered all over the freakin’ place).

For those following along at home: The Chronotune’s user interface is a rotary encoder, read by the Arduino. Year is indicated on 7-segment displays, and audio files are handled by a uMP3 board. (That’s what we had sitting around. If we had it to do again, we’d use an mp3 shield.) The speaker is driven by an LM386. The dial is moved by a stepper motor from an inkjet printer, with an EasyDriver.

Anyone tinkering with the Arduino experimenter’s platform is welcome to attend, as are those who are curious but don’t know where to begin. We’ll also have a look at the Arduino-LabVIEW bundle recently offered by Sparkfun. Things get under-way this Thursday (12/8) at 7pm.

Project – Feedback Slider

Makerbot Cupcake CNC is up and running!

Last week, i3Detroit’s new Makerbot CupCake CNC Ultimate kit arrived. This is a 3d rapid prototyping tool, which extrudes tiny bits of plastic to build up an arbitrary shape, according to the CAD model you send it. Similar in capability to the RepRap, the Makerbot isn’t designed to build more copies of itself, but just to make any plastic part you need.

Assembly and testing started Thursday and continued through last night (this morning, technically), culminating in the successful printing of the adorable little failwhale pictured here.

This is just the latest addition to i3Detroit’s fabrication tools, which already include two welders, a large lathe and Bridgeport mill, an industrial sewing machine, and more. Watch this space for class announcements!

Lets put some clothes on Red

On this bright Sunday morning we will knock out stage two of the “Lets put some clothes on our GIANT Red Green monument”.
So far pants, shoes, undies, and a belt have been dressed on our GIANT.

Starting early at 9am members leading the build will be at the space to help with the dressing of the Red Green Giant.  Using seven foot sheets of Tyvek, duct tape will be layered to make up the tartan pattern that is seen on the common flannel shirt Red is seen wearing.

So if you’re just waking up checking your RSS feeds, head on over to the space and lend a hand.   We’ll be here most of the day.

Red Green Build Update: Tartan Test

The Red Green build continues to make forward progress.  Tuesday we brainstormed the shirt and decided we need to use a very specific tartan for the flannel shirt.  Bonus points for all who can identify.  To the left is our test pattern.

This is all duct tape and backed by a cool material called Tyvek.  We are actually going to build a giant shirt for our giant to wear out of duct tape.

Keep checking the blog for more progress.  We will be working on the statue on Saturday and Sunday.  Please stop by to help.  Members and non-members alike are welcome.  Some back of the napkin math says we need 128 squares like this to the left.  Hope to see everyone there.