Busy hands | Disquiet mind

After a year hiatus Maker Faire UK was back in Newcastle last weekend. This time around I was behind the stands with tog. Our base for the weekend was the large room dubbed 'Zone C' which housed "Giant Drawing Machines and UK Hackerspaces", and us. (We'll allow them that gaff, as otherwise we were made very welcome.) The other areas held sections like DIY Bio, soldering, robots, crafters, software, and even a long line that allegedly led to a laser game in the style of a jewel thief caper.



Luckily there were enough of us on the stand that we could duck out and have a look around. I took part in a taste survey and got my tastebuds counted (I'm in the super-taster range) in the DIY Bio section. In the soldering section they were running a workshop with squishy circuits. In the craft section they had robots that knit! There were also modified knitting machines that could create complicated patterns, and an accurate set of knitted and crocheted organs. I also found beautiful modern quilts and a Dazzle Dress made of high-vis and reflective materials. Bitmap Machine Knitting even crocheted EL wire with regular wire to create hats and bracelet-cuffs!

( Pictures )

I met rainycat and saw her EEG-pendant visualiser in action. I met BobDotStone from the York hackerspace as he proudly showed off his 8x8 matrix tshirt. I even spied LEDs decorating a sombrero. Bare Conductive stopped by and kindly gave us one of their pen samples so we could have fun with it (we're thinking screen printing). Someone stopped by asking for advice on how to improve his touch-screen gloves and we gave him a piece of conductive fabric to try. This free sharing and helping is one of the things I really like about the Maker community. (For more of this sharing, and to see how much a duck is worth, take a look at the tog post.)



Lots of people seemed to enjoy our projects. partfusion brought his giant Ardunio, and a collection of his LED displays and wearable pieces. I brought my 7x7 LED matrix top, my temperature sensing scarf, and the Starry Light (LED wind-'chime'). Different people liked different things, I had great discussions about how the problem was really with the batteries (it's so great to met people who understand), about research in the area, giving people ideas about different ways to utilise soft-circuits (and getting ideas back in return). I even met a teacher who was really excited about the whole thing, hoping to use it as a way to get the girls in his class interested in electronics! I was also impressed to meet a young lady who already knew about soft-circuits, and was more curious in how we programmed them. All in all I think the future is bright (and twinkly).

( Pictures of our stand )

And of course MakerFaireUK isn't complete without purchasing so many books and kits that the weight-allowance on the flight home becomes a worry.



( About the LED nametag )

Overall it was an exhausting, but fantastic experience. I'm still buzzed from all the compliments and new ideas. And can't wait to see what all these other makers do next.

I bought a touchatag ages ago, but couldn't get it installed properly under linux (and when I got it working under Windows the supplied software required that I create an account, which I really dislike). It's no longer available to purchase (except perhaps through resellers with old stock), but it is a RFID-tag reader (that came with a few RFID-tags) and was part of the 'Internet-of-Things' effort. Although anyone I know who has one didn't get it for that reason. It lay gathering dust in the back of my mind until I suddenly had a project idea. But first, I had to get the darned thing to work!

Here's how I went about it under Fedora 18.

Pre-requisites (you probably don't need all these, but I have ambitions);
yum install pcsc-*
yum install libusb libusb-devel
yum install libnfc*

Install the driver;
wget http://www.acs.com.hk/drivers/eng/ACR122_Driver_Lnx_Mac10.5_10.6_10.7_104_P.zip
unzip ACR122_Driver_Lnx_Mac10.5_10.6_10.7_104_P.zip
cd ACR122_Driver_Lnx_Mac10.5_10.6_10.7_104_P/
tar -jxvf acsccid-1.0.4.tar.bz2
cd acsccid-1.0.4/
./configure
make

Check it's working;
lsusb
Lists it as Advanced Card Systems, Ltd.

nfc-list
It should list your reader, if not, try pcsc_scan, if still no luck run pcscd -f.
If at this point it's complaining that your firmware is bogus you need to edit the config file to skip the version checking, for me the file path is;
vim /usr/lib64/pcsc/drivers/ifd-ccid.bundle/Contents/Info.plist

Locate "ifdDriverOptions" and turn the "0x0000" value into 0x0005 (0x0004 might work too). Save and exit, then restart the daemon. I had trouble getting it back up again, so I rebooted.

Run the checks again to see that it is now picking up the device properly.

Use it;
This varies greatly depending on what you want to do. One of the alternatives recommended on the touchatag site is iotope. I downloaded it (to run in standalone node mode), unzipped, and ran the bash script provided (it's Java based). Then you open a browser and go to http://localhost:4242/ui/. Then simply put a RFID-tag in the reader and (if compatible) see the details show up.


I pieced together this information from two sources;
1. An archlinux wiki page which suggests another application, and
2. A backtrack linux page that suggests an entirely different application and use.

This is probably old-hat to those of you it interests, but I've finally gotten it to work, so I'm putting it here against my forgetting in future.

I try to keep this blog about things that have gone right (or at least experiences I can learn from). As such, I would be remiss if I did not mention the night of talks we had in TOG last night. The topic ended up being Computer Games and Development, and it's one of those rare times when everything just went right.

Back in December I said to the other members, I've a speaker lined up, let's have a night of talks! December being so busy it got pushed out to January. Which is good, because January is so quiet, and devoid of interesting events. But then a wondrous thing happened. Julie and Becky said, hey, I know someone who might like to talk, and suddenly we had a topic and more speakers than we could fit in one night!

It's one of those examples of just how a hackerspace should work. One person starts something, others join in, and a location is provided. Easy as pie, an event happens. And this one was spectacular (if I do say so myself)! One speaker presented from an iPad, controlled by a phone. Another provided my first real life experience of Windows 8. One was part of a team that won a BAFTA. And we had possibly the largest audience yet, including possibly the youngest yet. All on top of the genuinely interesting presentations!

But personally, the icing on the cake was that of the six (excellent) presenters, four were women. In the area of computer games. It happened without thinking, without specific effort. It was simply that when people thought of others involved with computer games, these were the people they thought of. It's a small thing, but it makes me happy.

Julie made the point that we reaped the fruits of past effort; of going to all those tech events and cons, of making a point of seeking out other women in tech, that made this possible. (And to be fair, in this case it was mostly Julie's graft.) So this, is not only a fine example of a hackerspace working well, but also a good reason why women-in-tech events are important. They lead to great events!

Moving on, people are already talking about a 'next one'. Guess we'll have to do something about that :)

While I wait for LJ to let me log in again (to upload photos), or until I find a better alternative, I thought I'd share some more of the LED-matrix top code with you.

Here's version 2, with the SparkFun wearable keypad functionality added. Let me know if there's any problems, or if you'd simply like to discuss it.

(Version 1 post)

I came upon this post just before bed, and now am having trouble getting my ticking brain to sleep. These photos, reportedly the first colour photos ever taken in Ireland, are 99 years old. They represent some of the poorest people and places of that time, some of the furthest from Dublin, and some of those retaining most of the old native Irish way of life. These people were the neighbours of my ancestors; my grandparents' parents. Irish identity is a tricky thing, a nebulous thing. For so long the colonised, the Free State only 89 years old. The records of our recent past burnt in uprisings, the stone monuments of the ancient past strewn about the landscape. And in between only the stories. (This is a good podcast by the way, if you're interested in the old Irish stories.) Then out of the blue (I like to think of the internet as blue) comes these photos.

It struck me, looking at them, how many are doing something, associated with their craft. Which in turn reminds me of the Hands boxset of documentaries from the early 1960's about traditional crafts, with a focus on those dying out due to industrialisation. I come from a people that tell stories and make things. What with the nature of this blog and all, it just kind of resonates. And my, how the world has changed in a hundred years.