All posts by Lenore Edman

About Lenore Edman

Co-founder of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories.

Fall Field Trips!

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Tailgating for electronics guys

First up: the last Electronics Flea Market of the year is tomorrow, Saturday, October 9 in the morning at De Anza. We’ll be there, and if you’re anywhere near here, you should be, too!


RoboGames 2006

Coming up soon: Combots Cup V at the San Mateo Event Center on Saturday, October 23 and Sunday, October 24. Combots is the annual heavyweight robot combat championship.

“This event highlights the best combat robot teams in America and their 220 pound flame-throwing, blade-spinning, titanium shearing robots of destruction! Whether you’re a sports fan or techno geek, ComBots puts on the best robot events in the world! If you missed seeing fighting robots at Maker Faire this year, or are longing for RoboGames, here’s your chance to see them again.”

We’re thrilled to announce that ComBots is offering EMSL readers a 20% discount on ticket prices (adults normally $20, kids $15). Coupon is valid for advance ticket purchases until Oct 20th. Buy tickets here and use the coupon code EMSL-1337 for your discount when you check-out!

We’ll be there all day on Saturday, so come say hi!


Pumpkin?

That same weekend: East Bay Mini-Maker Faire is on Sunday, October 24 at the Park Day School in Oakland. We’ll be bringing our Egg-Bots and showing off a few of their Halloween related applications.

We hope to see you there!

Robogames 2006 photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid under cc-by-nc license.

This entry was posted in Art, Eggbot, Electronics, Engineering, Field Trips, Robotics and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the Permalink.

Hacking the Blinkybugs Book

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Blinky Bugs Book

Our good friend Ken Murphy recently published his wonderful Blinky Bugs as a book and kit and was awesome enough to send us a copy. Blinky Bugs are easy to make LED critters with antennae as blinker switches that activate in response to vibration or air movement.


Blinky Bugs Book & Kit

Chronicle did a very nice job with it–the book itself comes out of the nifty sleeve that holds the kit and book together. The cartoon illustrations by Alexander Tarrant are very clear and there’s a nice assortment of accessories to go with the core hardware.


Blinky-o-lantern build

The bug circuit went together very easily. These little guys are super compact and self contained, which means they’re adaptable to all kinds of uses. And while putting them on pipe cleaner legs is seasonally appropriate, they’re a perfect fit for a mini-pumpkin. The first thing to do after gutting the gourd is to mark and cut the holes for the LED eyes. A 3/16″ bit turned by hand makes a hole that is just snug enough to hold a 5 mm LED firmly in place.


Blinky-o-lantern inside

A couple of slits let the LED leads stick up through the body of the pumpkin where the antenna wires will be able to reach them.


Blinky-o-lantern off

Finally, the pumpkin lid is trimmed to allow the antenna wires to move freely.


Blinky-o-lantern in the dark

You can find more pumpkin projects in our Halloween Project Archive.

This entry was posted in Electronics, Engineering, Everything Else and tagged , , . Bookmark the Permalink.

Larson Scanner Review

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Justin over at WyoInnovations writes:

“My 14 year old daughter put together the Larson Scanner Kit offered by the Evil Mad Science Laboratories (EMSL). We have put together quite a few soldering kits around here and this one is, simply put, the best “learn-to-solder” kit I’ve ever come across.”

Thanks, Justin!

Kits are in stock over at the Evil Mad Science store, just in time for Halloween!

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New York, here we come!

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We’re very excited to be attending and sponsoring the Open Hardware Summit on September 23 at the New York Hall of Science. The schedule has a fantastic line-up of open hardware stars, and we’re looking forward to participating in this groundbreaking event.


At the very same location on September 25 and 26, we’ll be showing off Eggbot and LED Sensor Circuits at Maker Faire New York. The Maker Faire PDF guide is up now–we’ll be in Zone A, inside NYSCI. The schedule has also been posted, along with the list of makers. We’ll have some extra Maker Faire tickets to give away, but we’re not sure how many yet. Follow @EMSL on twitter where we’ll announce giveaway details when we have them. We hope to see you there!

This entry was posted in Education, Engineering, Field Trips and tagged , . Bookmark the Permalink.

Interactive Game of Life Exhibit

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Interaction

Recently we put together this interactive Game of Life display as an educational adjunct for a new exhibit by the San Jose Museum of Art on the works of Leo Villareal. Leo primarily works with light sculptures, and we’re very excited to see (and participate in) the exhibit, which opens this Friday.


We put together a video showing off the project, embedded here:

(If you can’t see the video here, click here to visit the youtube page.)

Continue reading Interactive Game of Life Exhibit →

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Cooking for Geeks

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Cooking for Geeks cover


Woo-hoo! We just got Cooking for Geeks in the mail. You can view it as a cookbook that takes time to delve into the science of the recipes or a food science book with demonstrative recipes. Or maybe an introduction to everything that food geeks know about, but everyone else wishes they did. It also has a series of interviews with geeks, chefs and scientists– including us, but I’m not sure which of those categories we fit into. Regardless, we enjoyed talking with Jeff about the book and are happy to see it out in print!

The cover design with splatter marks and stains means less worry when it gets spilled on in the process of cooking (not that I’ve ever worried about that with any of my other cookbooks).

Cooking for Geeks inside


Most pages have ample room for margin notes, which is something I’m fond of for recipe alterations. It flops open on the counter well, too.

We got a nice shoutout from Jeff on NPR’s Science Friday last week for the laser cut pie crust from our Apple pie, which is featured in the book along with our electrocuted hot dogs. Thanks, Jeff, and congrats on getting the book out there!

This entry was posted in Play with your food and tagged . Bookmark the Permalink.

Maker Faire Detroit Pictures and Highlights

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Maker Faire Detroit

Maker Faire Detroit was a blast! It was held at The Henry Ford, which is a museum worth visiting in its own right. It is an amazing place we didn’t get to see nearly enough of and would love to go back and visit again.


Maker Faire Detroit


In addition to providing a history of American manufacturing and a showcase of amazing vehicles, they have Mold-A-Rama machines!

Maker Faire Detroit


As usual, one of the most exciting things about Maker Faire for us was meeting and talking with other makers. We got to talk to the participants in an aluminum casting demonstration, who were using foam that was carved onsite with a CNC router.

We also really enjoyed our neighbors at the faire with the Note Grinder, a machine that read player piano rolls optically and used door lock actuators to press the keys on a synth keyboard. We were impressed with how pleasant it was to listen to (even for two days straight!) especially with the rhythm accompaniment provided by the actuator motors.


Maker Faire Detroit


The fine folks at Context Furniture were passionate about the renaissance of craftsmanship in Detroit and had great stories of reclaimed buildings.


Maker Faire Detroit


We were tickled to see several Evil Mad Science kits integrated into Maker Faire projects: a Peggy 2 being used as a readerboard, Wes and Don‘s 3D POV display with a Peggy 2LE, and Matt Mets’ Meggy Jr Sr.


Maker Faire Detroit


Our Eggbots performed like champs, and we even tried out engraving on glass holiday ornaments during the faire. The engraver scratched away the paint on the surface, and as you can see in the top picture, they were beautiful when lit from within by an LED.

We didn’t come close to seeing everything, but we’ve put pictures of some of what we saw in a set on flickr.

We hope to see you at Maker Faire New York!

This entry was posted in CNC, Education, Eggbot, EMSL Projects, Engineering, Field Trips and tagged , , , . Bookmark the Permalink.

Packing our bags (of bots) for Detroit

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Eggbot @ Cal Expo - 02

This week we’re getting ready for our big trip to Maker Faire Detroit 2010, where we’ll be demonstrating the Egg-Bot, our forthcoming spherical-coordinate drawing robot, which we’re gearing up to release later this summer.

Our last Egg-Bot outing was to the California state fair a couple of weeks ago, where we had a blast showing off our machine, drawing on light bulbs and (yes) eggs:

Eggbot @ Cal Expo - 04   Eggbot @ Cal Expo - 07Crate   plaid

What else is going on at Maker Faire? Well, lots— it’s hard to know where to begin –but for one thing Wes and Don told us about their cool project– a low-resolution 3D volumetric display based on a Peggy 2LE, rotated on a big box fan.

Embedded youtube video follows:

For those of you who can make it to the Henry Ford this weekend, we’ll certainly hope to see you there. (And further off and further away, we’re planning to be at Maker Faire NY in September.)

 

This entry was posted in Eggbot, Field Trips and tagged . Bookmark the Permalink.