We’ve been watching the work of RoboGenius for quite some time. He has created some of the neatest non-geometric work anybody has done on the Egg-Bot. Recently, he uploaded a number of his designs to thingiverse, which means you can try them out, too. He has also been posting great pictures of them to flickr. When asked in the Egg-Bot user list how he created them, he posted:
The short answer is that it’s all done line by line in Inkscape.
The slightly more tedious answer is that it starts with an image (generally something off the web, or that has some significance to me), then I import that image onto my 3200px X 850px template in Inkscape and position it where I want it on the egg/ball. I then take a look at the image and decide how many color layers I’ll be needing for the plot and add those to the project, naming them sequentially followed by the color I use for the layer (for example: 1 – Yellow, or 5 – Black). I always begin with the lightest colors first, and generally end in black. Then it’s simply a matter of tracing over the picture on the correct layer using the bezier line tool (Shift + F6), and bending those lines with the path editing tool (F2). Once I get the basic lines created, I’ll create and fill any solid shapes using the EggBot Contributed Hatch fill extension (spacing should be set to 6 for eggs). To add shading, you simply go over the same places a couple of times with the same color, which can be achieved with Copy and Paste, and occasionally the shading can be enhanced by altering the angle of the line to match the angle of the shape or intended shadow (the Master Chief design is a good example of this technique).
That’s pretty much it. To finish off the project, I like to color all of the lines in a layer to match the marker used in that layer, then delete the layer with the picture in it.
Thank you for generously sharing both your designs and your techniques, RoboGenius!
They used a Peggy 2 to drive a field full of LED illuminated spheres, along with IR sensors to detect visitors entering the array. Each new person would trigger a new sphere to light up and move through the field.
This is the largest installation we’ve ever seen based on the Peggy 2.
Thanks for sharing your incredible project with us!
Links to many more Peggy 2 projects are on the wiki.
The 2013 Bay Area Maker Faire is a wrap— and it was amazing. And we took pictures. We’ve uploaded 362 photos from maker faire right here for your browsing pleasure. But first, a little preview.
Kids play with giant cardboard robot arms at the Giant Cardboard Robots booth. As they say, “The revolution will be corrugated.”
Glo-Puter Zero, by Alan Yates, with its phosphor-based memory. Truly a highlight of the show.
Lenore shares a nerdy moment with Akiba from Freaklabs.
An unusual LED badge, from the Bay Lights project.
The Western Pyrotechnics Association is a club for people that make their own fireworks. It’s incredible to see the complexity and artistry of the fireworks and the tooling that makes them.
A beautiful hovercraft, designed to look like a flying DeLorean; you can see video of it on the project site.
Back at our booth, the WaterColorBot was a constant hit. Above, Sylvia shows visitors how to sketch with it in real time.
An unexpected application: Our friend Bilal Ghalib stopped by and enlisted the WaterColorBot to help him make a birthday card for another friend.
And one of our favorite moments of Maker Faire: a young visitor, tickled pink as she tries out the WaterColorBot, watching it paint a drawing that she had just sketched.
A bicycle-powered cardboard walking rhino, by Kinetic Creatures, makers of walking cardboard robot kits, with Theo Jansen inspired walking mechanisms.
Some of the creations are simpler, like this sidewalk-chalk wielding vibrobot, spinning on a tabletop chalkboard at the Exploratorium booth.
Some of the creations are more technical, like the OpenPNP project to create open source pick and place machines for electronics assembly. We’re excited by where this is headed, along with a few related projects.
And of course, there’s no shortage of LED goodness.
Please click right here for the rest of our 2013 Bay Area Maker Faire photo album.
We have been visiting the Exploratorium in San Francisco again and again since we were teenagers in the early ’90s. And with good cause: The Exploratorium is an unparalleled museum of hands-on science, art, perception, and exploration. It’s not a children’s museum (although it is an amazing place to take children), nor is it a place where you admire giant fossilized skeletons, nor one of those museums that always seems to have a traveling exhibit with a name like “The Science of Jersey Shore.”
Instead, it’s a place full of simple, often-amazing yet not-too-flashy exhibits that (for the most part) you play with to learn about various phenomena. For example, at the Floating in Copper exhibit, you can get a feel for the un-earthly effects that strong magnets have in the presence of a large block of nonmagnetic, highly-conductive material. It’s one thing to read about eddy currents in an article; it’s quite another to release a chunk of metal in mid-air, only to find that it floats down to rest, more gently than a dandelion seed. You may have seen this exact exhibit at other museums (here, for example)— and if so, that’s quite likely because the Exploratorium makes many copies of its exhibits for other museums and publishes plans for others to make their own.
Since moving to the Bay Area in 2005 and starting the Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories blog, we’ve also been honored to present some of our own projects at Exploratorium events over the past few years, including the CandyFab, a Bristlebot workshop at the first Young Makers event, and some of our clock projects at the Open Make event on the theme of “Time.”
Exterior of the Exploratorium, at the Palace of Fine Arts (2010). Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid under CC BY-NC-ND license.Interior of the Exploratorium, at the Palace of Fine Arts (2006). Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid under CC BY-NC license
The Exploratorium has, since its founding in 1969, been located in the exhibit hall of the the Palace of Fine Arts— a huge arc of a building left over from the 1915 Worlds Fair, located in the Marina district of San Francisco, as pictured above. As the name implies, the building was designed to be a museum and was a remarkably suitable home for the Exploratorium. However, a few years ago, it came out in the news that they would be moving out of the Palace of Fine Arts, and into a space on one of the San Francisco Piers. Of course, our hearts sank at hearing this, as we could not imagine any more perfect place for the Exploratorium. Nor could we imagine that they could possibly find a place as large and welcoming anywhere else in San Francisco. We were also worried about parking, as the Palace of Fine Arts was blessed with its own parking lots, a rarity in San Francisco.
We were wrong.
On Saturday, we went to a member preview at their new location at Pier 15, which will be opening on April 17. We took a number of pictures as we explored, and in addition to sharing some of the highlights here, we have put up a flickr set from our visit.
The new location at Piers 15 and 17 on the San Francisco Embarcadero is right between the Ferry Building and Fisherman’s Wharf, in the shadow of the Bay Bridge. A huge advantage of the new location is that it is much easier to get to by public transport than the Palace of Fine Arts was. There’s a MUNI train stop, and it’s just a few blocks from BART and the other public transportation that already comes to the Ferry Building.
There are also plenty of nearby parking garages and lots. We had no problem finding an inexpensive lot to park in for the day, and now taking the train is an option for us.
And it turned out beautifully. Here at the end of the pier, there are a number of new exhibits, many about biology and the bay.
The new location is much bigger: there is three times as much space. This view is looking down one of the corridors, from the location pictured previously. The museum is packed with exhibits as far as the eye can see.
All of the spaces are well designed, and extremely good looking, taking advantage of the abundant natural light.
There are many large open areas, as well as cozy corners and nooks. The Tactile Dome is being rebuilt on a larger scale (in a space with a higher ceiling than this) and will be opening this summer.
Activity in the new bio labs is visible through large windows. In neighboring spaces, we saw them growing continuous replacement plants for the touchable plant exhibits and various organisms for people to look at under the microscopes.
The new location has the same spirit, and despite our expectations, still feels like the Exploratorium. The workshop is just as prominent as before, and still out in the open so that visitors can see new exhibits in progress and old ones being repaired.
Our old favorites on electricity and magnetism (like Daisy Dyno) felt right at home, and were as popular as ever.
The acoustics are much more friendly, making conversations and discussions much more enjoyable.
The one new building on the pier is the Bay Observatory, which has stunning views as well as brand new exhibits on bay topics such as geology, geography and tides. Above is a 3D tide table with the tides for each day represented by a the shape of each piece of plastic marked with the time and lunar information.
Since this was an early preview, many exhibits are still in progress or yet to be installed. This outdoor space between Piers 15 and 17 will be opening soon and the museum plans to eventually develop additional space on Pier 17.
Congratulations to the Exploratorium on such a successful move and wonderful new home!
The museum will be opening to the public on April 17, and tickets will be available online soon. There are additional member previews coming up on April 6 and 9 as well— check the calendar for details and other upcoming events.
We’re no strangers to seeing an occasional hard-to-look-at article of clothing. However, we recently came across the above pictured dress (the Signature Shift Dress by Julie Brown), and noticed a peculiar quality about it. The pattern of angled, high-contrast shapes makes it remarkably difficult to see the actual shape of the dress underneath that print.
Now, where have we seen this kind of thing before?
Ah yes: Dazzle Camouflage! Dazzle camouflage was used in WWI to make ships more difficult to identify and target, by disguising their size, configuration, range and orientation. This is different from traditional camouflage, which tries only to minimize visibility, but can be surprisingly effective. In the photo above, of the USS Mahomet in port (circa November 1918), it’s hard to make out even the out the shape of the ship.
Additional good examples of ships with dazzle camouflage can be seen here, here, and here (in an article that discusses the design process for the patterns).
Curiously, dazzle camouflage seems to have made a recent comeback in fashion.
This Print Wrap dress at Uupto distorts the model’s curves in strange ways. Thanks to the “mountain range” in the middle, one might initially perceive this to be a maternity dress.
The Print and Proper dress at Modcloth is another new example.
And the Poleci Women’s Cross Front Striped Longsleeve Top from FavBuy creates the illusion of a strangely misshapen abdomen.
The Elbow Sleeve Tiered Dress at Venus. The interrupted, striped, spiraling pattern creates the illusion (perhaps assisted by photoshop) that the diameter of the dress is somewhat smaller than it is in reality.
You can dazzle all the way to your toes, with these matching Black and White Platform Heels at Venus.
Some designs stray from simple black and white geometric patterns, but still effectlively confuse the eye, such as this Jersey Maxi Dress by Julie Brown. Worth noting is that many of the original dazzle patterns on ships were brightly colored, too.
Of course, this is not the first time dazzle camouflage has appeared in fashion. At the time that dazzle camouflage was first introduced, the public was fascinated by it.
The Dazzle Camouflage Pinboard by user Saruzza has some wonderful historical fashion examples, including a reference to a 1919 Dazzle Ball at the Chelsea Club.
From a contemporary article (via camoupedia), comes this account:
Four British naval officers, distinguished for their success at camouflage, had charge of designing the dresses, and the ballroom looked like the Grant Fleet with all its warpaint on, ready for action. The jazz bands produced sounds that have the same effect upon the ear as this “disruptive coloration” has upon the eye.
A themed masquerade ball is one thing, but the patterns did also make their way into the mainstream culture of the time:
This picture of dazzle camouflage bathing suits from the 1919 New York Tribune was provided as a visual supplement to an excellent audio post by 99% Invisible on disruptive camouflage.
And as for the future? No discussion of dazzle would be complete with out mentioning CV Dazzle, which covers methods of using makeup and hairstyles to thwart face recognition software. Perhaps soon e-ink fabrics will also provide changeable displays that disrupt QR and barcode readers, as well as other visual tracking systems.
George Hart sent us a link to his incredible Escher cookie roller project. The project “provides a customizable method of producing cookies that are imprinted with an individual’s favorite frieze patterns and tessellations.”
He and co-consipirator Robert Hanson have provided software for generating STL files to produce 3D printed tessellated cookie or clay rollers, and they’ve even posted a few of their sample STL files.
The process of using an imprinted roller to create patterns on clay dates back to ancient times. Using modern tools including image processing software and 3D printers allows recreation of the ancient patterns, as well as the creation of completely new ones.
If you’re anything like us, you’ve at some point come across supposedly-nerdy valentines and thought to yourself, “A real geek would have used an equation to express that sentiment.” And if so, have we have got just the thing for you!
Here’s our collection of six little valentine cards, each of which adds a little authenticity and class to the not entirely uncommon “geek” valentine genre.
Suppose that you want to communicate to your valentine just how hot you think they are. Sure, you could go with a picture of a thermometer— or a Sriracha bottle —but isn’t the thermodynamic definition of temperature itself in a whole category of its own?
And what better way to say “I love you,” than with the gift of trigonometric identities?
You can download the original file here (260 kB .PDF document).
Print it out on (or otherwise affix to) card stock, and [some steps omitted] enjoy the resulting lifelong romance.
Update:New cards have been released! Please check out the 2019 set, which contains all 42 cards from 2013 through 2019.
The idea was to build a infrared display out of old remote controls, using the existing infrared LEDs as pixels of a low-res display. 625 old remote controls are mounted in a metal frame connected by individual wires to a modified Peggy 2 that runs the whole installation.
The main change to the Peggy was to solder molex headers instead of LEDs: this is to allow the wires to be easily plugged in and out of the board which is necessary when dismantling and reassembling the piece. Yes, all 625 remotes are numbered so they can be removed from the frame for transportation! The current and voltage was also adjusted fo IR LEDs as opposed to visible LEDs.
While researching, the main thing I was looking for was the ability to play video (live) on a low-res matrix. I looked into various ways of doing this but once I found the Peggy 2 kit it gave me confidence to go ahead with building Infra because of the open-source nature, existing work done by Windell, and Jay Clegg’s video Peggy mod.
I connect all the remote controls via 500 meters of speaker wire to the Peggy, held into the frame by a simple looped elastic band. The circuit is mounted to a sheet of acrylic as the circuit bowed with all the wire attached. Each remote had to be opened to solder the wire directly to the LEDs legs. The wire is then routed out through the back of the remote and closed back up.
Preparing all 625 remote controls was the most time consuming part, each was different and often not very clean especially once you get inside. Although looking at all of the remotes individually revealed another side to the project which I’ve documented through a small run of books.
Thank you to Chris for sharing about how you made your piece with us. His exhibit will be up through February 3rd, 2013, so if you’re in London, go see it soon!
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