Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Knight Rider Fridge! GE Garages 2014 and the FirstBuild Crew


Tim G of GE and Andy Leer of TechShop Pittsburgh worked on a refrigerator for FirstBuild's refrigerator hacking installation at GE Garage's 2014 space. Tim wired up a Raspberry Pi to their LimaBean interface to read commands and state changes from the refrigerator. Once the Raspberry Pi could see the doors open and closing, it was commanded to play a set of MP3's upon open. A set of LED's was put between the freezer and refrigerator doors to simulate the scanning of KIT the car from the iconic series. The LED strip was controlled with an Arduino Uno. Needless to say, this could be one of the most connected fridges you'll ever see. We used a CNC vinyl cutter to create the Knight Industries graphic.




Learn To Solder POV: ATTINY85

I've recently been working on my skills in PCB creation. I've created one before with the help of Matt Beckler from www.wayneandlayne.com. This was my first try by myself. This kit was developed out the need for an interesting/cheap learn to solder kit. The kit has 5 LED's, a CR2032 battery, a simple switch and a ATTINY85 IC. The ATTINY85 is easily programmable with SparkFun's Tiny Programmer. See the YouTube video for some action! 

Gandy Bars

Recently, I've been working on these mountain dulcimers. They are like mini portable guitars. They are available for sale over at www.gandybar.com . I currently have 6 available for sale. We may also be running a workshop this summer at TechShop Pittsburgh.