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.

Almost another year gone by....

After almost another year since the last post, there has been one big change...I'm married, well there have been a few changes.

Courey now lives me with full time, as a good permanent girlfriend should :). Laura and Justin also got married and have had their lovely daughter, my god-daughter, Lucy Leer. And Charlie and Tiffany have set a date and will be married by the middle of this year.

Dad and Mom have had Laura, Justin and Lucy living with them and they are more than grateful for all of that. I am grateful for all of that. It has been a lot of fun recently seeing all of them together on our weekly FaceTime chats. For right now Lucy is cute and funny, soon she will start doing neat stuff too.

As for me, I'm doing okay. Work and travel have run it's toll on me and my body....I often find myself eating thing out and about that I later regret. The travel itself is fun. Always meeting new people has definitely made me come out of my extroverted shell. Work is challenging in that I'm constantly trying to be a step ahead to prevent any catastrophes.

Courey and I have been getting along just peachy. We are having fun getting used to each other more so now that we live together, even though with travel for work, it sometimes seems as though we still live on opposite end of the city. She's getting really good at trying new dishes and I try to cook from time to time.

The house has been good. I'm always standing on pins and needles waiting for the next thing to break or need replaced but so far most of the big things have already been taken care of. Just waiting for the roof to cave in.

The band has also been having fun, with advent of a new album we've been hard at work on some new originals and live recordings which we know that the fans will love. We keep trying to improve our shows and our overall musicianship.

I hope to keep posting more so that this doesn't become a yearly blog. Let's see what happens!