GoodGNUs

LinuxUser & Developer, issue 86, just came through the letterbox. I flicked through and a reader’s letter caught my eye - not because it called my Arduino article “wonderful” <blush>, but for its links to CopyLeft hardware resources.

Small Form Factor, Free Software, Open Hardware - 3 out of 3 for the NanoNote.

QI-hardware, producers of the Ben NanoNote, and the MilkyMist One boards are all projects deserving much wider publicity within (and beyond) the Free Software and hardware hacking communities. I’m certainly very tempted by the NanoNote.

Thanks to Wolfgang Spraul of QI Hardware for writing in to LU&D with the links.

Picture Credit: http://sharism.cc/ - licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

At recent events, when I meet new people, we naturally ask each other “What do you do?”. I’m failing quite badly at summarising my activities, so thought I’d briefly list current projects here, for reference:

1. Gaia University - IT strategy, project management, & SysAdmin, in a programme to gradually upgrade every online aspect of this international sustainability university over the next few years.
2. Social Media & the Accessible Web - the Profitable Conversations courses highlighted on the courses page. Got off to a good start last year, now lining up a number of courses around the North West for the Spring.
3. Hackspace North West - 10 months ago I started bringing people together whom I thought would be interested in getting spaces off the ground. I have done very little on this as fortunately it turned out there were plenty of people also wanting local hackspaces, and they’ve gone on to work towards getting them going. Latest steps in Shropshire & Staffordshire.
4. Credit Unions - Free Software solutions
   Should have been going a long time ago, but a key personnel hiccough has delayed things. Now we’re on the move again, and I’ll be posting announcements on the project here very soon.
5. Other financial software & local currencies…
   Next step is looking for partners to take the core of the Credit Union software, and adapt it for 3rd Sector book-keeping needs. This is something VCOs have been crying out for.
   We’re also talking to those involved with Complementary Currencies in a number of countries - something just beginning to gain ground in the UK after a brief flurry of LETS in the 80s.
6. Cloud Computing for the 3rd Sector.
   Voluntary Groups can’t host sensitive data in the USA, and don’t want to be advertised at by Google. Hoping to work with Fossbox on this, and looking for a sponsor to host the 1U server I have that was donated to the project by Blue Fountain.
7. Permaculture
   I studied for my Permaculture Designers’ Certificate in 1993-94, while also studying for the Royal Botanic Gardens’ diploma at Kew. It was the wrong time, and once back home in Montgomeryshire there was little or no work. Now I find a resurgent interest in sustainable design, and am following recent speaking engagements with more practical work.
8. IT Recycling
   M6-IT cic had a great success here, with Richard Rothwell’s Supported Family Computing project reaching dozens of families with recycled hardware, Free Software, family training, and local support, as well as broadband for people previously blacklisted by the ‘phone companies.
   Search for partners to replicate this has been unsuccessful, but it’s been a privilege to lead workshops on community recycling with ArcSpace in Hulme, Manchester, with an interesting and enthusiastic crowd of local activists.
9. Web
   Preparing new sites for local sustainability groups, campaigns, and VCOs: some Wordpress, blog-based, mostly Drupal CMS. I miss Plone, but it’s unsuitable for the quick and low-resourced sites I’m doing now.
   When a few more get finished I’ll put up some portfolio pages.
10. Blogging?
    I’m developing a horicultural/ethnobotany blog I started designing some time ago, and a *nix introductory blog for NetBook users. Once I can get a 30 hour day I’ll push these through to publication. :^)
11. Journalism - Linux User & Developer magazine recently commissioned me for a few articles. The first of these, on Arduino boards and open hardware hacking, hit the shelves a few days ago.
12. In Transition - the two towns nearest to our village are both in possession of new groups moving towards Transition Town Status. I’ve been lucky enough to meet some very interesting people, and get a chance to begin to investigate local food and power solutions.
    It’s certainly easier to work totally locally, than try to bring people together at a distance as I did at FACT’s Small Steps to Sustainability workshops. More soon here, and on Twitter.

Hope that helps fill a gap until I renew my calls-for-collaboration posts, too. As to Networking events, maybe I should print this list on a postcard?

Last week, I found myself writing (to a very tight deadline) an article on the Arduino board - and how it has led to a new sort of participation in Open Source, bringing more people from a range of backgrounds to playful & creative fun with technology.

The article will appear next month in Linux User magazine #84 [to be published 18 Feb 2010]. In the meanwhile here are links to some of the really cool projects that I found in the course of knocking out the article.

Where to buy one

http://www.oomlout.co.uk/

http://www.earthshinedesign.co.uk/

http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Buy

http://www.sparkfun.com/

http://www.tinker.it/en/Projects/TinkerKit

robot kits that were integrated with arduinos at Howduino:
http://kre8.com/

Or make Your own

http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Hardware
http://arduinofun.com/files/byoa.pdf
http://www.ladyada.net/make/boarduino/

Basic info

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino [a technical article]

http://arduino.cc/

Of course, you can Google for Arduino, Freeduino, Howduino, & Hackspaces. :-)

Learning

HOWDUINO: http://www.howduino.com/

http://tinker.it/en/Teaching/

http://web.media.mit.edu/~leah/LilyPad/

The complete beginner’s guide to the Arduino

Projects

A. Wearable

LilyPad - Arduino in wearable form

The LilyPad: http://web.media.mit.edu/~leah/LilyPad/

Leah’s Lilypad Lecture: http://www.smm.org/ltc/node/175

The bike vest: http://www.mykle.com/msl/?p=10 & http://speedvest.com/

V&A Smart Clothing Course

B. Music

Cake Orchestra & mark II & see the video

Theremin as a Capacitive Sensing Device

Theremin controlling xylophone - AKA ThereXylomin

C. Power Monitoring

Power monitoring

http://www.pachube.com/

http://homecamp.pbworks.com/

D. Around the home

Multi-channel-ambient-orb

The amazing Weasley Clock

Arduino, Stepper Motors, Weasley magic

James Devine’s Arduino Laser Projector

E. Practical

Camera remote:
http://www.fizzpop.org.uk/blog/nikon-dslr-ir-remote-project/
http://benosteen.tumblr.com/post/253208029/ir-control-for-a-nikon-d60-updated
http://www.bigmike.it/ircontrol/index.html
Vivarium temperature monitor

F. Fun

The Flock Clock & others….
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/arduino/
http://www.instructables.com/id/Flock-Clock/

hallowe’en is a popular excuse for Arduino family projects in the USA.

But here, and for Ben Tappin, it was an 80s party

http://www.thingiverse.com/oomlout

Misc

All sorts of links:
http://howduino.pbworks.com/PossibleProjects3

http://howduino.pbworks.com/Project-DisplaySharing

http://www.instructables.com/tag/?q=arduino

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=DIYbio

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=growduino

And big thanks to

Asa Calow, Cyberspice, James Devine, Hwa Young Jung, Lady Ada, John McKerrell, Nick O’Leary, Pindec, Ben Tappin, Aisha Yusuf, everyone on the various UK hackspace mailing lists who helped, & special thanks to Adrian McEwen.

EDIT - CopyLeft Hardware

Some great links from Wolfgang to CopyLeft hardware appeared in response on the LU&D site’s article. See also http://www.goodgnus.org/2010/04/open-hardware-copyleft/

Wednesday April 22, 2009 from 7:00pm - 8:30pm

FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology)
88 Wood Street
Liverpool, England L1 4D Get Directions

A start to getting together a crowd to open a NW Hackspace in Liverpool:

Starting Weds 22 April, a fortnightly meet-up at 7pm at FACT. We may try
and meet in their media lab at some time, but we’ll start with the bar.

Adrian McEwan will bring along Bubblino (as seen on BBC ;) to the first
meeting. Format will be informal discussion after a short intro on
hackspaces.

Creative learning

One reason for choosing this coming Wednesday is that it follows
straight on from the Small Steps to Sustainability meeting on Creative
Learning - something that very much includes having fun in a
hackerspace. I hope that some people will find themselves staying on
from Small Steps for the Hackspace Meeting (or coming early to the HS
meeting, to take part in Small Steps).

Note that Birmingham hackspace combine regular pub meetings with
occasional weekend hackdays. Help us find a venue and we’ll be doing the
same.

Upcoming - http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/2422946/
Webpage - http://nwhackspace.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/liverpool-meeting/

Below is the text of an e-mail I’m sending to various groups with which I’m involved. Please feel free to copy & re-post, Dig/Reddit/social bookmark, Tweet it, link to it at http://www.goodgnus.org/2009/04/more-hackspace/ or just talk about it to anyone who might be interested in joining in the hackspace fun :-)

Hackspace - a place for hacking. Playful invention with hardware, from Arduino to 3D printers. As one of the hackspaces puts it: “We’re looking to create a hackerspace where anyone interested in technology, or digital or electronic art can meet, socialise and collaborate.”

There are hackspaces all over the world [1], and now the UK. A new group [2] is trying to set up hackspaces in London [3] & Birmingham [4].

Why not the North West you ask? Well, I asked anyway ;) - so now we have a NW group - come and join the mailing list [5].

Where?

Members of Liverpool LUG have expressed an interest, and want to tie it in with planned workshops & the local arduino community. In Manchester the local coworking group are interested in sharing the space. In Stockport we’re looking at a storey of a nice mill building [6], and hoping to find a community of people to join in. In Bangor there’s a social enterprise start-up that would integrate very well with the space.

Join in

If you’re in N Wales or NW England, and interested in creative, fun (or profitable) things to do with computers, or would like to link such things with social action, perhaps, join the list. These things will only work with *people* - I’m committing a little time to help get these off the ground, but it’ll only work if we all muck in.

What next?

If you just want to follow what’s happening follow us on Twitter [7], sign up & lurk on the Google Group, or wait until we set up an [announce] mailing list.

[1] http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Hacker_Spaces
[2] http://www.hackspace.org.uk
[3] http://london.hackspace.org.uk/
[4] http://groups.google.com/group/birmingham-hack-space
[5] http://groups.google.com/group/NW-hack-space
[6] http://twitter.com/broadstonemill
[7] http://twitter.com/hsNW

Some of you may be aware of efforts to produce a hackspace in London & Birmingham. A place for creative experiment with technology. Fun for its own sake, which might also lead to all sorts of great artworks, products, and collaborations.

http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Hacker_Spaces lists hackspaces all over the world.

Recent talk on the Liverpool LUG mailing list, about finding somewhere to hold a netbook day for GNU/Linux newbies prompted me to think beyond a single event to what the city (& Manchester) is missing - a permanent hackspace.

Mentioning it on the LUG list, then at Manchester OpenCoffee, produced some interest, so I’ve put up a list at http://groups.google.com/group/NW-hack-space/ - please sign up and make yourself known if you’re interested.

Beyond the simple joy of hardware hacking, there’s the possibility of linking it up with some sort of co-working space, possibly sharing one floor of a building. It depends, of course, on who gets involved, and what people put in, as much as what people want to take out of it.

For example, I’d be keen to look at Sheffield’s Access Space, with its Social Agenda of helping people to help themselves with IT knowledge.