Freeplay a success
The Freeplay event this weekend was a success. The arcade games at the lab that made it to the event were played non-stop, and came back mostly the same. The consoles and vintage computers were also a big hit.
A number of new events and good meetups are coming up in August. The hackerspaces in space balloon launch is coming up as well. More details on that once they solidify.
Will post some freeplay photos in Flickr soon.
Poll Results 757 Labs Network Naming Scheme Results
757 Labs Network Naming Scheme Results
The results are in and it looks like "Astronomy" won out with "Hackers and Scientists" coming in close behind.
Here are the results.
Time to start getting the machines organized!
Open hack night, Friday Jul 30th, 8pm till midnight+
Just a heads up, the lab is open for a general open hack night on Friday. Everyone is welcome to visit. We will probably be working on a project or two, and people are welcome to bring their own projects to work on, or ideas to discuss. Software, hardware, whatever. It's been a while since we've held a general hack night, and hopefully we can move back to doing it twice a month or more.
Some new toys at the lab
In-counter barcode scanner has arrived and is setup for testing at the lab. This is for the self-checkout project. Erik has a dollar bill validator for us. Info on the wiki: http://www.757labs.org/wiki/Projects/selfcheckout
Our friend Lyman dropped off some older but fun toys for the lab, including two HID readers and some protocol converters. We've tested it, and we were able to read HID fobs and cards via RS232. This is going to be very useful! It will probably wind up as part of the lab's access control system.
Geoff dropped off a Motorola HC11 development kit. Bart in NYC gave us a Parallax Board of Education kit (Basic Stamp) and some accessories (along with other goodies.) While in NYC several of us bought some low cost arduino microcontroller development kits as well. In addition to the TI MSP430s that should be arriving. The lab is well stocked for microcontroller projects!!
Next HOPE preperation continues…
757 Labs is once again supplying the video distribution network for the HOPE conference in New York City. System consists of machines doing live encoding of video (DVD quality), transporting it across a network from the 18th floor to the 2nd floor, and then showing the video on various projectors and displays. And a management system, text overlay of anonymous comments, and more.
MIDI dabbling
On Friday last week a few lab members got together and toyed with electronic noise creating toys. It may become a regular meeting. Interested? Ping MarkG!
Travis versus Oracle LED sign by Sunrise Systems
The green 12' long (in 3 segments) LED scroller sign that Travis has been hacking on is looking AWESOME! He's got a half brightness feature implemented, and is now driving all 3 sign segments off of a single arduino microcontroller. The sign is neat in that there are 3 parts that plug together (it was some sort of expandable system.) The control software was DOS based, and the original control board set never worked right. Some mods were needed to each module to make it go. Overall though, it's looking great. The new code on the arduino controller will support using the sign as a frame buffer from another computer, and Enferex (Matt) has something wild in store for it!
Vizio TV guts
We finally took apart the Vizio 42" EDTV set that came to us for free (but had a cracked LCD.) No luck in finding a replacement panel. The working board set will be sold to hopefully cover some lab costs, meanwhile there are some odd left over parts. There is a trippy diffuser that was used on top of the backlights but before the LCD panel. A cracked LCD panel which serves as a conversation piece, and a backlight with 20 CCFL florescent lights in it.
GV42L is the model.
Travis playing with Vizio backlight diffuser plastic.
Rock the Fail Crane!
Enferex and I had spent some time (along with others that were at the lab on various days) updating the Skill Crane to run on a more modern setup. It was fully streamed 24x7 via Justin.TV and had the ability to submit moves without page refreshes. Also, the player's name and coordinates of play were burned into the video real time. It was great. But then the hard drive in the computer randomly died. Not just a click of death, it's a clack of death.
Some of the information was saved, some of it is in svn. The system will be back in a week or so. Perhaps sooner with the long weekend.
757 Labs at Fantasci 2010, other marketing
We're doing a little marketing of the lab around Hampton Roads. We were helping out at the Freeplay table at Fantasci over the weekend, and ran a short video about the lab (also posted to youtube.) A few people asked about the lab, and promotions for the Freeplay retro and modern gaming event (Aug 7th, www.sevagaming.com for more info) went well. In addition to this, some other ads were distributed at a few places in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake.
It was a good time supporting a local con, and I hope to do it more in the future. The HAMFest in September should be home to our next "booth."
Location
Links
User Groups
- 757 CCC Comic & Cartoon Creators
- 757 Python Users Group
- 757.rb Ruby Users Group