I’ve got a few projects on my hands at the moment in the Hackademia Lab.

First, I have been working on the home-made 3D scanner with a team for a few weeks now. We made a background and mounted calibration dots on it to correspond to the correct scale of the objects we plan to scan. To do the actual scanning, I volunteered the use of my Canon DSLR, though I wasn’t sure on how to work it. I did a little online research to see that I would need to a) know how to work the camera in video mode and b) have an HDMI cable. As for the video functions, I got the hang of it with the help of the manual, specifically figuring out the funky business of why the shutter stays open then closes randomly, or how to perform auto-focus, or do the (extremely helpful) LCD-zoom for focusing the camera with utmost accuracy. I would like to attribute my fine eye for focusing lenses back to darkroom photography and my countless days spent staring at crisp grains of silver on plastic. I wish we were allowed the same fine focusing of the projector we’re using to perform the scan, as you’ll see in this picture, the projector makes things a bit tricky.

Calibrating the projector with my DSLR, notice fancy cup!

After we calibrated the focus, another group member ran the scanning software to calibrate it with the computer. That’s where those fun little lines come from on the image above! The calibration process is easy to run, but not as easy to set up. The camera and projector have to be arranged at specific angle differences for it to work, the board & calibration dots have to be exactly facing the camera, and then we still get problems within the software of misread angles, thus affecting our point clouds. The actual scanning process is barely harder than the calibration: it takes about the same amount of time and it looks the same with the scan lines going. On our first try a week or two ago, we attempted to scan a bag of coffee beans. One factor we didn’t take into account was that the bag was made of reflective plastic, and reflective material messes with the scan big-time. The only things the point cloud definitively picked up were the matte-paper logo and the curled top of the bag. From here on out, it’s going to be all about getting the scanner to make a more accurate point cloud.

As for my individual project, I have started working on the Knock Block, seen here at Instructables: http://www.instructables.com/id/Knock-Block/

I hunted down all of the electronics on the creators’ list, but I’ve already noticed they leave a few things out. I’m glad our lab has basic stuff like alligator clips laying around. The instructions contain a picture of the actual setup of the Arduino as well as a circuit diagram. As I’m not an Electrical Engineer and I haven’t taken physics since AP in my senior year, the circuit diagram is a bit more of a stretch to understand. I find myself looking at their real picture more than the diagram. They aren’t easy to understand, and if you Google search “understanding beginner circuit diagrams” or the like, I haven’t come across any tutorials yet. Here is where I left off in the lab on Monday evening:

This is my best guess at how the squiggles on the circuit diagram are supposed to look in real life.

And the last project I’m working on is assisting my friend with getting to know the 3D printer. We thought the first place to start would be at the software, and since the lab has a Makerbot 3D printer, we went to Makerbot Technology’s website for answers. Solidworks would have been the best to learn 3D modeling, but we’re students and they don’t even give students a limited-time free trial, so we had to go the free route. We raced each other to see who could download Google Sketchup and add the necessary plugin for 3D printing first. My friend is a PC user, I’m a Mac user, and we both ran into a lot of frustrating problems for maybe a half an hour. I broke the cycle by looking deeply at the Makerbot website instructions, downloading a different version of the plugin, and adding it manually via the program preferences. Now to learn Sketchup…

Little did Mr. Smiley Pants know his creator looked down on him for being disappointingly two-dimensional...

Stay curious,

Julia

The result of 4 hours of work.

I have been looking into making my own “Knock Block” which I found on Instructables.com. You can find instructions for it here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Knock-Block/

I’m drawn to this project because it will give me the chance to really check out this Arduino stuff on my own, maybe tweak the C++ code a little bit, and exercise my mad woodworking skills. And the thing tells time too. I just got all the parts in the mail and I’m excited to start making it. The element that detects vibrations was the hardest to track down, I wonder what other kind of uses it could have.

Beth brought in a cool project for us to complete during lab meeting last week, it put my blinky LED and paper-cutting knowledge to the test!

I like to think that the dolphin is dreamin' big, trying to snack on that juicy light-up bird. The light is only activated when the card is pressed, preserving battery life.

Knock Block progress later,

Julia

One of the more frustrating aspects of the internet is that if I am looking for a simple solution to a problem, it will present me with several options and leave me believing the solution is a lot more complex.

My team’s project is to create a light box that changes color based off of University of Washington Police Department alerts. For example, if there were no alerts than an RGB LED inside the light box would be white but if a chemical spill occurred then the light would switch to blue. The inspiration for this project was twofold. First, I came across the Twiiter Mood in a Box (http://www.instructables.com/id/Twitter-Mood-Light-The-Worlds-Mood-in-a-Box/?ALLSTEPS) which changes color based off the mood most expressed in tweets. Secondly, as a Resident Assistant in the res halls, it is important that I know when there is an emergency on campus but text alert does not always work and I don’t check my email more than every couple of hours. Thus, a light box would be a more visible and immediate alert system.

One of the most crucial pieces to the light box is a Wifly shield that consistently checks UWPD alerts using a wifi signal. In my search for an affordable shield (average price is upwards of $85), I came across all types of configurations and models that left me with more questions than answers. Do I want a shield or a module, what is the difference between a transceiver and a resistor, how does the thing even connect to an arduino, ect… I finally came across a master post of all the wifly shields out there (http://postscapes.com/arduino-wifi) which will hopefully give some direction.

Pictures of the construction of the light box to come soon.

-Erin

This week in the Hackademia Lab we constructed high-tech cards.

We learned the basic structure of a circuit and applied it to making our card light up with an LED. I made a pop-up card featuring a bright idea.

My card was designed to congratulate someone who had a bright idea.

One of the barriers we ran into is how to create a switch using the materials we were given. A few of us wanted our LEDs to light-up when the card was open. This would save the battery’s power while the card wasn’t being looked at.

A couple of solutions were tossed on the table:

• Create a device that would slide into contact and close the circuit once the card was opened.
• Install a manual on/off switch accessible to the card reader.

We didn’t have time to try either, but I’m eager to test them out!

Back stage: power source and copper tape.

In the bigger scheme of things, we’re going to be starting our projects soon. My group will be creating a 3-D scanner using a projector, a camera, an arduino, and some free software (DAVID-LaserScanner).

We have all of the needed components assembled and we’ll begin the construction phase in the next week!

Best,

Mark

Hey, my name is Marcel and my first post will describe how I made a LED blink and what possible projects I have in mind for this quarter of Hackademia:

Blinking LED

Because there are a lot of good tutorials on how to make a LED blink with an Arduino, I looked for the most complete one which also included steps to connect the board to my computer: Tutorial

As instructed, I connected the LED to the board. Then, I downloaded the software and connected the Arduino Board to my computer. Then I compiled  the code, uploaded it to the board and thus completed my first Arduino project.

Possible Projects

My first plan for this quarter was to learn how to operate the makerbot and use 3D-Modelling Software to create my own object. After thinking about what I could create, I had another idea: Copying Objects

To make a copy of a real-life object, one first would have to scan it, then use the data to save it as a model for the makerbot and then print it. After some research, I found a instructional website which would let one build a 3D-Laserscanner at low cost: David-Laserscanner

I’m very optimistic that this could become a very interesting project and would love to hear what others think about it.

Follow @HackademiaUW for more project updates!

So, it has been a very long time since I made an LED blink – and I have never worked with Arduino before – but I think that things turned out pretty well.

I received my Arduino board as a gift, and after scavenging a few LED’s, a solder-less breadboard, and some jumper wires from the lab (thanks, Erin!), I had everything I needed to make that sucker blink!

I downloaded and installed the Arduino software, and found that it was no problem whatsoever to make that little light blink to my heart’s content:

So I decided to step things up at least a little bit!

I went ahead and wrote a little extra code to get the LED to blink out the name HACKADEMIA in Morse code Here’s a link to a video if anyone is interested:

I think this was a pretty successful first attempt at using the Arduino board and compiler. I am looking forward to ramping things up over the coming weeks…

Hi! My name is Kim Brown and here is how I make LEDs blink!…

I have worked with Arduinos before for another research position where I was the technical assistant to a DXARTS grad student for her project. I was given a task similar to this one, to complete on an Arduino and also involving LEDs. I remember it being challenging because I was not given a manual. My research supervisor handed me an Arduino Diecimila and asked me to look up how to use it online.

The reason my research supervisor had me working with an Arduino was to, in the end, have a system where the Arduino controls multiple pieces of Flexinol (contracting allow wire). It does this in conjunction with a relay shield (so the Arduino opens and closes circuits in a specific sequence).

I haven’t worked with LEDs or breadboards for a while so this was a helpful exercise. I used a relay shield to make the lights blink instead of connecting directly to the arduino.

http://www.hackademia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/IMG_9351.jpg

Hey, I’m Erin (Klim) and I like things that light up. For our first task, we had to make an LED blink using an arduino.

As Julia mentioned in her post (http://www.hackademia.com/blinky-led/), the Arduino website has an easy tutorial and pre-written code to make a blinking LED at

http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/BlinkingLED

From amazon.com I bought an Arduino Uno and USB adaptor for the arduino. The Uno board seemed to be one of the most positively reviewed arduinos on amazon and had free 2-day shipping, which is always a plus. I broke into a package of assorted radioshack LED’s in the hackademia lab and chose to use a large green one (specifics unknown beyond large and green).

Probably the hardest part of this exercise was installing the driver for the arduino. For some reason, window’s does not do this immediately and I had to go on an epic adventure through the bowels of my computer to install the driver. After that, I downloaded the arduino environment, pasted in the code, plopped the LED on the arduino (long leg in pin 13 and short leg in GND), and connected the arduino to my pc. Huzzah, we have light!!!

But Erin, what if I don’t have an arduino but have a ton of LED’s? Good question inner conscience! With a few watch batteries and tape, one can light up a multitude of LED’s. Here is a fun tutorial to make LED throwable clusters from the Graffiti Research Labs: http://www.instructables.com/id/LED-Throwies/

Julia and I scavenged around the lab and were able to light up some LED’s for ourselves.

Go forth and make the world a brighter place,
Erin