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Items by Phillip Torrone

MAKE Magazine

• 

  Open Source Hardware Association Announced!

  Posted: April 12th, 2012, 9:24am MDT by Phillip Torrone

  Exciting news and another milestone for open-source hardware!
• 

  NEWS FROM THE FUTURE – Tattoo That Vibrates When Your Phone Rings

  Posted: March 28th, 2012, 4:00pm MDT by Phillip Torrone

  "Nokia hopes to jolt the personal electronics and tattoo industries simultaneously with a new patent for a haptic tattoo that transmits “a perceivable impulse” through a person’s skin when he or she gets a phone call, text message or email alert."
• 

  NEWS FROM THE FUTURE – Solar Panels Made With Ion Cannons

  Posted: March 14th, 2012, 3:00pm MDT by Phillip Torrone

  "Twin Creeks, a solar power startup that emerged from hiding today, has developed a way of creating photovoltaic cells that are half the price of today’s cheapest cells, and thus within reach of challenging the fossil fuel hegemony. The best bit: Twin Creeks’ photovoltaic cells are created using a hydrogen ion particle accelerator."
• 

  NEWS FROM THE FUTURE – Factory Audits Becomes a Feature

  Posted: February 27th, 2012, 4:00pm MST by Phillip Torrone

  As makers we tend to care a lot about where and how things are made. Apple has been in the news regarding the factories they use such as Foxconn. So what can we all do about other companies?
• 

  Soapbox: The {Unspoken} Rules of Open Source Hardware

  Posted: February 14th, 2012, 11:30am MST by Phillip Torrone

  I truly believe open source hardware is here to stay — it's established itself as a great community, a great effort, and, for many, a great business. I spend most of my days working on open source hardware in some way, and I wanted to talk about some of the {unspoken} rules we all seem to follow. Why? Because the core group of people who've been doing what we've collectively called "open source hardware" all know each other — we're friends, we overlap and compete in some ways, but we all work towards a common goal: sharing our work to make the world a better place and to stand on each others shoulders and not each others toes : ) I'm sure there will be some folks who agree strongly with what I've outlined, other will completely disagree with many points too. That's great, it's time we start this conversation. OK, let's go!
• 

  NEWS FROM THE FUTURE – Drone Pilot Discovers “River of Meat Blood”

  Posted: January 27th, 2012, 4:00pm MST by Phillip Torrone

  This was one of our predictions for 2012, not the rivers of blood, but drones being used by "citizen journalists" more and more - I think this is a good example, even if accidental. My friend Johngineer posted up a great list of "The future of Drones".
• 

  News From The Future – The Drones Have Drones

  Posted: January 6th, 2012, 4:00pm MST by Phillip Torrone

  

  

  DailyTech – The Navy Unveils “Cicada”: Now Even the Drones Have Drones.

  The U.S. Navy Research Lab’s Tempest Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) may not be the mother of all drones, but it is the mother of two drones, at least. A Hoisted up to 53,000 feet onto a high-flying trajectory via releasable balloon, the Tempest UAV “gives birth” in flight, launching a pair of mini “Cicada” drones.

  The tiny Cicadas are an exercise in efficiency, with their logic boards doubling as wings. The Cicada UAVs are gliders, complete with smartphone-like two-axis gyroscopes and GPS circuits for navigation.

  Several variants have been produced. The Cicada Mark I can be launched by firing it from a gun into the air. The Cicada Mark III is designed with special wings for improved range and stability, and is the model used by Tempest “mothership”. Cicada stands for Close-In Covert Autonomous Disposable Aircraft.

  

  See our predictions for 2012, reporters will have drones too.

  
• 

  News From The Future – Flying Robot Insects

  Posted: December 23rd, 2011, 4:00pm MST by Phillip Torrone

  

  

  Robot gives clues on evolution of flight @ TG Daily.

  A tiny robot insect has given support to the idea that the first flying creatures were tree-dwellers.

  A six-legged, one-ounce robot has shown that while flapping wings help a creature run faster, it’s unlikely that they could have given it enough speed to take off from the ground.

  The flapping wings increased the speed of the running robot by 90 percent, going from 0.68 m/s to 1.29 m/s, and also enabled it to climb steeper gradients, increasing from a 5.6° ascent to a 16.9° ascent.

  
• 

  “We urge Microchip to give something significant back to the community they’re tapping”…

  Posted: August 30th, 2011, 12:16pm MDT by Phillip Torrone

  

  @ Dangerous Prototypes Ian has a fantastic article “Editorial: Our friend Microchip and open source”…

  It’s great that Microchip invested in the Arduino open source IDE. Unfortunately the contributions seem to stop with support for their product. Parts of chipKIT toolchain are still closed-source, and Microchip isn’t contributing open source drivers for the highly-advertised USB and Ethernet features of the chipKIT Mega.

  We buttressed this editorial by saying we’re huge fans of Microchip stuff. It’s their time-honored right to deal in closed source software – most companies do! With the chipKIT, however, Microchip wants to tap the Arduino buzz. They want promote products using the work of an open source community, but they’re not participating in the spirit of that community. It’s not illegal, it’s being a bad neighbor.

  We urge Microchip to give something significant back to the community they’re tapping. Open source drivers for the chipKIT shield would be a great first step.

  Read more…

  I have a much larger article on this topic coming out later, but I wanted to say I think it’s great to see Microchip coming in to the open-source hardware world and I’m really looking forward to them addressing some of the issues Ian outlined. Disclosure, I’m fairly certain Micrchip has sponsored MAKE in the past, present and future – at this time Maker Shed does not sell the chipKit(TM) Uno32(TM).

  Previous
  Why the Arduino Won and Why It’s Here to Stay.

  
• 

  Former SONY Enemy #1 – Geohot Now Working at Facebook on iPad apps

  Posted: June 25th, 2011, 9:24pm MDT by Phillip Torrone

  

  Former SONY Enemy #1 – Geohot Now Working at Facebook on iPad apps

  George Hotz, the infamous iPhone hacker, and the victim of a recent Sony lawsuit, now works at Facebook. A member of the Chronic-Dev Team named Joshua Hill (P0sixninja) said this in a recent interview. Joshua challenged GeoHot to find a bootrom exploit for the iPad2, and this news quickly spread on Twitter. In the interview, Joshua said the George was mad at him because he doesn’t want that much attention, after being sued by Sony, and backed out of the challenge to work at his day job… at Facebook. Geohot has yet to say anything, after the Sony lawsuit, he blogged for a while then completely MIA. This does all add up because Facebook has confirmed they are working on an iPad app, when before they said they were not going to do one at all. We will keep you guys updated if Geohot says anything.

  Gabe Rivera of Techmeme in a tweet found Geohot’s page at Facebook.com/Geohot, and the first post at the top of page says” is Facebook is really an amazing place to work…first hackathon over.”. He also found out that he started in May, and announced it to his Facebook friends on June 17, 2011…

  Congrats to Facebook, George is extremely talented. We expect to see (more) amazing things from him for years to come.

  See our previous article “Sony’s War on Makers, Hackers, and Innovators” where we talk about Geohot…

  

  Sony should take a page from Microsoft’s playbook and develop a PlayStation SDK for innovators with Hotz. Microsoft saw all the amazing projects and hacks with the Xbox Kinect, and they embraced it. Here’s a Microsoft employee celebrating jailbreaking and encouraging Hotz to hack their product! Brandon Watson is Director for Windows Phone 7.

  Sony should not be suing GeoHot, they should be making a job offer. GeoHot isn’t going away, he has a bright future ahead — just look at what he’s done already, and he’s only 21!

  
  He was a finalist at the 2005 ISEF competition in Portland OR with his project “The Mapping Robot”. Recognition included interviews on the Today Show and Larry King. Hotz was a finalist at the 2005 ISEF competition, with his project “The Googler”. Continuing with robots, Hotz competed in his school’s highly successful Titanium Knights battlebots team. George also worked on his project, “Neuropilot,” in which he was able to read EEG signals off his head with hardware from the OpenEEG project.

  Hotz competed in the 2007 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, a science competition for high school students, where his project, entitled “I want a Holodeck”, received awards and prizes in several categories. Hotz has received considerable attention in mainstream media, including interviews on the Today Show, Fox, CNN, NBC, CBS, G4, ABC CNBC, and articles in several magazines, newspapers, and websites, including Forbes, and BBC. The Forbes article said Hotz hopes to go into Neuroscience: “hacking the brain,” he called it. In March 2008, PC World magazine listed George as one of the top 10 Overachievers under 21.

  He entered the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2007, quickly after gaining notoriety for hacking the iPhone, but withdrew from the school after 1 quarter. In December 2007, Hotz travelled to Sweden to attend the Stockholm International Youth Science Seminar and talk about his 3D imaging invention (called Project Holodeck) that netted him a $20,000 Intel scholarship earlier that year.

  During Sony’s lawsuit against George I emailed Sony and suggested they drop the case (they eventually did) and hire George to develop their SDKs, and consider jointing speaking at Maker Faire about how Sony is going to work with makers and innovators. No reply, but later Sony contacted other “hackers” to get them to work at Sony but the “hacker” turned them down because of how Sony went after George.

• 

  Ladyada talks with Tabitha Soren @bloombergnews

  Posted: June 24th, 2011, 4:00pm MDT by Phillip Torrone

  Adafruit’s Limor Fried on the D.I.Y. Revolution

  Limor Fried, an engineer and owner of the electronics hobbyist company, Adafruit Industries, discusses do-it-yourself electronics. Bloomberg’s special correspondent Tabitha Soren reports on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg West.” Emily Chang also speaks.

  Maker businesses are getting a lot of action in the press lately!

• 

  News From The Future: Dolphins Soldiers

  Posted: June 3rd, 2011, 4:00pm MDT by Phillip Torrone

  

  News From The Future: Dolphins Soldiers

  …the Navy sent some real marine mammals into action off the Pacific. Four bottle-nosed dolphins trained to find underwater mines demonstrated their abilities during Operation Trident Fury, a joint U.S.-Canadian military exercise held earlier this month off the coast of Vancouver, British Columbia. The dolphins are part of the Navy’s little-known Marine Mammal Program, which has trained sea lions, dolphins, and, yes, seals to find mines and enemy divers and was used successfully during the Iraq War.

• 

  Live engineering chat with Jeri Ellsworth and Limor “Ladyada” Fried tonight

  Posted: May 14th, 2011, 4:00am MDT by Phillip Torrone

  

  BIG NEWS! On ASK AN ENGINEER – Jeri Ellsworth will be a guest! Sat. 5/14 10pm ET. Jeri and Ladyada will talk all things electronics, LIVE this Saturday night ***TONIGHT*** at 10pm ET! I will be behind the scenes running camera, stop by!

  Jeri was hacking, modding, and running her own computer store in the late 1990s—and more…

  Jeri Ellsworth is an American entrepreneur and self-taught computer chip designer. She is best known for, in 2004, creating a Commodore 64 emulator within a joystick, called Commodore 30-in-1 Direct to TV. The “computer in a joystick” could run 30 video games from the early 1980s, and was very popular during the 2004 Christmas season, at peak selling over 70,000 units in a single day via the QVC shopping channel. She is a pinball machine aficionado and owns over 60 full-sized pinball arcade games.

  Jeri recently put up photos of her “chip fab”. She writes, “It took me 2 years to achieve my dream of making transistors and simple IC’s at home.”

  Most recently, she’s been creating the great “A to Z of electronics videos as well as posting videos and content on element14.com - all while helping to create the largest 555 timer contest in the world.

  

  And! Jeri will be at Maker Faire next week!

  See you tonight!

• 

  Public Libraries, 3D Printing, FabLabs and Hackerspaces

  Posted: May 11th, 2011, 4:00pm MDT by Phillip Torrone

  

  Public Libraries, 3D Printing, FabLabs and Hackerspaces, Thomas writes in…

  We do not share the malaise of many librarians who worry that the Internet and e-books are going to make public libraries obsolete. On the contrary, these shifts liberate libraries to spend more of their resources on their essential purpose within a democracy. A public library is a hackerspace avant la lettre. It is a democracy machine where people inform themselves and then literally go out and form the world they live in. It is a place that empowers people to actively hack the social codes they live in. There has never been so much work for libraries to do! The harvest is plentiful (literally, one of our projects is to collectively farm ½ acre of public land at the Northern Onondaga Public Library) but the workers are few.

  We want to see 3D printing, FabLabs and Hackerspaces become a regular feature–in addition to its other services–at every public library in the country. This video was made in support of Lauren Britton-Smedley’s proposal to create a pilot FabLab at the Fayetteville Free Library. This is Lauren’s final project for the “Innovation in Public Libraries” class taught by Meg Backus and Thomas Gokey at Syracuse University’s iSchool. In this class we looked at avant-garde art from the past 60 years (social sculpture, relational aesthetics, institutional critique, interventionist practice, and hacker/maker/DIY culture) and used it as a way to rethink what the library of the 21st century could be. We remain committed to the essence of a public library as a genuine commons, as a “university of the people,” as a place where the knowledge of past generations is preserved for present and future research. Our class explored what this essential function means today. The class was, in some respects, run as a studio where each student proposed and then actually created a project like this one.

  Other students are working on organizing CSA drop offs through the public library network, redesigning the bus schedules for our local public transit (badly needed), making a library’s piano available to the public, and creating a self-watering, self-tweeting network of cacti with an Arduino (so that you don’t over-water your cactus). You can view are class website here.

  -Meg Backus and Thomas Gokey

  Previous:
  Is It Time to Rebuild & Retool Public Libraries and Make “TechShops”?…

• 

  Open Source Hardware Definition and Overview Endorsed by Over 100 People, Companies, and More!

  Posted: February 23rd, 2011, 7:45pm MST by Phillip Torrone

  

  Open source hardware definition and overview endorsed by over 100 people, companies and more! This is fantastic! If you look at the list it’s the full spectrum, from independent makers to large companies. Next up, logos!