Inclusive Hackathon - attracting larger audiences for STEM, hacker/maker/geek events

Here's an interesting post about attracting larger audience for a hackathon

Control another human via your brain

While this isn't has hardcore as River Tam's psychic abilities ("I can kill you with my brain"), researchers have done an experiment where a colleague controls another colleague's hand movement to press a key.

Vods:



It's no where near the Nerve Gear but we're getting there ... to the point where the Matrix prison could be a concern ... and taking control of people, or killing them via the brain interface could easily happen. Like in Surrogates or Ghost in the Shell.
Cyberpunk ftw.

Arduino + starter kit $12 or less, shipped worldwide

Yes, even though you could get arduinos for less than USD7 on taobao, you need a taobao payment method, conversion rates and whatnot, and pay shipping.

Here, it's on a familiar website (indiegogo), ships worldwide, purposed for education, and is definitely an inspiring and sharable campaign/project =) So grab one or more and share to the world the fun of electronics =D

Obligatory iframe:

ArduSat is In SPACE!!! (and AIAA Sydney Section tour of Canberra)

omg it's SPACE!!!
So Greg Chamitoff came to speak at the ANU a couple of weeks back (with U Syd and AIAA) and he said everyday, his commander would wake him up with "Guess what? WE'RE IN SPACE!!! =D"

Anyways, ArduSat was launched into space in the early morning (AEST, which is similar to Japan time) between the AIAA tour days when some students from Sydney came over to visit Canberra's Aeronautical and Aerospace stuff =P

I was so tired helping out and staying up and waking before 9 that I skipped the live launch, but here it is in all its glory (launch at 47:30). Rocket is JAXA's H-IIB, ArduSat is piggybacking on the HTV-4 resupply mission to the ISS, and will be deployed off Kibō [yes, I was a bit annoyed with the pronunciation of Kibō xP]



ArduSat was my first Kickstarter project I backed with $1 =P (Poor student who really wanted to afford time for operation of ArduSat). It's also apparently partly built in Australia. And has a goal for education and science, you could buy time on the kickstarter and I assume before EOL they'll have time for other people to do some science/education with it! Test and learn your arduino programs on the spacecraft here! =)


Here's a video about AITC, one of the places (CDSCC, AITC, ATSB and ADFA/UNSW@Canberra)  where the AIAA tour went in Canberra; by a Melbourne Hackerspace/Maker Jonathan Oxer (who not so coincidentally worked on ArduSat):


UPDATE 16/7/2014:  I posted some photos of the AITC when we visited here. I posted a lot more (100+) photos on facebook back around when this post came out which you can view if you're my "friend". =P

Open source projects being funded!

Title is as self explanatory as Kim Jong Un looking at things.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arcbotics/sparki-the-easy-robot-for-everyone
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1923745690/open-source-nimh-battery-charger-analyzer
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kytelabs/bleduino-bluetooth-40-ble-made-easy-arduino-compat
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/495099991/ember-and-torch-apps-meet-arduino?ref=live

It makes me happy to see people backing projects which are open source =) The last project still needs funds to be funded!
Ah, BLE 4.0, when you come on Android, all those things I could do with you -fantasizing-.

Fixer movement?

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/06/qq_thompson/
Fixer movement?
Next in the Hacker/Maker movement, it looks like what I've been trying to do to dying devices except being too noob to do it. Sounds good! (Sustainability (Y) haha)

Public Laboratory Spectrometer

for those who've missed the Kickstarter for Public Lab's spectrometer, here it is (the paper version):
http://publiclaboratory.org/notes/mathew/11-30-2012/final-fold-mini-spectrometer-print-files-and-instructions

Can't wait for my aluminium desktop USB one, although the first thing I want to test is HK water (and why it tastes funny, and requires boiling/filtration) and I got them to send it to Australia ...


Also on Kickstarter, Star Citizen raised 6.2mil in total for the campaign, with >$2mil from Kickstarter. Since, they've raised a bajillion dollars and are now at almost $7mil. (You can still 'pledge' and buy ships till what I'm assuming is alpha (they say "12 months from now"). However, there are less benefits than the campaign pledges like no life-time insurance on ships.) Totally can't wait for this! Especially if Oculus Rift fairs well with Star Citizen, will defs try this euphoric combo.

News post #11?

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/506466/given-tablets-but-no-teachers-ethiopian-children-teach-themselves/
Woot, u go, hacker children!!
Personally, I think humans are naturally hackers and makers, curious about things, tinkering with them, and wanting to make/create things. This bit of news kind of supports my thought =P
Also, good to see OLPC is doing stuff, their $100 XO-1 is pretty neat too, I've seen it in action before at ASSC, one of the guys from Lunar Numbat brought it along =)
Speaking of which, haven't heard much news from LN and White Label Space, but Canberra UAV had a pretty good year, and they presented at CLUG too! =D

Yep, lots of group dropping there =P Don't forget the hackerspaces I follow: MHV and HackJamHK@Dimsumlabs(-their FB page is pretty well updated) =D
Being a Melbourne boy, it's kinda sad I dont' follow these guys (CCHS) nearly as much (due to me not being around Melbourne -my fav city- as much as the other two places these days! ><") though some of them are LN and they've had some pretty cool projects. Their computer-in-car is especially cool =P and is part of the inspiration for Project Sheila (now much easier with mobile computing and Li batteries =D) which first requires a car and license (lol) xD Anyone get the project name reference? (Hint, my AI will be called Sheila).

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In other cool news:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/october/carbon-solar-cell-103112.html
First whole carbon solar cell including electrodes (apparently some researchers as engadget points out, has made the energy transducer part before)
Pretty cool.