Version Control For Eagle

January 7, 2010 by Mike Szczys 29 Comments

[Jeff] set up version control for Eagle libraries and projects. He mentions that Eagle has become the standard for open source hardware projects and he’s absolutely right. We use it for our projects, and we’ve grown to expect that the posts we feature have Eagle files available in most cases.

But Eagle falls short in its library management. There is some amazing work from SparkFun to support a usable parts library, but who hasn’t added parts themselves? [Jeff] setup libraries using github so that changes and additions to the libraries can benefit all and cut the amount of time spent making custom footprints for new components and packages.

Fun Theory Grant Is 25k For A Fun Project

January 7, 2010 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

First the bad news, it’s too late for you to apply for this grant. The good news is that you can vote for the projects you think deserve money to do some good.

The Fun Theory is the group that produced the musical subway stairs and the bottle bank arcade. Now they’ve put out the call to arms on the Internet for submissions that make life more fun and our communities better places. All of the submissions for the fun-theory-award are in and available for your perusal. Some of the most popular submissions include a vending machine that uses recycled cans to play a slot-machine game, a hand sanitizer that makes funny sounds when used, and putting a giant crossword puzzle at bus stops to encourage ridership and make waiting more fun.

[Thanks Matthew][see Matthew’s entry in the contest]

[cash photo credit]

SparkFun’s Free Day Is Nearly Upon Us…

January 7, 2010 by Nick Caiello 624 Comments

As I’m sure many of you already now, today is January 7th. While that might not have any real significance normally, today this means that our favorite hobby supplier, SparkFun, is giving away up to $100,000 of electronic goodness. We know we have our shopping carts filled to the brim, and we’re sure that most of you do too. With the start of Free Day being roughly 10 minutes away, we recommend that everyone man their shopping carts…. This should be interesting…

Max/MSP Accelerometer Beat Control

January 7, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 3 Comments

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/8222312%5D

[Ryan] let us know about his Max/MSP Controller. Inside the device is an ADXL 335 accelerometer and 6 push buttons wired to an Arduino. The input data is sent to Max MSP, a sequencer controlling 5 audio tracks, correlating to 5 of the buttons. The 6th button controls delay. What we really liked was how the accelerometer modified the speed of the beat in the X-axis, and the delay intensity with the Y-axis. Whats next? We think gesture recognition might be something fun to try, but [Ryan] is unsure. We’ll keep you up to date.