If you’re in the San Fran, CA area – this is one event to check out!
After giving his famous workshop at hackerspaces and hacker conferences around the world, Mitch will be at Noisebridge to lead Circuit Hacking Monday, the weekly workshop where you can learn to play with electronics.
This week will be a special edition for the holidays, starting at an earlier time — 5pm. And, in honor of Hallmark Appreciation Day, we will have Open Heart kits available. Open Heart kits have 27 LEDs in the shape of a heart. With an Arduino you can create cool animation sequences. As with all of the kits available, they are way fun, and easy enough that anyone can make them. Mitch has taught thousands of people to solder and make cool things with microcontrollers at workshops at hacker spaces and hacker conferences and schools almost everywhere. He can teach you, too, if you like.
If you have ever had any curiosity about making something with electronics, then please join us for Circuit Hacking Mondays at Noisebridge. Anyone and everyone can learn to make cool things. And it’s fun. And easy! You can learn to make something cool with electronics in one session, and take your cool project home with you.
What: Mitch will be lead this session of Circuit Hacking Monday. You can easily learn all of the skills you need in one session. Make a project tonight, and take it home with you! If you have your own project (advanced or simple), bring it by, and if you would like help, you can get it!
Where: Noisebridge 2169 Mission, San Francisco, 94110 (less than two blocks from the 16th St. Mission BART Station).
When: 5:00pm (2 hours earlier than normal), Monday, 15-February. (It is totally OK to come late.) Stay as little or as long as you like. Most projects take about 1 to 2 hours — but someone will be there to help each person till they finish.
Who: You! It is fun to make things in the friendly community of Noisebridge. Come join us. Everyone is welcome.
Cost: Instruction is Free! If you use any kits, reimbursement for kit price is requested ($10 to $30, depending on kit).
There will be plenty of cool kits available to build, including:
TV-B-Gone (turn off TVs in public places!)
Brain Machine (Meditate, Hallucinate, and Trip Out!)
Mignonette Game (play fun games!)
Trippy RGB Waves (interactive blinky lights!)
MiniPOV (more cool blinky lights!)
MintyBoost (charge your USB enabled gadgets!)
microcontroller programmers (program all your AVR family chips!)
Arduino clones (make just about anything!)
Open Heart (animate fun patterns in the shape of a heart)
And more.
More info on most of most of these projects is available on Mitch’s website: (click on the “maker faire” tab). If you have your own project, please bring it by and make it with us, in the friendly, geeky community of Noisebridge.
I’ve ported the TV-B-Gone code to run on the Arduino board. If you haven’t seen a TV-B-Gone, it’s a cute gadget that you point at a TV that’s bothering you, and it turns the TV off. Internally, it’s an infrared remote that broadcasts more than 100 different off codes that work on almost any TV. I figured it would be interesting to get the TV-B-Gone running on the Arduino.
The TV-B-Gone kit is what you need! This ultra-high-power, open source kit version of the popular TV-B-Gone is fun to make and even more fun to use. This version can be used in both “North American/Asia” as well as “Europe/UK” areas (basically, the whole world)! This kit comes unassembled with all parts necessary. Tools and batteries are not included. This is a very simple kit and great for people who have never soldered anything before. Tired of all those LCD TVs everywhere? Want a break from advertisements while you’re trying to eat? Want to zap screens from across the street? This turns off (or on) most TVs in the world!
Power: 2 AA batteries (not included) Output: 2 narrow-beam and 2 wide-beam IR LEDs Number of TV power codes: 230 total, 115 each for American/Asian and European! You can select which zone you want during kit assembly. Max distance: v1.2 has double the power, goes 150 ft or more!
This covers pretty much every TV of the following brands, including the latest flat-screens and plasma TVs…
In the distant future we will have a new TV-B-Gone kit, the major difference is that it will be both USA, Asia and European all-in-one. So, we’re looking to clear out our current inventory with a SALE! You can pick up the TV-B-Gone for the low-low price of $15.00! If you’re in the USA this is a sweet deal – tune in, turn on and turn off!
I really like TV-B-Gone by Mitch Altman. The idea to have an universal remote to switch off any TV set is just marvelous! But for some real sneaky operation I wanted a much smaller version which perfectly fits into my pocket. So how about a small experiment how small you can go (and still solder by hand). So here it is: (most probably) the world smallest implementation of TV-B-Gone:
The µTVBG is based on the ATTINY85 implementation by Lady Ada. I just downloaded the schematics and replaced some parts, reduced the number of IR diodes and did a new board layout. Nothing special. Even the firmware works unchanged.The whole board measures a mere 1.4 cm to 2.5 cm – small enough to fit in in every pocket.
…for my money, I give the kit a 10. With an under $20 price point you cant go wrong. I truly feel that I am getting my money’s worth with this kit. There’s value added from the experience of building my kit and value added from continuous enjoyment of the product after the build is complete. $19.50 (+shipping) is very fair for what you get. This is my second adafruit industries kit and the quality of their kits is excellent. Consistency and quality components are why I give them a 10. I also received what I ordered and all parts were there (nothing missing- no shortages). They say quality will not necessarily sell your customers, but it will keep your customers and I intend to continue to purchase from adafuit for more of their great kits. Adafruit Industries excels in this area. With the TV-B-Gone kit there is an entire site dedicated to the kit. Forum’s, detailed build instruction’s, schematics, design files, and FAQ are all available to the public. I had no problems with my kit, but if I did, I feel confident that I would have received friendly support quickly.
The creator of the TV-B-Gone, Mitch Altman, has turned his love of open-source electronic mayhem into a one-man business…
Many of his hacks, including the first versions of the TV-B-Gone, were built using the MiniPOV3 kit by hardware hacker Ladyada. That kit lets you create ghostly messages with a bank of 8 blinking LEDs, by waving the LEDs back and forth in the air.
By making changes to the kit’s circuitry, replacing the red LEDs with different colors and reprogramming the included microcontroller, Altman has made not only the TV-B-Gone, but also glowing lights that respond to hand gestures, an electronic “dog” that spins its tail in reaction to sunlight, a 3×3x3 cube of LEDs that displays abstract 3-dimensional patterns, and even a pair of glasses with embedded, flashing LEDs and a pair of headphones for getting your brain waves into a meditative state.
Altman is a fan of open-source hardware. The MiniPOV3 kit he uses is open source, and he recently released the schematics and code for his own projects as open source. Altman describes the decision to go open-source as a way of giving back to the hardware hacking community, which was already modifying and improving the TV-B-Gone.
“There are thousands of people who are incredibly intelligent and creative helping me, for free, and they love it,” he says, describing the benefits of open source hardware.
He’s also helped found a hacker space in San Francisco, Noisebridge, where hardware hackers (or those who would like to learn more about hardware and software) can gather to work on their projects.
“I make enough money to live the life I want to live,” Altman says. “And I love this life.”
Like all projects, TV-B-Gone universal remote control started off as a thought. More of a fantasy, really. Yet one that Mitch somehow knew he could follow through on. In this talk Mitch will show how the notion of turning off TVs in public places ended up taking over his life, providing he and his friends a living, and creating a new meme around the world. Along the way he points out some of hows and whys, as well as some of the more interesting and stressful aspects of the process. Mitch hopes to show why taking risks can be way worthwhile.
Though most known for inventing the wildly popular TV-B-Gone, a keychain that makes it fun to turn off TVs in public places, Mitch Altman is an inventor with a reputation for creating intriguing devices that amaze and delight, such as the Brain Machine, Trippy RGB Waves, and the Mignonette Game. Mitch co-founded 3ware (a Silicon Valley RAID controller company), and co-founded Noisebridge (a San Francisco hacker space). Mitch has written for MAKE Magazine and 2600 Journal, and for the last few years has traveled the world teaching people to solder and how to make cool things with microcontrollers. He is currently writing a book to teach total beginners how to make cool things with microcontrollers.
