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Intel Experience Pop Up – Day 5 Recap

by Carlyn Maw on December 9, 2013, no comments

 

TL;DR: CEO of Intel genuinely committed to Makers and the electronics hobbyist. When it gets busy, I stop taking pictures. Next time (Thursday), stepper motors, computer fan motor, or mechanisms…?

The CEO of Intel, Brian Krzanich, came by on Saturday, and, like an idiot, I didn’t get Jen and my picture taken with him to tweet. Not always so talented with the social media, this one.  He did, however, take our picture with Santa… well really mostly Santa.

We did get to talk Galileo Board with him and the nifty new smaller (tiny) board that might be coming down the pipeline for makers in 2014. Honestly, his face lit up when talking about it. He seems totally committed to Intel’s support of the Maker community.  That’s very exciting. His daughters have a Makey Makey, and they know how to use it.

Working side by side with Jen, showing each other what we had done was also really enjoyable.  The crowds were flowing through so we had some wonderful opportunities to preach the Maker agenda and display what was possible. The Makey Makey continues to be the biggest hit. It is interactive but low enough commitment to snag the passerby.

I wish that I had started a prettier sexier project to keep working on that day because it was hard with all the bustle and learning to share the table on the same day to wrap my brain around doing something completely new.  Or to stop and take pictures. Jen made a brush bot that I will try to get a shot of on Thursday. She also showed me how to charge our batteries with her solar panel.  I’m stoked.

Protoboard with interconnects and an LED

Newest addition to power supply is a green status LED to be connected to the Power Good (grey) wire

  • Added the status LED to the power supply, currently on the purple wire (Stand By power). Should be moved to the grey wire (Power Good)
  • Made sure that the 5 V & 12 V from the supply could run all the motors (mwah. ha. ha.)
  • Hooked one of the 3.3 V (orange) leads to the vibrobot and it danced ’till it dropped. I hate using non-rechargeable coin cell batteries.

I’ll be thinking all week about what to do on Thursday. I can either get the steppers from a floppy drive working or start thinking about how to make the whole system bigger and more mechanical. I want there to be a story. The CD spinning motors spin too fast, even under PWM control. There is a limited number of gear motors that we’re likely to get access to. I may look into how to make gears from what we have.