Matt Miller

My Makerbot came in and I got it built. The first three prints I attempted came out perfect, then it was nothing but trouble for a week. Last Sunday I got it working again.

I posted a bunch of pictures on Flickr and uploaded one design to Thingiverse.

You'll notice the filename on the light bracket I uploaded to Thingiverse has the number three in it. If you browse through the Flickr set, you can see the two failed design attempts.

(BTW: I'm sitting in a room with three making Makerbots, one idle one with a Frostruder, and one kit being built, none of them mine. That's what happens on craft night at NYC Resistor.)

So I live in New York now. Specifically, I'm in Brooklyn, at least for two months while I work on finding someplace permanent. It's exciting to be in a place where there is so much hacking/tinkering/making activity going on.

I attended a class on Bioelectricty tonight and got to make a do-it-yourself ECK circuit on a breadboard. This screenshot is the bioelectric signals my circuit detected when I stuck three electrodes on my chest.

Very cool, no?

I'm thinking I'll head over to NYC Resistor tomorrow for craft night. I'll probably take my Arduino and see what I come up with.

I haven't posted much recently for a simple reason - I've just accepted a new position and will be moving soon. Between the interviews and making preparations to move, I just haven't had the time to tinker or blog.

Give me a month or so -- I will very likely be space-constrained in my new location, but I'll definitely set up so I can keep working with Arduino in preparation for the arrival of my CupCake (Hmmm, I should probably call Makerbot and tell them not to ship that to Texas...)

In the meantime, I'm about halfway through putting together the robot arm I bought with the intention of wiring it to the Arduino. While I've been poking along, a friends son put it together in a few hours. Check out Abe's blog here and here

I finished up the electrical wiring in the workshop today. I buried a cable between here and the house, and installed overhead lights, four indoor outlets (one GFCI!), and an outdoor outlet.

This sure beats the extension-cord-and-power-strip solution I had earlier. Plus, the overhead lights with CFLs are much better (and more effiicient) than the halogen worklight I had hanging on the wall.

Here's some pics, I've got two from Before and several After. If the PictoBrowser widget isn't working, you can view the set on Flickr

The computer under the workbench is a Shuttle case with a Celeron and 1GB Ram, running CentOS. I need to get a wireless router I can use as a gateway for it and any other ethernet-aware devices I bring in.

I'm excited to have a good place to work. For my first project, I'm going to assemble a Robot Arm and hook it up to my Arduino controler.

I bought some shelves and a workbench Saturday and spent Sunday afternoon cleaning out my storage building so I can also use it as a workshop.

I debated building the shelves and bench -- that would certainly be more in line with "maker philosophy," but the deciding factor was I'm not sure how much longer I'll be living in this location and have access to this storage building. It'll be easier to move the bought shelves, and they would work just as well in an apartment spare bedroom or garage.

I got a deal on a workbench on clearance at Sears. After looking at Home Depot and the current stock at sears, I was dissapointed. Most of the workbench offerings were way overkill - tons of drawers and shelves. The clearance item I found has three drawers, a big flat top, and a backwall with pegboard and an fluorescent light fixture. Best part, it was 40% off.

I hope to finish putting the workbench together tonight, then I'll post some before and after pictures of my workshop conversion.