spetku

Light Play

Robot Army : Ditching the EEG

November 25, 2013spetku1 Comment

After a jolly romp to Quick Care to get antibiotics for my fluffy sinus, I ‘m in bed again writing emails. This PR stuff so far is feeling a lot like standing on my tip toes while shouting through a cardboard tube. >.< I did head down to SYN Shop yesterday for my first late night hang out since this spring. One of Mark’s old friends from Sun, Tsutomu, was in town for LDI (the lighting trade show) and I got to pick his brain while I was there. He was a great wealth of knowledge and gave some good feedback about me and Mark’s collaborative work as well as my light installation. Long story short, he persuaded me from using an EEG to control the robots like I was planning to. He voiced everything I had already assumed about the reality of using neural input to control anything electronic. Brain noise…

Light Play

Robot Army : Cuddling my Spreadsheet

November 21, 2013spetku5 Comments

Today, I find myself wanting desperately to feel as though I’m doing something right. I think it’s likely all the rain we’ve had that’s tainting my mood, but I’m discouraged. I’ve been adding things to my bill of materials and the proportions are seeming less than hopeful in some areas. Now I need to start shaving cost off things that are needlessly spendy. I guess this is where I learn to be inventive and shrewd all at once. It might just be my lack of experience in doing PR related stuff- but I’m stuck again with the getting the word out part. Maybe I’m not begging loudly enough. I’ve never been all that good at asking for attention. So this is another hurdle to overcome. This morning I did mock ups of several different variations Mark came up with for my delta’s arms. We foresee the cups that hold onto…

Light Play

Robot Army : We’ll Make More

November 20, 2013spetku1 Comment

Yesterday was another full day spent with Mark working on the Robot Army. He’s taken my sub par original revision of the delta brain board and is making it more practical for my needs and for my audience who will use it in the kit I’m Kickstarting. So far he’s made one huge adjustment : making it so VCC is not directly opposite from ground on the I2c bus. Apparently you can flip the connector around and blow things up this way (oops). He was either making a point, or practicing ritual sacrifice by blue smoking one of our three test boards >.< This is just one of the examples where he has filled in for my general lack of experience with his circuit wizardry and electronic prowess. While he tinkered, I did PR stuff. I’ve pretty much been rewording the same write-up in a dozen voices while emphasizing different…

Light Play

Robot Army Starter Kit : GO!

November 13, 2013spetku1 Comment

Dear World, The reason why I created this blog a little over a year and a half ago, was to reach out to noob techies like myself and help others see how fun and accessible the world of DIY electronics really is. My first post was about a project I started during my wee days in art school, involving a field of tiny delta robots that I would choreograph with my mind. This project was called Light Play. The idea is big and at the time seamed like a dream… but I’ve come a long way since then and now have the skills, contacts, and tools necessary to make this nerdy girl’s fantasy a reality. I’ve had a lot of delta robot content on this site over the past year. Since last March I’ve crawled my way from robots made of hangers and tupperware to a highly polished 3D printed…

Goggles

Disco Bug Goggles

November 2, 2013spetku1 Comment

[JUST TO MAKE THIS CLEAR: I do not use any of adafruit’s LED products in my goggles. These and all others on Robotic Arts are original pieces of work… and their editors should learn to cite things better.] It’s been a little while since I’ve pushed out a pair of goggles. It seemed like a good time to do so with October being the anniversary of when I created my first set, the 3D light goggles. I didn’t do anything new and unusual with this set. In fact, my goal was to see how interesting I could get these to look without the use of a micro controller. I keep getting asked if I sell these things, and I am too stubborn and sentimental to part with any of the others I’ve made in the past. This is a low-cost, ‘all that glitters’ pair that simply blinks and has the…

Jelly

Robo Jelly : Progress

October 14, 2013spetku8 Comments

Even since I first saw the Festo Aquajelly I’ve wanted to make one of my own. With the arrival of our brand new Flash Forge 3D printer…. this week seemed like the right time to start prototyping. If you haven’t ever seen the Festo Jelly, I advise you to check out the video below. This company inspires me. They sell fancy pneumatic parts and actuators but for shits and grins they make amazing robots that mimic the organic movement of animals. I mean, in a fantasy I’d come stay at their headquarters and make things with their parts for days on end…but who that I know of wouldn’t? I sat down earlier this week and drew up some parts in Sketchup. With a couple of revisions I made this jelly skeleton. It took about an hour to print one set of arms (I needed six total). So at around midnight…

Idea Bouquet

Light Bouquet

October 13, 2013spetku3 Comments

Back in 2010 I made a series of illustrations featuring incandescent bulbs. Since the light bulb is the symbol for the birth of an idea, I played on this visually for a while, using them in place of blades of grass, flowers, and the like. Like my delta robot army, this project was inspired by these ‘idea’ illustrations from the past. I have always wanted to make a bouquet of light bulbs that was portable, and finally with the right materials and a little push from my friend… I sat down this week and made it happen. A couple of months ago my collaborator Mark picked up a plastic transparent Christmas ornament from the craft store and suggested I use something like it as an alternative to actual glass. I agreed with him, but the Christmas bulbs weren’t the quirky up-side-down pear shape incandescent bulbs are, and the plastic had…

Lick

The Lower Half of Lick

September 2, 2013spetku2 Comments

It all started with a male torso Mark picked up from the dumpster at Blue Man. Figuring we’d use it for something eventually, we stored it on top of the vending machine at SYN Shop this spring. In time, everyone started taking a liking to our torso. He obtained nipples, a cod piece, beach cover, and above all else, acceptance. Mark and I then named this torso Tiberius, our first child. During the weeks we spent imaging what freaky things we’d like to do with a plastic limbless body, we developed Project “L”. It started with the idea to create a machine that tested how many licks it took to get to the center of a tootsie pop. At first our visions were purely dry and practical, but as our chattered progressed, the project evolved much like our friendship into this raw theatrical display of absurdity. So we went back…

DefCon Projects

Defcon 21 : Down to the Wire

July 31, 2013spetku0 Comments

So it’s Wednesday now. I’m sipping my coffee while admiring last nights war zone, which is still strewn across the dining room table. Red dixie cups filled with components, plastic bins of surface mount parts, discarded chunks of tape, lap tops, empty margarita glasses and more are all stacked on top of one another like the abandoned scene of a rape. The brutal part is that we aren’t even half way done and the gigs up tomorrow. The wild card was drawn this past Sunday. Jeff and I went out for a nice breakfast so that we could fill out tummies before starting down our long check list of things to do for the day. When we arrived home, about an hour and a half later, upon walking through the front door I heard something no one should hear inside their house. Rain. I ran through the kitchen and into…

DefCon Projects

The Road to DefCon 21

July 28, 2013spetku2 Comments

I have been so busy this past month in preparation for Defcon that my deltas have gathered a thin layer of dust and my mannequin torso, Tiberius has started sneaking off at night in search for what I’ve been neglecting to give him. It seems like we all put too much on our plates these past couple months, but I’m glad I was given the chance to help out as I have and can’t wait to experience the fruits of our labor (in less than a week!!). So here’s what Jeff and I have been up to… Crash and Compile This year, Jeff (Krux) is in charge of the infamous drinking while coding game that I’ve been hearing stories about since last summer… that’d be Crash and Compile. Jeff has spent pretty much every night at his computer working in preparation for this event, from overseeing registration to welding together…

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