And… After a dash across town I’m now at the Internet of Things Edinburgh MeetUp, which tonight is focused on “The Maker Revolution”…

 

Introduction – Simon Montford, Founder WEB3//IOT @simonmontford 

The theme tonight is the maker revolution – the opening up of industrial technologies to amateaur makers. The maker culture contributes 30-40 million to the economy, so this is a big and growing thing, with Internet of Things at the centre.

18:20 – 18:40 Dr Patrick Hickey (NIPHT)

From the event page: Patrick Hickey is founder of NIPHT and specialises in a diverse range of disciplines including biology, electronics and art. Recent projects include designing LED systems for laboratories, consulting for TV and film, art installations and providing technical expertise for several guerrilla marketing projects. In 2012, Patrick launched a successful crowd funding campaign creating modular enclosures for Arduino and Raspberry Pi, and plans to launch more projects including smart clocks and gadgets built using rare, vintage LED displays from the 1970s and 80s.

I wanted to just show you some of the things that I’ve been doing. I have a studio here at Summerhall, with a wee lab space. I have lots of projects on the go here. I’m from a biological background so a lot of my projects involve biology. I first got interested in maker things about 7 or 8 years ago. I wanted to take images from a microscope and until then I hadn’t realised that you coul dget all this cool stuff with microcontrollers… I love electronics and electronics and bio complement each other very well.

Back when I was working for the University of California, and the University of Edinburgh I was looking at fungal colony and tweaking and hacking the microscope enabled me to find new patterns that were very exciting. After my PhD I discovered microbial species that you can grow and play with in the lab… And using those as indicators…. I’ve now set up NIPHT which encompasses both art and sciences. So, for instance, I was approached to create living micobial art work to advertise Contagion, the Warner Brothers movie – this was the world’s first living billboards… Essentially using a huge petri dish which caused a great buzz. We did that by projecting the image we wanted, placing the bacteria according to the pattern, and they grew up really nicely.

I’ve done a few other projects with Curb media since then… For instance for 12 Monkeys on SyFy… And that started really interesting conversations… It’s all safe bacterial cultures here… The most recent project we did was a brand of soap called Lifebuoy… with the product a clean outline with bugs around it… It did really well on the Chinese version of YouTube (80m views). And we also did work with BBC for the Magic of Mushrooms – lots of timelapse for instance.

I did a crowdfunding project back in 2012… When I started to work with Arduino I was making my own enclosures… So I started a crowd funder for modular arduino enclosures… I didn’t ask for much cash – £1500 to get these laser cut. I got twice what I needed… Really successful project – I met some interesting people, sharing ideas and projects with me. And I still get orders for them… A lot of enclosures are available cheaply from China now, but they are a quality product. They let me test the market, lots of folks were also using Raspberry Pi along with their Arduino… We keep having to adapt it because of the changes to Raspberry Pi…

A few years ago I got a grant for an art project called Dis-Play… I was fascinated for years by LEDs in calculators and watches… Back before liquid crystal displays. My first computers were Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Amiga etc. Witnessing this revolution in computing has been a really exciting thing… But I love this 70s and 80s stuff… So I built up vintage LEDs… Like a clock. Often when you pick these up from eBay they are ex-military so were great high spec pieces… So I’ve been building these up for years for projects… .

I’ve also been making home made LEDs using silicon carbide crystals… One of the first LEDs was Monsanto MV – very dim… Used to be £10-£12 but now pennies! I take pictures of LED tips… And weird and wonderful stuff like Russian diodes… And we have Nixie Tubes – I love them but they aren’t in my collection as I focus on LEDs.

Many many very cool close macro images of LEDs and dissection under microscopes being shown here. 

I’m quite into these old LEDs, the data sheets, images, etc. What I plan to do is to rewrite the data sheets in a simple form so that someone with an Arduino can use these in a very simple way… One of my favourite LEDs is what looks like a prototype, an early dot matrix display… Only ever seen one..

And also smart displays – LEDs with a microcontroller chip. I tend to buy these and then build them into clocks… And you get HDSP Series Intelligent displays, and again I tend to build those into clocks… I will be selling those retro clocks. One of these has a chronodock so that when you unplug the clock, it keeps time… People do ask me why I don’t get PCBs made for these but I do actually enjoy the wiring, it’s very calming… But I will eventually…

So, finally I wanted to talk about some of the hacked devices… The HAL-culator – a calculator that won’t do what’s told. I have the Speak-and-Hell – which speaks profanity, so no longer for children. I did have a great Submarine missile launcher clock – a real one – which I picked up!Really any device can be hacked.

So, finally just a word about Tech Cube… We used LEDs and lighting to install a display here in the building… They are still there… And thats with James from Acus lab – doing very cool stuff with art and science…

Larissa Pschetz  (Design Informatics)

From the event page: Larissa Pschetz is an interaction designer and lecturer in Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Using examples of projects produced by the design informatics team, she will be talking about how designers are being influenced by the maker movement and vice versa, finally discussing the role of IoT in sustaining this relationship.

 

 

Lorna Crawford (IBM BlueMix IoT Hosting)

From the event page: Lorna has been with IBM for the last 17 years and currently manages the Software Business Partner Channel and Global Entrepreneurs for IBM in Scotland.

She supports Software resellers, independent software vendors and consultant integrators and enables them to maximise their returns.  In the last 18 months she has been promoting IBM’s Bluemix platform and Global Entrepreneur benefits to Tech Startups across Scotland.  She also runs workshops on Project Management and Social Media for Non Profit organisations under IBM’s give back programme ‘On Demand Community.’

Presentation will give an overview of IBM’s strategy in the IoT space and the availability of IBM programmes to support IoT and tech start up businesses.

19:40 – 20:00 Dr Benjaman Schogler (Skoog)

David Skulina and Ben Schogler, and their small team of creative-developers, have spent the last 4 years demonstrating their ‘music for everyone’ concept (in the shape of Skoog 1.0) in the world of education. 

Tested, honed and developed internationally, Skoog 2 is the evolved result: a nifty, wireless, thing of beauty that everyone can play.

Ben will give an overview of their journey so far, including raising investment, manufacturing, crowdfunding and more…

 

20:00 – 20:20 Panel Discussion / Q&A 

20:20 – 21:00  NETWORKING & DRINKS

Topics: Arduino, Raspberry Pi, IntelGalileo, ARM Mbed, IBM BlueMix, Azure, SAM Labs, AWS, AdaFruit, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, AI, IntelEdison, Crowdfunding, Maker Revolution, 3D Printing, Laser cutters, CNC, Microcontroller-based kits, Drones, Machine Vision, OpenData, Smart City, Smart Cities, Machine Vision, Smart Home, Smart City, Big Data, Robotics.

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