The 7hills Makerspace is soliciting input and interest in creating a Rome area software developer’s group.  We would like to see all software geeks of every stripe, from embedded software engineers to home coders working on fun Arduino projects.

We are envisioning an open forum for anything even tangentially related to software development, including embedded systems, robotics, and physical computing in addition to application and web development.

If you write code, we want to hear from you!

Outbreak of bad weather today in Rome. Took the following video outside the makerspace at 4th and Broad.

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I backed the FlipBooKit project on Kickstarter.

My kit showed up last week and I had a chance this evening to assemble it. I thought everyone would enjoy seeing it in action.

What’s a FlipBooKit? Here’s an excerpt from the Kickstarter campaign that explains what they are and where the inspiration came from. The video of mine is below.

“Flipbookit.net is from kinetic artists, Mark Rosen and Wendy Marvel. They create moving art that tells stories and tickles our sense of nostalgia. In late 2011, their series of motorized flipbooks based on the motion studies of Edweard Muybridge began touring with galleries, art shows and at special events internationally. MAKE magazine is featuring the artists in their January issue and a few of the boxes were on display at Maker Fair 2012 (you can see the original flipbooks at www.mechanicalflipbook.com).”

I bought my daughters two identical swiss army knives for Christmas.  To tell them apart, I wanted to mark them in a permanent way.  I decided to engrave the plastic with the laser to give it some relief, and then fill in the impression with acrylic paint.

The neon green paint was somewhat translucent and the dark red showed through.  Had similar results with the other colors we tried.  The solution was to fill the impression with a metallic silver base coat, which gave it a shiny base, and then reapply the color coat.

I used my own knife as a test case (so I wouldn’t mess up theirs), and here is how it turned out:

The font is a little jagged, especially the small flourishes.  The girls opted for simpler fonts and they came out a bit cleaner.

OK, who says marketing has to be all about Myfacing and Tweetering on the Interweb these days?

Well, Steve showed up at our make-night last night. He made this AWESOME plinko board for friend-of-the-space SAI Digital to show off a cool inbound marketing technique at the recent Business Expo event here in Rome. Um, they won best of show. No wonder.

I will try to get him to do a write-up on it, but for now, here’s a pic. It’s Arduino-controlled, has these cool clicky-sounding relays for the lights that give it a great carnival feel, and the woodworking looks like it was done at Yankee Workshop.

Iphone 5 engrave

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Iphone 5 engrave 2

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Well got the new iPhone 5… Now what to do with it…. I have an idea! Lets try the laser cutter on it!!!