DorkbotColumbus - the Blog

What makes project GREEN?

As the new year approaches, it struck me that pursuing a GREEN theme for Dorkbot was a tad open-ended.

What makes a project GREEN?  When we move toward Earth Day, and beyond, what themes might guide the "play" that is so important to "people doing strange things with electricity?"

Here are some thoughts on issues that playful approaches might deal with:

Power generation

• large scale sources, community power
• individual scale sources - from "solar"-powered devices, to energy independent homes

Energy requirement minimization

• general conversation - light bulbs, etc.
• mileage for transportation

Green Design

• manufacture new goods from previously manufactured/processed materials (recycling)
• manufacture new goods with zero waste, minimized energy requirement
• manufacture new goods, designed to metamorphose (age/fail/recycle) gracefully from product to product in a maximally extended useful life

Re-using Resources

• recycling waste materials generated by current processes into new raw materials
• recycling assemblies and sub-assemblies of current technology into new uses to extend their lives before needing to be reduced to raw material

Basic Research

• new materials that respond to the environment and to processing in useful ways
• new broad scale methods for delivering/distributing power, water, clean air

What do you think - other avenues worthy of exploration?

3D Printers - Fabrication on your desktop

It must be said that one of the Next Big Things has to be desktop fabrication.  We have already extended the computing revolution to personal manufacturing for print, for imprinting certain kinds of fabric, for media like CD's and DVD's.

The ante is being raised.  This desktop model has been available for less than a year, and early adopters have been exploring dozens of applications.  There remains a lot of research left to do:

• Design software
• Materials for building up "printed" items in a variety of circumstance (analogy to typ4es of inks for different applications?)
• Hardware simplification and durability
• Commodity design - new ways to look at products that must be assembled in this new way

This video provides a good look at where we are and what's possible.  Produced - and link provided - by the Wall St Journal.

Date and Place Set for Robotics Seminar

Now there are new ways to add real time motion to your tech projects!

Matt Howard will present an application-oriented look at open source hardware called Arduino and some very approachable new software called Processing to help beginners get started and to help more experienced experimenters expand into new areas.

Open source hardware? Indeed – along with powerful new high-level open source software that makes programming moving machines more practical and more effective.

Most people interested in making technology perform work are familiar with some of the principles and tools of software development. But what do you do if the task to be performed doesn’t exist simply on a computer screen – what if it requires a gadget that actually move and work in real time and space?

Updates – along with a sign-up form  – will be posted at DokbotColumbus’ Web site and blog – http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotcolumbus .

This event will be held January 22, 2008 at 7pm. at TechColumbus, at 1275 Kinnear Rd. (Location provided courtesy of The Platform Lab, www.platformlab.org.)

Tutorial Event: Robotic Components, Jan 22, 2008

Matt Howard has generously offered to spend an evening with a hands-on demo and training session about new approaches to robotic components.  Check out the latest in open-source hardware and software for robotics and other functional systems.   This meeting is intended to be a help in preparing for the planned DorkbotColumbus GREEN event during Earth Week 2008.

The date is Jan 22, 2008, from 7 - 8:30pm.  Put it on your calendar.  Even you do not plan to participate in the DorkbotColumbus GREEN event, this will be interesting if you have wondered how technology is advancing in this area.

Creating technology projects that incorporate movement, action and functionality is getting easier and less expensive with the advent of a variety of new open-source tools. Matt will present an application-oriented look at an open source hardware platform called Arduino and some very approachable new software called Processing - to help beginners get started and to help more experienced experimenters expand into new areas.

This event will be held in the main meeting room at TechColumbus, courtesy of the Platform Lab, at 1275 Kinnear Rd.  For more information and a map, check out the DorkbotColumbus Events page.

DorkbotColumbus goes GREEN for for Earth Week 2008

The Digigravitation event (the quarterly OSU Art & Tech department show of student projects) was well attended - and once again hosted a meeting of DorkbotColumbus members.

With current news in mind, the suggestion was made to pursue a GREEN theme for at least the early part of 2008 - and focus on a presentation event to be tied to Earth Week, observed in April 2008.

There was enthusiasm among the 15 or so attendees of the meeting, and the resolution - as if there were such things at Dorkbot meetings - passed handily.

What might make an interesting GREEN presentation?

Here are two ideas:

• In order to have fun with electricity, you have to generate it.  How many Dorkbot ways might there be to create electricity and either store it temporarily, or use it to perform some odd and/or grotesque <g> function?
• The reason we have so much waste and pollution is because those attributes are designed into almost everything!  If you were to start from scratch and design a functional product without pollution or waste in its production - and without waste at the end of its useful life - what might that look like?

Over the next few weeks, we will generate a call for projects, and some simple, basic rules-of-the-road.  But think - how can you have fun and do "strange things with electricity" - and at the same time demonstrate principles that help keep the planet GREEN and safe!

And thanks once again to Amy Youngs and Ken Rinaldo - the OSU faculty sponsors of the Digigravitation show - for supporting DorkbotColumbus and hosting our meeting!