Lego camera

Whilst researching hacked toys, I came across the lego camera. Nice use of bricks, makes a change from houses I guess.

Electronics

On Dan’s advice, I went down to Maplins and bought a kid’s electronics kit. You know the sort, 130 easy projects from a simple buzzer all the way up to counter-intelligence jamming gizmos. I’ve only had a quick look thru’ the manual but it seems to explain it in nice easy terms so hopefully by the time I’ve finiahed finished I’ll know what the various components are and what they do.

Simon opened up

I’ve had a quick look inside Simon and even though there isn’t a lot to him, there’s a few bits and pieces that I haven’t got a scooby-doo about. I’ve had a look on the net and found some things that could be them but I wouldn’t swear to it. I tihnk think my learning curve has just got even steeper.

Simon’s here

I managed to get hold of a Simon and it arrived yesterday. Now here’s a thing, how come it was cheaper and quicker to order a new one from the States than buy a second hand one over here?

Circuit bending

Wired news
Cementimental
osc?com
Chip collection
Table Hooters
Carrionsound
Circuitbenders
Justin’s Circuit Bending Projects
Bill Miller
Burnkit 2600
Anti-Theory how-to
Table hooters – good tips on how to change pitch
Speak ‘n’ spell hack

Oh yes

Bit of a break through today. I managed to get the led on one of the boards to light up when I moved the mouse over a grey square on the screen and to turn off when I moved the mouse off. There’s a bit of a delay which might be a problem so I’ll have to investigate further but it’s a start.

Boards

The 2 boards I ordered arrived today. They got here in about a week which is bloody good going – it’s a pity Amazon couldn’t do the same with the books I ordered nearly 2 weeks ago. As you can see below, there are a lot of pins for connecting things to so hopefully I ought to be able to rig something up to it and get it to respond. I think a quick trip to Maplins to get an led or something so that I can test them is called for.

Project idea

I’m fairly certain that I want to take an object and bend it to fit a totally different purpose. What the object will be and for what purpose, I don’t know yet – I guess that’ll be half the fun. Game Boys seem to be the favourite using them as musical instruments or for VJing. I quite like the idea of using children’s toys – maybe turn a Simon into a programmable drum machine.

Whatever I use, I’m pretty sure that I want to use Processing to control it all. I like Director but I’m a bit fed up with trying to get the right Xtras without running up my overdraft. With Processing being open source, at least if I need any extra bits I can get them for free. Plus there is a really good, helpful community built around it. Probably because of it being open source. At the mo I’m trying to get a couple of Wiring boarfs boards so that I can have a play about with controlling physical things with software. I think once I’ve worked out what I can do it’ll help me form a more concret idea of what I want to do.