Tech Guides - IoT and Hardware

For many years, technology in large organizations has been defined by established vendors. Oracle. Microsoft. Huge corporations were setting the agenda when it came to the technology being used by businesses. These tech organizations provided solutions - everyday businesses simply signed themselves up. But this year’s Skill Up survey painted an interesting picture of a world in which developers and tech professionals have a significant degree of control over the tools they use. This is how people responded when we asked them how much choice they have over the tools they use at work: Half of all respondents have at least a significant amount of choice over the software they use at work. This highlights an important fact of life for tech pros, engineers and developers across the globe - your job is not just about building things and shipping code, it’s also about understanding the tools that are going to help you do that. To be more specific, what this highlights is that open-source is truly mainstream. What evolved as a cultural niche of sorts in the late nineties has become fundamental to the way we understand technology today. Yes, it’s true that large tech conglomerates like Apple, Facebook, and Google have a huge hold on consumers across the planet, but they aren’t encouraging lock-in in the way that the previous generation of tech giants did. In fact, they are actually pushing open-source into the mainstream. Facebook built React; Google are the minds behind Golang and TensorFlow; Apple have done a lot to evolve Swift into a language that may come to dominate the wider programming landscape. We are moving to a world of open systems, where interoperability reigns supreme. Companies like Facebook, Google, and Apple want consumer control, but when it comes to engineering and programming they want to be empowering people - people like you. If you’re not convinced, take the case of Java. Java’s interesting, because in many respects it’s a language that was representative of the closed systems of enterprise tech a decade ago. But it’s function today has changed - it’s one of the most widely used programming languages on GitHub, being used in a huge range open source projects. C# is similar - in it you can see how Microsoft’s focus has changed, the organization’s stance on open source softening to become more invested with a culture where openness is the engine of innovation. Part of the reason for this is a broader economic changes in the very foundations of how software is used today and what organizations need to understand. As trends such as microservices have grown, and as APIs become more important to the development and growth of businesses - those explicitly rooted in software or otherwise - software necessarily must become open and changeable. And, to take us back to where we started, the developers, programmers, engineers who build and manage those systems must be open and alive to the developing landscape of software they can use in the future. Decision making, then, is a critical part of what it means to work in software. That may not have always been the case, but today it’s essential. Make sure you’re making the right decision. Read this year's Skill Up report for free.

Just a week prior to the writing of this post, Maker Faire Bay Area was opened for three days in San Mateo, exhibiting hundreds of makers and attracting hundreds of thousands of attendees. Maker Faire is the grand gathering for the Maker movement. It's a place where the Maker community can showcase their latest projects and connect with other fellow makers easily.  The Maker community has always had a close connection with the technology industry. They use the latest technologies in their projects, they form their community within Internet forumsand they share their projects and tutorials on video-sharing websites. It's a community born from how accessible technology nowadays is, so what can the tech industry learn from this positive community?  Let's begin with examining the community itself. What is the Maker movement?  Defining the Maker movement in a simple way is not easy. It's not exactly a movement because there's no singular entity that tries to rally people into it and decide what to do next. It's also not merely a community of tinkerers and makers that work together. The best way to sum up the entirety of the Maker movement is to say that it's a culture.  The Maker culture is a culture that revels in the creation of things. It's a culture where people are empowered to move from being a consumer to being a creator. It's a culture that involves people making the tools they need on their own. It's a culture that involves people sharing the knowledge of their creations with other people. And while the culture seems to be focused on technological projects like electronics, robotics, and 3D printing; the Maker community also involves non-technological projects like cooking, jewelry, gardening, and food.  While a lot of these DIY projects are simple and seem to be made for entertainment purposes, a few of them have the potential to actually change the world. For example, e-NABLE is an international community which has been using 3D printers to provide free prosthetic hands and arms for those who need it. This amazing community started its life when a carpenter in South Africa, who lost his fingers in an accident, collaborated with an artist-engineer in the US to create a replacement hand. Little did they know that their work would start such a large movement.  What lesson can the tech industry draw from the Maker culture?  One of the biggest takeaways of the Maker movement, is how much of it relies on collaboration and sharing. With no organization or company to back them, the community has to turn to itself to share their knowledge and encourage other people to become a maker. And only by collaborating with each other can an ambitious DIY project come to fruition. For example, robotics is a big, complex topic. It's very hard for one person to understand all the aspects needed to build a functioning robot from scratch. But by pooling knowledge from multiple people with their own specializations, such a project is possible.  Fortunately, collaboration is something that the tech industry has been doing for a while. The Android smartphone is a collaborative effort between a software company and hardware companies. Even smartphones themselves are usually made by components from different companies. And in the software developer community side, the spirit of helping each other is alive and well; as can be seen by the popularity of websites like StackOverflow and GitHub.  Another lesson that can be learned from the Maker community is the importance of accessibility in encouraging other people to join the community. The technology industry has always been worried about how there are not enough engineers for every technology company in the world. Making engineering tools and lessons more accessible to the public seems like a good way to encourage more people to be an engineer. After all, cheap 3D printers and computers, as well as easy-to-find tutorials, are the reasons why the Maker community could grow this fast.  One other thing that the tech industry can learn from the Maker community is about how a lot of big, successful projects are started by trying to solve a smaller, personal problem. One example of such project is Quadlock, a company that started its venture simply because the founders wanted to have a bottle opener integrated to their iPhone case. After realizing that other people wanted to have a similar iPhone case, they started to work on more iPhone cases and now they're running a company producing these unique cases.  The Maker Movement is such an amazing culture, and it's still growing, day by day. While all the points written above are great lessons that we can all apply in our lives, I'm sure there is still a lot more that we can learn from this wonderful community.  About the Author  RakaMahesa is a game developer at Chocoarts: http://chocoarts.com/, who is interested in digital technology in general. Outside of work hours, he likes to work on his own projects, with Corridoom VR being his latest released game. Raka also regularly tweets as @legacy99. 

Have you ever wondered where the filament for your 3D printer comes from and how it’s made? I recently had the chance to visit 3dk.berlin, a local filament manufacturer in Berlin. 3dk.berlin distinguishes itself by offering a huge variety of colors for their filament. As a designer it’s great to have a large palette of colors to choose from, and I chose 3dk filament for my Polygon Construction Kit workshop at Thingscon 2015 (they’re sponsoring the workshop). Today we’ll be looking at how one filament producer takes raw plastic and forms it into the colored filament you can use in your 3D printer. Some of the many colors offered by 3dk.berlin 3dk.berlin is located at the very edge of Berlin, in the area of Heiligensee which is basically its own small town. 3dk is a family-owned business run by Volker Bernhardt as part of BERNHARDT Kunststoffverarbeitungs GmbH (that’s German for "plastics processing company"). 3dk is focused on bringing BERNHARDT’s experience with injection moulded and extruded plastics to the new field of 3D printing. Inside the factory neutral-colored plastic pellets are mixed with colored "master batch" pellets and then extruded into filament. The extruding machine melts and mixes the pellets, then squeezes them through a nozzle, which determines the diameter of the extruded filament. The hot filament is run through a cool water bath and coiled on large spools. Conceptually it’s quite simple, but getting extremely consistent filament diameter, color and printing properties is demanding. Small details like air and moisture trapped inside the filament can lead to inconsistent prints. Bigger problems like material contamination can lead to a jammed nozzle in your printer. 3dk spent 1.5 years developing and fine tuning their machine before they were satisfied with the results to a German level of precision. They didn’t let me to take pictures of their extrusion machines since some of their techniques are proprietary but you can get a good view of a similar machine in this filament extrusion machine video. Florian (no small guy himself) with a mega-spool from the extrusion machine The filament from the extrusion machine is wound onto 10kg spools - these are big! The filament from these large spools is then rewound onto smaller spools for sale to customers. 3dk tests their filament on a variety of printers in-house to ensure ongoing quality. Where we might do a small print of 20 grams to test a new filament, 3dk might do a "small" test of 2kg! Test print with a full-size plant (about 4 feet tall) Why produce filament in Germany when cheaper filament is available from abroad? Florian Deurer from 3dk explained some of the benefits to me. 3dk gets their PLA base material directly from a supplier that does use additives. The same PLA is used by other manufacturers for items like food wrapping. The filament colorants come from a German supplier and are also "harmless for food". For the colorants in particular there might be the temptation for less scrupulous or regulated manufacturers to use toxic substances like heavy metals or other chemicals. Beyond safety and practical considerations like printing quality, using locally produced filament provides local jobs What really sets 3dk apart from other filament makers in an increasingly competitive field is the range of colors they produce. I asked Florian for some orange filament and he asked "which one?" The colors on offer range from subtle (there’s a whole selection of whites, for example) to more extreme bright colors and metallic effects. Designers will be happy to hear that they can order custom colors using the Pantone color standard (for orders of 5kg / 11lbs and up).   Which white would you like? Standard, milky, or pearl? Looking to the future of 3D printing, it will be great to see more environmentally friendly materials become available. The most popular material for home 3D printing right now is probably PLA plastic (the same material 3dk uses for most of their filament). PLA is usually derived from corn, which is an annually renewable crop. PLA is technically compostable, but this has to take place in industrial composting conditions at high temperature and humidity. People are making progress on recycling PLA and ABS plastic prints back into filament at home but the machines to make this easy and more common are still being developed. 100% recycled PLA print of Origamix_Rabbit by Mirice printed on an i3 Berlin 3dk offers a filament made from industrially recycled PLA. The color and texture for this material varies a little on the spool but I found it to print very well in my first tests and your object ends up a nice slightly transparent olive green. I recently got a "sneak peek" at a filament 3dk is working on that is compostable under natural conditions. This filament is pre-production, so the specifications haven’t been finalized, but Florian told me that the prints are stable under normal conditions but can break down when exposed to soil bacteria. The pigments also contain "nothing bad" and break down into minerals. The sample print I saw was flexible with a nice surface finish and color. A future where we can manufacture objects at home and throw them onto our compost heap after giving them some good use sounds pretty bright to me! A friendlier future for 3D printing? This print can naturally biodegrade About the Author Michael Ang is a Berlin-based artist / engineer working at the intersection of technology and human experience. He is the creator of the Polygon Construction Kit, a toolkit for creating large physical polygons using small 3D-printed connectors. His Light Catchers project collects crowdsourced light recordings into a public light sculpture.

Something special happens when a kid (or adult) makes an LED blink on their own for the first time. Once new programmers realize that they can control the world around them, their minds are opened to a whole new world of possibilities. DIY electronics and programming are more accessible than ever with the introduction of the Arduino and, more recently, Open Source programming frameworks like Johnny-Five for building Nodebots (JavaScript-powered robots!). But there are still some basic configuration and dependency requirements that can be roadblocks to new users. Our goal as a community should be to simplify the process and develop tools that help users get to their “aha” moment faster. Chris Williams, author of the popular node-serialport library used by the Nodebots community, summarized this goal as: “Reduce the time to awesome.” Johnny-Five does a fantastic job of abstracting away many of the complexities of interactive with Arduinos, sensors, and actuators. But its use still depends on things like installing a particular firmware (Firmata) on the Arduino and setting up a proper Node.js environment for running user’s applications. These requirements are often a stumbling block to those that are just learning electronics and/or programming. So how do we simplify the process further and help new users get to “awesome” faster? Enter Chromebots. Chromebots is an Open Source Chrome Application that rolls up all the requirements for building Nodebots into a simple interface that can run on any desktop, laptop, or even Chromebooks that are becoming popular in classrooms. The Chromebots appllication combines firmata.js, a browser serialport implementation, and all the Node.js dependencies you need to get started building Nodebots right away. It even uses a new JavaScript-based Arduino binary loader to install Firmata for you. There is nothing else to install and no special configuration required. Let’s see just how easy it is to get started. 1) Install Chromebots First, you need to install the “Johnny-Five Chrome” application from the Chrome web store. Once installed, you can launch the Chromebots application via the “Apps” icon in the bookmarks bar of Chrome or the Chrome App Launcher that’s installed to your taskbar (Windows) or Dock (Mac). You’ll be presented with a window like this: 2) Connect your Arduino Plug in your Arduino UNO (or compatible board) via USB and click the blue refresh button next to the Port selection box. The Chromebots app will automatically detect which serial port is assigned to your Arduino. Depending on what operating system you are using, it will be something like “COM3” or “/dev/tty.usbmodem1411”. If you aren’t sure which port is the correct one to choose, simply unplug the Arduino, refresh the list, then plug it back in and see which one shows up new. 3) Install Firmata If you haven’t already installed Firmata on your Arduino (or just aren’t sure), click the “Install Firmata” button. The TX/RX lights will flash briefly on your Arduino, and then the process is complete. 4) Add an LED to pin 13 For our first sample program, we’ll just blink an LED. The easiest way to do this is to insert an LED directly on the Arduino. The longer lead on the LED is positive and connects to pin 13. The shorter negative lead is inserted into ground (GDN) next to pin 13. 5) Run your Johnny-Five program Now you’re ready to run your first program! By default, the Chromebots app starts out with a sample Johnny-Five program that waits for a connection to the Arduino, defines an LED on pin 13, and calls the blink() function. Click the “Run” button and the LED you plugged into pin 13 will start blinking rapidly. And that’s it. You’re now ready to explore the power of Johnny-Five to build your own Nodebot! The Chromebots app makes several variables available for your use. The “five” variable is the standard Johnny-Five library. The “io” variable represents the Firmata instance for the board. jQuery (“$”) and lodash (“_”) are also available as convenience libraries. So what next? I recommend trying a few of the Johnny-Five example programs to get you started with understanding how the framework is used. Note, if you’d like access to the JavaScript console for debugging purposes, there’s one additional step you need to take to enable debugging inside a packaged Chrome Application. Inside Chrome, enter the following into the address bar: “chrome://flags”. Find the option for “Enable debugging for packed apps” and turn it on. Restart your browser (including the Chromebots app) and now you can right-click inside Chromebots and select the “Inspect Element” option in the menu to gain access to the standard Chrome Developer Tools. Now build something awesome and then share it with the Nodebots community! I can’t wait to see what you create. About the author David Resseguie is a member of the Computational Sciences and Engineering Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and lead developer for Sensorpedia. His interests include human computer interaction, Internet of Things, robotics, data visualization, and STEAM education. His current research focus is on applying social computing principles to the design of information sharing systems. He can be found on Twitter @Resseguie.

Are you looking for software for designing physical objects for 3D printing or physical construction? Computer-aided design (CAD) software is used extensively in engineering when designing objects that will be physically constructed. Programs such as Blender or SketchUp can be used to design models for 3D printing but there’s a catch: it’s quite possible to design models that look great onscreen but don’t meet the "solid object" requirements of 3D printing. Since CAD programs are targeted at building real-world objects, they can be a better fit for designing things that will exist not just on the screen but in the physical world. D-printable Servo controlled Silly-String Trigger by sliptonic FreeCAD distinguishes itself by being open source, cross-platform, and designed for parametric modeling. Anyone is free to download or modify FreeCAD, and it works on Windows, Mac, and Linux. With parametric modeling, it’s possible to go back and change parameters in your design and have the rest of your design update. For example, if you design a project box to hold your electronics project and decide it needs to be wider, you could change the width parameter and the box would automatically update. FreeCAD allows you to design using its visual interface and also offers complete control via Python scripting. Changing the size of a hole by changing a parameter I recommend Bram De Vries’ FreeCAD tutorials on YouTube to help you get started with FreeCAD. The FreeCAD website has links to download the software and a getting started guide. FreeCAD is under heavy development (by a small group of individuals) so expect to encounter a little strangeness from time to time, and save often! If you’re used to using software developed by a large and well-compensated engineering team you may be surprised that certain features are missing, but on the other hand it’s really quite amazing how much FreeCAD offers in software that is truly free. You might find a few gaping holes in functionality, but you also won’t find any features that are locked out until you go "Premium". If you didn’t think I was geeky enough for loving FreeCAD, let me tell you my favorite feature: everything is scriptable using Python. FreeCAD is primarily written in Python and you have access to a live Python console while the program is running (View->Views->Python console) that you can use to interactively write code and immediately see the results. Scripting in FreeCAD isn’t through some limited programming interface, or with a limited programming language: you have access to pretty much everything inside FreeCAD using standard Python code. You can script repetitive tasks in the UI, generate new parts from scratch, or even add whole new "workbenches" that appear alongside the built-in features in the FreeCAD UI. Creating a simple part interactively with Python There are many example macros to try. One of my favorites allows you to generate an airfoil shape from online airfoil profiles. My own Polygon Construction Kit (Polycon) is built inside FreeCAD. The basic idea of Polycon is to convert a simple polygon model into a physical object by creating a set of 3D-printed connectors that can be used to reconstruct the polygon in the real world. The process involves iterating over the 3D model and generating a connector for each vertex of the polygon. Then each connector needs to be exported as an STL file for the 3D printing software. By implementing Polycon as a FreeCAD module I was able to leverage a huge amount of functionality related to loading the 3D model, generating the connector shapes, and exporting the files for printing. FreeCAD’s UI makes it easy to see how the connectors look and make adjustments to each one as necessary. Then I can export all the connectors as well-organized STL files, all by pressing one button! Doing this manually instead of in code could literally take hundreds of hours, even for a simple model. FreeCAD is developed by a small group of people and is still in the "alpha" stage, but it has the potential to become a very important tool in the open source ecosystem. FreeCAD fills the need for an open source CAD tool the same way that Blender and GIMP do for 3D graphics and image editing. Another open source CAD tool to check out is OpenSCAD. This tool lets you design solid 3D objects (the kind we like to print!) using a simple programming language. OpenSCAD is a great program–its simple syntax and interface is a great way to start designing solid objects using code and thinking in "X-Y-Z". My first implementation of Polycon used OpenSCAD, but I eventually switched over to FreeCAD since it offers the ability to analyze shapes as well as create them, and Python is much more powerful than OpenSCAD’s programming language. If you’re building 3D models to be printed or are just interested in trying out computer-aided design, FreeCAD is worth a look. Commercial offerings are likely going to be more polished and reliable, but FreeCAD’s parametric modeling, scriptability, and cross-platform support in an open source package are quite impressive. It’s a great tool for designing objects to be built in the real world. About the Author Michael Ang is a Berlin-based artist and engineer working at the intersection of art, engineering, and the natural world. His latest project is the Polygon Construction Kit, a toolkit used to bridge the virtual and physical realms by constructing real-world objects from simple 3D models. He is one of the organizers of Art Hack Day, an event for hackers whose medium is tech and artists whose medium is technology.

3D printing is certainly a hot topic today, and having your own printer at home is becoming increasingly popular. There are a lot of options to choose from, and in this post I'll talk about why I chose to go with an open source 3D printer instead of a proprietary pre-built one, and what my experience with the printer has been. By sharing my 6 months of experience I hope to help you decide which kind of printer is best for you. My Prusa i3 Berlin 3D printer after 6 months Back in 2006 I had the chance to work with a 3D printer when the thought of having a 3D printer at home was mostly a fantasy. The printer in question was made by Stratasys, at the Eyebeam Art+Tech center in New York City. That printer cost upwards of $30,000—not exactly something to have at your house! The idea of doing something wrong with the printer and having to call a technician in to fix it was also a little intimidating. (My website has some of my early experiments with 3D printing.) Flash forward to today and there are literally dozens (or probably hundreds) of 3D printer designs available on the market. The designs range from high-end printers that can print plastic with embedded carbon fiber, to popular designs from MakerBot and DIY kits on eBay. One of the first low-cost 3D printers was the RepRap. The goal of the RepRap project is to create a self-replicating machine, where the parts for the machine can be fabricated by the machine itself. In practice this means that many of the parts of a RepRap-style 3D printer are actually printed on a RepRap printer. Most people who build RepRap printers start with a kit and then assemble the printer themselves. If the idea of a self-replicating machine sounds interesting, then RepRap may be for you. RepRap is now more of a philosophy and community than any specific printer. Once you assemble your printer you can make changes and upgrades to the machine by printing yourself new parts. There are certainly some challenges to building your own printer, though, so let's look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of going with an open source printer (building from a kit) versus a pre-packaged printer. Advantages of a pre-assembled commercial printer: Should print right out of the box Less tinkering needed to get good prints Each printer of a particular model is the same, making it easier to get support Advantages of an open source (RepRap-style) kit: Typically cheaper than pre-built Learn more about how the printer works Easier to make changes to the machine, and complete plans are available Easier to experiment with, for example different printing materials Disadvantages to pre-assembled: Making changes may void your warranty Typically more expensive May be locked into specific software or filament Disadvantages of open source: Can take a lot of work to get good prints Potentially lots of decisions to make, not pre-packaged May spend as much time on the machine as actually printing Technical differences aside, the idea of being part of an open source community based on the freedom to share knowledge and designs was really appealing. With that in mind I had a look at different open source 3D printer designs and capabilities. Since the RepRap designs are open source, anyone can modify them and create a "new" printer. In the end I settled on a variation of the Prusa i3 RepRap printer that is designed in Berlin, where I live. The process of getting a RepRap printer working can be challenging, because there's so much to learn at first. The Prusa i3 Berlin can be ordered as a kit with everything needed to build the printer, and with a workshop where you build the printer with the machine's designers over the course of a weekend. Two days to build a working 3D printer from a pile of parts? Yes, it can be done! Most of the parts in the printer kit Building the printer at the workshop saved an incredible amount of time. Questions like "does this look tight enough?" and "how does this part fit in here?" were answered on the spot. There are very active forums for RepRap printers with lots of people willing to help diagnose problems. But a few questions with even a one day turnaround time quickly adds up. By the end of the two days my printer was fully assembled and actually printed out a little plastic robot! This was pretty satisfying knowing that the printer had started the weekend as a bundle of parts. Quite a lot of wires Assembling the plastic extruders Thus began my 6-month (so far) adventure in 3D printing. It has been an awesome and at times frustrating journey. I mainly bought my printer to create connectors for my Polygon Construction Kit (Polycon). I'm printing connectors that assemble with some rods to make structures much larger than could be printed in one piece. My printer has been working well for that, but the main issue has been reliability and need for continual tweaking. Instead of just "hitting print" there is a constant struggle to keep everything lined up and printing smoothly. Printing on my RepRap is a lot more like baking a soufflé than ordering a burger. Completed printer in my studio Some highlights of the journey so far: Printing out parts strong enough to assemble some of my Polycon sculptures and show them at an art show in Berlin Designing my own accessories for the printer and having them downloaded more than 1,000 times on Thingiverse (not bad for some rather specialized tools) Printing upgrades for the printer, based on the continually updated source files Being able to get replacement parts at the hardware store, when one of the long threaded rods in the printer wore out Sculpture with 3D printed connectors. Image courtesy of Lehrter Siebzehn. And the lowlights: Never quite knowing if a print is going to complete successfully (though this can be a problem with many printers) Having enough trouble getting my first extruder working reliably for long prints that I haven't had time to get dual-extrusion prints working Accessory I designed for calibrating the printer, which I then shared with others As time goes on and I keep working on the printer, it's slowly getting more reliable, and I'm able to do more complicated prints without constant intervention. The learning process has been valuable too - I'm now able to look at basically every part of the machine and understand exactly what it's supposed to do. Once you really understand how a 3D printer works, you start to wonder what kind of upgrades are possible, or what other kinds of machine you could design. Printed upgrade parts A pre-packaged printer makes a lot of sense if you're mostly interested in printing things. The learning process for building your own printer can either be interesting or a frustrating obstacle, depending on your point of view. When you look at a print from your RepRap printer, it's incredible to consider that it is all built off the contributions and sharing of knowledge of a large community. If you're not just interested in making things, but making things that make things, then a RepRap printer might be for you! Upgraded printer with polygon sculpture About the author: Michael Ang is a Berlin-based artist and engineer working at the intersection of art, engineering, and the natural world. His latest project is the Polygon Construction Kit, a toolkit for bridging the virtual and physical worlds by translating simple 3D models into physical structures.

There’s a natural path for the education of a maker that takes place within the techshops and makerspaces. It begins in the world of tools you may already know, like handheld tools or power tools, and quickly creeps into an unknown world of machines suited to bring any desire to fruition. At first, taking any classes may seem like a huge investment, but the payback you receive from the knowledge is priceless. I can’t even put a price on the payback I’ve earned from developing these maker skills, but I can tell you that the number of opportunities is overflowing. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but the opportunities to grow and learn also increase your connections and that’s what helps you to create an enterprise. Your options for education all depend upon what is available to you locally. As the ideology of technological dissonance has been growing culturally, it is influencing advancements on open source and open hardware. It has a big impact on the trend of creating incubators, startups, techshops, and makerspaces on a global scale. When I first began my education into the makerspace, I was worried that I’d never be able to learn it all. I started small by reading blogs and magazines, and eventually I decided to take a chance and sign up for a membership at our local makerspace: http://www.Makerplace.com. There I was given access to a variety of tools that would be too bulky and loud for my house and workspace, not to mention extremely out of my price range. When I first started at the Makerplace, I was overwhelmed by the amount of technology that was available to me, and I was daunted by the degree of difficulty it would take to even use these machines. But you can only learn so much from videos and books; the real trial begins when you put that knowledge to work with hands-on experience. I was ready to get some experience under my belt. The degree of difficulty for a student can vary, obviously, by experience, and how well one grasps the concepts. I started by taking a class that offers a brief introduction to a topic and some guidance from an expert. After that, you learn on your own and will break things such as materials, end mills, electronic components, and lots of consumables (I do not condone breaking fingers, body parts, or huge expensive tools). This stage is key, because once you understand what can and will go wrong, you’ll undeniably want more training from an expert. And as the saying goes, “practice makes perfect,” which is the key to mastery. As you begin your education, it will become apparent to you what classes will need to come next. The best place to start is learning the obvious software necessary to develop your tangible goods. For those of you who are interested I will list the suggested order of the tools and experience I have learned from ground zero. I suggest the first tools to learn are the Laser, Waterjet, and Plasma CNC cutters, as they can precisely cut shapes out of sheet type material. The laser is the easiest to learn, and can be used to not only cut, but engrave wood, acrylics, metal, and other sheet type materials. Most likely the makerspaces and hackerspaces that you have access to will have this available. The Waterjet and Plasma CNC machines will depend upon the workshop, since they require more room, along with the outfitting of vapor and fume containment equipment. The next set of tools that require a bigger learning curve are the Multi-Axis CNC Mills, Routers, Conventional Mill, and Lathe. CNC (Computer Numerical Control) is the automation of machine tools. These processes of controlled material removal today are collectively known as Subtractive Manufacturing. This requires you to take unfinished work pieces made of materials such as metals, plastics, ceramics, and wood and create 2D/3D shapes, which can be made into tools or finished as tangible objects. The CNC routers are for the same process, but they use sheet materials, such as plywood, MDF, and foam. The first time I took a tour of the makerplace, these machines looked so intimidating. They were big, loud, and I had no clue what they were used for. It wasn’t until I gained further insight into manufacturing that I understood how valuable these tools are. The learning curve is gradual, since there are multiple moving parts and operations happening at once. I took the CNC fundamentals class, which was required before operating any of these machines. I then completed the conventional Mill and Lathe classes before moving on to the CNC machines. I suggest the steps in this order, since understanding the conventional process will play an integral role in how you design your parts to be machined using the CNC machines. I found out the hard way why endmills were called consumables, as I scrapped many parts and broke many endmills. This is a great skill to understand as it directly compliments the Additive processes, such as 3D printing. Once you have a grasp on the basics of automated machinery, the next step is to learn welding and plasma cutting equipment and metal forming tools. This skill opens many possibilities and opportunities to makers, such as making and customizing frames, chassis, and jigs. Along the way you will also learn how to use the metal forming tools to create and craft three-dimensional shapes from thin-gauge sheet metal. And last but not least, depending on how far you want to develop your learning, there are large air compressors, such as bead blasters and paint sprayers used with tools that require constant pressure in the metal forming category. There is also high temperature equipment, such as furnaces, ovens, and acrylic sheet benders, and my personal new favorite, the vacuum formers that bend and form plastic into complex shapes. With all of these new skills under my belt, a network of like-minded individuals, and a passion for knowledge in manufacturing and design, I was able to produce and create products at a pro level, which totally changed my career. Whatever your curious intentions may be, I encourage you to take on a new challenge, such as learning manufacturing skills, and you will be guaranteed a transformative look at the world around you, from consumer to maker. About the Author Travis Ripley is a designer/developer. He enjoys developing products with composites, woods, steel, and aluminum, and has been immersed in the Maker community for over two years. He also teaches game development at the University of California, Los Angeles. He can be found @travezripley.

Although solderless breadboards provide makers with an easy way to build functioning circuits and software, the builds are only really reliable if they aren't handled too heavily. For example, in our first post, we talked about building a Weather Cube as a sensory tool for occupational therapists. The breadboard circuit and the foam cube secured inside this might survive fairly well, but for any highly-physical wearable applications, it would be easy for a single wire to be pulled out of the circuit, causing it to fail at a vital moment. In this post, we will detail how we soldered our Weather Cube project, plus provide you with timesaving and pain-saving tips born through trial and error (and one burnt finger). If you have very little or no experience working with stripboards, it could be worth practicing your skills before starting. Important Safety warning Protective equipment such as safety glasses should always be worn. You should also have first aid equipment available whenever working with metal, including melting solder, hacksawing, and spot-cutting copper board. Before you begin soldering your project, you will need the following: A soldering iron (this iron becomes extremely hot, so take care not to touch the tip with your hands)· Solder (usually made of tin and lead). Soldering a stripboard for a Weather Cube First, cut your stripboard (also called veroboard by some people, but it's the same thing). Do this by laying the stripboard horizontal, with the copper side facing you. Count 25 points from the middle, right, and side of the stripboard. Draw a line from top to bottom. Use a G-clamp to secure your stripboard to a solid surface, and then cut along the line with your junior hacksaw. Starting with just downward strokes will help you keep on track initially. You could also cut the top two rails off if you want your project to be as small as possible, or color the top two rails to remind yourself not to count these holes. Then, follow these steps: Count six spaces from the right side. Draw a line from the top to the bottom of the board on the copper side. Count seven spaces from the line you’ve just drawn, and draw a line from the top to the bottom again. Count a further six spaces and once again draw a line from the top to the bottom. Spot cut these lines. Spot cutting involves twisting a dedicated spot cutter into parts of the copper where you want a gap in the copper rails. Then, flip over the stripboard so that the copper bit is facing down, and clip it onto the soldering station holder. For convenience, we recommend using exactly the same component positions as the breadboard build. It’s useful to keep a tested breadboard version of the layout nearby. You can use this as a reference for component positions on the stripboard version as you build it, to help ensure you don’t introduce errors. Soldering a piezo A piezo is a small sensor device used by Makers to convert pressure and force into an electrical charge. These sensors are also very delicate, and can easily come apart. If it does, you will have to re-solder it. To solder the piezo back together, follow these steps: Strip the end of the wire approximately 4mm. Twist the wire strands to make one piece of wire. Tin the wire by coating a bit of solder onto the exposed wire. Then, either push the wire into a hole on the same railing, or if the wire has come detached on the piezo end, then solder it back on to the piezo. Don’t leave the soldering iron on the piezo element for too long as you could damage it. Conclusion Soldering can provide projects with greater robustness, allowing them to be handled without easily falling apart. With these steps, we hope to have provided you with some of the tips and tricks to successfully solder your inventions. About the authors Clare Bowman enjoys hacking playful interactive installations and co-designing digitally fabricated consumer products. She has exhibited projects at Maker Faire UK, Victoria and Albert Museum, FutureEverything, and Curiosity Collective gallery shows. Some recent work includes “Sands Everything”, an interactive hourglass installation interpreting Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man soliloquy through gravity-controlled animated grains, and more. Cefn Hoile sculpts open source hardware and software, and supports others doing the same. Drawing on 10 years of experience in R&D for a multinational technology company, he works as a public domain inventor, and an innovation catalyst and architect of bespoke digital installations and prototypes. He is a founder-member of the CuriosityCollective.org digital arts group, and a regular contributor to open source projects and not-for-profits. Cefn is currently completing a PhD in Digital Innovation at Highwire, University of Lancaster, UK.

If you’ve visited any social media outlets, you’ve probably come across a never-ending list of new words and terms—the Internet of Things, technological dissonance, STEM, open source, tinkerer, maker culture, constructivism, DIY, fabrication, rapid-prototyping, techshop, makerspace, 3D printers, Raspberry Pi, wearables, and more. These terms are typically used to describe a Maker, or they have something to do with Maker culture. Follow along to learn about my particular journey into the Maker culture, specifically in the 3D printing space. The rise of the maker culture Maker culture is on the rise. This is a culture that thrives at the intersection of technology and innovation at the informal, social, and peer-led level. The interactions of skilled people driven to share their knowledge with others, develop new pathways, and create solutions for current problems have built a new community. I am proud to say that I am a Maker-Tinkerer (or that I have some form of motivated ADHD that drives me to engage in engineering-oriented pursuits). My journey started at ground zero while studying 3D design and development. A maker's journey I knew there was more that I could do with my knowledge of rendering the three-dimensional surface of an object. Early on, however, I only thought about extending my knowledge for entertainment purposes, such as video games. I didn’t understand the power of having this knowledge and the way it could help create real-world solutions. Then, I came across an issue of Make Magazine and it changed my mental state overnight—I had to create tangible things. Now that I had the information to send me in the right direction, I needed an outlet. An industry friend mentioned a local Hackerspace, known as Deezmaker, which was holding informational workshops about 3D printing. So, I signed up for an introductory class. I had no clue what I was getting myself into as I crossed that first threshold, but by that evening, I was versed in topics that I thought were far from my mental capabilities. I was hooked. The workshop consisted of part lecture, and part hands-on material. I learned that you couldn't just start using a 3D printer. You actually need to have some basic understanding of the manufacturing process, like understanding that layers of material need to be successfully laid down in order to move on to the next stage in the process. Being the curious, impatient, and overly enthusiastic man-child that I am, this was the most difficult part for me, as I couldn’t wait to engage in this new world. 3D printing Almost two years later, I am fully immersed in the world of 3D printing. I currently have a 3D printer at home (which is almost obsolete, by today’s standards) and I have access to multiple printers at a local techshop/makerspace known as Makerplace here in San Diego, Ca. I use this technology regularly, since I have changed directions in my career as a 3D artist towards Manufacturing Engineering and Rapid Prototyping. I am currently attending a Machine Technology/Engineering program at San Diego City College; (for more info on the best Machining program in the country visit http://www.JCbollinger.com). The benefit for me using 3D printers is rapidly producing iterations of prototypes for my clientele, since most people feel more reassured in the process if they have tangible and solid objects and are more likely to trust you as a designer. I feel that having access to this also helps me complete more jobs successfully given that turnaround times for updates can be as little as a few hours, rather than days or weeks (depending on the size/scale). Currently I have a few reoccurring clients that want updates often, and by showing them my progress, the iterations are fewer and I can move onto the next project with no hesitation given how we can successfully see design updates rapidly and minimize the flaws and failures. I produce prototypes for all industries: toys, robotics, vehicles, and so on. Think of it as producing solutions, and how you can either make something better or simpler. Entertaining the idea of a challenge and solving these challenges has benefits as with each new design job you have all these tangible objects to look at and examine. As a hobbyist, the technology has made it easy to produce new or even obsolete items. For example, I love Transformers, but you know how plastic does two things very well: it breaks and gets lost. I came across a forum where guys were distributing the programs for the arm extrusions that break (no one likes gluing), so I printed the parts that had been missing for decades, rebuilt the armature that had for so long been displaced, and then like magic I felt like I was six years old again with a perfectly working Transformer. Here are a few things that I've learned along the way: 3D printing is also known as Additive Manufacturing. It is the process of producing three-dimensional objects in which successive layers of varied material are extruded under computer-controlled equipment that is fed information from 3D models. These models are derived from a data source that processes the information into machine language. The plastic extrusion technology that is now becoming slowly more popular is known as Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM). This process was developed in the early 1990s for the application of job production, mass production, rapid prototyping, product development, and distributed manufacturing. The principle of FDM is that material is laid down in layers. There are many other processes such as Selective Heat Sintering (SHS), Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Stereolithography (SLA), and Plaster-Based 3D Printing (PP) to name a few. We will keep it simple here and go over the FDM process for now, as most of the printers at the hobbyist level use this process. The FDM process significantly affected roles within the production and manufacturing industries, as wearing multiple hats as an engineer, designer, and operator and as growth made the technology more affordable to an array of industrial fields. In contrast, CNC Machining, which is a Subtractive Manufacturing process, has been incorporated naturally to work together in this development. The influence of this technology in the industrial and manufacturing industries created exposure to new methods of production at exponential rates, for example Automation. For the home-use and hobbyist market, the 3D printers produced by the open source/open hardware initiative can be stemmed directly or indirectly from the RepRap.org project, which is a free to low-cost desktop 3D printer that is self-replicating. That being said, you can thank them for starting this revolution. By getting involved in this community you are benefiting everyone by spreading the spark that will continue to create new developments in manufacturing and consumer technology. The FDM process can be done with a multitude of materials; the two most popular options at this time are PLA (Polylactic acid) and ABS (Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene). Both PLA and ABS have pros and cons, depending upon your model structure. The future use of the print and client requests and understanding the fundamental differences between the two can help you determine your choice of one over the other, or in case of owning a printer with two extruders, how they can be combined. In some cases, PVA (Polyvinyl Acetate) is also used as support material (in the case of two extruders) unlike PLA or ABS, which if used as support material will require cleanup when finishing a print. PVA is water soluble, so you can soak your print in warm water and the support structures will dissolve away. PLA (Polylactic Acid) is a strong biodegradable plastic that is derived from renewable resources: cornstarch and sugarcane. It is more resistant to UV rays than ABS (so you will not see fading with your prints). Also, it sticks better than any other material to the surface of your hotplate (minimal warping), which is a huge advantage. It prints at -180* C, and it can create an ooze, and if your nozzle is loaded it will drip, which also means that leaving a print in your car on a hot day may cause damage. ABS (Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) is stronger than PLA, but is non-biodegradable; it is a synthetic monomer produced from propylene and ammonia. This means it has more rigidity than PLA, but is also more flexible. It is a colorfast material (which means it will hold its color for years). It prints at -220*C, and is amorphous and therefore has no true melting point, so a heated bed is needed as warping can and will occur (usually because the bed is not hot enough—at least 80*C —or the Z axis is not calibrated correctly). Printer options For the hobbyist maker, there are a few 3D printer options to consider. Depending upon your skill level, your needs, budget and commitments, there is a printer out there for you. The least expensive, smallest, and most straightforward printer available on the market is Printrbot Simple Maker’s 3D Printer. Retailing at $349.99, this printer comes in a kit that includes the bare necessities you need to get started. It is capable of printing a 4” cube. You can also purchase it already assembled for a little extra. The kit and PLA filament are available at www.makershed.com. The 3D printer I started on, personally own, and recommend is the Afina H480 3D printer. Retailing at $1299.99, this printer provides the easiest setup right out of the box, it’s fully assembled, comes with a heated platform for the aid of adhesion and for less chance of warping, and can print up to a 5” cube. It also comes loaded with its own native 3D software, where you can manipulate your .STL files. It has an automated utility to calibrate the printer’s build platform with the printhead, and also automatically generates any support setup material and the “raft”, which is the base support for your prints. There is so much more to it, but as I said I recommend this for beginners, and it is also available through www.makershed.com. For the person who wants to print, and is at the hobbyist and semi-professional level, consider the next generation in 3D printing, the MAKERBOT Replicator. It is quick and efficient. Retailing at $2899.00, this machine has an extremely high layer resolution, LCD display, and if you run out of filament (ABS/PLA), there is no need to start over; this machine will alert you via computer or smartphone that a replacement is needed. There are many types of 3D printers available, with options including open source, open hardware, filament types, delta style mechanics, single/double extruders, and the list goes on. My main suggestion is to try before you buy, either at a local hackerspace or a local Makerfaire. It’s a worthwhile investment that pays for itself. Choosing your tools Before you begin, it's also important to choose your design tools. There are many great open source tools to choose from. Here are some of my favorites. When it comes to design tools, there is a multitude of cost effective and free tools out there to get you started. First off, the 3D printing process has a required “tool-chain” that must be followed in order to complete the process, roughly broken down into three parts: CAD (Computer Aided Design): Tools used to design 3D parts for printing. There are very few interchangeable CAD file formats that are sometimes referred to as parametric files. The most widely used interchangeable mesh file format is .STL (Stereolithography). This format is the most important as it used by CAM tools. CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing): Tools handling the intermediate step of translating CAD files into a machine-friendly format. Firmware for electronics: This is what runs the onboard electronics of the printer, and is the closest to actual programming; a process known as cross compiling. Here are my best picks for each category, known as FLOSS (free/libre/open source software). FLOSS CAD tools, for example OpenSCAD, FreeCAD, and HeeksCAD for the most part create these parametric files that usually represent parts or assemblies in terms of CSG (Constructive Solid Geometry) which basically represent a tree of Boolean operations performed on primitive shapes such as cubes, spheres, cylinders, and pyramids. These are modified numerically and with great precision and the geometry is a mathematical representation of such, no matter how much you zoom in or out. Another category of CAD tool that represents the parts as 3D polygon mesh is for the most part used for special effects in movies or video games (CG). They are also a little more user friendly, and examples would be Autodesk Maya and Autodesk 3ds Max (these choices are subscription/retail-based). But there are also open source and free versions of this tool such as Autodesk 123D, Google Sketchup, and Blender; I suggest the latter options, since they are free, user friendly, and they are much easier to learn since their options are narrowed down strictly to producing 3D meshes. If you need more precision you should look at OpenSCAD (my favorite), as it was created directly for making physical objects rather than game design or animation. OpenSCAD is easy to learn, with a simple interface, it is powerful and cross-platform, and there are many examples you can use along with strong community support. Next, you’ll need to convert your 3D masterpiece (.stl) into a machine friendly format known as G-Code. This process is also known as “slicing”. You’re going to need some CAM software to produce the “tool paths,” which is the next stop in the tool chain. Most of the slicing software available is open source. Some examples are Slic3r (the most popular, with an ease of use recommended for beginners), Skeinforge (dated, but still one of the best), Cura, and MatterSlice. There is also great closed source slicing software out there. One in particular is KISSlicer, which is a pro version that supports multi-extruder printing. The next stop after slicing is using software known as: A G-Code interpreter, which breaks down each line of the code into electronic signals. A G-Code sender, which sends the signals to the motors on the printer to tell them how to move. This software is usually directly linked to an EMC (Electronic Machine Controller), which controls the printer directly. It can also be linked to an integrated hardware interface that has a G-Code interpreter built in, which loads the G-Code directly from a memory card (SD card/USB). The last stop is the firmware, which controls the electronics onboard the printer. For the most part, the CPUs that control these machines are simple microcontrollers that are usually Arduino-based, and they are compiled using the Arduino IDE. This process may sound time consuming, but once you go through the tool chain process a few times, it becomes second nature, just like driving a manual transmission in a car. Where to go from here? When I finished my first hackerspace workshop, I had been assimilated into a culture that I was not only benefiting from personally, but a culture that I could share my knowledge with and contribute to. I have received far more in my journey as a maker than any previous endeavor. To anyone who is curious, and mechanically inclined (or not), who believes they have an answer to a solution, I challenge you. I challenge you to make the leap into this culture—join a hackerspace, attend a makerfaire, and enrich your life and the lives of others. About the Author Travis Ripley is a designer/developer. He enjoys developing products with composites, woods, steel, and aluminum, and has been immersed in the Maker community for over two years. He also teaches game development at the University of California, Los Angeles. He can be found @travezripley.

While the Internet of Things(IoT) sounds like some hipster start-up from the valley, it is in actual fact sweeping the technology world as the next big thing and is the topic of conversation (and perhaps development) through the majority of the major league tech titans. Simply, the IoT is the umbrella term for IP-enabled every day devices with the ability to communicate over the Internet. Whether that is your fridge transmitting temperature readings to your smartphone, or your doorbell texting you once it has been rung, anything with power (and even some without) can be hooked up to the World Wide Web and be accessed anywhere, anytime. This will of course have a huge impact on consumer tech, with every device under the sun being designed to work with your smartphone or PC, but whatäó_s worryingis how all this is going to be kept secure. While there are a large number of industry leading brands we can all trust (sometimes), there are an even bigger number of companies shipping devices out of China at extremely low production (and quality) costs. This prompts the questionäóñif the companyäó_s mantra is low cost products and mass sales, do they have the time, money (or care) to have an experienced security team and infrastructure to ensure these devices are secure? Iäó_m sure you know the answer to that question. Unconvinced? How about TrendNetcams back in 2012äó_ The basic gist was that a flaw in the latest firmware enabled you to add /anony/mjpg.cgi to the end of one of the camsäó_ IP addresses and you would be left with a live stream of the IP camera. Scary stuff (and some funny stuff) but this was a huge mistake made by what seems to be a fairly legitimate company. Imagine this on a much larger scale, with many more devices, being developed by much more dubious companies. Want a more up-to-date incident? How about a hacker gaining access to a Foscom IP camera that a couple was using to watch over their child, and the hacker screaming "Wake up, baby! Wake up, baby!äó_ Iäó_ll leave you to read more about that. With the suggestion that by 2020 anywhere between 26 and 212 billion devices will be connected to the Internet, this opens up an unimaginable amount of attack vectors, which will be abused by the black hats among us. Luckily, chip developers such as Broadcom have seen the payoff here by developing chips with a security infrastructure designed for wearable tech and the IoT. The newBCM20737 SoC provides äó_ Bluetooth, RSA encryption and decryption capabilities, and Appleäó_s iBeacon device detection technologyäó_ adding another layer of security that will be of interest to most tech developers. Whether the cost of such technology will appeal to all though is another thing altogetheräóîlow cost tech developers will just not bother. Now, I see the threat of someone hacking your toaster and burning your toast is not something you would worry about, but imagine healthcare implants or house security being given the IoT treatment. Not sure Iäó_d want someone taking control of my pacemaker or having a skeleton key to my house! Security is one of the major barriers to total adoption of the IoT, but is also the only barrier that can be jumped over and forgotten about by less law abiding companies. If I were to give anyone any advice before äó_connectingäó_, it would be to spend your money wisely, donäó_t go cheap, and avoid putting yourself in compromising situations around your IoT tech.