The Node

Posts Tagged ‘electronics’

BuildBrighton is organising a Mini Maker Faire at the Brighton Dome on the 3rd September 2011 from 10:00am to 5:00pm. Tickets are free for visitors. A reader from Wired magazine described the event thusly: -

A Maker Faire is the place to come for anyone who makes things themselves, or wants to have fun trying. You can expect to see all kinds of things at a Maker Faire. Sometimes useful, often toys, usually surprising, always fun. From electronics, soldering and robots, to knitting, metal and woodwork, if you can make it, it will be there.

This Mini Maker Faire is being organised independently by the Brighton Maker community to showcase all the best local creative talent and energy.

It’s a great day out for kids, families, or anyone who wants to learn how to make things, to be inspired or to meet other makers. There’ll be exhibitions and demonstrations, workshops where you can learn new skills, and make things to take away.

Things like this are usually organised by MAKE magazine and have been events held mostly in the US. However, recently with the popularity of things like Linux, Arduino and developing mobile applications and devices, such events have seen a rise in popularity in the UK. I’ll be attending to take part, I hope you will too :-)

Please see here for more details.

Google I/O was pretty exciting this year, with the announcement of the first Chromium OS-based netbooks (or ‘Chromebooks’ if you prefer), but the biggest announcement for me was the release of the Accessory Development Kit which allows you to develop USB peripherals for Android devices by way of a hardware component. Luckily for open source fans, this hardware component turned out to be Arduino, the open source hardware development platform. The board is based on the Arduino Mega 2560 and Circuits@Home USB Host Shield designs. Unfortunately, Google’s reference kit is around $400 USD and is sold out until the end of May anyway, while Arduino hardware usually goes for a lot cheaper. Luckily, those fine folks over at HackADay have worked out how to use standard Arduino hardware with the ADK. Nice :-)