Dalek Auric and Eric Boyd at kwartzlab rocked TON!

EXTERMINATE! It was another great Tuesday Open Night at kwartzlab this week. We had a double-header of Rob Green and Peter Nesbitt’s fantastic Dalek Auric (show above) and Eric Boyd’s Sensebridge gear. Click through for some video and pics.

More after the break…

For all you Doctor Who fans: a Dalek invades the lab!

He arrived at the door in pieces…

over multiple trips in Pete’s van. Some assembly required, so start with this piece, a modified motorized wheelchair chassis, and…

then lower the body onto the chassis…

and bolt that on…

then…

add…

Rob…

the upper body…

and finally the head.

Rob was freed shortly after the invasion and, with Pete, gave a great talk about the project. I’ll post that video later this week. Great job, guys! And thanks for sharing your amazing Dalek with us.

Next up for the night, was the fabulous Eric Boyd, on his cross-country tour of collaborative working spaces. Eric (and his friend Owen from Guelph) ate tacos with us at Ethel’s and then introduced us to the cool gear he makes for Sensebridge, his company.

Here’s our Ed trying on the North Paw compass bracelet/anklet.

And then lots of people tried it on. This device has a compass module, arduino-based microcontroller, and 9 vibrating pager motors in it. When activated, the motor that is currently pointing north vibrates. As you turn around a different motor will spin up so that only the north-facing motor vibrates. So cool! You can buy kits from Sensebridge and build your own.

Eric has also constructed a belt on the same principle. After the crowd thinned out, Eric showed us lots of interesting sensory-extension devices he had made or purchased. A really fascinating domain of study and making. Thanks a lot, Eric!

Tonight wrapped up James Nye’s show of his super-cool oil paintings in our lab. Thanks so much, James, for loaning us great art to enjoy. The month flew by. I’m sure we’ll be seeing you around the lab real soon.

And to all our blog followers, both of you, please come join us on Tuesday nights 7-10pm for cool conversations/collaborations. Although Tuesday Open Night doesn’t seem to make it to our events calendar, it does happen every week. Most current TON news is typically found on the kwartzlab Twitter feed.

Happy making,
DW

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