When winter comes, so do the mice. This leads to us having unwanted pets. The common answer would be to put rat poison and/or mouse traps out. That is, unless you are a maker/hacker. With the help of a bucket, metal rod, beer can, peanut butter and a 2″ x 4″, Radu was able to come up with a humane way to capture a mouse. It took a week or so, but Bartholomew has fallen for the trap and has since be released back into the wild.

Congrats to Radu for his trapping abilities and best of luck to Bartholomew in the wild streets of Eastern Market.

Hey all, Jeff Sturges was asked to do a review of the new Arduino Starter Kit, but was tight on time so he asked me to do it.

A little background if you care: I have my BSEE and work at a little engineering company in Southfield, MI called MAXITROL COMPANY. I also teach soldering, electronics and Arduino classes at TechShop in Allen Park. I’ve been using the Arduino platform for the past few years for projects.

In fact, I did the electronics for a project for the Grand Rapids art competition ArtPrize using an Arduino Mega, MIDI Shield, and six JeeNode’s and we won our category for best time based piece. The people who I worked with were Wes Taylor, Carlos L05, Invincible, and Wajeed. The project was called Three Phases by Complex Movements.

Anyways, enough about me, let’s have a look at the kit.

Overall, I was think the kit is really well thought out. All the instructions are clear and have good illustrations to go along with them.

Everything you need to complete the projects is in the kit, which normally goes with out saying, but I know some kits can be lacking things. WHen I say everything, I mean not just the electronics components, but also the other things you need to make it work. Either printed on nice cardstock in the case of the motorized pinwheel, or laser cut in the case of the gel holders that I used in the color wheel project.

I can’t say enough good things about the book that comes with it. While you go through the code it explains what you are doing and why in a way that is easy to understand, which can be really difficult to do when you are talking programming.

There were only two things that I thought could be improved upon with the kit. The first is the jumpers, I prefer the stranded jumpers with the solid metal piece on the end. I think they are easier to work with. Second was that all the projects in the book show three band resistors, but there are three and four band resistors included in the kit. This could be confusing to some people at first; but with smartphone apps, websites, and the googlebox, it shouldn’t take more than a few seconds for someone to figure out the four band equivalent.

The kit I had was from RS components who is a big EU distributor. I know that the kits are going to be available through some US distro too. I saw that on the Adafruit website, they were taking preorders, so I’m sure the rest of the DIY and Maker sites will too.

I just breezed the project really quick, and didn’t go in depth, but if you want more detailed tutorials, check out the tutorials on the RS Components YouTube Channel.

Thanks for watching, and Happy Hacking!

A few of our members at OCD are also member’s of the Detroit moped gang, the Motor City Riot (like me!). We had a small ride last Halloween time, and had a lot of fun so we are doing it again!

The shop will be open at 7PM, and the ride leaves at 9PM sharp!

What you should bring:
- A working (this means lights too!) moped, scooter, minibike, etc.
- Zombie makeup/costume
- A lock for your ride

There will be a nice length ride through the city. There will then be an intermission for food/drinks at Green Dot Stables in Corktown (this is where the lock comes in handy). They have sliders and the like, including vegan/vegetarian options. I believe they have some Gluten Free stuff too.

Then we will go on the second leg of the ride, and end up back at OmniCorp for some more drinks and cool-down time. We will have some beer on hand, but if you have particular taste you can bring your own. We have fridges! There is plenty of parking, and you can leave your things in the locked shop during the ride if you would like.

We will be hosting an open shop Moped Monday the 22nd, so if your bike needs a little work, bring it on down and we’ll see what we can do. Otherwise, please don’t plan to wrench on the 29th. We will have a chase vehicle if you do break down, but hopefully not too many people do.

$5 donations appreciated for beer and chase vehicle For more details visit http://www.motorcityriot.com/

Hello OCD Friends!  We have all had a fun and busy summer and are finally back.  Next saturday, October 6th, we will be running a workshop for the Dlectricity Festival. Starting at 5pm and going until 7pm, OCD will be showing you how to attach LEDs and reflective material to your bike to make you extra bright for the 3.5 mile bike parade that follows directly after the workshop.

The event is free and we have free kits available to the first 400 people.  Each kit includes a spoke card with 2 LEDs, 2 additional LEDS, a 12 LED light strand, and a bunch of different color tapes and reflective material.

Spoke Cards

The spoke cards double as a souvenir as well as instructions on how to connect the LEDs to the Batteries to make them light up.

LED Strands

This part is as easy as 1…2…3…

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Other Stuff

And here is just some of the tape and other bright stuff to add to your bike

Maker Faire is coming up quick! Just a little over a month away. We are busy getting our projects ready to be seen! Come see us at Maker Faire July 28th and 29th!