Unlearn How Things Work w/ Jay Silver
- August 27, 2012 · 7:00 PM
Jay Silver will join us to launch the "invention kit for everyone": MaKey MaKey!
Food and Craft Beer @ 6:47 PM
Presentation, Demos and Q&A @ 7:19 PM
Brought to life by an over 2,000% funded Kickstarter campaign, MaKey MaKey is "an invention kit for the 21st century. Turn everyday objects into touchpads and combine them with the internet. It's a simple Invention Kit for Beginners and Experts doing art, engineering, and everything in between."
Wait, I'm a TechXplorer so I need more technical info than that...* (see below)
About Jay Silver:
- Creator of Drawdio, Singing Fingers, Scratch and MaKey MaKey!
- Maker Research Scientist, Intel
- PhD student, MIT Media Lab
Come Xplore:
- How the Maker Movement is transforming the prototyping of interactive systems
- What Intel and others are doing to support and learn from the Maker Movement
- Why you shouldn't (but could!) use your cat as a game controller =)
RSVP now to reserve your spot!
Ever played Mario on Play-Doh or Piano on Bananas? Alligator clip the Internet to your world and start inventing the future.
*MaKey MaKey is...
MaKey MaKey is a printed circuit board with an ATMega32u4 microcontroller running Arduino Leonardo firmware. It uses the Human Interface Device (HID) protocol to communicate with your computer, and it can send keypresses, mouse clicks, and mouse movements. For sensing closed switches on the digital input pins, we use high resistance switching to make it so you can close a switch even through materials like your skin, leaves, and play-doh. We use a pull-up resistor of 10-50 mega ohms. This technique attracts noise on the input, so we use a moving window averager to lowpass the noise in software, saving money on hardware filtering. There are six inputs on the front of the board, which can be attached to via alligator clipping, soldering to the pads, or any other method you can think of. There are another 12 inputs on the back, 6 for keyboard keys, and 6 for mouse motion, which you can access with jumpers via the female headers. If you wish to use a different set of keys, or otherwise change the behavior of your MaKey MaKey, you can simply reprogram it using the Arduino environment. By cutting a trace on the back of the board, you can disconnect the large pull-up resistors if you want to, which would be necessary in a small minority of Arduino projects. more info here.
Have more questions? Leave a comment here or tweet @TechXploration.
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Amanda Schwartz
For those who won a MaKey MaKey at our last event: Have you attempted to fulfill your creative goals with the kit yet? Please share any updates!
(Next TechXploration being announced this week...=))
September 19
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Amanda Schwartz
Video of the banana jam, presentation and Q&A are now live on our Youtube channel (subscribe!): http://tinyurl.com/9pq4pze
Photos from the event are on our Flickr: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjBU9mtQ
Share with friends!
September 3
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ZHIPAN REN
Help needed: could anyone give me a lift tonight? I am at Stanford campus. Thank you!!
August 27
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Phillip Russell
Amanda, don't forget to point out on the meeting notices of the easy access via light rail.
August 28
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Darryl Lee
Hey, great fun tonight! Will you be posting the video up? Would love to share Jay's brother's musical banana performance with friends.
August 27
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Amanda Schwartz
Hey Darryl, I hope you enjoy the MaKey MaKey you won! Video will be posted early next week...stay tuned.
August 28
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Roman V Shaposhnik
The beer tasting was great! We should make it happen at every TechXploration meetup -- BYOB-style!
August 28
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Roman V Shaposhnik
Great talk and an excellent, brilliant pairing with craft beer tasting! We should make it happen at all future TechXploration events -- BYOB style!
August 28
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Phillip Russell
Not often you see teenagers completely mesmerized by a tech presentation. :-)
Jay Silver did a fantastic presentation.
2 · August 27
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Darryl Lee
Hi, my boys (4 and 8) love the Makey Makey kit we recently got. Any problem bringing them to the even tonight? I'll steer them away From the beer.
August 27
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Ajoy Bhatia
Bob, I think it's a start to unlearning things beginning with how meetings are scheduled. :)
1 · August 27
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Suz
Hi. Is the food/beer "potluck" style? Want to be sure to pick something up if it is.... Thanks.
August 26
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Amanda Schwartz
Hi Suz, food and beer will be provided. But, extra love will be given to folks who bring their favorite craft beer...see you then!
1 · August 26
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Chris Pickle
Cool, a hardware topic... Will there be an opportunity to play with the kits at the event?
August 23
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Amanda Schwartz
Hi Chris! We are working on getting a kit or two set up at the event so folks can play around with it.
1 · August 23
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A former member
Allo, maybe this is a dumb question, but will there be MaKey MaKey kits available to purchase or is this just a teaser?
August 22
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Amanda Schwartz
Hi Nina! No word yet on whether they'll be on sale, but we did just receive 10 units from Jay in the mail so we'll be raffling those out.
August 22
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Amanda Schwartz
Extra special prize for folks who bring their favorite craft beer to share!
1 · August 8
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$100 off cafe membership for one month (normally $225)
from NextSpace San Jose
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25% off Yearly subscription to San Jose's Content Magazine
from Content Magazine
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