MAKER MOVEMENT PROJECTS

FIRST BATCH OF MAKERSLIDE NEARLY READY TO SHIP

Written By: Bill Griggs - Sep• 24•11

Makerslide unwrapped

First peek at Makerslide

 

Barton Dring the creator of Makerslide sent his Kickstarter supporters news that the first batch of Makerslides has been received and will be shipping soon. Dring posted an update which talked about his trip to the aluminum extruder plant to take delivery of the first batch of Makerslides. From reading the report it sounds like the visit would have been very  interesting on it’s own, even if it didn’t include delivery of the much sought after rails.

If I understood the process correctly the extrusion process involves preheating an  8 diameter 3′ long  Billet of aluminum up to 1000 degrees and then “smooshing” it through a giant machine similar to a Play-Doh fun factory. Then the metal is allowed to cool on long racks before it is cut into much smaller pieces, heated treated in an oven and (more…)

Minibloq Beta Adds Support For Arduino Mega Boards – Program Arduino Without Writing Code

Written By: Bill Griggs - Sep• 20•11

Last week we announced that Minibloq the open source Graphical Programming Environment for Programming Arduino Microcontrollers had added Three new boards to it’s list of supported hardware. This week Julián da Silva announced that Arduino Mega boards were now being added to the Minibloq lineup. Minibloq will add three new (more…)

Miniblog Beta Supports Arduino and Maple 32 Microcontrollers

Written By: Bill Griggs - Sep• 13•11

Minibloq Beta supports Maple 32 Bit boards

 

Minibloq developers today released news that the Beta version of the software will support Maple 32 bit Microcontrollers in addition to Arduino. Minibloq is a Graphical user interface and programming environment for Arduino Microcontrollers. I have used the Alpha versions of the program and found it is easy to use intuitive.

Minibloq v0.8 was released to backers and alpha testers recently and great progress has been made based the on feedback received. Recently, Minibloq doubled the (more…)

Minibloq v0.8 Alpha’s New Features Kickstart your Arduino Without Programming.

Written By: Bill Griggs - Sep• 11•11

Minibloq v0.8 Alpha  is an new open source Graphical Development Interface that will kickstart your Arduino Programming without making you write code. As I reported in June of this year Julian da Silva released the Alpha version of the open source Minibloq program to his backers on Kickstarter. I got my copy and within minutes I had programmed my Arduino Uno to perform a variety of tasks. I created a short video to show how impressed I was with the ease of use. I got such great response to that video that I have released a two more.

In the new videos I guide you through some of the neat new features of Minibloq v0.8 Alpha, the second major release and show you how to (more…)

Big Girl Character Out for a Stroll

Written By: Bill Griggs - Sep• 03•11

Every once in a while you find a project that is just bizarre. I am not certain what the story is behind this mammoth puppet but I am certain it is interesting.


What I can tell you is that this video is a behind the scenes documentation of a project done in Australia byJohn Cox’s Creature workshop using a Thermwood 5 axis CNC router. Thermwood has been (more…)