Last weekend our resident tinkerer, Andy, set up a meltmedia Hack Day. We took over the meltEast kitchen with plenty to play with: Arduinos and Arduino kits, LEGO Mindstorms, LEGO Star Wars sets, and of course, some code hacking as well. There was plenty of power strips, cables, pizza, and QT sodas to go around, and the day resulted in only one blown out surge protector. It was a fun and relaxing way to get some work done and to start (or feed) an electronics hobby.
The fruits of our labor
So what came out of Hack Day? LeAnn built a series of LED lights that light up in patterned sequence. Mike built an RGB LED that changes color based on the frequency of sound picked up by a microphone. And Jason and Christian both worked on top secret development projects.
Nick built a remote temperature sensor for the beer he brews at home. As the beer ferments, the temperature data is collected and converted into graphical data in real time.
Nick’s code for Monk, the node JS server, and the Monk arduino are open source on GitHub.
Andy spent the day building two Adafruit XBee adaptors for short range wireless data connection. He details the project and Hack Day on his blog, Stuff Andy Makes: meltmedia Hack Day July 2012.
And, most importantly, Hack Day resulted in two sweet LEGO Star Wars models: Luke’s Landspeeder and the Corellian Corvette.
In sum, it was a fun and productive day. Who knows what the next Hack Day will hold?
About Lynn Fisher
Lynn is a designer and developer for the web. She loves making websites, drinking diet soda, and talking about Battlestar Galactica. She's also been known to dabble with paint. See her work at lynnandtonic.com.