MindKits News and Blog

Making things. It’s a bastion of New Zealand culture. We call it the “Number 8 Wire” mentality. Some would argue that the future of our economy relies on our ability to keep on with the makery. Both Ben (from Ben.geek.nz) and I love making stuff, and Ben loves local kiwi company Mindkits (that's us), because we supply all sorts of electronic goodies to help you make anything you might put your minds to.

So it is my pleasure to announce that Mindkits and Ben.geek.nz are teaming up to give you a little bit of inspiration. I'm giving away a SparkFun Arduino Starter Kit, and Ben's going to throw in a dual motor gearbox, motor controller, and couple of tiny servos from his collection of RC bits. All you have to do is tell us what you would make if you had free reign of the Mindkits store room. Let your imagination run wild and yes, you get points for being entertaining. We won’t make you prove you can build it (but we would love it if you did). If we get enough entries, we’ll put the top three (selected by Ben and Tim) up for a vote.

Step 1: Browse Mindkits

Take a look at everything in the MindKits store for inspiration and add anything else you feel you'd like to use (disassembled VCR's, cats and anything electronic you feel would help). Come up with a plan of what you'd love to build if money, equipment, skill or knowledge weren't a concern.

Step 2: Write up what you’d build on Ben.geek.nz (click here to link to Ben.geek.nz)

Have a look around at the items available. Arduino boards, Lilypads (for the laydees!), gearboxes and proximity sensors, LCD screens, carbon monoxide sensors, wifi transceivers … heck we’ll even let you branch out a bit and consider using Xbees.

Step 4: Win!

Ben and I (Tim - MindKits Chief Ninja) will choose the most creative and/or amusing entry. That person will win:

• 1 SparkFun Arduino Starter Kit
• 1 dual motor gearbox
• 1 motor controller
• 2 tiny servos from Bens collection of RC bits - everything else is brand new.

I do have to laugh when I think about this last weekends (8/9th August) tinkering at the Mindkits Beginners Arduino Workshop in Wellington. It wasn't just that we had a bunch of guys from Weta (makers of Lord of the Rings for those who've lived in a cave all their lives) who ate up information and digested it effortlessly like Jo Seagar after the 40 hour famine or the moment that I looked up to see Matt Mueller throwing his SLR camera up in the air connected to a triple-axis accelerometer so it would take a picture at the top of the arc.


Matt Mueller from Weta with his SLR/Tri-Ax photography contraption. It worked too...!


Although all of those moments did make me laugh it was the echo of the promise our supervising Massey representative (Tanya) made to the head of department that "There's nothing that can go wrong loaning the room to Tim at MindKits for the weekend. We're just tinkering, no soldering irons, no fire and no problems. What could go wrong with that?". Shortly after I was reminded of that promise I turn around to see Matt Sloan with a lighter under a thermistor connected to an Arduino and in turn connected to a servo. There's a puff of smoke that wafts without hurry across his vision and he exclaims - "Wow, shit, smoke" and rips the wires from the board in one spasmodic motion.

Shortly after he plucked his courage up again as if investigating just how much magic smoke really is in all this electronics kit and does it again -  "that really makes it move" he exclaimed as the servo sounded it's chattering death throws and Matt steadfastly held the flame to the thermistor like a branding iron to an animal.


"If you haven't broken it, you haven't tinkered hard enough" - no idea who said it but I repeat it often as a MindKits mantra. Matt certainly put this into play.


It was a successful day with a strong focus on getting hands on and learning by experimentation and from what I've heard from the team so far everyone had fun and learned a lot. They all went home with a great set of kit to get them started and lots more fun to be had. Now that's the way to learn.


Frank and Kara playing with a home made pressure sensor and a servo


Small Plug for August Auckland Workshop if you're interested:
http://www.mindkits.co.nz/arduino_course-AK.html




All work and no play..pffft...it was the weekend so time for a pint at the Southern Cross



Tim
MindKits Chief Ninja

The team at MindKits are so pleased to have teamed up with Auckland University of Technology to be able to offer budding tinkerers the chance to build upon their Arduino knowledge at a day long workshop.

Tim from MindKits will be popping in to say hello and have an opportunity to meet with some of you so it'll be a good opportunity to ask any questions you have, request new products or just share your ideas with us. We love tinkering and are tinkerers ourselves so we cant wait to see you there.

Email AUT at the address in the poster below but CC Tim at MindKits.com to let us know you're interested and we'll be sure to come say hello.

Thanks for all your support and I wish you all the best with you Arduino learning and tinkering.

Regards,
Tim
MindKits Chief Ninja

 

 

 

 

The team over at SparkFun showed a link to this great project which embedded a an Arduino Pro Mini into a rocket and I felt it was worth exploring further. Check out the Arduino Pro's and Pro minis in the MindKits store as they are awesome for embedding in projects that you plan to leave in place for a while, power by battery or need to tuck away in small spaces. They're also cheaper than the Arduino USB boards and you just program them with a USB to serial adaptor which we can supply you too.

 

From the article:
"Yesterday I headed over to a local trotting track with Thomas to meet up with Marc Alexander, Rohan Fernando, and their kids to do a couple of launches with Marco Ostini's class-C rocket fitted with an Arduino telemetry payload. Rohan brought a video camera and Marc brought a still camera, and it was a beautiful day so we got some really good coverage. This was a triple-purpose trip: Arduino development for Practical Arduino, rocketry education for Lunar Numbat, and an excuse to have some fun."

Check out the article for more

The guys at SparkFun.com recently ran an Autonomous Vehicle Competition (AVC) and below are the video highlights including one bot that made a bee line for the drink. A huge thank you goes out to SparkFun for putting in the effort to bring us such an entertaining event. I know I was laughing while watching the video feed when I should have been working and this videoshows some of the fun that was had on the day.

 

 

MindKits Arduino Courses

We love robotics and we love the fun things that Arduino has enabled us to do so we want to share the love and run some courses in Auckland and Wellington. Thing is, we need to see who might be interested and what you might be after before we go too far right?

So, to all those out there that want to learn about Arduino and what you can build or have existing skills and want to build on them and meet like minded bot-builders send an email to fun at MindKits.com and let us know you could be interested.

Let us know what skill level you'd like to learn at and if there is something specific you'd like to build and once we have enough people we'll go for it.

Thanks for supporting MindKits and we look forward to meeting some of you and seeing what you can build.

Tim
MindKits Chief Ninja

Persistence of Vision Kit- MiniPOV3 - See how an Adafruit MiniPOV3 Kit comes in handy for Valentines Day. These make a great beginners kits with utterly loads of extra learning and expansion to keep you learning and entertained for hours.

If you’re wondering what Persistence of Vision is you’re not alone. Some say it’s a bug in our biology but it comes about because of the chemical electric nature of our eyes. When we see light, it kicks off a chemical reaction and we get a zap to the brain that tells us what we’re seeing. The thing is that this chemical reaction takes some time and as a result the light that we saw could be long gone but the chemical reaction still carries on telling us its there. We’ve all seen this before when waving a sparkler in the air at Guy Fawkes when moving it quickly through the air – it leaves what looks to us to be a trail. The end result? With a line of 8 Led’s we can write words in thin air. Oh the opportunities for mischief are endless!
Very cool – hacking the wetware!

We're back after the break and thought I would share this next link to Ted.Com and a talk on Persistence of Vision.
Inventor Nick Sears demos the first generation of the Orb, a rotating persistence-of-vision display that creates glowing 3D images. A short, cool tale of invention.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/nick_sears_demos_the_orb.html

If you're looking to play around with persistence of vision yourself you can do so with the MiniPov3 Kit available from MindKits. You can program it to say anything you wish.
http://www.mindkits.com/_product_36247/Mini_POV-_Persistence_of_Vision_Kit

If only I had one of these at home to play with. I can see a Saturday night now...friends, whiskey, guitar hero and then turns on the possessed welder.
YouTube- Bored Programmers