3D printing and other fabrication technologies are one exciting aspect of personal fabrication, but building programmatic intelligence into personal objects opens up a world of opportunity. Printing an object from a CAD file is exciting, but building a custom object that has network connectivity and interactive components creates a whole new world of product potential.
1. An Overview – The senior editor of Make: magazine and a frequent contributor have outlined the basics of hardware hacking, comparing it to a 7 layer burrito and then providing a framework and examples for each “layer”.
2. Where We Are – This presentation highlights the current state of the art. Great examples of what hardware hackers are making now.
3. Coming Soon – Shows off what some next generation hardware hacks could do to hybridize the physical and virtual world. A great deal of the presentation is given over to Bruce Sterling’s “Spime” meme, where object will become “blogjects” with a ability to locate themselves in space and provide information about their history.
4. Get Started 1 – RepRap is an open source 3D fabrication machine that can be built for under $2000, assuming you have some engineering chops. The goal of the RepRap projects is to produce a machine that can make objects of use to humans while also replicating itself. This presentation is half practical implementation and half manifesto for a new kind of manufacturing.
5. Get Started 2 – Everything you ever wanted to know about the Arduino development platform, but were afraid to ask. This set of slides provides a quick overview of what the Arduino platform is, what applications it is best suited for, and a plethora of links and resources to help you get started.
