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Analog Electronics Digital Electronics Learning OSHW

Contextual Electronics Announcement

“But Chris, what happened to your milling videos?”

“Well, the same thing that happens to lots of projects, they got re-prioritized!”

I really enjoy working with my new mill! It’s awesome and I’ve learned a ton. I didn’t post it to this site as a separate blog post on this site, but I did post two new videos to my YouTube channel. Both were failures…but that’s ok! A large part of the decision to get the mill was the learning process. The first was figuring out problems in using a half inch cutter and the second in doing profile cuts. But since then, I took a break.

I’ve been trying to take a new approach in 2013 to projects by focusing on 1 (2 at most) things at a time. As such, when a new project pops up that is more important, others fall behind (believe me, the state of maintenance of my house would agree).

So what?

Well, this is all because of my newest project, which has been brewing for a while. I’m calling it Contextual Electronics. This will be a 10 week course all about how to build hardware. Not only that, it will also have instructional videos about the particular part of the circuit we’re designing or troubleshooting, as we work on it. The information will be learned on an “as needed” basis, just like designers (like me!) need to do in the real world. People who participate in the class will also be able to build hardware all at the same time, so we can learn at the same time; this will be especially important for a skill like troubleshooting, which can be a very nebulous topic to people just getting into hardware.

Here is the introductory video:

Also of note is something which hasn’t been announced previously on this blog, though I’ve talked about it on The Amp Hour. I’ve been selected as one of the first 8000 to be able to buy Google Glass. While this does mean I’ll still need to purchase the glasses, I’m excited for them. Even moreso now that I can use them to livecast troubleshooting sessions and other events for Contextual Electronics using Google+ hangouts.

So that’s all for now. If you’re interested in this idea and want to be alerted to updates as we move towards the start date of the course, fill out the form below and be sure to confirm through email. I’m excited! Hope you are too!

Categories
Blogging Conferences OSHW

I’m at the Open Hardware Summit!

I’m spending the day at the New York Hall of Science. It’s amazing. The venue is perfect. The swag from the OHS people and sponsors is so cool. I’m completely smitten with everyone here. I’m kind of reverting to a childhood state I’m so excited.

Why?

Well, because this feels like the beginning of something much much bigger than me and that I get to watch it unfold in front of me. And participate, that’s key as well. And since I looked for a while for people online and failed and new get to sit in a room with 200 people that do hardware, it gets me excited. These are my people. My nerdy, awesome people.

Don’t get me wrong, open source hardware has been going on for a while. This is not new. But this is getting bigger and from chaos we are seeing order emerge. The open source hardware standard will be worked on and released at the end of this conference. You can view the 0.3 version on the Open Hardware Summit page.

I’m writing this mid-way through the day. We’ve already heard from Limor Fried from Adafruit and Gerald Coley from BeagleBoard. I can’t wait to hear more and hope to post them all here soon.