MattRichardson
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Make presents: Raspberry Pi Make:Off competition at Expand!
As if there wasn't already enough fun to be had at Expand, with our incredible lineup of speakers and our Insert Coin competition, we've got another treat for attendees. We're gonna have a Raspberry Pi Make:Off hosted by Matt Richardson of Make Magazine! Here's the deal: two teams of four contestants will spend the weekend building a project with tools and components from our electronics "pantry." The competition will kick off at 10 am on November 9th and a winner will be announced at 3:30 pm on November 10th. If you think you have what it takes to take home the proverbial gold (note: we will not be handing out any actual gold), you can enter your name here on Facebook. If you're chosen to be one of the eight participants, you'll receive a Getting Started with Raspberry Pi kit and a free ticket to Expand. What's more, the four members of the winning team will be featured in Make in an article by Mr. Richardson himself, chronicling the build. The submission period ends at 5 pm ET on Monday November 4th, so get your applications in now!
Live from the Engadget CES Stage: the Engadget Podcast with Matt Richardson (update: video embedded)
Let's get this party started right. Today may have the first official day of CES 2013, but it feels like we've been working at this forever. There's a ton of news to discuss already, and we've got an hour to do it in. Join Tim, Brian and some special guests like Make Magazine's Matt Richardson to catch up on all the news you've missed and to play around with some of the show's cooler toys. January 8, 2013 11:00 PM EST Check out our full CES 2013 stage schedule here! Update: video embedded
DIY 'Descriptive Camera' captures images, prints out prose
Have you ever wished that cameras could capture not only an image of the scene in front of them, but also describe it to you in plain English? Ok, what if it bypassed the whole "photo" thing and just spit out a slip of paper with words on it? Well, if you're still interested, the impressive Matt Richardson (of Make fame) has a project right up your alley. The Descriptive Camera is a relatively simple device really. A Logitech webcam is connected to a BeagleBone dev board, which is in turn plugged into a thermal printer from Adafruit. Obviously, the tech required to analyze a scene recognize the objects then convert that pile of pixels into a slice prose is outside of the budget and capability of your average DIY project. So Matt turned instead to Mechanical Turk, Amazon's marketplace for HITs or Human Intelligence Tasks. Images captured by the cam are uploaded via the BeagleBone, where an actual person describes what he or she sees and the resulting literature is printed out. For more details and images check out the source.
Matt Richardson turns Arduino, Twitter and lasers into art (video)
Matt Richardson's genius has never really been in question. The Make Live host and compulsive hacker has built an impressive library of creations, ranging from a Google Reader pedal to an email-triggered Christmas tree. The man's works are definitely art, in their own way, but his new project, Fade Away 1, is the first that we could easily see taking up residence in a SoHo gallery. At the heart of the installation is an Arduino (of course) that pulls in posts from Twitter with the phrase "fade away" in them. The same AVR chip then "prints" those tweets on phosphorescent paper with a UV laser mounted on a servo -- as the energy dissipates, the messages slowly disappear. And, if you're wondering what the "1" at the end of the title means, Richardson plans to continuously improve the project. For some more details about the next iteration and to see the current one in action, check out the videos after the break.
The Engadget Show is live, here at 6:00PM ET! (update: we're done!)
Are you ready for this? If not, too bad, because we're back, and boy have we got jam-packed show this month. The next episode of The Engadget Show starts shooting tonight at 6PM ET, and you can join us at this very URL -- so keep your browser locked to this spot. This time out, we'll be testing out the Grace One electric bike on the streets of New York City, paying a visit to the Frog laboratories to check out some awesome design projects, popping by Maker Faire in New York and discussing DIY projects with Make:Live co-hosts Matt Richardson and Becky Stern, getting serenaded by viral rock star Jonathan Coulton and discussing the origins of everyone's favorite dancing robot, Keepon. Update: That's a wrap! We'll have it edited and up on the site as soon as we can!
Matt Richardson MacGuyvers a Google Reader pedal out of just these items, zero duct tape (video)
The definition of a good friend is someone who, if you say to them "Gee, I'd really like a foot pedal to advance my overflowing Google Reader feeds," turns around and builds you one. From scratch. In this way we know that modder Matt Richardson is a good friend, as that's what he crafted out of a little electric pedal and a disused keyboard (of the Dell variety). It's not the most complex hack we've ever seen, but it is a good one, and he's happy to show you exactly how to do it in the video below. Oh, and the friend's response? You can see it for yourself at the end of the embed.
