Our very own Colten Jackson’s awesomeness has now been exposed to the techie world at large!

Colten’s side project of re-using old electronics and re-purposing them as musical instruments is a featured article on WIRED Design.  Read all about it here.

Way to go, Colten!

Makerspace Urbana is super excited to be invited back to the Art @ the Market booth this summer!  While we encountered a semi-tropical storm last weekend:

we will not be stopped!

Visit us this Saturday, July 19, 8am-noon at the Urbana Farmer’s Market; we’ll be right up front.

The t-shirts beckon:

Did I mention this is a free workshop?

Makerspace Urbana celebrates Hardware Freedom Day 2014!

Join us as we get together and do some open hardware hacking. Bring your Arduino board and we’ll show you how to make and program your very own walking robot creation. No programming experience required (but do bring your laptop).

Or come and work on your own project and socialize with fellow makers.

When: 3/14/14 – 11am

Where: The workshop will take place at Makerspace Urbana located in the basement room #16 of the Independent Media Center in Urbana. The space can be a little tricky to find but if you enter through the back Bike Project door (near the radio tower) and take your first left, we’re at the end of the hall. If you have any trouble finding us, just call (816) 287-1717.

If possible please let us know you’re coming through one of the following methods:

• Facebook Event Page
• Online sign up form

*We will have some computers for people to use for programming but if you can bring your own laptop and pre-install the Arduino software, that would be great. Or feel free to show up early with your computer and we will help you install it.

Resources:

• Workshop Presentation
• Touchsense Library
• TickleBot Code

Is it a bird?  Is it a plane?  It’s neither.  But everyone that attended our Glowing Chuck Taylors workshop (as part of our Summer Make-a-tion series) certainly gained the power of being awesome!

Thanks to AdaFruit‘s excellent tutorial, we too were “light” on our feet by cutting out an EL Panel:

adding an inverter for some much needed power (supplied by a simple coin cell battery):

and sewing it to our shoe of choice (in this case, a Chuck Taylor All-Stars):

Check out the finished product.  I dare you to say that doesn’t look cool.

In fact, this workshop was so easy, we had time to pull apart some old wind-up toys and make these little guys:

What does it do, you ask?  Stop by the space and find out 🙂

Check out more pictures on our Facebook page here.

We continued our Summer Make-a-tion series in true Discotech style by setting up several workshop stations which allowed everyone to move around as they liked.

We had our classic soldering workshop which teaches the basics behind using a soldering iron.  The project revolved around putting together a small robot pin by attaching its eyes (LEDs) and a holder for a small coin-cell battery to the body.

I’m not going to say people learned a lot, but I think people learned a lot.

And the finished product:

Pretty snazzy, right?

And if you think this isn’t the most fun you can have in 2 hours on a Saturday, we also taught people how speakers work by making our own mini versions using origami paper, speaker wire, and a magnet.

We discovered this jem of a workshop at this year’s Allied Media Conference in Detroit.  Props to Mt Elliott Makerspace for being awesome.

Check out the rest of the photos on our Facebook page.

If you don’t know what Tandem is, here’s a short description from the website:

Tandem: Champaign-Urbana’s Bicycle-Themed Poster Event allows the bicycle and design communities to combine their efforts in a way that will be mutually beneficial for both groups, and for the C-U community as a whole.  […] We’re inviting local and regional artists and designers to submit original pieces to be sold at reasonable prices ($20-40 suggested.)

The artists will keep 50% of the proceeds, and the remaining 50% […] will be donated to The Bike Project of Urbana-Champaign to help establish a cooperative bicycle shop in North Champaign.

Of course Makerspace Urbana had to enter.  A quick video of our submission is below: a mix of cross stitching, electronics, and touch sensitive thread. And it’s for sale.  Half the proceeds go toward the Bike Project and the other half will be donated to Makerspace Urbana! SO BUY OUR ART! It’s for two great causes.

Come check it out in action at Indi Go Gallery (9 E University Ave in Downtown Champaign).

Grand Opening is Friday, August 16th at 6pm.  The show will run until August 25th.

MU Tandem art entry.