HacDC

There will be a few classes on programming Atmel AVR microcontrollers. using the C programming language. No prior knowledge of AVRs, C, or even programming is required; I'll be trying to introduce what you need to know as it's needed.

At least three classes are planned, starting this Sunday (3/14). They'll be once a week, 6-7:30pm.

If you're interested, please join the mailing list, where more information will be posted.

On March 3 at the Pentagon, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, Chief Information Officer of the Army, announced the launching of Apps for the Army, a broad web and mobile application challenge (explicitly not "contest") for active duty Army, National Guard members, and civilians working for the Army.

This follows other popular development challenges: the D.C. government's Apps for Democracy project and Sunlight Labs' Apps for America contest. These exercises have established that even moderate financial rewards will encourage both professional and casual developers to experiment creatively and share their code. The total prize money is $30,000 and will be split between entries in categories under the labels of Data-Driven; Warfighting; Mission-Specific; Local-Aware Mobile; Training & Education; Morale, Welfare, and Education; and Personnel & Career Management. One hundred teams and individuals can enter the challenge, and the competition will run until May 15.

The motivation began from an awareness of the power of the maker/hacker mentality; in fact, Lt. Gen. Sorenson began by stating strongly that the project attempts to change "how the Army functions." Sorenson cited the example of two overseas deployed soldiers who had pressed for access to a Linux server to write web applications to share and collaborate on mission data. Unfortunately, however, due to a variety of barriers, it took six months for them to gain access to a server. Yet, once access was granted (near the end of their tour of duty), the soldiers were able to get an app online in two weeks, and before long the platform was expanded to serve around 14 or 15 different applications.

The Army has discovered that a young generation of "digital native" soldiers, as Sorenson put it, often have some software development experience, and that new tools, inexpensive open source software in particular, are enabling even "non-professional" programmers to write useful applications, often in rapid time. Hence, the Defense Information Systems Agency has adapted the military's cloud computing environment, the Rapid Access Computing Environment (RACE), to serve the challenge as a development platform and as a demonstration environment. Of particular interest, Linux server environments and development toolkits for Android, IPhone, and Blackberry will be provided.

The source code for the applications will be hosted at forge.mil, the military's code repository. Lt. Gen. Sorenson stated the Army is interested in exploring how they can collaborate with open source communities and local technology organizations in this and future endeavors. Also, DARPA has expressed interest in the Army's project, according to Lt. Gen. Sorenson, and in general collaboration with hackerspaces.

HacDC, a D.C. technology collaborative, would welcome all Army soldiers and personnel in the National Capital Region to stop by to talk about mobile application and web development. The challenge explicitly encourages the creative use of new languages and mobile environments that many HacDC members have significant experience with.

Registration is required and closes March 18th

We're getting together to build MadLab's Junior Theremin kit.

It's a version of the classic early electronic musical instrument - the first synthesiser in the world. A wire aerial responds to the movement of your hand towards and away from it and changes the pitch of the note it plays, without actually being touched. It can play individual notes as well as a continuously variable tone.

All are welcome! No experience is necessary. We're happy to teach you to solder and/or generally fiddle with it.

Audio Sample

GOODFET10 by Travis Goodspeed

Howdy,

This event (register here) is for the HacDC Hardware Hacking Course I'm going to run over the course of several weekends. This event, scheduled for March 13, 2010 at 3:00PM is Course 0, we're going to essentially do the "kit build" during this class time. Our hardware is going to be the GoodFET 21, open-source JTAG adapter. From the website:

The GoodFET is an open-source JTAG adapter, loosely based upon the TI MSP430 FET UIF and EZ430U boards, as described in their documentation. See Improving the MSP430 FET on Travis Goodspeed's blog for further information. In addition to JTAG, the GoodFET has been inspired by HackADay's Bus Pirate to become a universal serial bus interface.

Travis is a great friend of HacDC and perhaps one of the most neighborly fellows you will ever meet. His device is quickly becoming the platform for hardware hackers world-wide. Due to his constant upgrades of the hardware and a steady following of developers the device has built support for SPI, AVR, MSP430, Chipcon Radios and even some more advanced techniques such as Voltage-Glitching. All will be explained and the foundations laid during Course 0, we will build our very own device and in future course iterations, hopefully progress to furthering our hardware hacking knowledge as a whole, in more of a "study group" then lecture series.

BE PREPARED:
This is ALL surface-mount soldering at the 0603 (6 mm x 3 mm) size. Hot-air, solder paste and flux will be used, this is a bit more advanced then the earlier through-hole kit builds so bring your A-Game. I will do my best to prepare all students for this exercise starting from how to use the hot-air and paste correctly as to not bludgeon, burn or maul yourself or any fellow students.

If you have any questions contact me directly at: q the q labs.com or ping me on the HacDC Blabber List

Cheers,
-Q

Photo by Robert Scoble

We're getting together for Lawrence Lessig's "wireside chat" this Thursday. He'll be giving a talk on fair use, politics, and online video. Afterwards, there will be a question and answer session that we can take part in. This is part of an international event hosted by the Open Video Alliance. HacDC will be one of over 40 sites spread around the world; others will be participating from the Guatemala, United Kingdom, Brazil, and of course the United States.

Coincidentally, the NARG (Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence Group ) will be meeting immediately afterwards. If you're just interested in comradery, support, and information sharing on those topics you should show up at 7pm. Check out the wiki page for more information and links.

Both events are free and open to the public. No registration is necessary.

Registration is required

We're getting together to assemble a small LED heart kit, suitable for getting started with soldering, electronics, and microcontrollers. All are welcome! No experience is necessary. We're happy to teach you to solder and/or generally fiddle with it.

Full disclosure: the person organizing this kit build is also the person who developed the kits and is selling them at a profit. Hir time and energy at the kit build is volunteered at no cost, though.

HacDC's next Lightning Talks evening will feature an eclectic lineup of a dozen five-minute talks on anything and everything that's pressing on the minds of today's thinkers and tinkerers, from rapid boat construction to innovative DIY manufacturing (examples of past talks). The talks run about 90 minutes total.

There are currently several speaker slots still available, and we need your brilliant ideas, whatever they may be. For more information, contact obscurite - at - hacdc - dot - org ASAP to secure a spot. For more: http://wiki.hacdc.org/index.php?title=LightningTalks

Due to the predicted snowfall and DC's declared state of emergency, tonight's (Friday, 2/5) event is canceled. Stay warm, safe, and happy neighbors.

[This event has been canceled due to the predicted snowfall and DC's declared state of emergency. Stay warm, safe, and happy fellow hackers and hacker accessories.]

Since there will be a lot of great people who will be in town for ShmooCon this weekend, we're providing a place to chat, hangout, munch, and whatnot. Daniel's offered to help put on a light show and some music of some sort.

I expect the HacDC proper will be open, but we also have run of the dining room (in the basement). Current plans are to rock out from 8pm-2am Friday night (2/5). If you want to see what sort of awesomeness is afoot, or contribute some awesome of your own, check out the wiki page.

See you there!

Event Banner: 

Glance from Andy Holtin on Vimeo.

Andy Holtin : How to Fit as Many Steps as Possible Into Ideas that Started Out Really Simple

Working on his new project "Glance" allowed Andy to explore and employ a surprisingly wide variety of processes, both artistically and technically. He'll be sharing his obstacles and the solutions they generated.

Atau Tanaka : Current research

Atau will talk about his current research in Mobile and Locative Media Art, Interactive Performance, and Creative practice on Public Displays.

More at DorkbotDC webpage and after the jump.