HacDC

HacDC is developing an XMPP stack to coordinate networked messages to and from microcontrollers over WiFi, serial, and radio. It will ideally enable a near plug-and-play way for people to network their microcontroller projects and display them at HacDC. XMPP is "an open, XML-based protocol originally aimed at near-real-time, extensible instant messaging (IM) and presence information (e.g., buddy lists), but now expanded into the broader realm of message-oriented middleware." It serves as the backbone of Google Talk, for example. One of the first projects to be linked to our framework will be an ambient lighting system for the space.

On Thursday, August 12 at 7:00PM, as a part of the NARG meeting, Arc Riley will present on the some of the XMPP aspects of this endeavor and will discuss PubSub, Data Forms, and Ad-Hoc Commands. Any individuals interested in these interesting aspects of XMPP beyond chat are encouraged to attend, and, like all HacDC activities, the event is free and open to the public.

At the end of the presentation, we may do some code sprinting and ensure that those attending have access to the distributed code repository.

HacDC contains numerous enthusiasts active in both software and hardware projects, and although these categories divide, they can be difficult to define. On Monday and Wednesday nights at the space, microcontroller and electronics enthusiasts meet, and on Thursday nights hobbyists of artificial intelligence and natural language processing gather.

HacDC's NARG group is beginning a project that offers one way to bridge the gap between these rough groupings. Blinky lights and LEDs have always been a foundation of microcontroller work, and as actuators they can be surprisingly dense. Interested in the "smart home" concept, HacDC's NARG group would like to establish an ambient lighting platform with an API that could link into various algorithms -- smart, simple, or silly -- to affect the color and intensity of lighting in the space. Potential controlling factors include weather, natural language commands, and inferences about the "mood" of the space from sensor data. This could start as one light, like an ambient orb, and potentially expand to a complex network of lights and LED "objects." This effort could also merge with a larger, long-term project HacDC has to create a master network to communicate with microcontroller projects in the space via XMPP, radio, and WiFi.

On Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 7PM, NARG will discuss and outline the hardware and software needs for this platform. This meeting, like all HacDC meetings, is free and open to the public. And please feel free to keep visiting NARG on Thursdays and Microcontroller Mondays to help this project develop.

Last weekend, a collection of popular songs remixed into swing versions went viral on the Internet. They all used the "swinger.py" script in the trunk of Echo Nest Remix, a new python web services API for creating song remixes. The script sends sound files to Echo Nest -- a Somerville, Massachusetts company -- and then, using the data about the beats and song sections collected, manipulates the track into a swing version by "time-stretching the first half of each beat while time-shrinking the second half." The result is rather uncanny, with the songs immediately more upbeat and swingy, without significant artifacts.

Although similar effects, at least for swing, can be administered in Ableton Live and other advanced Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs), there is something magical about creating interesting remixes straight from the command line (especially with open source software!). Additionally, having the power of Python, along with the Echo Nest data, to manipulate song segments potentially enables an entirely new approach to remixing that is more algorithmic and comfortable for coders.

On Friday, June 25 at HacDC at 7:00PM, Todd Fine will introduce the Echo Nest Remix framework, do some live mixes (bring your mp3's and wav's), and the group will brainstorm about interesting algorithmic approaches to remixing (including music video manipulation). He will also talk about how SoX (Sound eXchange) effects can be added to Echo Nest Remix scripts to create an extreme command line studio. When Todd heard about the swinger.py example, he immediately created a version of Rick James's "Super Freak" which has received over 2,500 listens on Soundcloud in the last several days. He is still learning the potential of the Echo Nest framework, and would highly encourage others in the D.C. area with experience to stop by and describe the work they have done.

Super Freak by Rick James (Swing version with Echo Nest Remix) by tfine

When: 7:00PM-8:30, Friday, June 25
Where: HacDC Space, 1525 Newton St NW, Washington DC 20010
Cost: Free and Open to the Public!

HacDC will hold the first Gentle Hackers' Literary Salon at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, 16 March 2010. We will be discussing Cory Doctorow's 2009 Creative Commons-licensed science fiction novel Makers. You can read the dead-tree version or download it for free. The salon will be a casual, minimally-structured discussion of the book. Light refreshments will be available. Steampunk attire optional. :)

This event is free and open to the public.

Photo by Alex Barlow

Join us for Tea Night at 7:30pm on Tuesday, 19 January 2010 in our space. There will be demonstrations of gongfu tea ceremony and Japanese tea ceremony, and if you'd like you're welcome to bring an interesting or favorite tea of your own to share. This event is free and open to the public, no RSVP needed.

Last week, the phone application start-up Twilio obtained a nice little bundle of press for its announcement that it had obtained $3.7M in funding from Union Square Ventures.

To a couple of us at HacDC who have been playing with their product for a few months, this was not so surprising. They have built a clean and intuitive API for rapidly building phone applications using web services.

On Thursday, January 14, at 7:00PM at HacDC, Todd Fine and Darius Roberts will introduce the Twilio API (HTTP requests to dynamic XML), demonstrate two applications built using Python and Ruby, and finally lead a brainstorming session about other creative and artistic possibilities using the Twilio platform.

The first application is a distributed microphone for group-created ambient soundscapes (tentatively titled "Spacerad"). Twilio's platform can record audio over the phone and offer a callback URL for the saved WAV file. Using XMPP (the instant messaging technology used, for example, in Google Talk), this URL is immediately sent to a Python script running on a local machine which can interact with a number of audio environments Todd likes to use (Pure Data, Supercollider, and, hopefully, Ableton Live). Hence, even a large audience, with the ubiquitous cellphone, can provide the samples for an open-ended and cooperative musical experience.

The second application is based on a classic phone application of the tape answering machine era. The creative band They Might Be Giants once had a Brooklyn local phone number, popular in the eighties and nineties, that would play some of their songs off an answering machine. While this service was "always busy, often broken," with Twilio's API, we can create a service serving TMBG songs that far surpasses the original Dial-a-Song in functionality, hopefully without losing its charm. Darius will present his Ruby-based version of Dial-a-Song.

This event is free and open to the public, and we encourage anyone interested in Twilio, Python/Ruby, Soundscapes, or even They Might Be Giants to attend!

When: 7:00PM-8:30, Thursday, January 14
Where: HacDC Space, 1525 Newton St NW, Washington DC 20010
Cost: Free and Open to the Public!

We packed the house with smiling hackers at the first monthly HacDC Lightning Talks. The talks were awesome and so were the cookies. Thanks to everyone who participated and made this event such a success! Next month will be even better organized with more space, better arrangement, more advance scheduling, video recording, and publishing of slides and speaker content.


If you're interested in giving a talk at the next Lightning Talks (November) please send me a proposal with a title and description. Slides are optional - and you get to talk about whatever interests YOU. Date and time TBA. See http://wiki.hacdc.org/index.php?title=LightningTalks for details.

Join HacDC for a workshop series covering the fundamentals of digital logic design, from boolean gates to state machines, Verilog coding and eventually work with Field Programable Gate Arrays! This workshop will be taught through the Fall, covering a variety of topics and exercises each week. Be sure to check the course wiki page [1] for upcoming topics, past workshops and workshop requirements. This workshop is free and open to the public but may require additional resources as listed on the wiki page.

[1] http://wiki.hacdc.org/index.php?title=FPGA_Workshop

You may register for this workshop by sending an email to <teach me FPGA @ gmail> with the following information:

- Digital Logic Background (truth tables, logic gates, Flip Flops etc)

- C/C++ Background

- Time you're willing to commit (outside of the class) every week

We had a fantastic turnout at Tuesday's LED Cuff workshop, the first in what may be a series of soft circuit workshops. We're thrilled that so many people—many of whom were new to HacDC—came.

For those of you interested in conductive thread, Syuzi Pakhchyan (author of the tutorial we followed) wrote up a nice conductive thread overview; in this workshop we used the conductive thread from Lamé Lifesaver profiled there. I bought the conductive velcro from LessEMF, where you can also buy all sorts of conductive fabrics.

There are a few things I would do differently with this workshop in the future, so I started a Lessons Learned wiki page. Please feel free to contribute your thoughts to it. Much thanks to Ash (see photo) for the impromptu help explaining how the circuit works as well as assisting workshop participants.

What soft circuit would you like to build next? Personally I'd love to transform a WMATA SmarTrip card into a wearable cuff—I've already extracted the RFID chip from one—so figuring out how a suitable antenna could be constructed is the next step.

When: Tuesday, September 22, 2009 from 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM (ET)
Where: HacDC, 1525 Newton St. NW, Washington, DC 20010

Join HacDC for a workshop in which we'll construct a simple soft circuit -- in this case, a unisex fabric cuff with an LED that lights up when you're wearing it. We're charging a $10 fee to cover the cost of the materials, including the fabric, conductive thread and velcro, LEDs, batteries, and resistor. To participate in this workshop, you do not need to have any prior experience with electronics; this workshop is suitable for all ages (small children should be accompanied by an adult, though). We'll be using a tutorial by SparkLab's Syuzi Pakhchyan, a media designer and tinkerer who weaves electronic circuitry with craft.

Register at http://hacdc-ledcuff.eventbrite.com/ or below: