At a recent meeting of theMicrocontroller Study Group, the group's
*de facto *leader Bre Pettis greets each person as they arrive. Small packets of electronic components are exchanged from hand to hand like offerings during the greetings: bright white Light Emitting Diodes
(LEDs), three axis accelerometers to detect movement in any direction,
Hall effect sensors to detect magnetism, all in crinkly static-resistant plastic envelopes. These trinkets are the tools with which the do-it-yourself electronics community hopes to change the way we relate to our possessions.
The Microcontroller Study Group, a branch of the NYC Resistor hacker collective, meets on the second and fourth Wednesday evenings of each month, in a storefront beneath the
Gowanus Canal subway viaduct in Brooklyn. The group is dedicated to teaching ordinary people how to use microcontrollers; tiny programmable computers that can be built into everyday objects - from eyeglasses to tabletops to kitchen sinks -- allowing them to interact intelligently with their environment.
Pettis, a tall and angular man with fashionably broken glasses, spends his days as the video producer for Make magazine, a stiff-paged quarterly dedicated to the art of building things. A recent issue of
Make contained instructions on: hacking your Roomba; extracting the laser from a DVD player; and choosing the best tools for your electronics workbench. Each Friday Pettis releases onto the internet a Weekend Project: a five minute video full of bad jokes and cogent explanations describing how to put together a gadget, usually microcontroller-based, that does something cool. One recent Weekend
Project described how to build a brain machine: essentially, ultrabright LEDs embedded in a pair of goggles. By flashing the LEDs at various frequencies, the machine can help the wearer's brain to synchronize itself into various brainwave patterns indicative of sleep, calm, tranquility, or alertness.
At seven PM, Pettis begins the meeting by asking each person to introduce himself. Generally few herselfs are present; the typical attendee is a young man, late 20s or early 30s, who by day works at a non-technical job, and by night solders together electronic components into cool things.
Tonight many of these "makers" have brought examples of their work; some are stuck and want help, others want ideas or praise. One older man holds up a
1960's era electronic tube clock he has restored – it's running a little fast and he can't figure out why. A few people huddle with him to see what they can do to help.
Another young man, just arrived from his job in the financial services industry, opens his bag and pulls out a prototype robot on tank treads. The entire robot is made from scratch at the component level, he informs the group, not from a store bought kit. The robot moves forward few inches on the floor. It turns right, moves forward a few more inches, and turns left. It continues this simple pattern as various members ask the inventor about his plans. He's going to connect infrared sensors, he says. Possibly add a radio controller.
The robot heads under a chair.
This group represents a new generation of inventors and tinkerers – a generation that can easily work with friends in Williamsburg or
Wilhelmshaven, and buy electronic parts as easily from China as from
Chinatown. They grew up with themed LEGO kits that had one "right" way to put them together, and they're tired of a mainstream culture that purports to value creativity yet stifles it when it appears. Designing and building electronic gadgets for their own use is their way of exploring the outside of the box.
Yet one stereotype of a hacker group remains: the 40 or so men at this meeting are counterbalanced by a lone young woman. The room stirs appreciatively when she describes her day job:
working in the research and development department of Victoria's
Secret. She has come to the group to explore the possibilities for computer controlled clothing.
On cue, Pettis and others pull brown discs out of their bags and backpacks. These devices, about the size of an olive jar lid, are
"LilyPads" -- small, flat microcontrollers designed to be embedded in clothing. Pettis tells a quick story of coming out of the subway and walking two blocks in the wrong direction. Now he's going to use his
LilyPad to make a wearable compass so he'll never be lost again. A small magnetic sensor sewn into his jacket cuff will detect north;
when he extends his arm and sweeps it across the horizon, an LED will light up when he's pointing in the right direction.
All at once ideas for computerized clothing start to flow from the group. One man wants to use the LilyPad to make a cold weather jacket incorporating wire heating elements. Another wants to make a disco shirt that lights up like the dance floor in Saturday Night Fever, using multicolor LEDs. (LEDs are to hobby electronics what peppercorns are to cuisine: they can be sprinkled anywhere.) Other ideas include
a defibrillator shirt that will detect and zap heart abnormalities, and computer controlled inflatable pants. No reason is given for inflatable pants, but there's general agreement that inflatable pants
would be cool.
About an hour into the meeting, the group breaks apart to work on their brain machines. Most attendees have brought their own soldering irons, and for nearly 45 minutes the room is buzzing with the sounds of happy young technophiles building things, exchanging ideas, and simply geeking out with flashing goggles over their eyes.
Just before the meeting's nine o'clock end, the crowd gathers back together to watch Nick Bilton, a Design Integration Editor by day and hacker by night, mix some chemicals into a silicon mold he had made earlier in the meeting. In a few seconds the chemicals start to harden. Bilton explains to the audience that the chemicals can be purchased in any good art supply store, and the end result will be a hard plastic molded object they can use as a part, or an enclosure, for any gadget they build. Immediately, someone suggests embedding an LED into the plastic while it's still soft. The meeting breaks up with Pettis reminding everyone to bring in their LilyPad projects next time.
