I am onsite right now at the NY Hall of Science. I was here yesterday for the Open Hardware Summit which lit my brain on fire... but it was a calm and quiet lull before the storm compared to what is happening now. There is the sound of power tools and a smell in the air of cut lumber, machine oil, and spraypaint. Tons of familiar faces from Maker Faires past. I already ran into two guys from Techshop, and am sitting a few feet from the Life-Size Mousetrap. My friends are frantically bolting together a giant mobile squid and I am left wondering how much RF interference there will be tomorrow, and how much it would take to sink the project. I had to repair the video connector with pliers but the LCD screen they have on the stage where we will be presenting works with my machine and is bigger than I am.
It has been crazy getting ready for this, and there is some functionality that we had to give up on, but I am overall feeling very calm and pretty much ready. It has been a crazy journey of about two months since I conceived and began working on this project and despite the protesting murmurs of my inner perfectionist I am really pleased with how far it came and what we were able to accomplish. I wanted to take a few moments and shout out to everyone who helped me with it because it sure took a village! Without people promising support it is a lot more intimidating to start something so far outside of what I normally do.
Touchpad Pants
"by" Rachel Lyra Hospodar / Medium Reality
in collaboration with:
Jon Ferran - concept and circuit design
Jason Asbahr / Monstrous Games - concept, application, and software
Christine Hodges - software
Michael Shiloh - Arduino instruction
R. Miloh Alexander - electronics assembly and Zigbee troubleshooting
Mitch Thompson - Zigbee expertise
D. P. Chang - lending expensive hardware
Rich Humphrey - general hackery and awesomeness
Tara Ocon & Liz Carena - wearing the silly thing while I talk about it!
Noisebridge - source of amazing and supportive people and environment. and soldering tools. and distractions.
Of course I also owe amazing thanks to Sherry Huss, Dale Dougherty, and O'Reilly in general, for providing an awesome venue for crazy projects and believing that I would pull it off.
Now who wants to help me make a pants keyboard?
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