It’s only taken about 6 months, but I’ve updated the Hacker’s wallet to accommodate £20 notes, on the behest of Paul. Ashamedly, i obviously don’t see them very often!
The new source is here.

Because Jonnie Common‘s installation is going to involvve eight channels of transmitted FM, it will be an octophonic performance, hence the working title for the transmitter is now officially Octomitter!

So. I have all 8 boards working nicely, built to Guts v0.3.2 spec, which is almost ready for release, pending the instructable.

I spent some time testing them yesterday with some interesting results:

• All have to be on at the same time, else the transmitting frequencies vary.
• The 9v Oomlout transformer interferes with the signal a little, producing a whining noise, presumably because of the PWM used to step down the voltage.
• This whine varies in pitch depending on how many transmitters are in circuit parallel with the power source. Switching 1 to 8 transmitters on in sequence produces an almost major scale. Almost!
• It takes a while to find all the sweet spots for each transmitter’s output frequencies, such that the harmonics don’t sit on top of each other, and they are not competing with national radio stations.
• The best tactic in calibrating is simply Be Methodical, as with most things like this! Switch all on, tune to desired frequencies, then tweak the ones that aren’t playing ball. Note down everything.

Next up: testing in situ with Jonnie’s material, hopefully.

On the behest of Jonnie Common [new album Master of None out now), I have today been investigating the feasability of broadcasting using multiple Nifties in close range, with good results today. I tried this at the time of the Common Thread deployment last autumn and got all sorts of interference troubles (a kind of fluttering/beating phenomenon) but apparently today in the flat there is no such problem. In fact I can get my v0.24 and my home v0.1 broadcasting pretty cleanly within 0.5 Mhz of each other 88.6 and 89.1 to be precise. Jonnie is after a simultaneous broadcast on 8 channels, so that would cover 3.5 Mhz of the spectrum in total, I guess from 87 up to 90.5 would be the easiest. will need to test that too.

A big issue here with the nifties in their current form is that the drifting of broadcast wavelength is (even more) annoying as the transmitters could drift into each other’s range as well as out of the receiver’s range. So I think we will require regulated DC 9V supply to each board from a mains supply, snapping onto the usual PP3 clips. That of course means I can do away with the battery trays entirely, so could do a bulk sleeve that houses 8 circuit boxes perhaps? Could look pretty nice with the new home v0.1 layout, and jack to jacks coming from mixer to transmitter box. Like an addon rack for a wee mixer.. Will do a drawing!

Roy

I have removed the wiki features temporarily while I sort out some server problems. The hack and develop page for niftymitter weas subject to some malicious activity so that has been reverted to a previous version, which might mean it is out of date for now. Aplogies! Am getting it sorted as quickly as I can.

Ooft, sorry about that.

Makerfaire was a smashing success for all of us, Brian and Annalisa and I went down as a team of three representing, well, ourselves, and met some fantastic folk and saw some wild things. My fave was definitely Paul Duddy’s watches that he was inviting people to personally cast in jelly/glycerine. Nuts.

We had people making hacker’s wallets, and I’ll pop up some photos in a minute. I have just published all the source and done a pretty darn comprehensive instructable (it’s amazing how teaching 30 or so people to do it can clarify the processs for you!). Check it all out here.

Thanks to Brian and Annalisa, Misha and all at Makerfaire UK. My pals from DIY Pie were there bigger and better than ever, a good time was had by all.

Have finally got round to uploading lamps. Release v0.22 is not quite there but good enough to release as a ‘download and make’ and v0.23 which I am awaiting back from the CNC cutters, is up as the current development release. Here are some pictures from the development thus far:

I tried getting some cut in PETG, but it didn’t cut well at all. The acrylic is pretty brittle, so I think the only realistic option is the aluminium versions upcoming.

There is suddenly a lot of activity at the Open Hardware Logo thread (a logo to go with the open hardware definition, which i have endorsed).

I put in a couple of submissions a couple of weeks ago, and thought I might in with a chance for defining this graphic that could potentially be a widely adopted standard, but there have been some much better ones since then. Which is great of course, if one of them gets picked. It is unclear how selections will be made, so if I disagree I may lead a revolt and simply adopt Dr. Snaut’s excellent offering!

Mine were:

I just got a prototype back from the Manchester Fablab of the Gig sleeve in lovely hard ABS. Unfortunately the only innards I have are currently with Mr. Loudon so will have to wait to test it. Initially it looks good though, and a lovely finely ridged finish to it. This was printed on their Dimension machine for a very reasonable rate.

The other news is of course that Openthing will be at Makerfaire in Newcastle on the 12th/13th March.

A team of us are going down and we’ll be helping people to make Hacker Wallets and showing the Niftymitter, with some exclusive new sleeve designs, as well as Clampalamp, the clampable lamp.

I’m pretty darn excited but there is so much to do..

In the run up I’m doing a drop in session at the Electron Club next Saturday at 3pm – any Glasgow based Makers would be very welcome there for a wee tea party.