Before I get too far, I’ll have you know that their next meeting is Wednesday, February 15th (at RIT’s Center for Student Innovation), and you can get at them on their meetup group, or their twittery bits. If combining technology and journalism sounds fun to you, you should stop by, because it seemed like a bunch of smart and interesting people.

Ok. For the rest of our time together, I’m fixin’ to dump a few links on you. I am not a journalist, nor a programmer, but I have been quite interested in this area for some time, and hope to contribute – at the very least – as a well-informed cheerleader, brainstormer, facilitator, or village idiot. We’ll see. Either way, maybe I can give interested parties some ideas of what’s possible/probable before the next meeting.

Open Sesame

“Open” excites me. Open source software, open hardware designs, open data, “free culture” in general. Fun things happen when information is free and accessible. Maybe this first dawned on me when I saw the Oakland Crimespotting site. By now, everybody has seen a multitude of visualizations made by dumping data on top of Google Maps. Back then it was pretty new and exciting. What struck me most, at the time, was that the Oakland PD was publishing this data to a public website, and in a format that was fairly easily scrape-able and parse-able. Wow! Amazingly pedestrian, really, but for a city or county government it seemed unthinkable (and still does, apparently).

Many municipalities are doing a decent job in this area nowadays. Some have even progressed enough that sites like EveryBlock have sprung up, taking these public data feeds and massaging them into a format that mere mortals can make sense of. Baltimore has an open data website that looks like it has lots of useful info, in easy to digest formats. Chicago too. I’m sure there are many others… those were just the first two to pop up when I poked around for “data dot blah blah dot gov” sites. There is no data.cityofrochester.gov site, unfortunately. How do we make that happen?

Dumpy Data

In the meantime, we rely on FOIA requests for information from local governments. Often times, these arrive in the least convenient format possible, and they are likely full of sloppy and inconsistent data. We’re pretty lucky then, that after cleaning things up, the D&C often shares this data with us on their RocDocs site.

I wonder if they know about Google Refine? Refine is “a power tool for working with messy data, cleaning it up, transforming it from one format into another, extending it with web services, and linking it to databases like Freebase.” If you’re dealing with cruddy data of any sort, you should check it out. It’s a bit of a weird install, running as a web server on your computer. Ask your local nerds if you’re having trouble… it’s worth it.

Community Data

Even if you can get it in a decent format, governments don’t always have the data you need. Or if they do, it might be stale by the time you can get at it. There are some fun things happening in the world of open data acquisition. Let’s call it “open mapping”, although I’m sure there are non-location-based projects I’m overlooking.

First, Google is changing the terms of service on their Maps product… taking it out of “beta” status and reaching into your wallet for some payback. If you have a certain amount of map views per day, it’s no longer free to use. Thankfully, all along, a large community of folks have been creating their own street maps by compiling open government data (TIGER files in the US), or by walking, biking, and driving routes with a GPS logger and uploading their tracks. OpenStreetMap is the result, and it’s an amazing feat. Anybody can edit the map… so feel free to liken it to the “Wikipedia of maps”, even though that probably makes some people bristle. Not coincidentally, the resultant data is available under a farily open license, and has thus been mixed and remixed into a plenitude of other projects, products, and experiments.

OpenCycleMap builds upon OpenStreetMap, and highlights cycling routes. It is rather sparse in the US. I recently attended some public meetings on Rochester’s bicycle plan, featuring some large maps of city streets rated “A” through “F” for bike safety. Perhaps that belongs on such a map, editable by all those who actually ride the city streets and know that traffic volume and speed are not the only relevant dimensions for such a grade.

OpenHeatMap lets you upload a spreadsheet of data and crank out a heat map on top of OpenStreetMap. Mapbox is a bit more sophisticated, but costs some money for hosted maps. No matter… the Mapbox developers have released TileMill, a gorgeous application that lets you handcraft interactive maps yourself. It requires a bit more knowhow, but I’m sure Hacks/Hackers has plenty of that.

The folks at Safecast wanted to map radiation levels following the Fukushima disaster in Japan, so they cobbled together some GPS loggers and Geiger counters. After driving around the country, they plopped the data on top of the OpenStreetMap. This isn’t child’s play yet, but every day it’s getting easier to bring together the hardware and software needed to record data and make it easily available.

A Brief Aside

These radiation mappers weren’t “traditional journalists”. Maybe it wasn’t even journalism or news. Whatever. It was really important info, and I’ll bet no reporter thought “I’ll just go out and record that data, instead of waiting by the phone for an official report”. I hope, after hanging out at Hacks/Hackers, that mindset will change.

Semi-related: Rochester has a nuclear power plant nearby, and Interlock has a Geiger counter:

(not a terribly well calibrated Geiger counter, admittedly)

For some more thoughts on the future of local news and journalism, from people much smarter and more cogent than I, I will simply link without comment to some posts I’ve bookmarked from Ryan Sholin, Jeff Croft, and Tim Porter.

Burbling Infobrooks

If real-time info is needed, Pachube is a free clearinghouse for data feeds. It’s ridiculously easy to upload sensor data to the site, whether it be temperature, weather, energy use, and so on. Equally important, it’s also easy to retrieve that information as a regularly updated and well-documented stream. Would you like to browse the 2700 available feeds tagged “radiation” on Pachube? Probably not. But it’d be a relatively simple task to create a program that retrieves and maps them in an easy to digest format.

Some folks – mainly in New York City – weren’t quite satisfied with the current status quo of air quality monitoring. So they’re building their own sensor network using open platforms to measure and make the data available to anybody that wants it, in real time. This stuff isn’t too technically challenging nowadays. We just need to pair up those with a need for info with the people who know how to get this stuff done.

Too Long; Still Reading

There’s plenty more fun stuff happening in this area, but that’s enough to keep you occupied for a few hours a least. If – after you close all your browser tabs – you still find your cravings unfulfilled, do join us at the next meeting, or fire away in the comments here. I’m sure we’ll be able to fill up or otherwise utilize your vast cranial resources. See you there!

So I searched the net and tried all the standard resetting of the PRAM, booting from dvd and anything I could but there was no change. So I bought a new Lenovo laptop, installed Linux and restored all my personal files from backups over the network from home. Very slow but within two days I had a working laptop and continued with my work.

After five more months I still wasn’t happy with my new laptop. I had everything I needed working but there were a bunch of little annoyances. So I decided to spend an afternoon trying to resurrect my MacBook Pro. I started by going to ifixit.com for some pointers on disassembling and checking on things.

http://www.ifixit.com/Device/MacBook_Pro_15%22_Core_2_Duo_Models_A1226_and_A1260

I had the small philips screw driver and the torx driver but I didn’t have a spudger (and really had never heard of it). But I was able to use a small flat blade screw driver very carefully and managed.

First I opened it and tried removing/moving/replacing the ram modules just to make sure – do the easy things first even if they aren’t likely to do anything. Then I tried checking any and all connectors – disconnect, reconnect and test again. I followed all the cables that had anything to do with video to see if maybe one was broken. After checking all of this there still was no change in the behavior.

After some more searching it seemed like the last thing to try was to reflow the solder on the GPU. There were several videos about doing this both specifically for the MacBook Pro and for video cards in general.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jFTi_P24z8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_uN6VBqWkg&feature=related

Since the laptop was useless as it was I had nothing to lose. So I continued the disassembling until I had the main logic board free. There were lots of screws and many tiny little connectors to all the other bits in the case. I was fairly sure it would never work again because I doubted my ability to get everything connected correctly again but I pushed on. I cleaned all the heat sink compound off the cpu, gpu and interface chips. Using the heat gun at our soldering station, I heated the the little board holding the gpu onto the logic board focusing on any solder joints I could see. After ten minutes of this it seemed like the solder I could see was a little shinier and the board was certainly hot. So I started the long process of assembling the laptop again. Getting all the little connectors on top of the logic board and reconnected was quite a tedious process. Then getting all the screws back was also lots of fun. I tried keeping the screws generally laid out in groups by where they came from but there was still a lot of hunting for a hole that the screw would fit in. But eventually I had it all back together with no left over parts.

Now the moment of truth. It was late and time to go home so I waited until everything was back together and plugged in. Then I pushed the power button and the startup gong sounded. Then wonder of wonders, the screen lit up and the system booted all the way up. I was able to login and the system was working perfectly! Several days later and everything is still fine.

So for a few hours work I have a my laptop back.

Giftmas origami balloons made out of wrapping paper.

One way I kept on an even keel during the recent holiday season was by taking every opportunity I could to practice making these origami cubical “balloons” using scraps of wrapping paper. I made in excess of a dozen, and that was the high point of my recent kick to practice enough to be able to do this pattern from memory.

From a maker-theory perspective, even with the digital revolution and the move to e-texts to replace things, like books, that have traditionally used paper, paper as a material is still ubiquitous and cheap. Its ready availability means that one can cultivate the maker state of mind just about any where–I started out on this recent origami journey after lunch one day a couple of months ago, using the coated-paper basket liner at a burrito place.

Paper fast-food tray liners and place mats do pretty well in a pinch, and making something then and there is a great way to entertain a youngster or to open a discussion with an indulgent friend, co-worker, or even a stranger, about the fun to be had as a hacker and maker.

Amongst different types of paper, paper sold as “origami paper” can be a little more hard to find and more expensive. I also try to resist that tendency projects have to lead off with “first, go out and buy something”. So I set out to figure out a way consistently to convert randomly-shaped scraps of paper into squares suitable for use with traditional origami patterns.

More recently, at my last turn on door duty for Interlock’s “Do Night” I worked on expanding my repertoire a little bit, learning how to make these open-topped boxes. Also, Reggie was a pretty ggod sport about taking some instruction from me about how to fold up his own balloon made from wrapping paper I pushed on him.

So far, I’m not that enthused about making little animals. Also, I had my paper airplane phase as a kid, so that doesn’t hold a lot of appeal for me at the moment. Mostly, pure geometry, as in the balloon-cubes, and potentially useful knick-knacks, like the candy box, are what I’ve been after. With the holidays gone, my interest may fade for a bit. We’ll see.

Define:NFC

Near Field Communication is a way to transmit information between intelligent devices. I know you’re already thinking Bluetooth but wait. NFC has a limitation that says in its spec that it can’t be more than .2m away from its partner during communication. It may be a bit more depending on the implementation but the thing to remember here is that the protocol itself is what limits the distance, not just the hardware. (Quit pointing that gigantic antenna at my pocket right now!) It transmits on the HF band 13.56MHz, a frequency already used by some RFID chips and fun devices like the Proxmark 3.

Modes

Here’s what’s different about NFC: There are three different modes.

• Reader/Writer: Commonly used in smart posters or smart stickers. Think QR code but subtle.
• Peer to Peer: Data is exchanged back and forth between devices; securely exchange credit cards, give your friend your home WIFI settings, or exchange business cards.
• Card Emulation: A device acts like a contactless smart card. What if you could use your phone as a bus pass instead of keeping that flimsy magstripe pass in your pocket?

NFC != RFID

Lets take care of that up front. NFC sounds a lot like RFID (they share the whole RF thing) and it seems to get stored in people’s heads that way because NFC has the card emulation mode where it emulates at “tag” or an RFID chip.  RFID isn’t usually much more than a tag blindly broadcasting data hoping a receiver picks it up. Passive tags (or little antennas without a power source) sit and wait for an RFID reader to come by to energize them. They get all excited and tell the reader everything they know. Imagine a dog just waiting at the door for it’s owner to come home. The active RFID tags have a battery in them that constantly broadcasts itself to anyone that will listen. Kind of like that annoying friend you have that tells you everything about their life even though you never asked. NFC on the other hand is like an intelligent college student. She can have an intimate conversation with you, she can make a presentation in front of a class, but she can still get drunk and act stupid if that’s what everyone else is doing at the party.

NFC is not a new technology

We’ve seen them in European phones since 2003 or 4 and they’ve been hacked on for just as long. The folks at the Chaos Computer Club have been hacking on NFC since it’s original inception; when manufacturers like Nokia started installing it into their feature phones, AKA dumb phones. It never made it across the water – some may say due to some FCC regulations on the 13.56 frequency but I’ll leave that topic to the Ham guys.

Security

If you haven’t already, you should put on your tin foil hat now. NFC is a way for corporations to take over our bodies, man! Well…most likely not. But you’re already thinking about the security problems as soon as I wrote “credit card.” I’m going to save this whole discussion for another day but the tl;dr version is that NFC has been designed with security in mind but a lot is left up to the developer to implement securely. We all know how well that works especially for mobile app developers so I’m sure everything is going to be fine, right? Maybe next time I’ll tell you about the butt sniffing attack. No seriously.

Android and The Galaxy Nexus

How is Android implementing NFC in the Galaxy Nexus? Here’s an example of a peer to peer mode connection: When you put a Galaxy Nexus next to another Galaxy Nexus, the phone will make an NFC connection as long as both phones are unlocked. If the app that you  have open supports NFC (i.e. Google Maps) it will allow you to communicate data from your app to the other device. Some examples of this are sharing contact information, location data, websites, etc but apparently it’s going to be used for games or whatever developers can think of.

The Reader/Writer mode will allow you to take an NFC tag and shove it next to the phone. Depending on the data stored on the card, it will open an appropriate app to view the content. In the case of an NFC tag that is contains a URL, it will automatically go to that page. Ask me about some of the NFC tags I’ve made at a 2600 meeting sometime.

More info:

If you want to see a much better post that’s chock full of info check this out: http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/10/engadget-primed-what-is-nfc-and-why-do-we-care/

Here’ s a random YouTube video of two guys with Galaxy Nexuses so I don’t have to make one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQSc4uiakv4

JustBill at the controls….with aliens supervising

We also got an old Radio Shack HTX-202 operating APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System) with UI-View32 (an ancient client software for radio packet hosting) and the ProComm TNC to communicate to the radio.  K2HAX is on the map!  APRS is an important tool for position reporting, remote telemetry, text messaging anyone anyplace, and local coordination of emergency training events. For a cool view of current APRS activity around K2HAX, go here.

’73 – N2ZVP – rochbert

We’ve got a 3d printer! It’s still a bit “in progress” as far as building and tuning it goes, but anybody interested in small-scale hobby-level 3d printing should stop in to ogle as our new eMaker Huxley RepRap prints out whistles and gadgets and geegaws all night long.

The build was pretty involved, but with a group of four folks we managed to get the majority of the work done in one long Sunday, a time-lapse of which follows:

That resulted in the following structure, which just needed to have its nozzle and build platform installed (and quite a bit of wiring).

With surprisingly little calibration and tinkering, we finally got our first fully printed part last Friday, the semi-traditional whistle model. The quality is really good already, and will get a bit better once we tweak some settings and really get the machine purring.

I think the nozzle is clogged now, unfortunately. So my goal tonight is to clear that out and get plastic extruding again, and then try to print out the interlock logo, which you can see above, extruded from a DXF file in openSCAD. Come visit, and bring a model you might want to print! There’s plenty of inspiration and/or finished “things” on Thingiverse if you don’t know where to start, and we’ll have a class soon on how to go from and idea to a 3d print… so stay tuned!

Our Christmas tree stand has this nifty tiered collection of what are, essentially, big set screws, designed to hold the trunk of the tree upright in the center of the tree stand. Problem is, over time we’ve lost the little plastic caps from the trunk end of several of the set screws. This means the set screws tear up the bark of the tree trunk more quickly, and dig more easily into the trunk of the tree.

That can’t be good.

Also, another of our tree stands, smaller, with only one tier of set screws, has a nice little conical stand-off built into the bottom of the stand, to help keep the bottom of the tree off the bottom of the stand. That way water can get into the bottom and up through the tree. The larger stand that we like to use, with two tiers of set screws, has no such stand-off.

So, I made little caps out of PCL (polycaprolactone, aka Shapelock aka Friendly Plastic, about which perhaps more some other time) to replace the missing ones.

I made a mold out of some polymer clay using the OEM green cap and made one PCL cap with the mold. Using polymer clay this way is something I’ve been meaning to try. Sad to say, that approach still needs a little work–I had a lot of trouble with the PCL locking into small imperfections in the mold. The rest of the replacement caps I made by just pressing warm PCL around the ends of the set screws, free form, and then letting them cool and harden in place.

I also made a little PCL stand-off to put in the bottom of the tree, with a little “spider” consisting of two crossed PCL rods to help keep it near the center of the bottom of the well of the stand.

Here they are, all together:

The caps seem to have worked pretty well. The spider kept slipping out of place as I was trying to get the stand fit onto the tree. Next year maybe I’ll try putting something soft and sticky on the ends to help with more of a press-fit, either some sort of generic silicone caulk or some Sugru or something.

We initially had a Kenwood TS-530s transceiver and roller tuner setup for HF and we made a few contacts.  We wanted to get the Yaesu FT-857GX out of the storage container and try it out.  That is setup now along with an automatic tuner.  Reception seems decent.  We are waiting on an operable microphone to get back on the air.  Bill, Von, Rowan, and Steve are working on that.  We will be working on CAT control and a hook-up for using SDR like functionality with Ham Radio Deluxe, allowing us to get into the digital communication modes.

The Yaesu FT-8800 VHF/UHF rig is working well, K2HAX normally monitors 146.61 (N2MPE local ARES/RACES repeater) while someone is in the shack.  We have cables for programming this rig on order and also have a cable for use with the PacComm TNC for packet, etc.

We also have a desktop PC with a nice monitor setup for use with the transceivers.  We are waiting on a 2 port serial card to communicate with the radios.  The remote programming of the radios and the option for digital mode communications (PSK, Packet, etc) opens up with the PC.

Our bench includes power supplies, frequency counters, various multi-meters and hand tools.  We have a great selection of soldering tools for discrete and SMT component work.  We have a variable temperature iron and a variable speed and temperature blower for re-work.  On order is a Hakko 808 de-soldering tool.  We have 2 antenna analyzers, a new Comet and an older MFJ.  Several bench projects are already underway including Jamie’s whispering clocks, many cable hacks for the radios, and Walter’s attempts to repair blown audio equipment.

Ham radio is witnessing a rebirth in popularity.  Emergency preparedness at the county/state/and national level has recognized the value of Ham radio as the most dependable means for communication during an emergency.  Interlock members have participated in local POD drills, Ginna nuclear event practice response teams and are regular attendees at the local ARES/RACES meetings.  Ham Radio can provide texting, TV and many other familiar forms of communication without any annoying infrastructure.  We can DX with Ham operators around the world, by voice and many new and old digital modes.  SDR is an emerging technology applied to Ham radio; opening up some fantastic possibilities for low power operation, contesting, and pulling weak signals out of the noise.

Ham radio is growing in popularity.  Interlock Hams would love to introduce anyone interested to the hobby and answer any questions you may have.

’73 Walter

It’s true, we’ve managed to move all of our gear and junk into a new space. We’re in the same building, but we’ve now got over twice the space, and some delineation between a workshop sort of room, and other rooms that are more office-like. Above, you can see a shot of the new workshop. It’s pretty close to the size of our entire previous space, and we’re excited to fill it up with useful tools and fun projects. The first step though, was painting:

In addition to having more space, we also finally got roof access. That, plus a particularly motivated new-ish member (Walter), means that we already have a respectable antenna farm installed up there, perfect for the roughly 50% of our membership with ham licenses.

We’ve set aside a whole room for all the ham gear and a secondary electronics workbench (although it’s already surpassing the main bench as far as sweet gear goes).

The network goons have a server closet now, so normal humans can be isolated from the constant whine of small fans and hard drives.

There’s a large room set up as a classroom or conference room, perfect for some upcoming classes that are in the works, and nicely isolated from other noisy activities in the space. I reckon we can accommodate a dozen people per class, if they all need hands-on desk space, and more if it’s just rows of chairs.

There’s more to the space that hasn’t been shown here. Three more rooms in fact… some of which we’re not quite sure what to do with. If you want to see more pictures, there’s always our flickr group, or better yet: come visit us in person! Check out our calendar for a schedule of events and open nights.