OSH Camp 2012

This past weekend was OSH (Open Source Hardware) Camp 2012, conveniently located in the building next door to us.

Thanks to carrierdetect on Flickr for the photo. (As per usual, I forgot my camera.)

(Yes, it is that beautiful.) It was filled with things like this:

Thanks again to carrierdetect for the photo

(No, I don’t understand either.) There were more computers than I could possibly imagine, and more acronyms than I could shake a breadboard at. There was good food (with delicious vegan options!), and friendly people. Despite knowing absolutely nothing about Arduinos, or Raspberry Pis, or programming, I met lots of lovely people who were willing to explain this world to me.

Much of the talks went totally over my head, but it was a good insight – and inroad – to geekery. There were talks on 3D printing, the Internet of Things, wearable technology, and Arduinos, to name a few. I even bought myself a DIY Shrimpduino kit! (A Shrimpduino is basically a cheap Arduino. The clever folks over at Shrimping.it have designed & made these little kits that contain all the components of an Arduino, that can be programmed using normal Arduino software. They have instructions online of how to put it together, and they cost around £3. They made it really simple for me to begin to understand, were generally very helpful, and really lovely too. Good stuff! Ok, the impromptu ad is over for now.)

Coming back into my usual world of LEDs, textile crafts, and crude jokes felt somewhat inadequate by comparison, but I think I’m settling back in. My soldering skillz may seem a little basic all of a sudden, but I’m having fun creating things, and that octopus light is so very nearly finished. I’ve also got plans to sort out the things what were wrong with that light box/embroidery light from last week. I certainly have some exciting ideas of how to incorporate such geekdom into LEDs…