The Joy Agenda

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We’ve been working on (until recently mostly just thinking about) a project called The Joy Agenda, which conceptually is an alternate reality layer at the college – something like a combination of geocaching, faerie doors, escape rooms, and Meow Wolf – all motivated by providing opportunities for joy and wonder. We’re getting close to installing the first element of the project, a Free Little Art Gallery, housed in an old newspaper dispenser.

FLAG in a newspaper dispenser

The gallery will be housed in the Library, and folks from the Artist Guild (the college’s arts club), the Equity Center, and our own Innovation Center student community are making and sharing beautiful and tiny – 3″ x 3″ (x 3″ for sculptural works) pieces of art. The plan is to hang a show for a week, and then those works move to the top of the gallery to be taken home by interested art patrons, and another show hung. Rinse and repeat.

FLAG

We’ll launch v1.0 as soon as we get enough works for 2 or 3 shows, after which hopefully the project will chug along under its own momentum. Feel free to send some (3″x3″x3″) art, any media, to The Innovation Center, 10 College Parkway, Folsom CA 95630. Phase 2 will see the addition of cyphers and clues and puzzles, leading to fake books in the stacks containing hidden artifacts, tokens for a vending machine filled with arts supplies, and other things we have yet to think of!

Sonification and Visualization

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Years ago Max Mahoney (Chemistry) and I did some work with Chladni plates, but ended up breaking the speaker motor we were using. Lately I’ve been dreaming of different ways to visualize sound as part of ongoing data sonification efforts, so I knocked together a little prototype using a Bluetooth transmitter connected to the modular synth:

Bluetooth transmitter/receiver

and a little Bluetooth speaker driver thing:

Bluetooth speaker driver

Nothing spectacular, but the sand did indeed dance!

The Buoy is in the Ocean!

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ic_buoy_03

After more than a year of planning, the Innovation Center successfully deployed a wind and wave data buoy (a Sofar Spotter) in Richardson Bay, a protected eel grass preserve between Sausalito and Tiburon in San Francisco. The project is part of an ongoing partnership between the Innovation Center, Professor Jason Pittman/FLC’s Geosciences Department, and the UC Davis Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute.

ic_buoy04

David Dann (UC Davis Marine Operations Manager) was one of two scuba divers who assisted with the mooring, and did the heavy lifting of the deployment. David expertly navigated the complex regulatory environment of California’s coastal waters, which included securing permits and coordinating with the Richardson Bay Audubon Center, San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Coast Guard, the City of Belvedere, and Clipper Yacht harbor.

ic_buoy_02

The data gathering buoy (which includes the Open Acoustic Devices HydroMoth audio recorder) is part of the Innovation Center’s larger “Quantified College” project, an effort to gather a variety of environmental data and to provide students with opportunities to use those data in a variety of ways, from sonification (i.e. creating music from data) to “big data” analysis as part of FLC’s innovative Artificial Intelligence curriculum. Data from the buoy will also be used to support coastal erosion research being conducted by UCD researchers. The project is the first of many for the partnership, with the overarching goal of providing FLC students with opportunities for hands-on field experiences, as well as transfer and career pathways. Have a look at the data!

Richardson Bay Data

Thoughts on Reopening (After a Few Years Closed)

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Opening day flyer

After a few years, the Innovation Center @ Folsom Lake College has once again opened its doors to students!

Sophie trains new staff

It took a bunch of work getting to this point, including seasoned Makerspace Facilitators (Sophie and Nicole) training up new staff…

Opening day

We’ve held some workshops – here Sojourner and Hannah lead a laser cutting workshop.

Maker club

We also hosted the second ever meeting of a new organization – the NorCal Makers Guild – we’re helping get off the ground.

Sacramento Valley Makers Guild

Students from Cordova High (one of our longtime K-12 partners) paid us a visit and drove some robots.

Cordova high students drive robots

After a few weeks, we’ve got the core of a vibrant maker community emerging, including a new student-led Maker Club (something we’ve never had formally before). Club members recently had the opportunity to fly some of our aerial imaging drones.

Maker club flying drones

Last but not least, we finally got a mini LEGO wall for the front entrance, which makes me incredibly happy.

Portable mini LEGO wall

Thankful to be back!

Fidget Spinners in the IC

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Fidget spinners are suddenly all the rage in the Innovation Center.

Fidget Spinners are all the Rage in the Innovation Center

So far folks have 3D printed them on the Ultimakers, laser cut them out of acrylic on the new laser, and just today cut some out of HDPE plastic on the Carvey.

Nathan's Spinner

Easel (the software the runs the Carvey) even has a spinner add-on that enables easy design and tweaking.

Easel Fidget Spinner Maker

I see a big old bag of bearings in our future!

Field Trips!

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Lots of visitors in the past couple of weeks, starting with Oak Ridge High School students, who came to talk about their upcoming hacakathon – http://orhacks.com – and how we might partner.  They also drove the Double around.

Students from Oak Ridge High School Driving the Robot

A couple of days later, we hosted Foresthill High School students, who took a tour of the college and then spent some time in the IC with me to learn about our programs and makerspace development efforts. They’re planning a space of their own, and were eager to hear about everything from gear to floors to furniture. CJ and Alex (FLC students and some of my most skillful assitants) volunteered to help, showing students around and helping them print some stickers on the new vinyl cutter.  We also scanned some folks using the Skanect/XBox Kinect setup, which is always a crowd pleaser.

Scanned

Later that day, about 30 (mostly) 5th graders from Georgetown Makerspace (our sister lab) spent the afternoon in the lab, driving the robot, building with (borrowed) LittleBits, preparing and cutting a tile on the Carvey, getting scanned, and learning about the aquaponics setup.

Untitled

Busy couple of days, but great to connect with regional maker educators to share information and resources.  More photos…

Field Trips 2017

3D-Printed Smartphone Spectrophotometer

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Max Mahoney (Chemistry) is working on printing SpecPhone, a 3D-printed smartphone spectrophotometer develop by Dr. Adam W. Smith’s lab at the University of Akron.  From the developer:

The SpecPhone is a 3D-Printed smartphone spectrophotometer for research and education. The device can make analytically accurate measurements of concentration and can be used for teaching analytical chemistry and DIY science projects.

After some sketchy results and strange print decisions by the Ultimaker, it seems that the model doesn’t quite sit flat.  That is, the legs don’t seem to be the same height.  Using Netfabb Basic, I dropped in a Z plane to visualize:

NetFabb Basic Z Cut #1

Taking that plane up, it seems that it’s not just the bottom of the model, but that the skew continues all the way to the top:

NetFabb Basic Z Cut #2

With support structure enabled in Cura, we were able to print it after a few botched attempts, so it’s not a deal-killer, just a bit awkward.  Now we just need to find an iPhone 5s…

Printing a SpecPhone

The Garden From Above

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FLC's Garden From Above

Field day with Jason Pittman’s (Geosciences) mapping class yesterday. We flew the 3D printed picavet for the first time. After we worked the wetlands, two student volunteers agreed to walk the balloon up into campus, as I wanted to get shots of the garden. That little patch of green in the dry area (above) is the garden. Image below from a different flight for comparison.

FLC's Garden as Seen from Above

The entire dataset can be found at the project blog (DoLookDown.org), as well as the images from our 2014 and 2015 flights of the same area.  When I find the time, I plan to redesign and 3D print the picavet from the ground up, shaving some additional weight.