First Floor Going In

It's time to get the first floor in. The measurement isn't perfect, but the shape of the base is super irregular and there are all kinds of bumps and stuff on the base too which makes it so that we have to be raised above it. We tried putting clay on the bumps but it was not really helpful so we used a modified box top and cut it to fit. We decided to have the floors covered in aluminum foil for a cool, metallic look which goes with the cyber theme.
Chelsea created furniture, decorations and made walls with LEGO. Alfia made a pi bench with playdoh and keyboard keys. Andrew worked on the flooring and modeled Chelsea's homemade disco ball. Lots of glue gun action went down.

Chelsea glues glass to a mini globe earring to make a disco ball

Lookin' good!

Gluing in the bottom floor

Mini icebox with open doors

The disco ball will hang in the disco, not the dining room.

Dining room with kitchen behind

North Bay Young Makers Meeting - Plussing

We went to the third North Bay Young Makers meeting in San Francisco this weekend. Andrew, Chelsea, and Alf learned the basics of coppersmithing from Alexis Turner, an amazing artist. Here is her website: http://www.lexiebecjewelry.com/leather.html.  Working with the handsaw was pretty challenging. Art and Andrew also went to the session on 3D fabrication with Andrew Taylor of Autodesk.

Afterwards there was a "plussing" session where we told about our project. Chelsea and Alfia stayed at the table and told about our project. Art and Andrew walked around and looked at other projects.

After lunch we listened to speakers. There was Dale Dougherty who founded Maker Faire. Alexis Turner the jeweler, and Tom Lipton who makes stuff for Lawrence Berkeley Lab also spoke. It was interesting and inspiring. 

Young Makers North Bay webpage

Arduino Initiations

We're not sure how we're going to wire this thing up, especially since Art is the only one of us who has real experience with wiring or electronics.  Today we unpacked the Arduino kit and started working through the Arduino book. I started going through the Processing book a few weeks ago and am really enjoying that. I'm not sure how we're going to use them together, if we are, but working on the Processing makes the Arduino code pretty easy to understand.

Chelsea wants the disco ball to light up and spin, which we should probably be able to do. Not sure if we're going to put it in the speaker or aim the light at it. Also, I'm worrying about how we'll wire the iMac although there are plenty of openings in it. That's for Art to mentor us on.

The Arduino kit is fun to play with but I'm pretty ham-handed when it comes to getting the wires and resistors into the breadboard. Chelsea is much better at it than I am.  Even after reading most of the book, the Arduino board is still pretty mysterious to me. It'll probably just take a lot more practicing with it.

Also, we burned out a couple of LEDs because we didn't take the resistor requirements seriously enough. Doh. Art made us a Scratch program to help us figure out the resistors. 

 I need to wear these magnifying glasses to even see the holes in the breadboard!

The holes in that breadboard are really small!

So yeah, the electronics part is going to take a bunch of work and more Art helping out.

Flooring options

We're thinking about using LEGO as flooring. We played around with Duplo, which would be fine for adding furniture, but not so good if we want to use regular-sized LEGO people.

Measuring the inside of the frame. Since it's an irregular, rounded shape we're looking for something moldable for the bottom of the floor, like styrofoam or thick cardboard. The floors have to be flat, obviously.

Thinking about flooring, Chelsea and Alf play with LEGO. Duplo is easy to use for fast prototyping. We may even use some of the cute Duplo animals for the dollhouse "people".

Red Duplo looks nice inside the blue iMac with the strawberry keyboard

Side view

Playing around with ideas for design elements

We want to use the logic board and circuit board in general as design elements.  They're pretty dirty and need to be cleaned.

Prying it apart, releasing components

Playing with dislocated keys and bottle caps

 

We have a lot of corks and a lot of bottle caps. Thinking what to do with them.

Putting it back together from scratch

Now it's time to start putting it back together as something else.

Snapping the pieces back in place was a lot easier than pulling them apart

The top is snapped in

The speakers make sweet goggles - or maybe chandeliers

Now to figure out the framework for flooring and wiring..

Gutting the iMac!!!

This weekend we finally gutted the iMac G3! We had to be especially careful about staying grounded and not getting any charge from the CRT. We continued to use the official Apple iMac G3 takeapart guide found here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/103447/iMac-G3-Disassembly-Guide

  Almost endless unscrewing. We kept all the screws in little tupperwares and separated the different types in case we needed them later. The little round things are speakers and they were the hardest things to get out. There are lots of tabs around the frame that need to be popped out to get to the screws underneath. The YouTube videos really don't help much with that. The official guide form Apple really is the best way to go.

 

The logic board was underneath.  Just took a lot of unscrewing to get it out but not too big a deal.

 Peekaboo. Getting this front piece off was a huge pain and took a lot of careful prying. We did crack it a little bit, but nothing too bad. We glued and taped it afterwards.

 

The CRT is revealed. Had to be extra careful here and follow directions on pages 76 - 79 of the guide.  Beware of the Degaussian cable!

 

More unscrewing..

 

Finally the CRT is out. We will bring it to the electronic recycler.

The back and frame pieces. We'll wait for the glue to dry on the frame and start putting it back together next.