DorkbotPDX people doing strange things with electricity

The Bus Pirate came up as a topic on the mailing list a few days ago, and I realized I hadn't yet shared the slides from my presentation (a year ago now!) on how to use the Bus Pirate to poke and prod I2C devices like sensors and EEPROMs. So for those of you not on the mailing list, here you go:

Dorkbot PDX 0x08 - Sailing the I2Cs with the Bus Pirate

A colleague recently suggested I try laser-cutting paper to make solder paste stencils, instead of ordering metal or Kapton stencils. I was encouraged by the results, and have managed to improve upon them to the point where I'll use this technique for all my prototyping -- as long as I have access to a laser cutter... The secret ingredient? Adhesive mailing labels.

The full details are over at my blog.

I'd be happy to show people some of my results at the next meeting.

Dorkbot PDX is well-represented at Maker Faire. I think there's about seven of us here right now. Brian and I are at the Make: TV booth, talking about our Make: TV episode dispenser -- a machine that copies episodes of Make: TV onto people's USB drives.

It's been working reliably and people seem to dig it -- not bad for a project that didn't really do anything useful until Thursday at 1AM...