MightyOhm

Having had some experience generating RGB video signals with the PIC, I have a deep appreciation for the work these guys did in not only generating composite video with an Arduino, but also making a Pong game.  The daily duino (need to bookmark that one) has a simpler example based on the same code.

My good friend Tony created this awesome bike headlight that is sweeping the internet.  You can see how he made it at Instructables.

This kind of stuff makes me want to go out and buy a lathe and milling machine for the garage.

Update: Tony won the Instructable’s Light up Your Ride contest with this project.  Congratulations, Tony!

Dorkbot-SF is meeting tonight at the Retox Lounge.

Topics include Laser Cutting Things, Touchscreen Video Controllers, and Space Tourism.

The full lineup and schedule for the 2008 Blip Festival is now available.  The festival takes place in NYC a little over a week from now, on December 4th-7th.

From the festival site:

Highlighting the chipmusic phenomenon and its related disciplines, the festival aims to showcase emerging creative niches involving the use of legacy video game & home computer hardware as modern artistic instrumentation. Devices such as the Nintendo Entertainment System, Commodore 64, Atari ST, Nintendo Game Boy and others are repurposed into the service of original, low-res, high-impact electronic music and visuals — sidestepping game culture and instead exploring the technology’s untapped potential and distinctive intrinsic character.

The Blip Festival assembles nearly 40 practitioners selected from the chip music movement’s expansive global underground, taking care to represent as many as possible of the genre’s surprisingly diverse styles, geographical and technical scenes, communities, and traditions. The festival’s concert program will be supplemented by daytime events to be announced, including workshops, presentations, and screenings. The Blip Festival’s intended result is to provide a cross-section of a movement currently in explosive flux, teeming with artistic exploration, and poised at the cusp of global awareness.

What is so cool about 8-bit music and the Blip Festival?

As a child of the 80s, I was exposed to the 8-bit sound first through video games on the Commodore 64 and the Nintendo Entertainment System, and much later through the vibrant chiptune scene that surrounded the Commodore Amiga computer.  I distinctly remember loading games on my C64 just to hear the music – it wasn’t unusual for a game to have music than graphics or gameplay.  Years later, I’m not sure if it’s because 8-bit music was ahead of it’s time or that electronic music today is embracing a more raw low-fidelity sound, but I still find the 8-bit sound fresh and interesting.  Certainly it does have something to do with the many talented chiptune artists that have chosen to exploit the 8-bit sound in ways that remind me of the old but are also completely original and new.

(By the way, the C64 is even now playing a hidden role in popular music – see the Timbalands controversy and the Sidstation, used most notably in Fischerspooner’s Emerge and Kernkraft 400′s Zombie Nation.)

If you can’t make it to the Blip Festival, one of the best introductions to 8-bit music is the 8-Bit Operators album.  The album features 15 covers of Kraftwerk by 8-bit artists and gives you a taste of a few very different approaches to the 8-bit sound.  Also check out the Gamewave Podcast, which often features artists that have performed at the Blip Festival in previous years, many of which will return in December.

The vintage telephone speaker I used for my Bluetooth Handset project has a mysterious component wired across it’s terminals, as shown above (it’s the black cylinder with two leads on the upper left).  The component measures as an open circuit on my DMM, but obviously it has some hidden function.

So far my guesses are:

• A lightning arrestor/spark gap or back to back diodes that protect the person using the phone from strikes or other high voltage on the line
• Some sort of lowpass filter to keep you from hearing otherwise audible tones used for signaling
• A device that keeps the high voltage ring signal from damaging the speaker

I found a schematic at the Bell System Memorial that shows a symbol for the device, but I don’t recognize it.

Does anyone know what this thing is and what it’s for?

We’re also having a discussion about it on flickr.