Live Stream: 15th of December at 9:30 AM CT (Chicago) or 3:30 PM BST (Leeds)

 

Thanks for joining us! Click 'View Event Recording' to view the video of this stream.

 

Join element14 presents hosts Lorraine Underwood, Clem Mayer, James Lewis, and Dave Darko.

 

They will be discussing their latest projects, answering live questions and generally having a good time.  We'll also be introducing a new segment called community feedback.  The first segment will include discussion around feedback from  ,  ,  ,  ,  and  . Join us, won’t you?

 

We'll also be

 

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They'll be talking about Dave Darko's PCB Retro Gaming Project:

 

 

The Panel:

 

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VCP Biography: Katie MAYER MAKES - Clem Mayer

 

Lorraine is a Senior Teaching Associate at Lancaster University, instructing undergraduates in computer science in hands-on studio sessions. Even with a degree in Computer Science, Lorraine was never interested in electronics until she attended a Raspberry Pi training session for educators called Picademy. That event opened Lorraine's eyes to electronics, and introduced her to a new love: LEDs, which have since become one of the focuses of the many projects she's built. In 2020, she wrote her first book: "Save the World with Code: 20 Fun Projects for All Ages Using Raspberry Pi, micro:bit, and Circuit Playground Express" in paperback, which was published by McGraw-Hill and is on sale today.

I'm Clem Mayer, a maker and 3D printing enthusiast. I'm a generalist in making, if an idea sparks in my head, I just start building it.  No matter if I already have the skills for the project, I learn them as I go. I live in the eastern part of Austria right in the middle of Europe, not to be confused with Australia. In the slightly over thirty years of my life I've built various projects and toured lots of Maker Faires in Austria and Germany with them. My first lurk into hacking stuff was in fact modding and building electric guitars, just because I wanted my guitar to be different. I soon realized , after building a few custom guitars, that I'm better at making stuff than playing those instruments. But my real first projects were PC game mods, in particular Wolfenstein 3d (which was illegal to own in Austria because of the WW2 theme), I  started modding it and making my own non ww2 themed versions  of that  game and shared it on floppy disks with hand drawn logos on them (I had no access to a printer). I can't remember when I started that but it  must have been around 1998/99. For me making started as a hobby, that soon became a passion and turned into a job.  After spending about ten years selling farming supplies, I quit my day job and became a full time Maker. .
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VCP Biography: James VCP Biography: Dave

Back when James was in high school and had hair, he grabbed a soldering iron for the first time. Repairing a Heathkit training board immediately hooked him on electronics. Well, after the burns healed. His first hardware hack was changing the RC oscillator on his TI-85 calculator to make games, like Breakout, run at a reasonable speed. During the PS2 gaming era, he created UnitiBlue, a modular adapter to use classic console controllers with PC emulators. (Back then we said “classic,” not “retro.”)

Today James 3d prints, laser cuts, and solders together things that beep, blink, and fly. Known as the Bald Engineer, he writes engineering articles, makes Arduino tutorials, and rants about capacitor types. His YouTube channel, AddOhms, features simple animated tutorials to explain electronics to everyone.

Hi, my name is Dave Ploeger. That's okay, umlauts are tough. I'm not a David. You might have heard of me as davedarko, maybe not. Yes that is in reference to that movie with the man in a bunny suit. Like any good movie, it's set in the eighties and is about time travel!

How did I get here? Back when I started studying informatics I read this "little" tech blog. They wrote up one hardware hack a day and I was fascinated how people made (consumer) electronics do new things. Up to that point I only dabbled with LEDs, but I soon bought my first USBASP programmer and got into programming AVRs. The first time I got featured on that "little" tech blog with an AVR project was an amazing feeling. It all escalated quickly and now I'm sitting in a room that is dedicated for making things and filming my endeavors, which lead me to the Hack-Like-Heck contest and finally here!

In my day job I'm developing, supporting and maintaining a point-of-sale system for water-skiing and wake-boarding parks - while also doing some hardware bits and 3D designs along the way. When I'm not busy working on projects after hours, I'm probably on the streets of Berlin playing Pokemon GO. Yes, people really still play that, here's my trainer code: 1013 8744 3543. I acquired a lot of handhelds over the years - but weirdly don't really play any of them, I just like consoles for the technical aspect. My favorite has to be the Game Boy pocket in the Japanese "classic color" edition.