Live Stream: 27th of October 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 Andy West, Clem Mayer, DJ Harrigan, and James Lewis.

 

They will be discussing their latest projects, answering live questions and generally having a good time. Join us, won’t you?

 

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They'll be talking about Andy West's Nintendo Super Scope Project:

  • TBD

 

The Panel:

 

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VCP Biography: Andy West MAYER MAKES - Clem Mayer

I started programming computers when I was nine or ten years old, driven by a curiosity about how video games work. That eventually led to a career in software engineering, where I've worked for a number of companies in a wide variety of industries.

For a long time I assumed that hardware hacking was too hard or too expensive for me to try. I briefly dreamed of making my own game console, inspired by books like Andre Lamothe's "The Black Art of Video Game Console Design", and Andrew "bunnie" Huang's "Hacking the Xbox". But nothing much came of it. I did a few random projects, like a head-mounted VR display back in the late '90s, but nothing consistent.

Then a few years ago, things started to change. The Arduino and Raspberry Pi were affordable and offered many possibilities. The first decent, yet inexpensive 3D printers hit the market. I bought a soldering station, even though I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it. And around that time I bought some vintage computers on eBay and restored them.

When the Hack Like Heck competition was announced, something clicked. I had never built a portable game system, or 3D printed anything near that level of complexity before. I honestly had no idea what I was doing. But I loved the process, I learned a lot, and it paid off in the end.

I get the same feeling of satisfaction experimenting with electronics today that I did learning how to program decades ago. And even though being in front of a video camera is somewhat terrifying, I'm pushing out of my comfort zone and trying that as well. I hope to demonstrate through my videos that anyone, regardless of skill or experience level, can do fun and amazing things with electronics.

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: DJ VCP Biography: James
DJ is a designer and maker based out of Southern California. Inspired by countless gadgets and inventions shown in T.V. and films, he's always been inspired to bring that kind of fantastical technology to life. In the past he's put his skills to use creating puzzles for escape rooms, building gadgets and writing tutorials for Instructables.com, prototyping hardware for SLA 3D printers, and teaching many people how to solder and use CNC lasers. He currently works as an instructor at a local makerspace where he shares his passion for digital design and open source hardware. In his spare time, he runs his personal YouTube channel: Mr. Volt, where he builds custom gadgets and 3D-printed props.


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.