Live Stream: 25th of May at 11:00 AM CT (Chicago) or 4:00 PM GMT

 

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

 

Join element14 presents hosts James, Clem, DJ, and Dave.

 

They will be discussing their latest projects, answering live questions and generally having a good time.  We'll also have community feedback featuring where the presenters will share feedback from members of the community: ,  ,  , and .

 

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They'll be talking about DJ's Arduino Single-Wheel Balancing Robot:

 

The Panel:

 

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James MAYER MAKES - Clem

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.

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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DJ Dave

 

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.

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.