Welcome to another installment in the Design Challenge Weekly Summary series here at Element14! I just got back from Charleston, SC where I attended ProtoCon 2016 where Element14’s own BenHeck was the keynote speaker. The conference was great, and I enjoyed meeting a new group of engineers and makers. That’s not the reason for this blog though, so lets get on with the details from the past week in the Design Challenges! Unlike the previous week, the past 7 days have been about normal for the Open Source Music Challenge in terms of number of new project updates that were posted. In case you missed my last Design Challenge Weekly Summary, the Make Life Accessible Challenge is getting close to its extended submissions deadline, so remember to get your project proposals in asap!
Open Source Music Tech
In the past week, we have had a total of three project updates posted to three different projects. While this is a little less than I like to see, I am excited to see progress being made! I highly suggest that you head over to the challenge’s project blog’s page to check all of these out. This week I will be highlighting two projects.
In the past week the following three projects have have been updated:
- Project: Vintage Toy Synthesiser by Liam Lacey (liamtmlacey)
- Project: tEChnOLOGICal Communion by Nadal Kristallin (fraktalize)
- Project: eViolin by Stephen Olsen (selement14)
This Week’s Top Updates
Project: eViolin - Sacrificial Violin
Stephen Olsen (selement14) project, eViolin, saw a very controversial post (with violin rights organizations) this week featured the deconstruction of a cheap violin Stephen acquired from Amazon. Stephen warns that if you are faint at heart, and get queasy around musical instrument violence, then you should not watch the video embedded in this update. Using a bench grinder, and some hacksaw blades, the violin’s body was saved. Unfortunately, its top plate did not survive the surgery, but will be rebuilt with some electronics in the near future.
Vintage Toy Synthesiser - BeagleBone Proto Cape
While no musical instrument surgery took place this week in project: Vintage Toy Synthesiser, Liam Lacey (liamtmlacey) did get some work done. Instead of using unsecured jumper wires, Liam wanted to find a way to securely fasten the project’s signal wires to the Beaglebone BlackBeaglebone Black. He also knew that he did not want to solder anything directly to the development board, so the decision was made to solder some screw terminals onto an Adafruit Beaglebone Proto CapeAdafruit Beaglebone Proto Cape. This will allow him to easily move connections from one pin to another, and still be able to secure them to prevent any breaks in the connection.
Make Life Accessible Design Challenge
Initially, Element14 set a deadline of February 19th for submissions to thew Make Life Accessible Design Challenge but this week the decision was made to extend the application deadline to March 4, 2016. This should give everyone a chance to get their project idea submitted for consideration. If you have not yet submitted your entry, now is the time to do so. Head over to this page to get your idea in the project pool! Check out the links below to find out more about the Make Life Accessible Challenge, and how you can submit your project idea!
- About The Make Life Accessible Challenge
- The Prizes
- The Official Challenger Kit
- Proposal Examples
- The Make Life Accessible Challenge Terms and Conditions
That is going to wrap things up for this installment of the Design Challenge Weekly Summary here at Element14. I will be back next week with another installment, until then remember to Hack The World, and Make Awesome!