I was able to attend an interesting "hacker" camp last week and thought it worth a post. ToorCamp is advertised as "The Five Day, Open Air, Tech Camping Event where you create more than just ideas and build more than just inventions". I don't think that is a particularly good description but I really enjoyed it. It is located in the Orcas Islands which are located between Washington state in the U.S. and British Columbia in Canada, a very beautiful location.
Around 500 people attended. We had a cabin but most people stayed in tents. Here is the view from our cabin which was located above the main venue and had a peekaboo view of the bay through the trees.
I set up my AIS alarm and also a battery powered Raspberry Pi based AIS I have been working on running on the small screen at left. The small screen is the official 7" model which I obtained from Newark after winning an element14 contest - Thanks element14!
I also put together a decoration for the cabin. I obtained the mask sometime back while working in Papua New Guinea. It was made for the tourist trade and no cultural artifacts of significance were damaged. It normally occupies a place of honor in a covered area of my garden and I wanted to return it unharmed so nothing was permanently attached. I used one of my MSP430 "wearable" boards for the controller and a PIR sensor to detect movement. When movement is detected it lights up the WS2812 LEDs behind the eyes and mouth and runs a little sequence. Construction incorporated hot glue, popsicle sticks and paper for diffusing.
There was a software silly hacks contest which was pretty good. My favorite was a web app which automatically created code. It worked by typing a line of code in and hitting enter. It would then go to github and find that line or something similar and fill in a complete program. Perfect for the lazy programmer.
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