RSVP BEFORE FRIDAY MAR 12th, 11:59PM
You must RSVP if you’re not a SXSW-interactive badge holder!
RSVPs through facebook will be registered to win giveaways from Make magazine!

Co-Sponsored by:

• SXSW Interactive
• Silicon Labs
• Mr. Data Consulting
• QRANK by Ricochet Labs

We’re still in need of at least one more sponsor to help cover rental costs.  If you’d like to help out and have your name attached to one of the visible and popular SXSW-interactive events, please let us know!

Current presenters include:

Lone Star School of Music

Will be hosting a class this month (Sat. Jan 23, 2010) offering instruction and guidance while you build a commercially offered stereo tube amp kit

The class will consist of practical discussion about the easy to build kit but will also offer discussion of how to solder,commercial recordings, diy high end sources, vacuum tube lore and audio tweaks for this kit. This class aims to give the participant a rounded view of audiophiledom and to desconstruct the exclucivity of “high end” audio. This puts the user in control of the sound they’re looking for and is a spring board to other audio projects and most importantly is a way to get closer to the music.”

Drake presented at Dorkbot 22 a set of electronic lightning bug jars created for Murder Ballad Murder Mystery at the vortex theater in oct. 2009.  Each jar powered 12 randomly flickering LEDs and was powered by a single pic microprocessor.

Drake Wilson is an eclectic creature from the conceptual world currently puttering about in Austin.  He often works with the ACTLab, mainly doing volunteer sysadminry and being akin to a second-chair teaching assistant of some stripe.  He can be found on the Web at http://begriffli.ch/~drake/

The Ambisonic Microphone

Dan Hemingson is the ACTLab TV’s Lead Audio Engineer. His work has been so successful that he recently presented his work to the Audio Society of Engineers in Munich Germany. His work in the ACTLab includes surround sound environments, microphone development and audio hardware development.

Project:  Ambisonic microphone and recordings – Dorkbot 22

Using only a few dollars worth of microphones, some custom circuitry, and a little bit of post-processing, Dan is able to create three-dimensional audio environments that rival the atmosphere created by thousands of dollars worth of equipment.

Check out dan’s website for details more on some of his work.

More about Dan Hemingson:

Dan Hemingson made his first audio recordings on a wire recorder and a Wilcox-Gray disc recorder in about 1953 and 4 years later received his amateur radio operator license, building his transmitter from surplus military equipment.  While a high school senior, he built a digital computer from discrete components, winning a Ford Foundation Future Scientists of America Award.  He worked for 30 years for LaCoste and Romberg, Inc., a manufacturer of gravity meters, then for Avnet Corporation as a programmer, and for Brookhaven Instruments, where he designed a digital storage oscilloscope for use in ion implanters.

Since 1964, he has been a sound engineer at the First Baptist Church of Austin.  In 1974, he formed Audio Productions Company, providing sound and recording services for corporations.  In 2004, he returned to The University of Texas at Austin where he was introduced to surround sound by Professor Sandy Stone of the Advanced Communications Technology Laboratory and Professors Mark Sarisky and Bruce Pennycook of the Butler School of Music.  He is a recording engineer for the Butler School of Music.

John Boiles lives in Austin, Texas, where he writes software, builds things, and presents his amazing ipod and internet controlled devices at Dorkbot Austin

Project:  Dimlet – Dorkbot 21

The Dimlet is an ipod touch controlled light dimmer circuit.  By reading accelerometer output in four directions, a user is able to control the power output of four independent electrical sockets.  The Dimlet was originally built for a friend’s party in July 2009.  John’s Dimlet video is not to be missed!

Project:  Tilty – the ipod touch controlled RC car – Dorkbot 21

Project:  Christmas-spirit-meter (powered by twitter!) – Dorkbot 22

The Christmas-spirit-meter monitors twitter and adjusts Christmas light intensity based on a 2-week moving average of Christmas-related tweets.  John is hoping to finish the spirit-meter prior to Christmas 2009 – if not, we’re sure it will be easy enough to convert into a president’s day-spirit-meter

Project:  iphone controlled oldsmobile – Dorkbot 22

John worked with the guys at Waterloo labs to adapt his iphone-controlled RC car into an iphone-controlled actual car…  And then surf it.

Check out John’s website for details more on some of his work.

Cafe Mundi 1704 E 5th St. (a few blocks east of I-35) (512) 236-8634 FREE EVENT

If you have a project or something you’d like to present, let us know!

Current Presenters:

• Alan Watts presents his new animation app Toon Fu
• Mikal Hart shows off his GPS Box
• Andre Lamothe demos the new chameleons
• Dr. Bleep, Dann Green, and Eric Archer annouce the Handmade Music Austin workshop series, and demo their new Andromeda Space Rockers mini-instruments
• John Boiles shows off his ipod contolled devices (1, 2)
• Brooks Coleman
• Marvin Niebuhr

Dorkbot is, as always, a FREE event.

Laura is a web designer in the Faculty Innovation Center at UT’s Cockrell School of Engineering. She’ll be helping to coordinate our upcoming events, so feel free to contact her if you’d like to speak at our next event or to help out in some way. dorkbotaustin [@] dorkbot [.] org.

If you are interested in volunteering for Dorkbot Austin, please contact us. We can always use extra folks for setup or teardown at our events. Or if ‘you know a guy who knows a guy who has a friend’ who might like to present at our next event, just let us know. dorkbotaustin [@] dorkbot [.] org.

RSVP BEFORE FRIDAY MAR 13, 11:59PM

RSVP (Option 1):  Join the dorkbot-austin announce list (all dorkbot-austin announcelist members have automatic RSVP+1)

RSVP (Option 2):  http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1904017

Co-sponsored by:

• SXSW Interactive
• Silicon Labs
• Mr. Data Consulting
• Monstrous
• Make Magazine

Signs provided by BuildASign.com Giveaways from Mike Rigsby, author of Pointless (yet awesome) Projects for the Electronically Inclined

Current presenters include:

• ArcAttack – Singing Tesla Coils – http://www.arcattack.com/
• Operation Playmate – Extra-planetary Erich Ragsdale vs. Eric Archer’s Big Box o’ Techno – http://www.myspace.com/operationplaymate
• Phil Macnutt – Homebuilt Analog Synthesizer – http://www.philmacnutt.com/siterrt/Analog_Modular.html
• Bleep Labs – http://bleeplabs.com/
• Jason Asbahr / Monstro.us – Presents their latest release Entranced, a 3D interactive music experience game-as-art – http://www.monstro.us
• Alison Lewis – Battery powered crafts to make and sew – http://iheartswitch.com/switchcraft
• FIRST Robotics Anderson High School FIRST robot team #2158, and Girl Scouts of Central Texas FIRST robot team #2881
• George Sabra – Bringing his latest e-waste sculpture http://www.georgesabra.com
• Marvin Niebuhr – Prickly Pear Cactus Rhythm Synth http://flimflamlab.blogspot.com
• The Robot Group – A large selection of projects including the Babbling Head, Ping Pong Printer, Glamour Girl, and more – http://www.robotgroup.org/
• Aileen Adler – Theremin for the Masses – http://www.thereminforthemasses.com
• Lori 16mm Varga – Lots of odd film/handpainted footage and circuit bent sounds
• Jay Smith / Livid – Viditar MIDI controller – http://www.lividinstruments.com
• Bob Comer – Robots used at and info about the Computer Studies and Robotics and Automation program at ACC
• Bill Byrne / The Painful Leg Injuries -  Software and hardware instruments by controlled by Nintendo Wii-mote http://myspace.com/painfulleginjuries
• John P. Funk – multi disciplinary artist, Inventor & creator of LED Space Lights http://www.cozmicfunk.com