Come on down to the Haiti relief event at Lowe Mill tomorrow. You will seldom see such an amazing musical lineup for $5 admission. There’s also a silent auction fundraiser, and Antitronics is contributing some items so come bid on them! Here’s what we’re putting into the hat:

Two Drawdio kits from Adafruit Industries. These are fun little kits that make a lencil that generates tones when you draw, using the resistance of the graphite on the paper. You can see one already built at the Antitronics space – I’ll be there this afternoon.
Auction Info (pdf).

Two Introduction to Arduino kits and lessons. These each include an Arduino Duemlanove, some assorted extras, and a free lesson.
Auction Info (pdf).

Update: Here’s a link to some of the awesome artwork available at the auction.

I arrived today in Dallas with the makerbot in fine shape, after flying with it as checked baggage. I had checked with the folks at makerbot labs, and they advised me that a Pelican 1620 case was the way to travel with a ‘bot. They were right.

I have to give a shout out for the people I ordered the case from – Leisure Pro. I ordered the case with less than a week to go before this trip, so I had it shipped second day via UPS. Leisure Pro called on delivery day and said “Your shipment was just delivered to us. We don’t know why, but since you ordered this second day you must need it in a hurry – what can we do to make sure you have it when you need it?”.

Wow – proactive customer service! They got the case to me in time, it holds the makerbot, a handful of tools, and a couple of pounds of plastic with no problems. And – it comes in under 50lbs, which makes the checked bag limit.

So the ‘bot is here at the Ubuntu Developer Summit, and is printing as I write.

Unless the creek rises or something, I’ll be at the space on Saturday demoing the makerbot during the public hours. Come on by and say hi!

I’ve ordered a dozen arduino Duemilanove boards in assorted colors, for the upcoming Intro to arduino class at the space. Due to my travel it looks like the date will be Saturday, Oct 3rd at 5:00 PM or so. Final details and pricing will be settled soon –

Retail price for the Arduino boards is $30 – what I’d like to be able to do is charge the $30 and throw in some resistors and LEDs, a potentiometer, a USB A->B cable, and a nine volt battery clip with the power connector for the arduino. This will let everyone leave with something that they can play with later. If you want to bring your own, that’s fine. The class is free.

Stand by for more information

The two hands project will be visiting Huntsville, and Antitronics, Sew-Brilliant, and Maker’s Local 256. We don’t know the date yet, just that it will be in the next month.

Makerbot has made an announcement that they are going to try crowdsourcing manufacturing for some of the makerbot parts.

In Dublin for a Canonical development meeting, I grabbed a few friends and we visited the TOG hackerspace. We met some great people and happened to be there on their microcontroller night, so we saw some arduino projects in the works.
Here are some photos.
TOG is an exciting space. Here’s their web site.