For a couple of months, I’ve had my Camara Axe Arduino shield kit in a box waiting to be put together. I imported it from the States as it seemed one of the most versatile ways to control flash sync timing in a reasonably cost-effective way. I have done some manual shots with flash and liquid droplets, but have really reached the limit of what I can do effectively with timing by hand. (For more info, see the presentation I did for BarCamp Nottingham in July.) Anyway, today, I finally pulled my finger out and constructed the kit. Those less willing to do a bit of DIY have the option of the more expensive ready-built version.

It’s based around the popular Arduino Uno open source hardware. I bought my Uno from the lovely folks at Oomlaut in the summer. The Camera Axe Shield v5 (CAS5) acts as an additional board with specialist I/O hardware and LCD screen, which piggy-backs onto a regular Uno. It comes as a custom PCB with all the discrete components and LCD screen required to make the shield:

CAS5 Kit of Parts

Maurice Ribble is the CAS5′s designer, and he is terribly helpful if you need any questions answered. The CameraAxe Wiki also has a very easy to follow step-by-step guide to building the kit. I had absolutely no problems seeing where everything should go, and once my rusty soldering skills were honed a little, I was reasonably fast in putting things together. Not quite as fast as the great little stop-motion video of the folks from TechPhotoBlog constructing the kit!

Build in progress

A few hours, a lot of soldering and a couple of minor burns later and it was done! I did manage to avoid setting my  hair on fire this time, which has been known in the past. The smell of singed hair is pretty awful, so I was glad I didn’t do any damage to my locks!

Shield front completed

Shield rear with Uno board

Did It Work?

Yes!

I’m pleased to say that once the CAS5 software was loaded onto the Arduino board, the shield booted up and showed me a nice menu first time – hurrah!

But then I depowered and repowered and it appeared to be dead! Minor panic, until I realised I was using the Uno R2 board, some of which require a very minor mod by adding a diode which prevents a big voltage spike on startup (this apparently upsets the CAS5 board until the software is re-loaded again). I also need an external PSU for the Arduino, since I don’t necessarily want to have to have it connected via USB to my netbook every time I do a shoot.

I guess now I should really learn how to use the thing! It is quite complicated with lots of menu settings – each of which will need careful experimentation with the various different sensors I have also bought (Microphone sensor, Photogate sensor and the Valve sensor) to get optimum results. But as the long winter nights are drawing in again, it’s the perfect time of year to have a play and see what I can achieve. Watch the other space!

Me and my fake moustache

As well as the general session slots, @thehodge and his glamourous assistant @alistair also organised some evening entertainment in the form of a BarCamp Fortunes* Quiz. This culminated in two of the opponents fighting it out by bashing a piñata for sweets. I only caught this with my iPhone, but it was pretty silly!

Simon Willison beats up Adrian Howard's Piñata

So, that’s about all for this post! Here are a few more pictures:

* This really isn’t a rip-off of Family Fortunes, honest

After a walk down the prom followed by meeting up with some other later arrivals, we enjoyed some food and a quick beer before heading to bed for an early night – I for one need my beauty sleep and left the hard-core partying to the more adventurous geeks who were staying nearby.

Leeky and Alistair give BPL some lovin'

Saturday dawned bright and sunny (the weather has been great for the past two BarCamps too). After a hearty English Breakfast we headed over to the Pleasure Beach to sign in and get our electrical gear safety tested. Alistair had bought a soldering iron especially! Thankfully, Gemma didn’t throw him out for this!

Room sign for The Tower

The sessions were short this year – a mere 20 minutes with a 10-minute turnaround. Whilst this may be good for the first-timer unsure if they can fill half an hour (and also good for getting as many slots as possible into a 4-room venue with 140 attendees) a lot of folks felt this was a bit short. Some talks had barely got into their stride before Gemma came around and cracked the time-keeper’s whip. It is a delicate balance between timing, rooms and sessions, and I wonder with such a big turnout this year whether a venue with more smaller rooms is a better way to go in future? I have no idea if such a venue exists in Blackpool so it’s easy to say but harder to pull off…

I enjoyed lots of sessions during the day. First up was a discussion on Agile development lead by @dchetwynd. I found this a bit bemusing as the discussion was partly underway when I joined. But more so because, as a lone freelancer who rarely works with others on a project, the concept of pair-programming and the like was a little alien to me. Still food for thought however.

The lovely Blue Screen Of Death!

The next was fun session on the History of Computer Error Messages. The guy speaking was brave foolhardy enough to attempt a live demonstration of a Spectrum loading from tape. Under normal demo conditions, this is the kiss of death and nothing works. But of course, despite failing several times during rehearsals, once in front of an audience, the machine behaved impeccably and showed no error! Argh! This was one such session which had barely got into its stride before it was time to call it a day.

@cubicgarden talked about sex again – more specifically, the etiquette of who should pay for a first date in the 2010′s. The general consensus amongst the audience seemed to favour going Dutch, but this has not been Ian’s experience generally.

For reasons best known to himself,  @alistair suggested we should try to make a pop video. No, don’t worry, not the moving-pictures variety but showing a succession of stills to illustrate a song. Hard enough in 20 minutes – we required a bit of extra time during lunch to complete some of the photos and he spent a while after the BarCamp doing the editing. We chose the song Rollercoaster by B*Witched (thanks Gemma for that suggestion!) – well, we were sitting next to one at the time, so I suppose it made sense! Here’s the finished article:

Otto helps out

After our lunchtime rations (three small sandwiches and a modest portion of chips each), the afternoon swung into action. I joined the Nintendo-themed Craft workshop to make an 8-bit fridge magnet out of tiny Hama beads. Fiddly but fun! I had some help from my new little friend Otto (skillfully knitted for me by @catashton).

For the newbies at BarCamp, there was a session which explained the rules of Werewolf. I was sitting at the back sorting some pictures during this one, but did briefly prowl around (at the appropriate moment) wearing my lovely new hat, which was christened Diefenheader.

Ian gets to know Diefenheader

It scared Ian out of his wits when I snuck up behind him! But he later made peace with it…

We weren’t confined to the venue all day – as well as sneaking out for some photos for the video, we also had the opportunity to watch the Physics Busker perform on the prom nearby. He was demonstrating little rockets made with bicarb and water mixed in a little fillm pot and shaken up. Placed cap down, enough pressure builds up until it can be contained no more – POP! – the missile fires into the air.

The Physics Busker prepares his ammo

We were kicked out of the venue briefly while they set up for the after party, but this gave us the opportunity to take all our stuff back to the B&B and travel light for the evening. As usual, there were plenty of free drinkies available thanks to the generous sponsors, and lots of nosh too. I’m not so sure Rock Band worked for those not participating – at times, it was so loud it was difficult to talk to someone sitting next to you… previous years have had a magician for the entertainment, which I think worked better as it involved the whole audience rather than just a handful at a time.

All in all, an enjoyable BarCamp and fun weekend in the North West. Thanks to @ruby_gem and @biglesp for all their hard work in organising.

Here is a selection of my photos from the day:

Hodge hacks with Lego

There were plenty of talks and sessions to go to in the mansion, whilst other geeks were just happy to sit in the sun and play with Lego. We were like pigs in you know what once @matthewcashmore was brave enough to give us some power on the lawn, thanks to a portable generator! The only issue was the wifi, which seemed to be rather flakey. A pity, because obviously it’s difficult to hack without access to the internet. I understand that previous OTA’s have always had impeccable wifi, so it was a shame. I’m not complaining though – I spent much of the two days “disconnected” anyway, only checking Twitter briefly by 3G. It’s nice to have a rest sometimes – I’m not addicted, honest!

Mr Duck - there in spirit

Hev being rattled by Hodge

Hello Campers! Cristiano, Mel and Leeky in their tent

Friday evening’s entertainment was provided by some excellent Ignite sessions from, amongst others: @billt (on Digital Public Space); @alistair (on his Metro Simulator); @edent (on QRpedia) and @Ewan(on all things Eurovision). There was also plenty of beer, pizza and lasagne to keep geeks coding through the night. Some decided to pitch camp on the lawn in front of the main house – certainly a very cool campsite!

What have I let myself in for?

Leeky sketches the Cunning Plan

Since I didn’t have any better ideas for a hack over the weekend, @Leeky press-ganged volunteered me to help him and @Ewan build a hardware version of the Enigma Machine called Enigma Kerplunk.

What could possibly go wrong?

Instead of wiring and cogged rotors, we decided to go for the full Wallace & Gromit approach and build ours out of plywood, garden hose and plastic cups. The “signal” through each path was originally planned as dropping a marble down the pipe, but standard garden hose from B&Q isn’t big enough for your average marble to pass without resembling a snake swallowing its breakfast. So – what to use insted? Ballbearings? Nope – couldn’t find any in said B&Q. But then we thought of those teeth-breaking ballbearing-like silver ball cake decorations and we had our solution!

Oh no! Who let me loose with the power tools?

Enigmatic Trio!

After enjoying too much beer and sunshine on Friday, we didn’t actually get anything built (although we did manage to source most of the materials). So Saturday morning dawned, and after feasting hugely on a Full English Fryup in the marquee (#win #win #win) and watching a few minutes of the England vs Scotland rugby on the big screen (#win – eventually!), we set to work building the contraption.

Drawing. Measuring. Planning. Sawing. Hammering. Swearing. Unscrewing. Laughing. Sweating. Scheming. Chopping. Sticking. Adjusting. Munching. Swigging. Testing.

For a while we became an entertaining side show as geeks passed from the mansion to the marquee in search of tea and talks. But we carried on regardless.

And then it was done!

The hack itself was presented after all the competition entries whilst the judging was taking place – yes, we were the cheap interval entertainment!

Onstage - picture by Rachel Clarke

It went well. Apart from only some of the pyros going off. Ooops. Tread carefully until the rogues were made safe and removed…

Several of my other hacking buddies did well in the competition, winning anything from Lego Mindstorm Kits, a Drone, books, Amazon vouchers and big fat wads of cash. Well done peeps – you know who you are!

It was heaps of fun and I really do hope that OTA decides to return to Bletchley for next year’s event. We were terribly lucky with the weather, having two days of scorching sunshine to play in. But a huge thanks must go to the staff at Bletchley Park for letting so many geeks run amok, camp on their lawn and screw things into their picnic benches.*

* This might not have happened

You can see the rest of my pictures here:

Saturday Morning Grid

Baywatch Rescue - Brighton Style

The sessions were many and varied. I enjoyed attending talks about:

• Funky Decision Making with @alanmjackson
• @aral taught us to sing
• Wikipiedian “Ask Me Anything” by @tommorris
• @joshje (one of my 100 Strangers!) on Designing For Distraction
• Regular Creativity – Chris talked about making a piece of music once a week
• We had a live screening of Dr Who in the evening
• @thehodge told us of his plans for world domination his new Think Startups hack event
• @alistair talked to a small but appreciative audience about bulding SmallQR.com
• I managed to escape for a photowalk on the pier with Alistair and Dom on Sunday afternoon too.

Here are my best pictures from the weekend:

Happy Barman Alistair!

Helpers at the reception desk

As with previous Newcastle BarCamps, I found it a very friendly and informal atmosphere. We had some helpers volunteer for holding the fort at reception – they seemed to do a good job and never get bored!

The venue was also very good for holding a BarCamp – and we even had our own real bar to serve the drinks from on Saturday evening! Alistair enjoyed that bit – can you tell?

As well as having a drink or two, there were plenty of other evening entertainments including unicycling, Dr Horrible in the Cinema, power point karaoke, werewolf and a monster game of Carcassonne. The retro gaming corner also went down well, and the trainset got a run out too.

There was also a great selection of sessions during the two days, on all sorts of topics. I did my High Speed Flash presentation again and enjoyed attending other sessions. They were very diverse this time around and didn’t all belong in the technology camp – which is great to see some variety. There are only so many talks on jQuery you can attend!

Here are my pictures from the event: