Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Jamming out with Spikenzie Labs”.
Where we’re going right now is the maker shed, which is the retail outlet of maker media and we’re going to check out some of the electronics and kits and prototyping boards that they have on offer? Oh, I think we are going to start off over at the folks from Spike NZ. This is spikenzielabs hi there. How are you I’m Mike Colombo for Make Magazine? What’S your name mark mark and you’re you’re with Spike NZ? That’S right! Yes, awesome! Um yeah! I i really, i really dig your. I dig your kits I’ve. Actually, I’ve done a couple of them, and one of them that I haven’t done is.
Is this what’s what’s this? This kid is the drum kit. It comes as an arduino compatible PCB with six piezos. So the electronics are included in the kit in the part that you supply yourself is what are we going to make your drum pads? Out of, i recommend most pads chunks of metal. In this case we got some foaming, camping mat underneath to dampen it.
But if you i mean, if you really wanted to with the piezo, as i mean you, can you can break them out with wires and put them to anything that you want, like you, can make your own like real drum set out of it right, absolutely yeah. Sure we have, we have people who send us videos every so often over the way. They’Ve done it and what I particularly like somebody’s taking some tubing and they’ve stuck in stuck ikea plastic food containers on to it and they’ve just moved the peso’s inside that and they made a drum kit. Yeah.
That’S great, and I mean that’s that’s the cool thing about you know, open source hardware is that is that you can, you can take something and you can riff on it. You can you can you know turn into your own thing. I don’t know, would you agree with that? Absolutely so um I’m itching to try these out.
Can I give them a try, say that again, we’ve been waiting for you all day. Thanks I like to play um awesome. What else do we have from Spike? Nz really knew we have our Telegraph kit.
Basically, you type Telegraph onto the key over here and it decodes. Whatever letter you’ve just peed in wow, that’s really cool. You know, um back back in New York, um one of our editors, Matt Richardson, was sort of inspired. After Hurricane sandy to get his ham, operators license – and I know – and I know to do that – you need to know a little more scotch so like actually having something like this. That you can practice on ever imagined would be a good tool. Absolutely it’s definitely a great tool for learning.
When I was developing this a couple of months ago, I knew Morse code really well, oh really for sure. It’S because I kept trying different letters and combinations and things like that it has a beeper in it. So you can turn to be / on or off, so you don’t have to disturb other people. If you don’t want to hear the beep, so you can just see the dots and dashes here’s a dot for you and if it’s a bit longer it’s a dash. I have it set sort of two easy mode now, so the kids can play when they when they come to the table here, but it’s based on North, we know so any of the settings in it are really easily changeable and the quotes on the website. So you can just download it and hack it go away with it.
That’S awesome, yeah i mean what one of the cool stories about Morse code was. I don’t know if you know this was that one of the one of the really of key sources of intelligence in world war, two was listening to the Germans, send Morse code, because all the Morse code operators have what you call a hand which is like your Particular style or your accent of how so based on the signals that they were getting in the hand they could know which Morse code operators were in which location and then sort of, but you know, figure out strategically what the Germans were doing. It meet right. Very neat yeah um, so I don’t know any more skill, but I know SOS a little bit cheeky.
Oh ok! So, let’s see if I can, if I can try to spell Mike so all right, let’s see em all right, good sort of slipped out of my hand, but that’s okay! You have you, have, you know, yeah hit it now, so I ok and okay and there’s the E I can’t spell there. We go also all right. Let me up to just hear of the day and also our best drummer of the day. Yeah I win the prize all right. Well, it was nice talking to you. Thank you.
Thank you very much and have a good weekend. .