The project is a 3D printed robotic head for a telepresence immersive experience, the project includes movement of the 3D printed head and computer vision. Using the accelerometer that the Oculus Rift headset provides we are moving several servos that have webcams mounted, the goal is to mimic remotely the moves of a person wearing the headset. We have a node.js apps that obtains this data, process it and translate it to actuators plugged to an Arduino, OculusHead have movement on 3-axis with servos simulating almost all of the possible movements of a human head. For the vision part we are using two webcams mounted on the servo system that can see in the same direction the user sees, this is real time streamed to a computer and can be visualized on the Oculus Rift headset plugged to this computer in a different location that the OculusHead is located. There are several filters applied to the source image to give the full immersive experience including the depth that's needed for the headset. The software part is implemented using JavaScript and node.js and libraries like vr.js, three.js, johnny-five and socket.io. We are currently working on printing a full head (based on InMoov project) and implementing more features of computer vision like face recognition and more image processing.
Educator, tinkerer and software developer. Elemental Geeks co-founder, Innovation Lab @ GalileoU lead, Android GDE, NodeBots Guatemala & GDG Guatemala co-organizer. Firmly believer in the power of community. From Galileo University he is trying to empower as many people as possible in latam to become makers. He started Engineering Kickstart a program for high schoolers to get started into coding and basic electronics, to get them excited about tech, to let them connect with mentors and make them cross the line from users to makers.
I intend to talk for a little bit about my own journey to becoming a Maker (becoming a software engineer, finding a hackerspace accidentally, getting to know people, taking classes) and then give a partially-serious, partially-humourous list and set of anecdotes on "things that happen/how you change when you become a Maker" (serious things like how my job widened and I had new opportunities at work and humourous things like "covert bathroom soldering" and "sparkfun evangelism").
Working for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at Kennedy Space Center as a Computer Engineer, Jamie Szafran works on projects like the Spaceport Command and Control System and in the SwampWorks rapid prototyping lab. Outside of work, she's a half-marathoner and triathlete, a professionally-trained and performing musician, a self-styled programming language theorist, and the treasurer and a member of FamiLAB, Orlando's hackerspace. Most importantly, she's a puzzle-solver, a teacher, and a lifelong student. Jamie got started with science and software tinkering early, but didn't get into the hardware world and really consider herself a Maker until after she found FamiLAB and started learning about electronics and the Maker Movement. Since then, she's gone from being a software developer who'd never heard of the word "Arduino" to teaching soldering at Maker Faire Orlando, giving talks on topics ranging from NASA's future to hackerspace history, attending her first Maker Faire, competing in hackathons, and learning new ways to let the magic smoke out.
Nick Doiron is a developer and mapmaker. He works on websites, hardware projects, and open source libraries at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City.
Kristina Durivage is an independent software developer interested in data visualization and making the world a brighter place with LEDs. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Susan Hinton is a web developer by day, and hobby enthusiast by night. She's currently heavily immersed in the 3D printing scene, teaching and enabling others in the technology. Her latest weapon of choice is a Printrbot Jr, which has been tricked out with upgrades and experiments. In 2011, she released a 3D printed jewelry range at http://owlposse.com. Her idea of an ideal Friday night is 3D modeling jewelry and robots, accompanied by a glass or two of quality scotch. As a board member of SYN Shop the Las Vegas hackerspace, Susan maintains the rapid prototyping station there. She also runs a newsletter called 3D Print Weekly over at 3dprintweekly.com. She's probably attempting to 3D print a cat right now.
Bryan Hughes is a front-end developer at Rdio and an organizer for the NodeBots SF meetup group. He went to college for a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, but wandered into JavaScript through a fortuitous serious of events. "Back in his day," Bryan created robots using C and 68k assembly that took weeks to create. He still enjoys building robots today, just without the C and assembly code. He typically prefers working with the Raspberry Pi, having added support for it in Johnny-Five with the raspi-io plugin. In his spare time, you can find him wine tasting or enjoying the arts with his awesome wife and attempting to be an amateur photographer.
NodeBots are her passion! Kassandra has experience with several different platforms, and am enthusiastic about documentation and teaching others. The platforms she has experience with include arduino, Pinoccio, SparkCore, sphero, AR drones, and adafruit's Gemma and Flora. She also has experience with building wearable tech, and working with RGB LED installations.
Mike is a developer at GitHub. After having good friends playing with hardware for many years, he was inspired to bring some of this to GitHub. Starting with a 3D printer (now controlled by their company chat bot, Hubot), he has slowly worked to reignite the hardware hacking culture and make it easier for the open source hardware community to leverage GitHub for their needs.
Pawel is a software engineer with Zappos.com and an enthusiastic maker at his local Las Vegas hackerspace, SYN Shop. He has been programming ever since his parents bought him a Commodore 64 for Christmas. His first stumbling steps with electronics were on a Radio Shack 100-in-1 Project Kit, but he yearned to be able to control the components and program logic using a powerful computer (like the Commodore 64). Though he toyed with Arduinos and other microcontrollers, these dreams didn't come to fruition until JSConf 2013, which he did not attend. Instead, his friend came back with photographs and video clips, raving about NodeBots. When Dan Shaw proposed 'International Nodebots Day' and set up a github repository signup to gauge interest, Pawel immediately sent a pull request even though he had no idea what he was doing and pulled his friend into helping him organize the event. Since JSConf used somewhat expensive Parallax robots and there wasn't a huge budget, he came up with a simple open source design for a wooden laser cut sumo bot kit, now available at http://sumobotkit.com and filmed an instructional video for attendees to follow. As a result of the popularity of the kit, he was invited to run the robotics workshop at RobotsConf, a JSConf offshoot as well as the next JSConf (which he did attend) and Makerland Conf in his home country of Poland. He developed a healthy passion for teach robotics through these conferences as well as local NodeBots events and programs with Code for America.
Jay enjoys Arduinos, Embedded Linux, Laser Cutters, 9-axis inertial measurement units, and Primesense sensors. Need we say more?
Donovan studied computer science at the University of Houston and continues to further his programming knowledge at key industry events, including JSConf, NodeConf and TXJS. He is also a regular contributor to Johnny-Five, an open-source framework for programming robots using JavaScript.
Gabriel is a software developer, innovator, father and husband. He didn't invent the web, HTTP, JavaScript or even rounded corners, and he haven't written a book (yet) or any draft specifications, but he does enjoy the challenge of pushing the limits of technology. He is passionate about spending time with his family, learning everything, messing with technology and evangelizing America's pastime. Gabriel currently works as a Software Architect for the LDS Church where he has been influential in pushing the web as a strong platform for building applications. He is the founder and current manager of the Utah Google Developer Group where he enjoys interacting with other individuals who are passionate about learning technology. Gabriel has over a decade of experience as a developer and a B.S in Computer Science from Utah Valley University.
Sara began working in marketing in 2010, and repeatedly found herself in roles with strong technical components. She was consistently the most technical person on her team (and the nerdiest). After managing the development of an iPad application, she realized she wanted to start creating technology, not just using it. She began teaching herself programming in 2012, and when she left marketing and began working at New York University, Sara finally had a schedule that would let her explore and develop a passion for code. She took one course through Girl Develop It, then promptly took all the other courses they offered in New York. While planning a conference for the Information Systems department at NYU, Sara dove into the website’s code to update it herself. She loved it (and developed a deep respect for well-formatted code). She began putting any spare moments at work towards rebuilding the website, and those were the best moments at work she had ever had. She was hooked.
Francis is a long time developer and technologist. He's run development teams for hedge funds, tech startups, and private education. He loves teaching, javascript and robots.
At The Hybrid Group, we are passionate about making useful things with technology. Based in Los Angeles and San Francisco, California, our software developers & designers specialize in JavaScript, Go, Ruby, Cloud Computing, the Internet of Things, Application Design, and most importantly, helping you solve problems. Find out more at hybridgroup.com
Thomas A. Valletta, Mobile Architect, Open Web Evangelist, and hack has been developing for the web for fourteen years. His clients range across industries including defence, healthcare, technology, e-commerce, human resources and religion. He has professionally developed native applications for Android, iPhone, WebOS, Blackberry, and Windows. He has engineered solutions using Java, .Net, PHP, JavaScript, Objective C, VBScript and Commodore Basic (I am pretty sure that those last two don't count). He lives outside of Salt Lake City, Utah with his wife and four children.
Raquel Vélez is a Senior Software Developer at npm, Inc. in Oakland, CA. She has previously worked at institutions such as Caltech, NASA JPL, the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and various universities in Europe. In her off time, you can find her baking, teaching NodeBots not to fall off of tables, and speaking. Also, hanging out with her hilarious husband and two cats dressed in dog suits.
Rick Waldron is an open source software engineer at Bocoup and creator of Johnny-Five, the JavaScript Arduino programming framework for Node.js. In addition to being a core committer to jQuery, Rick sits on the jQuery Foundation's Board of Directors and serves as a representative to ECMA/TC39, forging the future of the JavaScript programming language. Though sometimes abrasive, Rick is actually a nice guy.
As web developer and farmer from Akron, Ohio, Persa Zula has become intrigued by the potential of web-enabled personal electronics. She has worked on Raspberry Pi and Arduino projects for the past year, and has enjoyed incorporating sensors and automation with web projects. Recently she's discovered the SparkCore, and it has made web-enabled projects so much easier! Persa is interested in spreading the love of open-source hardware to makers and doers, as well as how to build small web apps to engage with the environment around us.