Last weekend, I got to participate in Hackbright's first-ever Hardware Hackathon, Silicon Chef! It was incredibly fun, challenging and inspirational. My team was working on ZigBee networking with XBee shields: tiny devices that create small personal area networks using radio signals to communicate on a "mesh network" -- that is, networks with no central control or high-powered transmitter/receiver.
In theory, we would team up with 1-2 other teams and generate, transmit & process signals that would activate LED lights, power a motor, send a message to an LCD screen, or some other fun & creative network project.
 |
| XBee shield with antenna |
The idea was fairly basic, and we got these AWESOME SparkFun kits to build out our ideas - each kit had an Arduino redboard, a bunch of wires & resistors, LED lights, an accelerometer, LCD display, and booklet with illustrations on how to build each circuit. As it turned out, we spent the entire first day troubleshooting our XBee shields; we realized at the end of the day that they weren't actually compatible with the red Arduinos that were supplied in the kits [cue the sad "You Lose" gameshow music].
On Sunday, we returned with renewed energy, determined to build something cool with what *did* work. Our fantastic mentor, Bill Ward, showed up with Arduino Blue boards, which had the proper connectors to work with the XBee shields. After a brief brainstorming session, we decided to build an LED light show powered by a remotely-networked accelerometer. Fun AND pretty! We worked our butts off to get everything working, and in the end we were able to demo our project, albeit at the very last minute. Hooray!
 |
Me (center) with teammates Joanna Ma (left)
aka @Pegui and Erica Baker (right),
aka @Ericajoy. Brilliant ladies! |
 |
| Yes, I love seeds. |
On the homefront, we've been working after-hours to get our garden into production mode. Sent off some soil samples for a test to make sure we're okay to plant directly into the ground, and in the meantime, we sowed a cover crop of buckwheat over the areas we hope to plant veggies. Buckwheat makes great green manure, meaning once it begins to grow, you till it under for extra soil nutrition. We also planted "Bee-friendly" and "Hummingbirds' Delight" flower mixes in our front garden beds, and have been watering them twice daily -- hope to see some of the little guys sprouting up soon!
 |
| Little sprouts, all in rows |
Speaking of sprouts, we have those too... Rainbow chard, lettuce mix, broccoli raab and mustard greens, to be precise. They didn't take more than a few days to pop their pretty heads up out of their starter pots, and in a couple weeks, will be ready to go into the ground. If our soil test results come back with the thumbs-up, we have all these other seeds that we'll start at that time -- I can't wait!
And finally, here's a pretty picture of our cranberry bean plant, who's really going off right now. We'll probably save 10-15 beans to sprout into new plants, since we won't get much of a meal out of the total harvest these pods will produce. That being said, I'm sure we'll cook up a few of them, just to enjoy some of the fruits of our labor ASAP!
 |
| Beauteous beans |
