Makers Faire in San Mateo<\/a>. Don’t go to see\u00c2\u00a0us, go to see Maker Faire with your family! It’s really a tremendous event.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\nYou know what, you -should- go to Maker Faire to see orbs!<\/p>\n
And I didn’t even mention SWARM at Subzero in San Jose June 1…. \u00c2\u00a0or more\u00c2\u00a0orbage at Robogames in San Francisco June 12-14! Oh wait, I just did. :-)<\/p>\n
Here’s a bit more about the Jaunty Jackalope release party!<\/p>\n
The San Francisco Jaunty Jackalope release party was held on Thursday April 23 and was by all accounts a great success. \u00c2\u00a0It was quite well attended; I would roughly estimate several dozen people or 50-60. \u00c2\u00a0We held the party in conjunction with a group of technically inclined electronic musicians on the Mp3Death.US Creative Commons netlabel, and they were responsible for a good portion of the draw. \u00c2\u00a0The event was billed variously as “Ubuntu Linux Release Party featuring Linux Music & Robots”, or “Jens and the Jaunty Jackalope” (Jens being one of the performers). \u00c2\u00a0“Robots” was a reference to the Orb SWARM project, which brought two of its machines to perform; they both ran embedded Debian on a TS-7800 board.<\/p>\n
Our contact with Mp3Death.US was through its founder Jordan Gray, who presented the previous month at Bay Area Linux Users Group. \u00c2\u00a0Jordan makes all of his music on Linux; his main tools are the open source MIXXX and LittleGPTracker applications, and he performs using two Linux-based devices: an EeePC netbook (running Ubuntu) and Game Park GP2X handheld. \u00c2\u00a0Jordan graciously agreed to perform at the event, and in addition enlisted several of his friends to perform on the bill.<\/p>\n
They had been planning to throw a birthday party for a couple of their DJs, so we agreed to combine parties. \u00c2\u00a0We also recruited interim_descriptor, author of the open source “dvj” music visualization software. \u00c2\u00a0INTD ran projections on the wall for the his own set as well as the other artists’.<\/p>\n
The Orb SWARM team demonstrated one of their robots rolling around the floor inside its shell (2 1\/2 ft diameter aluminum sphere cage). \u00c2\u00a0The orb interacted with partygoers, operated by a SWARM crewman with remote control. \u00c2\u00a0In addition to moving around the floor it flashed patterns on a matrix of multicolored LEDs and produced a variety of sounds. \u00c2\u00a0Besides the shelled orb, we set up a naked robot on a table where people could see its inner workings. \u00c2\u00a0It was connected by crossover cable to a laptop, and we ran a telnet session into the robot to demonstrate the Debian command line of the embedded ARM processor inside.<\/p>\n
About half the party space was taken up by a laptop area where people were doing various things on Linux. \u00c2\u00a0Grant Bowman performed a fresh Linux install on an HP Netbook, using the Jaunty Jackalope Ubuntu Netbook Remix bootable USB stick he made earlier that day. \u00c2\u00a0We also gave away a Jaunty Jackalope CD on request. \u00c2\u00a0A number of other interesting Linux devices were present, including an OLPC XO laptop and a phone-sized Nokia device running Debian (brought by a member of Noisebridge, the local hacking space).<\/p>\n
A good time was had by all and we hope to repeat our success in October for Karmic Koala.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We’ve been lax about posting to the SWARM blog… SWARM gets out way more than you know! Last week the orbs were found dancing and flirting with the laptops at the\u00c2\u00a0Jaunty Jackalope Ubuntu Linux Release party!\u00c2\u00a0(Each orb runs ARM embedded Debian, pretty nerdy, huh?) This Thursday 4-30-09 a cadre of orbs will be migrating to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":222,"url":"http:\/\/blog.orbswarm.com\/2009\/05\/26\/swarm-at-subzero-san-jose-june-5th-2009\/","url_meta":{"origin":211,"position":0},"title":"SWARM at SubZERO San Jose June 5th 2009","date":"May 26, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"We'll be rolling our orbots into the hearts of San Jose-ians (hmm, \"San Franciscan\" rolls off the tongue... there's got to be a better phrase ;-) ) on June 5th. 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They're so excited to see us that we\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Fun"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":249,"url":"http:\/\/blog.orbswarm.com\/2010\/10\/12\/swarm-camp\/","url_meta":{"origin":211,"position":2},"title":"SWARM Camp","date":"October 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The orbs breath life into us as we breath life into them! This coming weekend we'll be making a new push to bring the orbs to the next level with communication, choreography, and autonomy!","rel":"","context":"In "Progress"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":144,"url":"http:\/\/blog.orbswarm.com\/2008\/04\/04\/what-is-swarm\/","url_meta":{"origin":211,"position":3},"title":"What is SWARM?","date":"April 4, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"SWARM is a kinetic art work consisting of multiple semi-autonomous spherical robots (\"Orbs\") that roll under their own power. Each has a spherical shell 30 inches in diameter: roughly waist high to an adult. Orb shells were computer-designed and cut from a flat plate of aluminum, then welded together to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Progress"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":217,"url":"http:\/\/blog.orbswarm.com\/2009\/05\/25\/swarm-at-google-io-conference-maker-faire-robogames\/","url_meta":{"origin":211,"position":4},"title":"SWARM at Google IO Conference, Maker Faire, Robogames","date":"May 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Building the rolling, singing robotic singularity takes a lot of work, I tell ya! After they've taken over, things will be so much easier, I'm sure. In the mean time, you can see SWARM at several events in the coming weeks. 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