Technology

Sneak Peek: Board Forge Pick & Place

Sneak Peek: Board Forge Pick & Place

Born out of a collaboration at famed Chicago hackerspace Pumping Station One, Board Forge is a six-person startup developing a prosumer-grade, open-source circuit board assembly robot. This weekend at SXSW Create, I got a chance to snap a few photos of their prototype version 1.0 while chatting with founder Jeff McAlvay about the democratization of industrial electronics assembly equipment.

What Happens When Your Kickstarter Fails?

What Happens When Your Kickstarter Fails?

Andrew Deagon, Steve Frehn, and Ian Schaser were inspired to create NeckFX after Andrew dreamed up the idea while recovering from knee surgery (Because you know…pain meds). NeckFX is a custom attachment for guitars that light up LEDs as the guitar is played. While I don’t play the guitar (or have any musical ability what so ever) an LED powered guitar seems pretty cool to me. They built a few prototypes like the one shown in the video and even sold them to bands and musicians. They launched a Kickstarter campaign in hopes of raising enough money to ramp up production and really scale up their maker business.

But it didn’t work out that way.

“Heads Down” Display for Bicycles

“Heads Down” Display for Bicycles

So far the coolest thing I’ve seen at SXSW has been this clever early-stage prototype from our own Matt Richardson. It’s a “dynamic bike headlight” which can project your speed (and other useful information) onto the road surface in front of you. Matt showed off the proof-of-concept build, this morning, at Bike Hugger’s Built: Make & Tell event. Well done, Matt!