File > Make

A few weeks ago I went to hear a meetup lecture about The Maker Culture , from Wikipedia: “.. the maker culture include engineering-oriented pursuits such as electronics, robotics, 3-D printing…” . Basically it saying that the development doesn’t end when the compilation is successful. Being a Software Developer, I’ve always been intrigued by the potential of learning how to combine software with hardware and how it can extend my creativity belt. One day, it will be intuitive to us to have “File > Make” in apps as File > Print.

My wife studies Design Management. Last semester she took a course in HCI. Their project was to do something “interactive”. They learnt how to write code and how to use Arduino. Being managed by her (I’m not going to do that again…!) , she designed a model and I assisted her coding it into the Arduino. Her vision was to make a lamp, a real lamp inspired by Pixar Luxo lamp by adding some kind of “personality” to it. So we’ve built “The Spoiled Lamp”. A lamp that is responsive to touch that has several motoric controls. It is assembled from a basic Arduino board, 4 servos, simple led and home-made touch sensor.

I highly recommend you all to buy Arduino (25$) and start hacking!

Watch The Spoiled Lamp from Lilach Rapaport-Berger on Vimeo.