Category Archives: Fests and Summits

KiCon 2019, Chicago

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The seed for my long overdue tour of the US was planted when I realised that my son – and “Minion-at-Large” at WyoLum, Hearsh’s Graduation at the University of Pittsburgh and KiCon 2019 were happening practically on the same weekend. Thus were set in motion the gears that culminated on my current Whirlwind tour of the US. I was looking forward to both events with equal anticipation. First step was to take a couple of small hops halfway across the world.

One small hop, then a large one !

At WyoLum, we have been using KiCad since 2010, when it was still quite rough around the edges, but suited us better than other existing EDA even with all of its shortcomings. Since then, I’ve been consistently using KiCad for all of our hardware projects. And I love conducting workshops and boot camps to help people get started with KiCad. Over the years, at many locations in India and the US, I’ve conducted quick 2 hour introductions, as well as long, 2 ½ day intensive boot camps. This summer trip, I planned to do more of the same wherever possible. But I wasn’t sure what I could talk about, or do a workshop on, at a KiCad conference attended by novices, power users, developers and everyone in between.

Alongside of KiCad, we have also been using FreeCAD since several years. FreeCAD is an open source, parametric 3D modelling software similar to AutoCAD, Solidworks and Fusion360. It’s an amazing tool to develop models for 3D printing, Laser cutting or CNC engraving. We have been using it to create models of electronic components for use with KiCad, and also for designing enclosures for our projects.

Currently, I’m using FreeCAD to design a 3D printed case for a photo booth project we are working on right now, and it seemed like an apt topic to talk about at KiCon 2019 – “Mechanical CAD integration with electrical CAD”. We built our first photo booth in 2013 for the Open Hardware Summit, and an updated version for MAKE: magazine in 2016. The latest version is a huge improvement on the earlier versions – more about it in another blog post – and I’ve spend a lot of time trying to design an enclosure for it. Just like us, I figured everyone else who builds circuit boards will sooner or later require an enclosure, and using KiCad + FreeCAD seems like a killer combo.

While at the conference, I set up our TouchSelfie photo booth, and we managed to get some great snaps. Here’s a LINK to the photo album.

There are two separate use cases where FreeCAD is useful when designing electronics. One is to build 3D models of electronic components, align these models with their KiCad footprints, and embed them within the KiCad project. The other is to design an enclosure around the completed KiCad board which can then be 3D printed, laser cut or machined / injection moulded. In both cases, the basic FreeCAD workflow remains quite similar, and my talk focused on providing a quick walk through of the commonly used workbenches. I also briefly talked about two special workbenches which are very useful – KiCad Step Up Tools and CADquery workbench. The former, in particular, provides very strong integration between KiCad and FreeCAD. Embedded below is the video from my talk at KiCon 2019, and a link for the slides deck.

VIDEO : “Fast 3D Model Creation Using FreeCAD” – Anool Mahidharia (KiCon 2019)

Slide deck, KiCon 2019 (Google Slides)

It’s not easy covering such a lot of ground within under 30 minutes, so I was glad to have a chance to do a longer workshop the next day where I (hopefully) guided a roomful of folks get started with the basics of FreeCAD such as constrained sketches, boolean operations and parametric modeling.

KiCon 2019 has been a great experience for me, and I met a ton of interesting people from all around, and made a lot of new friends. I’m hoping it becomes a recurring event and look forward to the next edition. Videos of the talks are being uploaded on YouTube on the Contextual Electronics channel. Do check them out, give a thumbs up, and share them around.

Anool’s Whirlwind Tour in the Summer of 2019

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Less than a week from now, I’ll travel halfway across the world from Mumbai for a 2 month, Whirlwind Tour of the US east coast. As usual, I’m taking this opportunity to spread some Open Source love the best way I can – by doing workshops at Maker Space’s along the coast.

If you want to get started with PCB design using KiCad, or CAD design using FreeCAD, check out my schedule and sign up for the workshops if I’m passing by your town. Here’s what I’ll be up to during my stay here in 2019.

Hopping along the East Coast !
  • The very next day after arriving in New York city, I’ll do a day-long KiCad boot camp at NYC Resistor.
    • APR 14th, 2019, Sunday, 10:00 am to 6:00 pm
      KiCad Boot Camp – (Open Source PCB Design Software), at NYC Resistor
  • On 17th April, I’ll follow up with a short, introductory session on FreeCAD at NYC Resistor helping hackers get started with the basics of CAD design.
  • On 24th April, while in Pittsburgh, I’ll be hanging out on the Hackaday.io chat channel doing a Hack Chat – talking about KiCad and FreeCAD. The Hackaday Hack Chat is where all the hackers and makers hang out, and is a great place to discuss, ask, learn, show off, or generally spend time talking to others just like you from all around the world.
  • Chicago is hosting KiCon 2019 – the first ever user-centric KiCad conference, and it is shaping up to be a great event. I will be talking, as well as doing a workshop, on using FreeCAD to quickly model components for use with KiCad’s 3D visualizer, and get started on basic mechanical design such as enclosures. The conference is on 26th and 27th April at mHub in Chicago. It’s still not too late to plan attending this amazing con, so grab your tickets and we hope to see you in Chicago.
  • From Chicago, I’ll hop over to WyoLum HQ in Reston, just outside of Washington DC for a week long confab with Justin, Kevin and the rest of the WyoLum gang. We have a lot of catching up to do, with all of the various projects that we are simultaneously working on at present. Some of the current projects we are working on are ClockIoT, WyoStat and Braccioforte.
  • After a short personal trip to Fort Lauderdale, I will be heading up to Orlando, doing another set of KiCad and FreeCAD workshops at the MakerFX Makerspace. I’ll do a super quick KiCad boot camp followed by an introduction to FreeCAD on 11th May.
  • After a quick stay over at Austin, I’ll be back in Pittsburgh and will stay there until the end of May. I’m trying to setup KiCad and FreeCAD workshops in Pittsburgh either at the Pitt MakerSpace or at HackPGH (or probably at both places). Stay tuned for announcements on dates for these events in Pittsburgh.
KiCad EDA – Open Source Software for PCB design
FreeCAD – Open Source Parametric CAD modeller

At WyoLum, we just love sharing our work, and our skills, among the hacker community and spreading some love for the amazing open source tools that we use everyday to get our job done.

If you’ve been waiting for an opportunity to learn KiCad to help design PCB’s or FreeCAD for CAD design, do support our enthusiasm for sharing by signing up for the workshops over the next two months. Looking forward to meeting an amazing bunch of hackers this summer. Drop by and say hi.

WyoLum goes to MakerFest 2014 at Ahmedabad, India

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The first week of January had me and Samata Mahidharia driving down to Ahmedabad, about 550 kms North of Mumbai. We were on our way to attend MakerFest 2014, organized by the awesome folks at Motwani Jadeja Family Foundation, at the uber-cool design school – National Institute of Design.

WyoLum gave away 40 of our BADGEr – e-paper conference badges for Makers attending the Maker Fest. We didn’t have time to program all the BADGEr’s , but the Makers were kicked to be able to take them away and get hacking. I took a few pictures.

I gave a talk about the Maker Movement – talking about how the Maker revolution is bringing us back to our Maker roots, using my personal experiences as examples.

Samata and me did an Origami Workshop. The initial plan was to limit attendance to 20 people in a classroom. Eventually, a much larger number of people turned up, and the organizers asked it we could accommodate all. Seeing as how enthusiastic everyone was, we just couldn’t refuse, and moved our workshop to the main stage of the open grounds. It was wonderful to be surrounded by almost 50-60 folks – from little kids to grown ups, eager to learn some folding. Due to the large crowd, and also that no one had a good flat folding surface in front of them, we cut down the original plan of folding about 6-7 models in an hour to a more manageable 3 simple models. Eventually, I think everyone managed to fold the models – a tumbling toy, a cawing Crow and a Swan.

The most exciting event for Samata and Me was to team up with Albie Brown and run a MakerFest Treasure Hunt. Up for grabs was a bag full of goodies, including a WyoLum BADGEr, a BeagleBoneBlack and other cool stuff.

Visitors to the Fest were handed over a “Guide for Hunters”

This explained how the hunt worked. On the back of the sheet was a list of 100 words, numbered 00 – 99. Only five of these were relevant to the final solution of the puzzle, the remaining 95 being duds. Hunters were asked to stroll through the booths at Makerfest 2014, where they had to find, and solve, five mini puzzles.

The starting “hint” was that there were a few logos on the clue sheet that indicated which booths are presenting challenges. In no particular order the five booths were:

  • Education for Design (e4d)
  • Microsoft Research
  • WyoLum
  • FabLab
  • Printajoy

    • E4D is working towards bringing education to everyone. Beginning with a handful of Centres in southern India, they are building a higher educational model focused on reaching the masses, rather than building universities. They seek to minimize infrastructure and costs, while taking full advantage of freely available online educational resources. Their activities also include education for blind persons. Their clue was – What is the name of this code spelled backwards? This hint was written in braille on a piece of a can and the can was glued to a stick of bamboo. Puzzlers had to translate the braille and answer the question to solve the clue. The answer was “elliarb”

    Microsoft Research is working on conductive ink printers made from regular Ink Jet Printers, but using special cartridges filled with ink made from Silver nano-particles. These printers, along with a range of sticker adhesive elements, allows designers to quickly fabricate prototypes. Their clue was – “What am I made of? (Hint: they sometimes call me 47)” and the answer was “Ag” (the symbol for silver).

    WyoLum put up one of their ClockTHREEjr with a code written next to the clock – C1F8D1H1N9G6. Reading off rows and columns (C1, F8 etc) gave them the word “Patang” which translates in to English as “Kite”

    The MJFF donated a $140,000 Fablab from MIT to the maker community in Ahmedabad. The Fablab is a set of digital fabrication equipment and software to help makers transform their imagination into products. The Fablab is housed at the prestigious CEPT University Ahmedabad and will be open to the public at select hours every day. At the Fab Lab booth the manager told puzzlers to press print. They had to figure out how to use the vinyl cutter and print a document that was concealed by coloring all components black so the text was invisible. The machine then cut out the word “Replicate” in sticker form and the puzzlers had to pull off the sticker to reveal the answer.

    Printajoy is a photo printing service for Instagram photos – a “Print button for your Instagrams” India’s first affordable, online printing solution that converts your Instagram photos into beautiful lifetime memories! Their clue was – “There is something hidden underneath every Smile”. Then under the deck of business cards (which said smile on the front) there was one card with a label with the word “Memories” stuck to it.

    If you solved all five puzzles you ended up with five answers and five two digit numbers. Several teams kept asking us to check if they’d got all the right words, but we just encouraged them to continue going.

    At 3:30 we revealed the final clue. Albie wrote out the clue on a white board, and held it up for everyone to see

    _ _ _ _ _FEST

    The first alphabet taken from each our five answers, when placed in the right order formed the word MAKER. Almost everyone filled in the blank with “MAKER” but were flummoxed when we encouraged them to keep going since the hunt was not yet done. The smart winning team realized very quickly that the numbers still have not been used. “MAKER” indicated the order in which to use the 10 digits, which gave a phone number. When they called the number, they won!!! The winning team called the phone number within a minute of our releasing the final clue. Not just that, they even followed Albie who ran behind the stage when he picked up the phone they had dialed, and told Albie – “Turn around and look here – I’m the guy calling you”

    In the middle of the Maker Fest grounds, we set up a pop-up Maker Space where the makers got together and started building and showing off stuff to visitors, and encouraging them to join in. There was a lot of Arduino, flexible sticker circuits, wearable electronics, PVC pipe Lamp shades and other stuff going on. Samata even stitched a quick Dress from an old Saree and sewed a string of LED’s around the neck. Apparently she did a Ramp Walk with the LED dress in the auditorium, but I wasn’t around to witness the awesomeness !

    I set up a PolarGraph drawing robot. I had received the kit a few days before heading off for MakerFest, and had no time to get it working. At the Makerspace, I tried setting it up, and even managed to get one trial print. But I was constantly being interrupted by eager visitors asking me what it was, and ended up spending all my time telling them what it was supposed to do. I even managed to show it off to Mr. Sam Pitroda

    At the end of the second day, the MakerFest was wrapped up with a Panel Discussion featuring a bunch of Makers – Angad Daryani – a young Maker from Mumbai , Spandana Cheruvu – another young maker , Anand Gandhi – Ship of Theseus film maker , Freeman Murray from Jaaga Bangalore, Anna Waldman-Brown curator of MakerFest 2014 , Myself, Vaibhav Chabbra – from the EyeNetra team and also running Makers Asylum in Mumbai, Ankit Daftary – from the Arduino India team, Bangalore , and Kshitij Marwah from MIT Media Labs

    Thanks to everyone who participated! We had a great time putting it all together! We met some amazing Makers from all of India. Some of them we knew via Facebook or Twitter or Google, but meeting them in person was wonderful. And we made a lot of new friends ! All in all, this years MakerFest was a blast and we look forward to next year’s MakerFest.