With previous success animating my InMoov hand with arduino its time to get started with My Robot Lab.  There are useful tutorials available on the MyRobotLab website at http://myrobotlab.org/tutorials
At first I was a little nervous about using the command line interface (cli) but after saving the mrl.jar file to my c drive and typing the commands into the cli exactly as shown on the "starting a new mrl" tutorial I was pleasantly surprised to see a graphical user interface (gui) for MyRobotLab (mrl)

Java? Python? Whatt are these guys talking about?

Below is a video using MyRobotLab conneted to my InMoov right arm, through an Arduino.  The Arduino has the mrlcomm.ino sketch installed and MyRobotLab is running a modified version of the Inmoov.minimal.py example code with custom gestures created using the InMoov gesture creator service.  See more on my instructable Making InMoov Move.

Success!  Or as they say at My Robot Lab "worky"!

I was excited to hear that a Makerspace would be opening in the Pikes Peak region and I couldn't help, but go and check out what they had to offer.

Unlike the PPLD 21C facility, known as the 21st Century Library, members here can take a two hour class on how to use the 3D printer and software and then get hands on, turning models into tangible objects.

In the photos above you can see some servo pulleys being converted from an .stl file 3D model to .gcode and then being printed out, to be used on the In Moov hand project.

In addition to the 3D printer station, I found a complete 3D modelling station with professional software packages installed for members to use. Here you can create 3D cad drawings that can be converted to .stl files for the printer or .svg files for the laser cutter shown below.

The laser cutter can cut through and carve out detailed shapes and images In wood, leather, plexiglass and more.  

The space is also loaded with more traditional, metal and wood working tools and equipment.  With a little imagination, knowhow and time, there's not much that can't be built here.

After my successful POV Globe project, I have learned how to use a microcontroller with shift registers to cycle LEDs on and off quickly to create the illusion of a full display using persistence of vision.  Inspired by this instructable  http://www.instructables.com/id/EL-EE-DEE-Glasses-First-Prototype/
I decided to try making a wearable LED matrix.

In this LED matrix I'm using an Arduino Uno, two serial in parallel out shift registers, and a decade counter.  The shift registers light up each column in sync with the decade counter that provides the ground to the cathodes one row at a time.  Due to the speed of the circuit all the rows will appear to be lit up simultaneously.

In the photo below, you can see the wiring and soldering done on the backside of the shades.  Each row is soldered directly to the breadboard and soldered to the cathode of each LED in that row.  The columns are raised an 1/8" above the rows to avoid short circuits and soldered to the anodes of each LED in that column.

The Rave Shades Animator available on the instructable link above allows you to easily create custom animations.  By copy and pasting the 0 or 1 value to each cell, the binary to decimal conversion is done for you and formatted so the code for the frame drawn can be pasted directly into the Arduino program.

Here you can see a successful test of a 50th anniversary animation.  Now that everything is working, its time to shrink the circuit to make it wearable.

With the circuit working reliably, it is time to start on the cosmetic aspects of the LED shades.  I used a piece of 1/4" foam I had laying around to cover up the wire matrix, leaving only a small portion exposed for visibility, where I had previously drilled out the holes on the breadboard.  Next, I selected a pair of safety glasses to donate their hinged ear mounts to the cause.  The pair I selected had a good size cross section at the hinge that would provide a good base to hot glue the hinges to the bread board.

Now to squeeze a voltage regulator, Atmega 328 with crystal oscillator and capacitors, 2 serial in parallel out 8 bit shift registers, a 4017 decade counter, 8 npn transistors, various resistors, a 9V battery and a power switch all onto a reasonable size breadboard that can be hidden on the back of the wearer's head.

Now that the shades fit on my head, I'm getting close.  Just need to add some foam to the back of the circuit board, so there aren't 100 pins poking the back of my head, but I think I'll leave the circuit and wiring exposed for conversation.  Some slight tweaking of the shape and a little carefully applied black spray paint to make them look more like sun glasses and finally, a few custom animations to finish off this project.

Since it worked so well for VR games I figured it would also be useful and improve the gaming experience on standard mobile games as well.  So I started searching for a PS3 Dual Schock Android Mount on Thingiverse and my search was rewarded with this model http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:508838

In researching a game pad to use with my Dive VR headset I learned a PS3 Dual Shock controller could be used with an Android phone using a USB OTG adapter.  From what I've read it may be possible to use the PS3 controller wirelessly, using bluetooth, but this requires a rooted phone and I'm not ready to go there yet.  Once I had my PS3 controller plugged into my phone all I had to do was push the PS button to link the two and use the game pad with my VR headset.

I was able to take the stl file from Thingiverse to the library to have the parts printed.  I only needed to add a short 5" piece of allthread, a few hex nuts and a 1-1/2" bolt to assemble the mount.  I also modified the mount by drilling a hole for the micro USB connection to the controller.

This is a tool that I've been missing for far too long.  With all the styrofoam I have been hoarding for years it was time to make a hot knife, so I could start carving up patterns, prototypes and molds for lost foam casting.  As it turned out I had everything I needed on hand.

• Some random brackets, nuts & bolts
• An old electric heater
• An old 12V 850mA transformer

I started with a 12Vdc 850mA transformer wired to each terminal, but burnt up three before I found a 9Vdc 750 mA transformer that worked more consistently.  Even with the 9 volt power adapter the transformer gets too hot to hold after about 45 seconds of use.  I decided to use my adjustable power supply, which proved to be the superior choice for extended use of the hot knife.