It's not that I haven't been making stuff. I just haven't been making a lot of my own robots lately. This is mostly due to being involved with FIRST, and specifically getting the FTC (FIRST Tech Challenge) middle school pilot program started with FIRST in Michigan. Very worthwhile programs and rewarding when you see the next generation of engineers start to get excited about problem solving and making stuff, but it can take over all your available time. And some that isn't really available, so you end up getting behind in other projects. Like sleep.
But now that I've pretty much passed FTC on to the next generation of coaches and mentors, I'll be getting back to my own maker projects and other interests like mountain bike racing. My upcoming projects live at the intersection of bikes and tech - turning my dumb indoor trainer into a computer controlled bicycle dyno, building a chain break in rig and using paraffin as chain lube, and developing a data acquisition system for mountain bike suspension tuning.
And I've started home brewing beer, so there will be some mention of that I'm sure. Not just brewing and tasting, but also developing recipes and building some equipment like wort chillers, all-grain brewing system, and kegging.
Other possible projects include some FTC training materials (you have to go into witness protection to get completely out of FIRST I think), PowerWheels racing at Detroit Maker Fair, working on an I2C bus motor controller using Digispark, quadcopters, and learning to use the Freescale Freedom board and K40 Tower system.
Some of this may end up on Instructables, some may get turned into open source projects, some may actually become products. This blog will be my live engineering notebook, so all the dead ends, discoveries, missed deadlines, abandoned ideas, unexpectedly easy successes and surprisingly hard tasks will be visible.
If you want to follow my bike racing adventures, check out CatVI. For more on FTC, check out FTC Coaches Corner.
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