It was great to meet another 14 kids … and teach them to build and program their own robot. This year’s class at Norwalk Community College were a friendly bunch and demonstrated some extensive coding talent, despite not having had a whole lot of experience using the Arduino board. It wasn’t long before they were …
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Gardening in January
Harvesting the bounty of my garden the Spring, Summer and Fall months is a great thrill. But harvesting in January is even more exciting! The above photo was taken in my basement just today (1/12/2023) and it is proof that anyone can grow their own greens at this time of year, despite freezing temperatures outside. …
LED Matrix for my Car’s Rear Window
There was a time when I was logging a whole lot of highway miles. And, during my travels, I thought about the possibility of making a device where I could display custom messages to my fellow motorists. After all, driving can be kind of lonely sometimes and a simple message like this could help make …
Laser Cutter Fun for Christmas
I was racking my brain for gifts I could give to friends and family – and it suddenly occurred to me to harness the tools around me. That’s when I got the idea to personalize some Cocoa Coir doormats for friends, using our 60-Watt Laser Cutter. Here are a couple of my creations over the …
RipLabs to hold classes in New Hampshire
The crisp Fall air has not settled in yet here in CT – but the season is already starting to turn up North. So we decided to take the show on the road for a couple of weekends in September to take advantage of some cool Fall weather! While we’re there, we’ll be teaching two …
Arduino Instructions for Grass Roots robot classes
We’re having a great time over at NCC this week making robots! I’m posting this for the benefit of the kids in the classes, to help make it easy for them to experiment with their robots at home. Step 1 When you get home tonight, ask your parents for a computer you could use to …
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Rippowam Labs Summer 2022 Teen Tech Camp
We had to skip the last couple of years, due to the Covid 19 pandemic, but we are back: Rippowam Labs will once again be hosting a Teen Tech camp! This year’s classes will be held from 8 am to 5 pm during the last week of June (6/27 – 7/1) and the theme of …
Ben Franklin Phone Available for Sale
2022 is destined to be another year of big changes! As part of this, Rippowam Labs has made the decision to consciously decouple itself from Big Tech and we’ve dumped our old Android phones in favor of GrapheneOS! GrapheneOS is a flavor of the Android operating system that has NOT been co-opted by Google and/or …
Time to De-Google
I’ve been talking to some of my friends lately and we’ve become so disappointed with the big Tech companies. The social media companies cancel anyone who expresses an opinion other than that of the mainstream media and companies like Google and Facebook have the ability to track your every step – even if you have …
Our DIY Projects aren’t all robots
My wife and daughter gave me a great Christmas gift this year. They gave me some Rit fabric dye (along with some color fixative). I had some old jeans that were still good (no rips or fryaing) – but they were really faded in some spots. I guess this was to be expected after 5 …