GPUs (video cards)

On December 11th Michael Grube from MCIT came and talked about how all those kids playing video games are helping shape the future of computing.

The video card in your computer likely has a 100 times more cores than your CPU. Michael talked about the challenges and advantages of tapping into all those parallel processors. He also covered the interesting discovers which might be made by having an order of more computational power.

The Mythbusters, as always, have some interesting examples of how CPUs and GPUs are different.

Click here to download his presentation and example code.

3D printing!

September 18th from 12-1pm Tyler will be talking about 3D printers. He'll be talking about why you would use them, some of the limitations and where you can get access to them. We'll have 15 minutes of discussion / question time at the end.

He will have a Cupcake Makerbot that you can check out and 3doodler.

Room 1412, Arbor Lakes building 1.

Bring your own lunch!


In separate news the 3D lab is having an open house September 12th.

For more information see the following URL

http://um3d.dc.umich.edu/

Beekeeping!

Andrea and Rachel gave a presentation about beekeeping. They gave us a run down on the hobby. We then had an open discussion on how the hobby might benefit from some of the low cost electronics and sensors now available.

Bees are sensitive to humidity and heat, even more so in the winter. You can only take so much honey from a hive. Bees make things harder because they work to cover sensors with wax. The question is how to build something that can just plug into the hive to give you the data you need to ensure good hive health, especially during the winter months. Good discussion was had by the audience.

Future lunches will feature 15 minutes of discussion and questions at the end as it was popular.

Here are a couple of photos from our Innovation Lunch today. What a fun topic and a great turnout!

music? MUSIC!

music? MUSIC!

Sick of sitting in your office for lunch? Bring your lunch down and prepare for some treats for your ears.

Come learn about how an audiophile looks at hardware. Ed Colone works on audio equipment in his spare time searching for the perfect sound. Come learn about home built high end audio featuring features like vacuum tubes.

For the second half of the hour, Joe Bauer will show off his music that he makes using sampling and computers. It should be a rocking good time.

Thursday 7/24 from 12pm - 1pm.

Oculus Rift Demos

We brought in a few Oculus Rift units for folks to demo. This is what the students are probably going to be using and working on this fall or early next year.

Everyone who was brave enough to try it had a great time riding dragons, rollercoasters, and spaceships.

All Hands Active loaned the Oculus Rifts for the lunch time fun. If you are interested in showing the Rift technology to your kids or friends contact Martin for a tour.

Beginner's Book on Arduino

Recommendation from Tony Weil on a good book to start exploring Arduino.

"This is the book I used and it will get you up and running with the basics very quickly. It's available on Safari Books online at the Unversity Library, so its free to read online. 

The Internet related projects at the end are a bit dated and don't utilize any of the new Internet of Things products and just use basic Ethernet hardware, but maybe that's a better place to start.

Parts and tutorials are available from places like Sparkfun.com and Adafruit.com"

http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com/book/hardware/arduino/9781430232407

• Beginning Arduino

• By: Michael McRoberts
• Publisher: Apress
• Pub. Date: December 23, 2010
• Print ISBN-10: 1-4302-3240-4
• Print ISBN-13: 978-1-4302-3240-7
  
  

Demo the Oculus Rift - Virtual Reality

June 12th at noon we'll have a couple of computers with the Oculus Rift. Come check out what kids will be asking for around the holidays. More humorously see your coworkers freak out on a roller coaster.

As always join the MCommunity group for invites and announcements.

https://mcommunity.umich.edu/#group:ITS%20Innovation%20Lunches

The Oculus Rift's are provided by All Hands Active, one of Ann Arbor's Makerspaces.

Tony's Toys

Tony W. joined us and presented on some of the project's he's exploring outside of work. He's been involved with providing Raspberry Pi's to communities in Africa with copies of Wikipedia, robots and interactive technologies.

Here's a copy of the presentation

http://tonystoys.org/primer/

Here's a shot of the action.

Welcome to ITS Innovation Lunches

Debbie, Judy and I are starting a monthly brown bag lunch where we showcase upcoming and current technologies like Arduino, Oculus Rift and other things.

It's an effort to build cross connections across ISO teams, to get introduced to new technologies that students will be using to change the world.

Hopefully you find it interesting. 

Join the MCommunity group to get calendar invites and emails.

https://mcommunity.umich.edu/#group:ITS%20Innovation%20Lunches