On the night of March, 22, we had the first official activity of our hackerspace, and a big one: SJC Lightning Talks, which brought more than 150 people to check 9 quick presentations.
When speakers have to shrink their usual 45-minute presentations to fit in time limits as small as 5 ou 10 minutes,they usually start to mess up with other speakers slots. To keep all presentations, plus registration and meals, inside our 3h limit, we had to find a way to force speakers to keep the defined time limits.
Then came the idea to make a timer. Not a simple timer: A time-bomb. But a FAKE time-bomb, obviously. We still want the delayed speakers to be able to return on future events.
And that's what make us love the hackerspace environment: In a single weekend, we managed to gather people and get an Arduino-based prototyppe of the !Bomb (The "NOT-bomb"), a fully working timer that resembles a 80's-hollywoodian-movie-style time-bomb that blinks and makes noise when time is up.
See it in work here:
Of course, the project is open-source. If you want to replicate it, you can download both the electronics schematics and PCB design (Fritzing files) and the Arduino code (MariaMole project) from here
If you're Brazilian, check the project Portuguese page at the hackerspace website. And, if you happen to be in São Paulo area, come to join us!