Tag Archives: ladyada

Lady Ada Lovelace Day

OHS 2012

For Lady Ada Lovelace Day, we would like to celebrate an area of success for women in science and technology: the open source hardware community. This vibrant community has many strong women it holds up as role models. The newly formed Open Source Hardware Association is well represented with board members Alicia Gibb (president), Danese CooperCatarina Mota, and Wendy Seltzer. In addition, the Open Hardware Summit has been organized by women from the start: Alicia Gibb and Ayah Bdeir in 2010 and 2011, followed by Catarina Mota and Dustyn Roberts this year.

The 2012 lineup of speakers included women from all over the world and from an amazing variety of disciplines, including Leah Buechley, Ayah Bdeir, Shannon Doesmagen and Liz Barry, Katherine Moriwaki, Louisa Campbell, Liza Stark, Sylvia Todd, Erin Kennedy, Myriam Ayass, Amanda Wozniak, Meg Pirrung, Valérie Lamontagne, and Hannah Perner-Wilson.

In addition to the speakers, there were even more women presenting posters and demos, including Amelia Marzec, Cindy Harnett, Gabrialla Levine, Jennifer Jacobs, Joanna Cheung, Tesia Kosmalski, Analisa Russo and Jennifer Lewis, Margarita Benitez, Maki Komuro, and Sophi Kravitz.

All of these presenters build on the past two years of excellent content at the summit, and we look forward to the inspiring speakers of years to come.

Photo of OSHWA board members Windell Oskay, Nathan Seidle, Wendy Seltzer, Alicia Gibb and Catarina Mota at the 2012 Open Hardware Summit by Jacob Gibb.

A Liquid Power Fuse

Liquid Power Fuse 9

Liquid Power Fuse 5

Here’s an interesting find: This rather large mad-sciencey-looking component is a Bussmann type 23L1F15E, liquid-filled power fuse. What is all that stuff in there, and what’s it doing? It turns out to be a clever old solution to a tough problem, involving springs, wires, and solder, not to mention the mystery fluid!

Continue reading A Liquid Power Fuse

Ladyada’s Workshop in LEGO

Adafruit has an awesome LEGO kit design for Ladyada’s Workshop up on LEGO CUUSOO. CUUSOO is a site where people can submit designs for new LEGO sets or vote to support designs that have already been submitted. With enough support, LEGO may eventually turn these into actual production kits. With your support, maybe we can all have the chance to play with a LEGO version of MOSFET, a pick-and-place and a soldering iron.