Canary in front of the orbit.

With support from Freya (doing some work experience in the lab) finally built the “Canary” to hang up in the lab. An ambient display to tell us if all is good with our Lorawan gateway at the top of the orbit. A great little project that went from sketch to install in a few hours, and a great way to learn about connected devices. But that wasn’t the highlight of the week.

V&A preview

Leah and Valerio had also got us tickets to the preview opening of the new V&A on East Bank. You could hear the passion in directors talk, the building is a treat to explore, but the highlight was “The Music is Black“ exhibition.

Director’s speech photo

Walking around with quality headphones listening to superb audio was quite the experience. From a technical perspective I would love to know how they manage the zonal and directional sensing (UWB?), and the mix of individual and collective audio. Is it all streamed? Or was it a mix of local and virtual? From an immersive perspective I loved that you could walk around in your own little world but then emerge into the shared experience by lifting one headphone off, often in response to seeing someone else doing the same little dance as yourself! Highly recommend a visit. The Why We Make exhibit was also excellent and one that we will be taking our students to.

The Music is Black

Experimented with a new drone last week - a DJI Neo 2. A really simple to use pocket drone which is essentially a flying selfie camera! I remember a demo at one of the Intel Developer forums (probably 2015?) over ten years ago demonstrating a drone flying through a fake forest on stage. This was just as Intel was making their many drone investments and the same time the drone shows were starting. 10 years later and I am carrying this in my cycle jersey! Half way through you might notice excellent avoidance of what are quite small branches! Very impressive.

The week ended seeing Imogen Heap playing at the Camden Roundhouse. Her first gig in 7 years and I thought it was pretty amazing. Her voice and technical skills are another level. The MiMu gloves were impressive to see - a project that I had a glipse at back in 2018 via Helen who was working on a Microbit version! The listening party at the end with John Hopkins was the icing on the cake!

Looking at links.duncanwilson.com, these parts of the internet crossed my path this week:

• only one this week a link to pen plotter tutorials!