Gadget Guru

I talk about technology on World Radio Switzerland

Local makerspaces !

Gadget Guru is a short weekly radio show on World Radio Switzerland that I do with Tony Johnston.

Here’s the show from April 14th, 2015:

Here’s the usual set of links & videos from the show:

Post Tenebras Lab calls itself a hackerspace, but according to this diagram is really a makerspace. fablab-makerspace-hackerspace Post Tenebras Lab is very much a community effort, designed for all sorts of technology enthusiasts to get together, share and learn. Come along to Carouge any Tuesday evening to find out if its for you! Don’t forget, PTL is kind of a secret underground lair – we don’t have a volcano yet but we’re working on it. There’s no doorbell – you have to know the secret phone number (on the home page of the website) to ring up and get the door opened.

Pangloss Labs is different. Pangloss Labs is a fablab but designed to inspire business creation. We don’t yet have a physical location but we’re in active discussions in Geneva and the Pays de Gex (for now). We have various events, including the monthly speed-networking where you can get to know the community and explain your project (if you have one) or your dreams.

Paul Leave a comment

3D Printing in Geneva

Gadget Guru is a short weekly radio show on World Radio Switzerland that I do with Tony Johnston.

Here’s the show from April 7th, 2015:

Here’s the usual set of links & videos from the show:

For more information about 3D printing, MAKE magazine is a great place to start:

To try 3D printing in Geneva, you can go to Post Tenebras Lab, the Geneva Hackerspace on any Tuesday night. It’s open to the public from 19h00 and they even have a communal meal. You might even see me there. We’ve just completed a major upgrade to our 3D printing capabilities and have 3 new printers including a Lulzbot TAZ 4 (a really big one!).

There’s the new Replik3D shop in Acacias. You’ll find their website here. Give them a call before you go to visit them as they are very new and sorting out their opening hours. Their website is in French but both Matthieu and Giovanni speak great English. They sell 3D printers, supplies and do printing services and more. You can even get a 3D scanned bobble head made of yourself in full colour!

You’ve also got Romain at Les Voisins coworking, and Sebastien at Onl’fait who both offer workshops and 3D printing services but you will need to speak French for these two.

Paul Leave a comment

Reality in all it’s forms

Gadget Guru is a short weekly radio show on World Radio Switzerland that I do with Tony Johnston.

Here’s the show from March 31st, 2015:

Here’s the usual set of links & videos from the show:

Virtual Reality

A Rollercoaster Simulator on the Oculus Rift

There’s an open source system for VR gaming

Augmented Reality

Google glass – not dead yet.

Navigation

LayAR

Mixed Reality

Microsoft Hololens

and you can even try for yourself with the iPad Ikea catalogue

Paul Leave a comment

Digital Cinema and a Film Festival

Gadget Guru is a short weekly radio show on World Radio Switzerland that I do with Tony Johnston.

Here’s the show from March 17th, 2015:

Here’s the usual set of links & videos from the show:

Digital Cinema

Festival du Film Vert

The DCP – or Digital Cinema Package is the format that cinemas play – it’s a lot better than DVD and even blu-ray! Count on a 2k (like HD) movie taking between 75-160 Gigabytes and a 4k (like ultra-HD) movie taking up to 600 GB.

Professional kit for making DCPs is expensive, but fortunately for festivals like mine there’s great open source software for making DCPs for your local cinema!

Open DCP

DCP-O-Matic – this one is brilliant as you can cluster together computers to reduce encode time. With this software I went from 3 days to 7 hours to make a DCP.

The film festival starts today, hope to see you there. If not, see you next week on WRS!

Paul Leave a comment

Tech at the Geneva Motor Show

Gadget Guru is a short weekly radio show on World Radio Switzerland that I do with Tony Johnston.

Here’s the show from March 10th, 2015:

Here’s the usual set of links & videos from the show:

From the Mobile World Congress we had the LG Flex2 self-healing phone…

But this week is mostly about the Geneva Motor Show, which runs from the 5th to the 15th of March

The ED Design Torq – Electric Driverless Racing Car – which apparently could have a racing driver inside, but who’d want to without windows?

Bentley EXP10 Speed 6 with 3D printed parts

The Quant F and Quant Quantino Nanoflowcell cars have a range of up to 1000km between refills with ionic electrolyte fluid.

The EDAG Light Cocoon (for the blinky light fans)

The Aston Martin all electric DBX concept

The Swiss Rinseed Budii that will hand the steering wheel to you if you feel like driving

There is also the completely bonkers Koenigsegg Regera “hybrid” which does 0-400km/h <20 seconds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWm8xEapjuQ There are 76 cars at the motor show which emit less than 95g of CO2 per kilometer, and most of them are in production

Oh, and this week Apple launched the most personal computer ever designed. This goes on sale in France on April 10th, and in Switzerland “sometime in 2015”

See you next week!

Paul Leave a comment

Mobile World Congress (hah!) and Virtual Private Networking

Gadget Guru is a short weekly radio show on World Radio Switzerland that I do with Tony Johnston.

Here’s the show from March 3rd, 2015:

Here’s the usual set of links & videos from the show:

For the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge:

The Virtual Private Network (VPN) comparison site I mentioned is https://www.bestvpn.com

Just to be safe, I suggest you use either Paypal or an e-card (one time use card number) from your bank to make the payments to these companies. It’s not that they aren’t safe, but I’ve noticed that they come and go over time.

Open source routers will allow you to VPN to your own home, but I won’t give you a link. If you don’t know how to find these, you shouldn’t be attempting it. Surf safely!

And remember – a VPN is just a pretend (really long) network cable.

For details of the next Pangloss events click here.

Paul Leave a comment

Internet of Things

Gadget Guru is a short weekly radio show on World Radio Switzerland that I do with Tony Johnston.

Here’s the show from February 24th, 2015:



Here’s the usual set of links & videos from the show:

The Internet of Things market is expected to be huge, with pretty much all market forecasts in the high billions of dollars. By 2020, there are expected to be more than 100 billion devices connected.

The home monitoring (air quality, temperature etc) system I have is from Netatmo My little drone is the Parrot Minidrone Rolling Spider, available from 1000ordi in Geneva for 135-7 CHF. They also have a range of Connected Objects and speak English (not a lot, but enough!).

The lighting system from Philips that’s getting towards what I’d like

And of course, the build it yourself option with the Arduino Micro from Sparkfun and the Femtoduino

We held the first Pangloss Labs Internet of Things meetup on the 23rd of February in Eaux-vives.   For details of our next events click here.

Paul Leave a comment

Flying free like a bird

Gadget Guru is a short weekly radio show on World Radio Switzerland that I do with Tony Johnston.

Here’s the show from February 17th, 2015:

Here’s the usual set of links & videos from the show:

If you’ve ever wanted to fly like a bird you need to catch up with the BIRDLY bird simulator.

And the amazing EPFL telescopic contact lense is here.

The Pangloss Labs Internet of Things meetup will be held on the 23rd of February in Eaux-vives.  You don’t need to be an expert – just bring an object and tell us how you’d like it to be connected (or not!)  For details on this and all our events click here.

Paul Leave a comment

LIFT to Space

Gadget Guru is a short weekly radio show on World Radio Switzerland that I do with Tony Johnston.

Here’s the show from February 10th, 2015:

Here’s the usual set of links & videos from the show:

The totally brain-resetting LIFT Conference web site so you can see what you missed.  The presentation from my workshop on Designing Alternative Currency Systems can be found on the Pangloss Labs site.

The BikeCityGuide can be found in the app stores for iOS and Android, or take a look at their web site.  The Geneva map basically goes from the Jura to the Saleve.

You’ll need to use google translate or the Chrome browser (which has google translate built in) to read the Norwegian findmysheep.com website, but it’s worth it to find out how to get those 21st century cowbells.

Being more serious, the European Space Agency Technology Transfer program is designed to bring space applications into our daily lives, so if you are a startup company, you’ll want to take a look.

You know about the awesome Solar Impulse project, but have you heard of Solar Stratos – using solar power to get to the edge of space?  Another local project, as is Swiss Space Systems – who are hiring.

The Pangloss Labs Internet of Things meetup will be held on the 23rd of February in Eaux-vives.  You don’t need to be an expert – just bring an object and tell us how you’d like it to be connected (or not!)  For details on this and all our events click here.

Paul Leave a comment