We are pleased to announce that we will be holding a hackathon to mark the bicentenary of Ada, Countess Lovelace, at Oxford Hackspace on November the 11th.
Some ideas for projects include:
- Laser-cutting the adding mechanism, which is made of cogs for adding, and arms for carrying tens:: http://youtu.be/HHuoQrEQqX0.
- Building a card reader like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=-FSJ7YnARwE&list=UUY-_ TOnhlhx9hjMJMcaoJrg. - Using a card reader to make other things happen – a music box, bells, whistles, puppets, or automata. Some amazing paper automata: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=AnamH97oC1I. - 3D printing of some or all of the neuronal network of c elegans (see http://browser.openworm.org).
- Loading the c elegans neuronal network onto a Raspberry Pi and interacting with hardware. Some work has been done on this already (https://github.com/
Connectome/GoPiGo) but a more advanced network which can produce voltage/activity/calcium concentration traces with networks of varying detail is under development<https://github. com/openworm/CElegansNeuroML/ tree/master/CElegans/ pythonScripts/c302> and should fit on a Pi. - Connect 302 LEDs to the Pi and have them follow the activity of the individual neurons in the simulation. Link this to other OpenWorm code<https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=r2OBznK6HkI> to simulate some of the detailed recordings being made of individual neuron activity in freely moving worms<https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=llHrk7RR4GE>.
Other things that Ada was known for include the Bernoulli numbers, her interest in gambling, ‘Flyology’, and her prediction of computer-generated music:
“Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.”