You ability not accept heard of Ken Murphy, but you are apparently accustomed with his work. It's awesome. He hacks archetypal Radio Shack items to actualize blinking bug sculptures and analog synthesizers that complete like Atari video games.
Most recently, his DIY rooftop photography rig got him on the shortlist for a 2012 Vimeo Award in the beginning category. And he does his tinkering area others would abundance amazon sauces and Cheerios: in the 60-square-foot kitchen abdomen of his San Francisco Victorian apartment.
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"The abdomen was altogether set up as it was. It was already a absolute workbench," says Murphy, a web programmer by trade. He got absorbed on electronics in 2005 if a abecedary acquaintance asked him to advice out a bounded top school's FIRST robotics aggregation with his programming expertise. "The access to programming a apprentice against a web page is actual different. It reintroduced me to alive with concrete objects," he says. "Computers can be so abstract. This accomplished something craving aural me."
He bare the abdomen and abounding it with a cast new Weller soldering iron, a anger extractor, accumulator bins to abode assorted electronics gear, and a breadboard, which allows Murphy to ancestor and analysis circuits afore soldering them. One of the highlights is his library of resistors, which he keeps in a simple gray accumulator bin with baby drawers. "One of the basal architecture blocks of any cyberbanking ambit is the resistor," says Murphy geekily. In case you don't know, resistors absolute the breeze of electricity in a ambit to accomplish abiding apparatus don't get added abstract than they need.
When Murphy aboriginal began tinkering with electronics, he capital to actualize massive LED canvases that apish cascades of decrepit baptize or alive patterns of ablaze in the sky. After a few apocryphal starts, he absitively to actualize something simpler, something that appropriate basal parts, but still had an absorbing function. "Slowly, I got this abstraction to accomplish a little bug and to accept it do something," he said.
They're alleged Blinkybugs and they appear in peace. These active bug sculptures accept coin-cell array bodies, LED eyeballs, guitar cord antennae, and $.25 of wire abutting the antennae to the LED leads. They beam their eyes in acknowledgment to movement, vibration, and even air currents. Murphy went to Maker Faire in 2006, a antecedents of Blinkybugs in tow, area he met a few humans from San Francisco's Exploratorium. Now he's an artist-in-residence there. "This afternoon activity afflicted the advance of my life."
His next big idea, a time-lapse video activity for the museum, would crave him to be able to yield a account of the sky every 10 abnormal for a year. So he hunkered down in his lab and fabricated a custom rooftop camera rig. "I congenital it out of off-the-shelf parts," he says. "It was a absolute Frankenstein rig." He acclimated a baby solid-state computer active Linux to ascendancy a Canon A520 agenda camera, and an open-source affairs alleged gPhoto for limited angel capturing. An uninterruptible ability supply, or UPS, gave the arrangement array backup, and the photos were stored both locally and downloaded to the Internet through an Ethernet cable. "Even if the arrangement affiliation goes out, the camera can shoot pictures for a few canicule after talking to a computer." He congenital a tripod out of slotted metal and purchased an alfresco asylum to assure the rig from the elements during its deployment on the Exploratorium roof.
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But the absolute complication of the time-lapse project, which is a 2012 Vimeo accolade contender, was in the programming. "I'm demography 8,640 pictures a day, over 3 actor pictures a year," he says. "Cameras aren't usually advised to yield that many. If you just dump that abounding pictures into a directory, that's a nightmare." Murphy acclimated his programming chops to address a affairs on top of gPhoto that renamed anniversary downloaded photo according to year, month, day, hour, and second. "It's a huge annal that's actual organized, so it is simple to aught in on an angel on any day to the actual second."
Murphy accumulated the photos into "A History of the Sky," a admirable circuitous of 360 time-lapse movies, anniversary apery a day in the activity of the San Francisco sky. "Everyone is afraid at how abounding dejected canicule there are in San Francisco," he quipped.
Name: Ken Murphy
Location: San Francisco, CA
Money Invested: "I didn't advance annihilation into the amplitude itself," said Murphy. "It had a ton of adverse amplitude and accumulator space" as all kitchen pantries should.
Prized Possession: A Weller soldering iron. "You can get a absolutely bargain soldering iron, but I sprung on a absolutely nice station," said Murphy. "Having top superior accoutrement makes a big difference."
Theft Deterrent: Not accepting annihilation account stealing. "There's annihilation absolutely big-ticket in here. Robbers absolutely wouldn't be interested," Murphy said.
On the Wish List: An oscilloscope to analysis and alter cyberbanking circuits and a bench-top ability accumulation for clean, connected electric current.
Photos address Ken Murphy
