EMF Day 5

We were up bright and early to pack up and get on the road. Time taken to pack the bags and get everything together: 20 minutes. Time taken to get folding table back into its bag: 20 minutes.

It has been an amazing event. Best one ever by a considerable margin. The weather helped, as did the huge range of talks and installation, but the best bit for me was the people. Everyone was interesting and interested. There were lots of things I would have love to have gone along to, but I’d have needed several of me to get the most out of the time here. The good news is that a lot of the presentations will find their way onto YouTube so I can take a look at them later.

Huge thanks to everyone who made it possible.

EMF Day 4

Waking up with the Custard Cream Camera

Today is the last day of EMF. Which is sad. I spent the morning learning about Canbus and the afternoon I went to sessions about the Tildagon badge design and PAL TV amongst other things. Then, in the golden hour just after sunset I took the Custard Cream Camera for a walk and grabbed a bunch of pictures, printed them and handed them out. When the outside light failed I took the camera into the Null Sector nightclub and tried to make it work with the available light there. Which was great fun. Thanks to all my patient subjects.

Sometimes the camera heard “turn into Logo” rather than “turn into lego”

We also went along to the closing ceremony, where all the volunteers took to the stage. There were so many that there was concern that stage wouldn’t support them all. Hundreds of people gave up their time to make this amazing non-profit event. The best news came right at the end, when they told us they were planning for emf in 2028. I’ll be there, with whatever the Custard Cream Camera has turned into by then.

EMF Day 3

The Otter Plotter

The thing about EMF is that in amongst all the silly things (see above) they also have a whole bunch of serious things (see below).

Virus Talk

Alongside daft creations we had proper hard science and some deep discussions. It is also wonderful to see artists and engineers working together to make the most amazing installations. I’ve never seen so many at an emf before.

I went to a super session about photography which started from first principles and taught me a few things I’d never thought properly about. I was then lucky enough to have a chat with the presenter, try to take their picture with the Custard Cream Camera and totally fail because the LCD panel was impossible to see. Oh well. This is just a super fun place to be. In the evening they had a showing of the movie Apollo 13 using a proper 35mm projector.

This is the projector at the end of the show. That big reel on the left was full of film at the start. Just the sound of the projector firing up and the look of the film were great. And we got the full sound treatment too as they were using the DTS theatre soundtrack. Awesome.

EMF Day 2

I still remembered “plugh”

We found our way into the arcade tent where they had a teletype running the Colossal Caverns adventure game. It was super nostalgic to press the keys, hear the clunk and see the printed output.

The bar seemed as good a place as any to upgrade the conference badge. For 2026 there is a new badge face and sensor board which much improves the control switches and looks really snazzy. The badge runs apps from the festival App store. I’ve added one called Custard Cream which you can run to view pictures taken by the custard cream camera.

The Custard Cream Camera is working well

They’ve done this rather cunning thing with the Null Sector nightclub this year. They’ve pointed all the speakers away from the camp rather than towards it. This means that it is a lot quieter in bed at night, although I didn’t seem to have any trouble getting to sleep as it turned out.

EMF Day 1

We got up bright and early today and headed off down the motorway to Electromagnetic Field. The motorways were mostly clear, the weather was mostly very warm. Just the temperatures for carrying tents, groundsheets and Custard Cream Cameras around. Once we had the tent up and everything in place we went out for a walk and to take some pictures. Then we repaired to the Lounge to take a look at what we had, and fiddle with it a bit.

EMF has this rather nice sign. I asked the Custard Cream Camera to put it on the moon.

Then I added a bit more cheese to the event…

…before turning one lucky person into Lego…

Then we headed back to the tent to get things ready for tomorrow. If you want to see these and many other pictures from the event you can go to: https://custardcream.cam/ Just hit the “See a random picture” link to, er, see a random picture.

Using AI to make Rubber Duck Frying Pan Cartoons

One of the reasons that I created the Custard Cream Camera was to make a device that had built in AI filters. I was inspired by Banamera to create something you could speak commands to. I’ve got it working now. Above is the first ever image processed result. It took a photograph of a large rubber duck in a frying pan and turned it into a cartoon of a large rubber duck in a frying pan.

This is going to go down well at EMF….

The Custard Cream Camera Lives!

The camera with a duck and a printed picture of the duck

Please don’t ask me why it is called the “Custard Cream Camera”. Just take a look at the box and use your imagination. Anyhoo, it is now mostly complete and working. I’ve no idea how reliable it is or what will happen when I throw it in a tent and then go round taking snaps of happy festival goes.

But we’ll find out later this week.

It has a user interface and everything

Camping Purchases

Today I bought a sleeping bag liner and a portable pillow. The preparation for Electromagnetic Field is underway.

EMF Memories

Jonty welcoming us all to the festival

One of the nice things about using a film camera is that when you develop the film you are never sure quite what you will get. Today I found a bunch of shots I’d taken at Electromagnetic Fields earlier this year.

Taking a break with our Polaroid camera

The horizon is actually slanted at EMF.

Heading home

Today it was time to go home. Rather sad. It has been an awesome festival. We’ve gone to loads of session, met a bunch of people and seen some amazing tech. Thanks so much to the organisers and the huge team of volunteers who made everything work. Apparently it isn’t possible to organise and manage an event like this with such a small number of people. Except that it is. Wonderful stuff. Counting down now to EMF 2024.

Self promotion at emf

Shameless self promotion in the lounge

We’ve had a couple of interesting nights here at emf. It’s quite fun to watch the tent around you swirl and dance as the wind howls and the rain pours down. Really. The best bit is the moiré fringe effects that you get when the inner and the outer layers of the tent touch each other. Quite mind blowing.

Anyoo, the good news is that just as we woke up the rain stopped and it wasn’t ever a hinderance right through the day. Oh, and here I present my tips for emf shower success. I meant to write these down last time, but I forgot and had to rediscover them all again.

• wear shorts for the shower. There’s nothing quite as nasty as pulling on jeans over barely dry legs in a steamy, enclosed space.

• don’t wear socks for the shower. If you think jeans are hard to pull over damp legs, you haven’t tried pulling socks over damp feet.

• a carrier bag is your friend. When you set out it holds your clean clothes, towel and soap etc. You can hang it on the hook in the shower, and then move things in and out as you go through the shower process. A true ninja takes two bags, one for clean stuff and one for dirty.

• put your toothpaste on the toothbrush before you leave the shower cubicle. The tap and basin are outside the shower. It’s a real faff to put toothpaste on a brush while standing in a queue. Much better to just have it all “tap ready” when you leave your shower. The first time I saw someone heading towards me holding a toothbrush in front of them I thought I was being challenged to some kind of duel. But when he shot past me and made for the tap I realised what a genius he really was.

emf skies

Humans: “Look at the pretty light displays that we’ve made for emf (they were very good)”
Nature: “Hold my beer………”

Making Geiger Counters at emf

What better way to start the day than by building a Geiger counter. The session yesterday was fully booked so today saw me standing in my wellies (the weather has changed slightly) at the head of the queue to take part. I was lucky to get in, as in the previous session things got very busy. The bad news for everyone was that, due to a shortfall in Geiger tubes, not everyone would be able to take away a fully working device. But they are readily available on ebay for a modest price, and I never could resist a bit of soldering, so off we went.

It was wonderful. We had excellent instructions, plus lots of folks wandering around offering us components and advice. At the end of the day some of us walked away with working devices. Number one son got his built and working and even managed to get a tube to take home. I’m going to get myself a tube on ebay so that I can finish mine off . Somebody told me that bananas are a good source of radiation. I’m looking forward to investigating this.

Note that just because the counter makes a noise when you hold it close to something doesn’t make that thing dangerous. I’m very grateful to the folks from Bristol and their sponsors for making the whole thing possible though, it was awesome.

When presentations go wrong...

So much for testing

If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working furiously on a device for a presentation at emfcamp. Emf is a fantastic place to talk tech and meet folks. I was at the last one and really enjoyed it. We arrived at the camp on Thursday and yesterday I got to tell everyone about my “Chocolate Synthbox Synthesizer”.

I’d spent a lot of time building the device and after some careful testing in the tent in the morning I reckoned it was good to go. Fate however had other ideas. If you’ve ever done any presentations you’ll have heard of the “Demo Gods”. If they smile on you all will be well. If they frown on you, then get ready for trouble. The worst I ever had was a while back when I did a session in Amsterdan where every demo failed - that is, the worst until today.

The presentation involved me saying nice things about two technologies, sending MIDI messages to musical instruments using the Raspberry Pi PICO and using the Puredata program to make sounds. It hinged around live demonstrations of the soundbox itself. If that didn’t work, I was toast. It didn’t work. Worse than that, it gave the impression of working every now and then just to get my hopes up, and then failed when I tried to use it to show anything off.

The audience was great. They laughed at all my emergency jokes – that is until I ran out of them. I think they were entertained too, but not in the way I was intending. Oh well. You should treat every setback as an occasion to learn something. In this I’ve learned that you should always have a fallback position. Most of the other presentations I’ve been to have used videos to show things off, so I really should have had a few of them lying around to show off.

We’ve tracked the problem down to power supply issues and a broken speaker connection. I’m hoping everything can be got working so that I can wander down to the bar with it and show it off properly.

Apparently, to this day in some parts of Holland they speak of the time that everything broke for the idiot Englishman, perhaps it is OK to be remembered for something, even it is glorious failure.

I just hope I get the chance to present at emf again, so that I can show something that properly works.

Heading for emf

We headed off to emf today first thing. Well, around 8:30, we’re not fanatics. The roads were nice and quiet and the journey was very pleasant. We didn’t actually sing at any point, but wouldn’t have been out of place if we did.

The site was just coming alive as we arrived and number one son found us a nice site on the side of the hill. Actually, here everything is on the side of the hill which takes a little bit of getting used to. If Istand up suddenly I then feel myself instantly falling over. The tent proved quite easy to put up. We’ve taken the precaution of getting an extra groundsheet to keep the inside of the tent nice and dry, but the ground seemed pretty dry.

We’ve carefully planned our itinerary for the first day, I’ve tested everything for the presentation and the WiFi reaches up to us. We’ve even got our own mains power courtesy of the tent next door. This is going to be fun.

emf presentation written

We head off to emf tomorrow, so today I thought I’d write the presentation I’ll be delivering. As you do.

Tent to loiter within..

Yesterday, in preparation for our trip to emf, we went out and bought a tent. Today we had a go at putting it up and it seems to work OK, although putting it back into the bag it came in turned out to be a non-trivial task….

Rob at emfcamp

I’m really looking forward to emfcamp this year. I went to the last one four years ago and it was excellent. Last time I attended lots of splendid sessions and just enjoyed the atmosphere. This time I’m presenting as well. I’m going to be showing off my Chocolate Synthbox synthesizer and describing how you could build one of your own. It’s going to be great fun. Trust me.

There are lots of other great sessions too. You can find the complete list here.

Test Air Quality with the EMF Badge

The air here seems ok

One of the (many) wonderful things about the electromagnetic fields event I went to was the badge that everyone was given. This was an embedded device with a nice colour screen and a powerful processor that just happened to be a mobile phone as well…… I thought I’d turn it into an air quality display. So I 3D printed a case and make some modifications so that I could fit an air quality sensor and a battery to power it on the back of the badge. This is the back of the badge:

The hardware construction went fine, and I had the badge and the sensor exchanging messages quite nicely. Then I tried to write the software and it all went wrong. So I gave up and decided to enjoy the event instead….

However, I’m not a quitter. So, after a lot of fun and games, I’ve finally submitted my air quality app to the badge store for the emf badge. You can find it in amongst the other apps in the store here. It seems to work a treat and I can wear it around my neck with pride. Although I guess this would probably look a bit silly around Hull, where a lot fewer people seem to be wearing emf badges than there were at the event.

Anyhoo, one significant (at least for me) takeway is that if you want to use the serial port in MicroPython in binary mode (i.e. not have the driver mess around with carriage return and linefeed characters), you can use a special option to request this:

sensor_port = UART(2,9600, bits=8, mode=UART.BINARY, parity=None, stop=1)

This option is, of course, undocumented on the MicroPython pages for the UART class, leading to endless hours of “fun” for developers (like me) who spend ages wondering why their binary checksum values are all wrong…..

Heading Home

We were up bright and early and on the road home by 8:00. The whole event was fantastic from start to finish. They say the next one will be in 2020. I’ll be there.

There is also talk of “electromagnetic pulse” events being organised in the gap between the “fields” events. It would be great to set up one of these in the Hull area.

Anyway, time to head for home and then to get the Air Quality sensor working with the badge…..