Hackers On A Plane is a hacker touring group led by the infamous Nick Farr. He organizes hacker trips to places like the annual XXC3 conference, CCC camp, and other prominent points of hacker interest. They also have been coming to Japan the past few years and we get the chance to show them around and hang out with all the other international hackers. Currently, they're in Tokyo for PacSec, AVTokyo, and hanging out at Tokyo Hackerspace.

A few weeks ago, Adafruit swung by Tokyo for a much needed vacation. We ended up meeting up with them and taking them around Akihabara and Tokyo. It was interesting because Bunnie Huang from Chumby was also in town so it was like a mini OSHW summit.

Pieter and I went to MIT Media Lab to attend the Safecast meetup and discuss the radiation mapping project. Along with meeting everyone involved in Safecast on the US side, we got the chance to hang out at the High/Low Tech lab with Leah Buechley. Leah was the designer of the LilyPad Arduino and also works on craft-oriented applications of technology. I was struck by the similarities of hearing her talk and listening to Mitch Altman talk. One of the other things I was impressed with is that the supply jars in the High/Low tech lab don't have the usual things like screws or parts.

Things have been crazy in Tokyo Hackerspace recently. There are tons of projects going on simultaneously and everyone is buzzing about. We've been hosting a lot of guest speakers at the hackerspace as well to provide updates on what's going on, what they're up to, and to provide information about the recent events.

This is the project page for the Tokyo Hackerspace/RDTN Geiger project. This is an Arduino-based geiger counter shield that makes it easy to upload data to the internet and also interchange tubes. Since it's open source and Arduino-based, its also easy to hack this to other interesting applications.
Here's the dev history:

2011-04-03 Akiba, FreakLabs:'

I just wanted to give a big thanks to Reuseum for sending us geiger counters on short notice. I'll be bringing them to the Tokyo Hackerspace meeting tomorrow and we'll get started on setting them up. I've powered both up, tested them outside, and confirmed that I'm able to sense geiger events. Now I just need to read the manual. He also sent us a nice keychain dosimeter and some "Atomic Fireball" candy. Ha ha ha. Much appreciated. We'll be sending back some genuine Japanese spinach :)

Thank you to all the people that donated money, time, parts, and emotional support for what was the craziest week in probably all of our lives. It was completely surreal. I don’t think Hollywood could have even made a movie that would compare to what went on last week. With a massive earthquake, tsunami, nuclear meltdown, blackouts, and basic food and water shortages, all occurring at roughly the same time, it felt like the world was ending.

Here is the agenda for the meeting on Tuesday 11/02/2010:

1) Hackers on a Plane

2) AV Tokyo this Saturday

3) Akihabara tour on Sunday

4) Make Japan

5) Mitch’s workshop

6) Possible Urban Gardening group in the hackerspace

7) TameGoesWild's Tokyo Marathon Outfit

8) Richard's suggestions on and ideas on event planning

Wow, the hackerspace project me and Patrick worked on to put together a video guide to Akihabara seems to have gotten a lot of press. So far, it's been covered in HackADay, Make Magazine, Engadget, and Slashdot.

MRE just finished teaching his window farming class at the space and it went extremely well. Seven window farming towers got put up. More details from MRE:

Thanks Akiba!
Right, so we had several people show up. More so than I was expecting! And the list of places from which they heard about the event was long.
At any rate, they(we) all came together for one reason: We've killed everything else we tried to grow!

that is the nice thing about a window farm - put it on a timer, fill the tank, and watch the magic grow.