Imagine a Brian Cox monologue discussing the relative nature of time, and how it is a concept dependent on the reference frame of the observer. While you are busy doing that I’ll slip in, unnoticed, that it’s three weeks since our last weeknotes and we are pushing our luck not just calling it ‘notes’. Yes, it’s Chris this week, how did you know?

A photograph of the Tyne bridge taken from Newcastle. The bridge is a large steel arch, painted green, with stone pillars at either end and a road way running through it. Beyond this bridge three other bridges can also be seen spanning the Tyne.

Adrian enjoyed returning to Newcastle to present Museum in a Box at the Design Network North conference Rise and Design - Design in the Heritage Sector. It brought back many good memories of the Maker Faires. In preparation for the event we printed some of the Natural History Museum - Make it visible collection. These are models of electron microscope scans of pollen, with Braille descriptions. At the event there were good questions from the audience and some interesting use cases we’d not thought of before. The details of the talk can be found on the catalogue page and the slides will be published on the Museum in a Box blog once Adrian has tidied up his notes.

Two 3d printed models of pollen, on yellow supports that also have a Braille description of the object. These are part of a Natural History Museum Collection for Museum in a Box. In the photograph the models are in the foreground, behind on a wooden desk is a transparent Museum in a Box

The first three Museum in a Box boxes in Hawaii are up and running at a community college in Honolulu. A box has gone to Big heritage for use at the Deva Roman experience, and three more are in transit to North Carolina. Which is a roundabout way to say we are very close to selling out the current batch. So if you were thinking about getting one now is a very good time to visit the shop [Turns to camera and grins while holding up a glinting Museum in a Box]

In more Museum in a Box related news we met up with staff at Liverpool Central library who work in the archives. They’re interested in how they can use the boxes they have from the British Library, currently showing Unearthed: The Power of Gardening. We talked about their plans to make oral histories more accessible, and to support exhibitions of the archives across the community libraries. As we were talking about the variety of treasures in the library collections, such as the Audubon book, we got to possibly the best casual remark I’d ever heard in a meeting. “…and there’s the American flag that’s been to the moon…”.

We are embracing Open Hardware Month and will see how many new projects we can certify in October. We will definitely be submitting the Lightbeam the addressable LED bollard we’ve used in active travel projects. A new version of the My Bike’s got LED board is being manufactured at the moment, this has a header compatible with the ubiquitous, circular INMP441 microphone boards. So expect us to be playing more with sound reactive WLED in the near future. The clocks go back soon so we need more brightness in our lives. Adrian is also working on a new board that makes it easy to drive LED noodles, particularly in wearable projects. It’s based on one of the WCH CH32V chips, and linked to the magnetic pogo pin modelling he talked about in the last weeknotes. I’ll leave him to talk about the details when it’s finalised but enough to say it’s going to be a lot of fun.