Report on the DOJO Cultural Festival 2017

Surpassing Company Boundaries to Create “Something New”The Birth of the “TDK MAKER DOJO” Maker’s Space

A cultural festival was held last year in December 2017 at the maker’s space, “TDK MAKER DOJO”, where any TDK employee can stop by to practice their creative activities. Sixteen objects including guitars, programs, and even cartoons that they found interesting and learned from through creating were put on display with TDK’s venturous spirit.

DOJO’s slogan is "Make and Share". The first thing to do is to “make”, and the next is to “share” with everyone. All kinds of people regardless of age, department, or occupation who love to create anything that can be touched, gather together to present their knowledge each other so that this could lead to future ideas.

Pick Up

TMR Angle Sensor - Demonstration machine

TMR sensors are new types of magnetic sensors that use TMR elements of HDD heads, which are highly sensitive reproducing elements.
Rotating sensors in the directions of the magnetic fields of magnets allows the angles to be detected very accurately. The angles being detected upon transferring the distance and positional relationship to the magnet in various locations could be intuitively confirmed with the color of the light and a monitor using the demonstration machine.
》TMR angle sensors

DOJO IoT plan using MESH

MESH is a block-shaped wireless electronic tag created by Sony Corporation’s Seed Acceleration Program. IoT technologies were applied to DOJO’s Chimes and voice guidance and objects such as light switches.

A guitar with position markers that light up

Is it possible to have LEDs light up in different colors corresponding with angles, currents, and sounds with sensors by TDK? This concept led to RGB microcomputer LEDs being installed in the neck of this guitar.
》TDK’s sensors

Other exhibits

Just simply press	A machine that waters plants every day with the press of a button
Primary motion sensor	The cursor in the monitor moves in accordance with the position of a light saber. A game where the player escapes from a star
Would you like to be more skillful with computers?	Generating graphs from CSV files with Python
Bernoulli's scissors	Visualizations of the movements and angles of the blades of Bernoulli's scissors in animation format
DOJO cartoon “Can a shy employee enter DOJO?”	A four-frame comic strip
Constant temperature water tank	Creating a low-temperature cooking device with Raspberry Pi
Work experience workshop at Tokagi Elementary School	“OK, Google” survey
Rice paddy water channel - a device that checks whether or not there is water	It checks whether or not there is any water in the water channels of rice paddies and the data is uploaded to a cloud service
Server client system for playing music	Music is played on an iPhone with Raspberry Pi as a network server
Music box top	A top that lights up when spun

People from other companies can also visit DOJO. Please contact us if you are interested.

A message from DOJO

DOJO’s mission is to become a place where people who enjoy creating things, whether they are from our company or different companies, can gather to make amusing things.
Please come and visit when you have some free time away from a meeting or are nearby on a business trip.

DOJO leader, Shunya Sato (left)
Yasuhiro Kanaya (right)

Summary of Main Details of the “TDK MAKER DOJO”

Date of Opening: February 15, 2016 (Mon.)
Location: Yawata Technical Center, W1 Tower, 2F
Available for Use by: All employees of the TDK Group (employee registration required)
Available Hours: 8:00 – 20:00 on specified operating days of TDK
(however, there may be occasions where it is reserved for lecture courses or events, or where it is temporarily unavailable for use due to maintenance or other reasons.)
Operation Management: Technology and Intellectual Property HQ