Shop Sunday is back!

This week will be all about using the drill presses available around crashspace. Twist drills, hole saws, countersinks, blowouts, junk shots, massive oil spills it’ll all be there! We’ll practice using and setting up the drill presses and cutting in wood and aluminium, how to set speeds, cut depth, and how to safely operate the machine.

Making holes in stuff is fun, so show up and get your hands dirty! Reccomended 15 dollar donation for non-member drill happy participants.

Noon Feb 26th at Crashspace!

Join us a Freeside next Thursday for an Introduction to Arduino Class. The class will be aimed at the basics of Arduino Programming, so some programming experience in any environment would be preferred, but is by no means necessarry. We will even have a limited number of Arduinos and Computers, however if you have the ability, please bring your own laptop and Arduino to work with.

Location: Freeside Atlanta
Time: 7:30 - 10:00 pm
E-Mail: freesideatlanta@googlegroups.com

Have you switched your QSOs to PSK31 or some other digital mode, but miss the joy of sending CW with an iambic paddle? Then here’s a project for you.


Bill Ward (KD4ISF), Guy Dickenson (KD7TJJ) and Dave Clausen (W2VV) setup a club call sign N2YCR and a remotely operated computer station running fldigi for PSK31. The machine is in the backroom at NYCR and can be operated by members with general class amateur radio licenses from anywhere, using xvnc to display the fldigi application.

But operating it with a keyboard has none of the feel of an old fashioned QSO, so I designed an interface for Dave’s BY-1 Bencher Iambic Paddle. Iambic paddles are very different from straight keys in that they have two inputs: one for “dit” and one for “dah”. If an input is held in, it will repeat at a pre-programmed speed. If both are held in, they will alternate between the two symbols. Typically the dah is three time as long as the dit.

The paddle itself doesn’t generate the code; this is the responsibility of the radio, or in this case, of the Teensy 2.0. It runs a state machine that listens for PIND4 to be pulled low to indicate a dah, or PIND5 to be pulled low for a dit. If neither is pulled low within the time of two dits, the current bit-stream is looked up in a table and if there is a valid USB keyboard event in the table it will be sent to the host computer.

With a straight key the computer would need to estimate the codes per minute and try to differentiate dits from dahs. But with the iambic paddle, the operator has input the separate symbols so there is no difficult step to determine the code. This makes it feasible to run the entire decoding stack in a small microcontroller like the ATMega32U4.

Sending CW without audio feedback is very hard, so a tone is produced via PWM on OC0A at 498 Hz, directly into a speaker scavenged from an old headset. Software controls the volume in a crude fashion by limiting the on-time of the square wave. If the input sequence is not a valid Morse code, the timer 0 is switched to a slower speed, which causes OC0A to be driven at half speed, or 249 Hz, which will indicate an error tone.

Full source for the Teensy is available for your own use. It should appear as a generic USB keyboard and work with any application.

The case is made using my laser cut box generator and available on Thingiverse. I cut it using 6mm clear acrylic at 100% power, 4% speed, and etched the raster at 100% power, 20% speed. The box is a friction fit and holds together without any screws or glue.

Some possible improvements are to have an external potentiometer to control the speed of the CW (currently it is a compile time constant), and to create a USB serial device that translates its input into audio so that you can have a full CW QSO with fldigi.

We will be holding our rescheduled practical class and demonstration of Flower Arranging/Floral Craft this Saturday the 25th of February from 2pm to 4pm @ 091 Labs. This is the first of a series of Floral Craft workshops, to be held every second Saturday. The first class will cover how to make a Corsage, suitable [...]

Microsofts Kinect, Nintendos WiiMote und Sonys Move bieten Benutzern neue Interaktionsmöglichkeiten. Gesten und Sprache erlauben es deutlich einfacher Computer auf natürliche Art zu steuern. Somit könnten solch berührungslose Steuerungen bald ebenso wie Touchscreens zu unserem Alltag gehören.

Daniel Meixner, Developer Evangelist bei Microsoft Deutschland, stellt die Möglichkeiten des Microsoft Kinect SDKs und der Kinect Hardware vor. Anhand von praktischen Beispielen demonstriert er anschließend, was für die Entwicklung eigener Applikationen benötigt wird, wie man beginnt und für welche Anwendung die Kinect geeignet ist und für welche weniger.

Martin Herrmann von der TU Dresden gibt eine kurze Einführung in die verschiedenen Gestentypen und ihre Bedeutung für die Mensch-Computer-Interaktion. Darüber hinaus stellt er Kamerasysteme vor (Farbkamera, Sterokamera, ToF Kamera, Kinect), mit denen es möglich ist, Nutzerinteraktionen aufzunehmen und auszuwerten. Ergebnisse eines Workshops zu Schnittstellen von Microsoft Kinect und Surface sowie die Live-Demo einer Spieleanwendung auf der Basis von Kinect bilden den Abschluss des Vortrages.

19 Uhr geht’s los. Der Eintritt ist wie immer frei und für Getränke und Snacks ist ebenfalls gesorgt.

Anmelden kannst Du Dich bis spätestens 22.02.2012 formlos per E-Mail an techtalk@developergarden.com.

The lack of Corporate and Governmental transparency has been a topic of much controversy in recent years, yet our only tool for encouraging greater openness is the slow, tedious process of policy reform. 

Presented in the form of a Soviet F1 Hand Grenade, the Transparency Grenade is an iconic cure for these frustrations, making the process of leaking information from closed meetings as easy as pulling a pin. 

Equipped with a tiny computer, microphone and powerful wireless antenna, the Transparency Grenade captures network traffic and audio at the site and securely and anonymously streams it to a dedicated server where it is mined for information. Email fragments, HTML pages, images and voice extracted from this data are then presented on an online, public map, shown at the location of the detonation. 

Whether trusted employee, civil servant or concerned citizen, greater openness was never so close at hand..

...And Idea who's time has come!

Tonight, we assembled our new 16′ diameter PVC dome. The result of two solid Saturdays of work, it came together beautifully. Now we just need to disassemble it and move all the furniture back in before tomorrow’s class…

The members are 1″ PVC pipe. We flattened the ends by heating them briefly in the kiln…

… and clamping them between two handy bits of heavy metal.

A few minutes with the drill press to finish them up…

… add a few bolts, washers, and nuts to flavor.

And then take it all down to adjust the angles…

Put it back up…

Just a few more bolts, and there you are. All dome!

Now you can dome in the morning, you can dome at night, you can dome when you wanna dome.

 

 

 

Am Samstag, dem 25. Februar, startet das dritte Barcraft-Event und bringt für euch diesmal sowohl die MLG Winter Arena als auch die ASUS ROG Winter Assembly auf zwei Leinwänden als BarCraft Double Feature. Immer ein Event auf dem MainScreen und das Andere ohne Sound nebenan. Welcher Stream auf den Mainscreen kommt, entscheidet IHR vor Ort. Da wird keine Action verpasst. Notiert euch den Termin also schon mal im Kalender!
Mehr Infos auf barcraftberlin.wordpress.com/

 

Come on down the the node tonight (Thursday Feb 16th), for the Shapeways Baltimore Meetup!

Lots of people will be here showing off their prints, talking about shapeways and 3d printing.  Ana the community manager from Shapeways and Mike the forum moderator will both be here hanging out.  After a while, we’ll head over to Joe Squared for some food and drinks.  Hope you can make it!  RSVP here: http://www.meetup.com/ShapewaysCommunity/Baltimore/

Due to a huge interest of this talk, it is currently waiting list only now. I will review number of seats/tables for each event at the weekend. Still book a place as places will be allocated on a first come first serve basis. I am also considering running the same talk on a 2nd date too. Stay Tuned!

Title: Introduction to Security
Date: Thursday 16th of February 2012
Time: 19.30 – 21:00
Venue: TOG
Cost: Free
Limited to 30 places.

Title Wireless (WiFi) Security Workshop
Date: Saturday 10th of March 2012
Time: 13.00 – 17:00
Cost : Free
Limited to 14 places

 

I will give a talk titled “Introduction to IT Security”. Many people are interested in the area or see it as the great unknown. This will be the beginning of a series of talks that will take place in TOG covering the area of IT Security and all it’s ups and downs.

I will also be running a Wireless Security Workshop where I will set up wireless networks to be attacked and go through the process of doing so as well as explaining the reasons why the attack works.

The talk is directed towards students considering a career path, people currently employed and looking for something new, or just someone who sees it as something interesting and would like to see what it is really about. I will cover a lot on the night so I will not be going into any great detail or going too low level, but other topics will be covered in greater detail in other talks in the series. I have allocated 1 hour and 30 minutes for the talk but I will not be presenting all the way though. The floor will be open to questions throughout the talk.

For the workshop I will using information that is freely available, some since 2001, I am simply structuring this into a session where I will present an attack, and attendees will give it a go. We will be looking at open wireless networks, WEP and WPA encrypted networks. 4 hours has been allocated for this session. This tutorial is hands on and everyone is encouraged to help one another. Requirements for the session will me mailed to the registered attendees closer to the time.

For booking a place or other questions, please use the forms below.

Only book if you are sure you can attend. Places are limited.

I have hit the total allocated space for the IT Security Intro, so any further submissions will be for a waiting list. I will re-count the seats for the event at the weekend and mail people on the waiting list directly

I have hit the total allocated space for the Wireless Security Workshop, so any further submissions will be for a waiting list. I will re-count the seats for the workshop at the weekend and mail people on the waiting list directly

 

Booking: Intro to Security	Booking: Wireless Hacking Workshop
[contact-form-7]	[contact-form-7]

Throughout the winter, BikeHood has been running for those brave enough to keep cycling all the way through the cold weather. Seriously, once you’ve been out there for a few minutes, just about any weather is warm on a bike!

The next one will be at the Hackspace on February the 18th, from 12:00 – 17:00.

BikeHood is not just about getting your bike repaired, but learning how to look after it yourself. It’s been going from strength to strength, and we’re on hand to teach and help you get your bike up and running. Even the most complex bits of bicycles aren’t so scary when you’ve got them apart and know how to put them back together.

As well as work stands and a large selection of bike tools, we have resident experts ready to help you fix your bike and get it back on the road (or the trails). Whether you’re a complete beginner or an old hand, you’ll find a friendly group of mechanics and cyclists with a well equipped workshop. Though future events will be ticketed, all we’re asking for now is a voluntary donation to the Hackspace in return for us helping you to fix your bike.

We’ll have more announcements to make about the March event.

(Creative Commons photo by A Long, Lone Run)

The Hackspace recently acted as a Global Gamejam 2012 venue, with about 25 people descending on the space for the weekend to make games.

In case you don’t know much about the making games, modern console games take between eighteen and twenty-four months to create. The challenge of the Global Game Jam is that these teams had just two days to make something, so… a pretty tight deadline! We had seven teams compete in all, including local companies IndieSkies and Nerf Games.

As well as myself (David H), hackspace members Andrew Armstong and Andy Thorpe helped to make sure everything ran smoothly. While the teams cracked on with their projects, we also played quite a bit of Johann Sebastian Joust. Below are shots and a video from a couple of the projects.

Andrew Roper from IndieSkies writes:

Quest for Indimmortality is a game where you, a budding alchemist, are fantasizing over creating the philosophers stone, a rare and hard to create item. You start out with basic ingredients and some metal, and have to combine ingredients in the right equipment to be able to produce more valuable metals. Eventually you’ll create the philosophers stone and gain Immortality. Developed by Ryan Simpson and Andrew Roper, music by Gavin Harrison.

Unfortunately, the game wasn’t able to be completed over the 48 hours, though there are plans to continue development in the near future.

Also by some developers from IndieSkies and sent to us by Lewis Moore, Causality:

The most fun thing about that one during the jam was watching their artist mess around with the assets.

Game jams aren’t really about making a polished game, which would be impossible, they’re about roughing out a new idea. Confining development to such a short timescale means that a team can try out some really risky or strange ideas for games, without wasting a huge dollop of a studio’s time and resources to make something that ultimately doesn’t pan out.

We’re looking forward to hosting more of them at the hackspace.

Vom 17. bis zum 19. Februar wird die Mainhall von Android-Entwicklern besucht. In den 48 Stunden ab Freitag 18 Uhr können Projekte rund um den kleinen grünen Roboter (weiter-)entwickelt werden.
Android-Entwickler treffen sich weltweit in 50 Locations, um 2 Tage am Stück durchzuhacken.
Insgesamt werden bis zu 1000 Teilnehmer erwartet!

Platz ist für ca. 50 Teilnehmer. Wer von euch mit dabei sein möchte, kann sich über das Registrierungsformularanmelden.

Die Teilnahme am Hackathon ist kostenlos. Damit ihr genug Power für die 48 Stunden habt, werdet ihr darüber hinaus (großteils) mit Getränken und Essen versorgt!

Weitere Informationen hierzu und zum gesamten Event gibt es auf dem Android in Berlin Blog.

Das Event wird ermöglicht durch

• BlueVia
• PayPal
• developer garden
• Readmill
• droidcon Berlin
• COMPUCCINO
• PRESSMATRIX
• SOUNDCLOUD
• YOU IS NOW
• geeklist
• Neofonie Mobile
• Open-Xchange

und durch Mithilfe vieler Member.

What the heck is a Bug Jam?

README

Ok, so now what?

 

From Friday March 2nd to Sunday March 4th in IRC at #ubuntu-us-pa on
freenode we will be working as a group to help with this event.

On Sunday March 4th from 10am to 6pm at
Hive76 we will have a Bug Event.

If you can get out and join us, please do! No experience necessary.

Heck, even if you want to just hangout, stop on by.

Event info and Registration

TOG will be hosting a night of short talks as part of engineers week on Thursday 1st of March . Each talk will be twenty minutes long on a range of interesting topics. The space will open from 18.30 with the talks starting at 19.15. The event is free and open to all.

Talk 1

Title: PRESENTING WITH EFFECT

Speaker

A few days ago, one of our newest members, @dustynrobots shared a link to some amazing Valentine’s day cards with the rest of the group.

These amazing Valentine’s day cards for makers by Steve Hoefer are sourced from old public domain US Patent Office. They’re awesome and hilarious, and have inspired us to make a few things.

First, it got me to make the ecard site that I’ve been thinking about for a while now. Postkin’s GeekCards are free, funny ecards for the geeky people in your life. These cards were so amazing, once Steve agreed to let me use them, I had to get the site built in time for Valentine’s day!

Now that the site is built, I’ll be adding more geeky ecards for other events soon! It’s also flash-free and built on web standards so you can actually view the cards when you get the email on your phone.

Hope you enjoy the ecards, and if you have ideas for other geeky ecards we can create, please let me know!

In the meantime, Trammel has been working away on letterpressed editions of these cards on our Intaglio press. Hopefully we’ll have some more pictures of the process and finished cards soon!

Trammel has a great writeup on using the letterpress, but if we pester him in the comments and maybe he’ll do a post about the process of making these plates and some of the other amazing new stuff he’s been up to with the letterpress lately!

WARNING: This might be a bit of a long post. Some parts of it have been waiting a while because blogging is the devil. First off, we’d like to thank our friends at Four Star Pizza. We had our AGM (minutes here!) back at the end of November and they gave us a few pizzas [...]

This weekend the 18th and 19th of February will be the second Global Hackerspace Cupcake Challenge.

Hackerspaces worldwide are challenged to bake, decorate and package a single cupcake and send it to another hackerspace. The receiving hackerspace will then open and judge on various topics including decoration, condition and taste.

Full details are included on the Global Hackerspace Cupcake Challenge 2012 wiki page.

Below you can see last years winner denhac from Denver, US which was recieved and judged by NESIT Connecticut, US.

 

Jason Denney  hosted the first of our “The More You Node” classes on Friday, February 10, 2012.   It was a class about using the primary and secondary colors for painting pictures called “Art Class.”  Members from the Baltimore Node and the Baltimore’s Playground meetup.com group enjoyed refreshments, learning, and meeting new people.  Thank you Jason for organizing this event!

Photos of the event can be found at:

Event photos

 

Just finished the Saturday series of welding classes at My Inventor Club. Matt from Freeside taught this one, but Shane from MIC does a series too.

Here's Newt on the MIG while Charlie and I are playing around with aluminum on the TIG.

Gloves and trendy jacket belong to the house, I just had to bring the glasses. Ear plugs may be a good idea too.

Here I am, grinding down a piece for an ugly, abstract sculpture to practice on.

All in all, we learned and then got to play with Oxy-Acetelene welding and cutting, grinding, portable band saws, MIG, Stick, TIG, and cut-off wheels. I came in with no experience and left with at least enough knowledge to not burn my own eyes out.

According to Matt, they do the classes as 3 weeklies on Wednesdays, Thursdays, or Saturdays with 2-4 person groups. Drop a line on the Freeside mailing list if you're interested and they'll put together a class.

Hive76′s Art Hackathon

March 10th and 11th, 3pm to 7pm

For the second weekend in March, Hive76 is hosting a day of smashing, cutting, gluing, taping, painting, and general making and frivolity. We’re calling it “Art Hackathon”. Inspired by the Bravo TV Series Work of Art, and following closely in the footsteps of Art Hack Day, the event will focus on the rapid creation of meaningful works of art out of a provided supply of recycled materials.

Hive76 will provide massive piles of cardboard, tubs of glue, masking tape, tubs of spackle, box cutter blades, and a few cans of various colors of spray paint, to let every participating individual or team create a work of their choosing. The works will be based on a single theme, to be announced at the beginning of the event.

The event is split across two, four-hour days. While participants are free to use the time as they wish, the time is designed to provide time for planning on and a moderate amount of building on the first day, with some drying and curing time overnight before finishing up the next day.

A fee of $25 per person will be charged at the door, to cover the cost of materials and food that will be provided during the event for both days. Please RSVP for the event before March 6th by emailing smcbeth@hive76.org.

What is art? To me it has always meant indirect communication–the implied conveyance of ideas through conventions of shared culture. Anything is fair game for a medium, and anything can be a potential message; thus art is infinite in both dimensions.

So with that in mind, I wanted to create an event that epitomized the nature of creativity, of “art”, in a way that was familiar to me. And I wanted to make a kind of logo to go along with it, to be memorable and ‘cuz logos are just fun and I want the event to be fun.

I began by searching on DuckDuckGo for familiar imagery for the concepts of art and hacking. For art, the image of the paintbrush and pallet was very common. For hacking, the skull and crossbones shows up. Well, for hacking, photos of people sitting around tables, staring at computer screens, completely oblivious of any photographers in the room, was also quite common, but that’s rather difficult to capture in a logo.

I did a few sketches on paper of the idea of a Skull and CrossBrushes, but it was too simple and too cartoony. I need something that is stonger, with a lot more color. At this point, I got an idea. The event will feature construction of 3D elements, so maybe the logo could be constructed in 3D as well. I began a crawl through Thingiverse, looking for the perfect skull model. I knew that a skull should still be the basis of the piece, but I had a few ideas other than just “crossed brushes” to bring it back to “art”.

And then wonky hotel WiFi stymied me for about an hour, but that was okay, I had some laundry to do.

When the WiFi came back, I went back to looking for the skull. This is what I found.

 

That looked like a pretty good skull, and I knew that starting with a model that was good for printing probably meant that the geometry was solid enough to do a 3D rendering. I then goofed around in Blender until I got something that would serve as a good start for some more work in Photoshop.

To make the cross, I searched for some more images through DuckDuckGo, and found a suitable brush and screw driver. Over in Photoshop, with a few applications of the Posterize command, some Hue rotation, some Outlines and Drop Shadows, a little text, it was pretty much complete!

After visiting The Hacktory’s “Soft Circuit” event, PJ and I were inspired to take a stab at making some micro-controller circuits using alternative, “high/low tech” approaches.  PJ made an MCU circuit using conductive paint (has potential, but needs some tweaks).  I opted to try a circuit board using metal leaf.  That happened to work on the first shot — although careful scrutiny of the picture on the left suggests there was some luck involved (there are holes in the circuit that come dangerously close to wrecking it).

I had considered using scored foil as a way to make free-hand, one-off circuit boards for quite some time — but until recently, I never had the mix of free time and raw nerve to actually try it.  It turns out that my reservations were probably well-founded, but it also happens that the technique is workable, and the results are actually aesthetically interesting.

We decided to make the board in a hexagonal shape (Hive76 — hexagon — get it?). First, we prepped circuit board material by spraying adhesive on card-stock and then sticking the faux gold-leaf on the prepared surface (this sounds simple, but the foil is maddening stuff, so the process involved profanity and a certain amount of despair).  Then we cut the foiled card-stock into hexagons. After that, we cut out a rectangle where the IC was going to go, so that there were no conductive paths under the chip.  Once the board was roughly prepped, we made a “squashed bug” of the IC , splayed its pins out, and soldered it to the gilded surface.  Using the gaps between the pins as a guide for an exacto knife, we cut free-hand traces that routed the pins of the chip to large zones on the edge of the hexagon (I was a little surprised that the cuts were free of bridges). Finally, we soldered a capacitor between the MCU’s Vcc and ground and soldered a 47k resistor between Vcc and the MCU’s reset line.  At that point, we had a working circuit that was in-system programmable — at least in theory.

Unfortunately, I had no idea how we might program the MCU or hook it up to external circuitry without damaging the fragile structure.  PJ came up with the idea that made it all workable … magnets.  All really good magic is done with magnets.  The idea here was to place the paper computer on a steel surface, which allowed us to stick magnets wherever we wanted to make a connection.  With steel under the circuit, the down-force of the magnets gave us firm-but-gentle electrical contact with the delicate foil. Once the magnets were in place, we only needed to touch alligator clips to them — since the clips were steel, they stuck happily. With the clips secured to selected points on the MCU, we were free to connect the opposite ends of the clips to the various external items needed for the circuit.  Note the ingenious use of paper-clips.  PJ again — see a pattern here?

Our first connection was power (two magnet connections, one for +3.6 volts, the other for ground).  Then we hooked up the Spy-bi-wire programming interface (two wires, two more magnets).  After that, we wrote the obligatory “blink LED” program and loaded it into the paper computer.  Naturally, we wanted to see the results — two more connections for the LED terminals and — Voila!  Here’s the movie …

We are now live on Hackerspaces API. This project is based off a Bifferboard running Debian that checks I/O port 11 on the Bifferboard to see if its connected to knife switch. It then connects to websites and updates every minutes with status if space is open or closed. Great bit of hardware and cheap enough for something with IO. Next step is to connect to IRC to update channel with status. More details on wiki.

^^ Status of space is updated on website here and the to left <<

 

 

Sort of late to the show but here we go:

Sign up today!

http://wiki.freesideatlanta.org/classes/arduino

Like playing chase-the-laser-pointer with a kitten.

After a couple weeks of hacking on the Gilson we have PID* control.

When we first saw the Gilson, we didn’t have access to any feedback mechanisms. All we had were panic stop modes of control. After a ton of experimentation, and Nick reading five control theory books, we are having fewer incidents in which someone yells “Holy Crap Make It Stop Before It Destroys Itself!” It’s not yet a null set, but the cardinality is significantly reduced.

<cue loud bang>

* proportional integral derivative

 

Crash Space has a whole new Bimonthly Event called Shop Sunday, focused on exploring the tools and methods used to make everything from toasters to rockets.

This week’s Shop Sunday will be all about Threads!. Tapping, Die Cutting, and using a lathe to cut threads, will all be demonstrated and you’ll even get to tap and fit check a hole! We’ll also go over the various uses and applications of threads, from ball screws and power screw applications to fasteners and Bolted Sections. We should be covering the basics and simple equations, and also go into more depth for things people are interested in.

Shop Sunday is hosted by Kyle Cothern, a Launch Ops Engineer from SpaceX who has 6 years experience working in development shops for various mechanical design projects.

Shop Sunday will  start at noon and go till 3pm on February 12th, and will happen every other Sunday in an ongoing fashion, similar to Radio Mondays. It’s free for members and a recommended contribution of 15$ for non members. Topics covered should eventually teach anyone interested how to use the tools available at the space. Special Projects crop up once every month or so as well.

If you’re interested in hosting a Shop Sunday, or would like a specific topic covered at one in the future, let us know! The meeting will be an open format for interested tinkerers of all experience levels who like getting their hands dirty with design and fabrication of mechanical widgets.

Happy Friday too everyone!

- Kyle

Please note that this class has been postponed to a later date, which we will be announcing shortly. Apologies for any inconvenience caused. Practical classes and demonstrations of FLOWER ARRANGING @ 091 Labs every second Saturday beginning with this Saturday the 11th of February from 2pm to 4pm. The first class will cover how to [...]

Fancy learning how to make paper animals? Join this specially themed origami workshop, taught by Jamie O’Leary!

The “Animals” workshop will run twice. To attend, you should already be familiar with origami, for instance having attended one of our previous events. If you’re a complete beginner, worry not, for we’re also doing a re-run of the “beginner” workshop.

Workshop #1 – Beginners. Saturday, February 18th. 2pm to 4pm.
Cost: €5 for non-members, free for members.

Workshop #2a – Animals. Wednesday, February 22nd. From 7pm to 9pm
Cost: €5 for non-members, free for members.

…or…

Workshop #2b – Animals. Sunday, February 26th. From 2pm to 4pm.
Cost: €5 for non-members, free for members.

Please sign up using the form below. Make sure to indicate which day(s) you would like to attend in the message box.

(No animals were harmed during the making of this picture.)

[contact-form-7]

Radical urban homesteaders Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen (authors of Making It and The Urban Homestead) will assist us in making our own self-irrigating planters. SIPs make growing veggies easy and are perfect for balconies and yards where you can’t dig. We will provide all the materials for you to build your planter in this workshop so you will be fully equipped to go home and get growing! SIGN UP HERE.

Sunday, February 26, 2012, 11:00am    $25

 

Next buildout is scheduled for March 3, 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM. For those not in the know, Buildout is when Freeside's members get for the purpose of making the space better, socializing, and eating food. Incidentally non-freesiders are more than welcome to show up, help, socialize, and then *maybe* become members afterward. Buildout's a great time for anyone to show they care for the space.

If you have an idea for what needs worked on, please add it to the task list here:
https://sites.google.com/site/freesideatl/build-out/to-do

If you need something for said task, such as a ladder, please feel free to add it to the list here, and we'll try our best to see it shows up.
https://sites.google.com/site/freesideatl/build-out/shopping-list

Incidentally you might notice that many of these items don't have a responsible person. If you can please try to take ownership of at least one task. If you don't know what the task involves, it's possible no on else does either. Take it anyway, and ask the list for advice!

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask one of the officers directly (so as not to spam the list) or to ask the list.

See you there!

We’re doing an additional open house every week now. If you can’t make it on Wednesdays, or if you’d like an additional day to come and check us out, we’ll be there every Saturday starting at 2 PM.

Stop by and check out our 3D printer, our plethora of games, or come just to hang out, and/or work on your own project ideas.

Apostrophe Now! — based out of Philadelphia and developed by P’unk Ave — is “a content management system designed for maximum flexibility with a minimal learning curve. The interface is ergonomic, all content-editing is performed in-context.”

Do you have or are you building a website, but you are looking for alternatives to WordPress, Django and other CMS engines? Apostrophe may be right for you!

Come meet Geoff DiMasi and Tom Boutell, two of the lead developers, and find out all the nitty gritty about Apostrophe. They’ll give an overview of the system, design goals, and features, and they’ll also dive into the code to show us how it’s all put together. Geoff and Tom will also talk about other things Philadelphia (the founding of P’unk Ave, the founding of Indy Hall, and the founding of Ignite Philly).

You won’t find this info on Youtube or Vimeo. Come on down to your favorite hackerspace to learn all about Apostrophe and an awesome Philadelphia success story.

Hive76
Wednesday, February 22nd, 7:30 pm
915 Spring Garden, Suite 519

We have been silent for a while; the winter is quite cold here. But, hey, let’s brag instead! This week’s Tuesday meeting saw diverse activity:

• Olleolleolle and Jimmy built two projects: a photo lightbox and a Hexayurt for Barbie.
• stg and Terninator opened up some old remote controls, and begun playing music with the trackball in there
• an osmocom link to be able to fill old phones with interesting firmware was built by phrst and it begun working at the “hello firmware world” level. jonas assisted with cross-compiling and general trouble-shooting.

When we were done with the photo box and the scale model, we had to store them somewhere. The photo box sits in the ceiling, on top of some well-insulated pipes. The model was dismantled, to be re-built and perhaps even painted, at a later date. Needing a Barbie to stand next to it.

In the near future, we will host a Saturday Forsk – yes, the plan is really to host one once a month. A Saturday Forsk is a prolonged slack event with a theme. The upcoming theme is “Luften är fri”. (Thanks for the name, we will only borrow it, Sparvnästet!)

Watch this space!

Raphael Abrams shows us his Freelance “Puncher” time tracking device. After trying many different methods for keeping track of his hours, Raph created this little puncher to easily clock in and out of his freelance work.

Check out the code and schematics here: https://github.com/raphaelabrams/freelance-puncher

Music: Eric Skiff, Resistor Anthems – HHavoc Loop

Sure they took 30 min to print two, but if my time is worthless (now that I’m unemployed) then they are nearly free!

Designed with Illustrator, Rhino, Slic3r.

P3D.in is a new beta service (currently free, prolly will change) for rendering 3D models in the web browser, no flash or plugins required. I guess it works via HTML5?

They only take .obj files at the moment (which you can export to from Blender). It’d be much much more useful if they automatically imported STL files, and all of Thingiverse, among other sites. I’ve logged a bug report and feature request along these lines.

Here’s a yoda head converted to .obj and imported and hosted by P3D in their demo iframe. pretty cool. (NOTE: I guess it needs a while to load in the browser, apparently. So if it’s not showing up yet in your browser, give it a minute).

CONTROLS:
Left click and drag – rotate
middle click and drag – zoom
Right click and drag – translate

When life gives you busted up old LCD panels, make… lightboxes! I constructed this one out of the CCFL backlight from an old laptop LCD I found around the space. It gives a nice, even white light, and runs off a 9V at about half an amp.

The inverter for the backlight was long gone, so I replaced it with one of these inexpensive CCFL inverters from MPJA.

A little hot glue and acrylic cement later, we have a perfectly serviceable lightbox. Now, what ever could we use one of those for?

Starting Monday 13th and taking place over 4 to 5 weeks, the Android Workshop will guide participants through the basics and principles of developing app for the Android platform by building browser from scratch. The workshop will be based on sBrowser, which I developed specially for this workshop. By the end of the workshop members [...]

Tech@Burlington Meetup — Wed, Feb 8th @ New Moon

 

We’ll let this bit of awesomeness speak for itself Check out all the Resistor cameos!

Learn more here!
http://arduinothedocumentary.org/

#tassebier – „Treffen, nerden, trinken, Weltherrschaft.“
Fr 03|02 20:00 | Eintritt frei

Finissage event with the Twitter DJ-Collective #tassebier and http://blog.rebellen.info/tassebier

Nach dem um 16:00 beginnenden Symposium: “Hackerspaces: The story so far and the future ahead.” gibt es noch was zum entspannen – eine #tassebier.

Die Tassebier ist “Open Sorce” und steht unter “Creative Commons Lizenz”

Worauf sich das Berliner – nennen wir es mal – feste “Orga-Team” schnell geeinigt hat war, dass eine Tassebier immer offen für jedermann und die Veranstaltung immer kostenlos sein müssen. Kein Eintritt, auch wenn es nicht nur eine “normale” Tassebier ist, sondern eine Party mit DJs und Live-Acts.
Zudem kommt, dass die Tassebier nicht nur “unser Berliner Ding” ist und jeder der möchte, seine eigene Tassebier veranstalten kann. Jeder kann mitmachen oder seine eigene Tassebier veranstalten. Natürlich nur unter den Vorgaben kein Eintritt und offen für alle.

TMSB #6 – Transmedia Storytelling Berlin: „Von der Idee ein Universum zu schaffen“
Do 02|02 20:30 | Eintritt frei

Die Kunst des Geschichtenerzählens unterliegt seit jeher einem steten Wandel. Heutzutage trägt besonders die ständige Weiterentwicklung der digitalen Medien dazu bei, dass sich immer wieder neue Möglichkeiten und Chancen für Geschichtenerzähler auftun. Doch wo gilt es anzufangen? Und um welche Möglichkeiten handelt es sich? Wie kann man sie einsetzen? Und ist das alles überhaupt notwendig?
Transmedia Storytelling ist der Begriff der sowohl diese Fragen als auch ihre Antworten beinhaltet und umfasst. Und genau diesem Thema widmen wir uns ans unserem TMSB #-Abend. In insgesamt drei Vorträgen führen moderne und erfolgreiche Transmedia Storyteller anhand von Beispielen in das Thema ein und beleuchten es aus verschiedensten Blickwinkeln.
1. “Transmedia? Transmedia Storytelling? WTF?”
Referenten: Dorothea Martin und Patrick Möller
2. “Vom Buch zum Film zum Transmedia Universum”
Referent: Sebastian Fitzek
3. “Transmediale Kunst: Das Keiner Syndrom”
Referent: Johannes Brandrup

Mehr Infos: http://www.transmedia-storytelling-berlin.de

The Irish Government is planning on disposing of it’s eVoting machines and is seeking tenders. Various members of TOG are interested in this, and seeing if we can get some eVoting machines, so we’re going to have a meeting/discussion/brainstorming session in the space at 9pm Saturday 4th February.

If you’re interested in this topic, please come along!

The Node will be hosting an art class for the first installment of “The More You Node” led by folks from the Baltimore’s Playground Meetup.  We’ll be making a simple painting using only primary and secondary colors and basic shapes, which will leave you with something nice to show off on your fridge.  The grading scale is 80%  participation and  20% effort, so should be an easy ‘A’ for you.  We will provide paint, paper, and some brushes, but if you have your own supplies please bring them!  You should also bring a ruler if you can.

RSVP to help us gauge supplies.  You’ll need a meetup.com account, or you can simply email me:  jasondenney “at” gmail.

Our Open Workshop Sessions for February will be taking place at madlab, on

• Wednesday 1st February, 7pm - 11pm
• Wednesday 8th February, 7pm - 11pm
• Wednesday 15th February, 7pm - 11pm
• Saturday 18th February, Noon - 6pm.
• Wednesday 22nd February, 7pm - 11pm

Next Friday is the first of the month. That's this Friday. It's 2600 time! Meeting will be at the usual place the Game Lounge at 178 Main Street in Burlington Vermont from 5-8. It's on the third floor, so just keep going up. There will be signs to point the way.

Afterwards we will probably head over to Laboratory B our new hacker space just  1.5 blocks away for further hijinks! We've made a lot of improvements since we moved in 2 weeks ago!

We’re (re-)starting learning nights at the Node. Watch this space for announcements. We’re appropriately naming this learning endeavor The More You Node

NASA today released a crazy high-res reconstructed photograph of the world, 61 megapixels (8,000 x 8,000)… we can finally replace the one from Apollo 17 from 1972.

Here are the deets.

A ‘Blue Marble’ image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA’s most recently launched Earth-observing satellite – Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth’s surface taken on January 4, 2012. The NPP satellite was renamed ‘Suomi NPP’ on January 24, 2012 to honor the late Verner E. Suomi of the University of Wisconsin.

Suomi NPP is NASA’s next Earth-observing research satellite. It is the first of a new generation of satellites that will observe many facets of our changing Earth.

Suomi NPP is carrying five instruments on board. The biggest and most important instrument is The Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite or VIIRS.

Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

JANUARY 30th 2012 – 8 PM
dorkbot.bln
„People doing strange things with electricity.“

OFFICIAL PARTNER EVENT TRANSMEDIALE 12 & CTM

Host: Frank Rieger (raumfahrtagentur Berlin)
ENTRANCE FREE
http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotbln/

*** Fritzing – André Knörig
http://fritzing.org/
Fritzing is an open-source initiative to support designers, artists, researchers and hobbyists to work creatively with interactive electronics. We are creating a software and website in the spirit of Processing and Arduino, developing a tool that allows users to document their prototypes, share them with others, teach electronics in a classroom, and to create a pcb layout for professional manufacturing.


*** Tworse Key – Martin Kaltenbrunner
http://modin.yuri.at/
Martin Kaltenbrunner is Professor at the Interface Culture Lab, University of Art and Design in Linz, Austria, and is known as co-creator of the Reactable, an electronic musical instrument with a tangible user interface. Martin will present his latest exercise in Interface Archeology, the “Tworse key”, which can directly send twitter messages through a classic morse key.


*** Klackerlaken – Mey Lean Kronemann
http://meyleankronemann.de/
Mey Lean Kronemann is an artist, designer and researcher based in Berlin. Mey will talk about her Klackerlaken workshops, where children and grown-ups learn to design and build their own solderless, glowing vibrobots.


*** etib – Milosch Meriac
http://etib.org/
A new hackerspace is coming up in Berlin! We proudly present etib, the Electronic + Textile Institute Berlin.
Milosch Meriac from etib will talk about the new hacker space. He is also Co-Founder of active and passive RFID open source projects like Sputnik/OpenBeacon.org, OpenPCD.org, OpenPICC.org and committed to RFID related security research.


*** raumfahrtagentur Berlin – Gismo C.
http://hackerspaces.org/
Concept and presentation of recent projects of Berlin’s based raumfahrtagentur.


More information on http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotbln/

Here at Hive76, my desk sits right next to the wood working station. Normally, this isn’t an issue because my computer uses passive heat management, so there is no risk of getting dust clogged up in the fans. But I recently bought a new printer and want to keep it nice and clean. I initially thought of buying a dust cover, but serendipitously completely forgot to even look for them before I left the store. So, necessity being the mother of invention that it is, I was stuck in the space, not wanting to hop back in the car for a silly little dust cover, when I realized that I had a useless cardboard box that I was about to discard that was almost the exact dimensions of the printer itself. Duh! The box it came in! I cut one side off of the box, taped the corners down, left the hole from the missing flap for the wires coming out of the back of the printer, and voila! A free dust cover. I suppose if the color ever bothers me I can just spray paint it a solid color. This solution is actually better than a real cover because now I can stack papers and other lite objects on top when the printer isn’t in use and not have to worry about them sliding or rolling off because of the somewhat round top of the printer.

Hello folks, Join us for our next LAN Night at 091 Labs on Friday the 17th of February from 6pm till late! We’ll have a fully-stocked tuck shop and our MAME arcade cabinet will be set up for anyone needing a break from the main attraction. Entry is €10 (all money goes to 091Labs). Members [...]

Christopher Wilmer from Northwestern University just got published in a leading chemistry journal, Nature Chemistry. Congrats Christopher! To convey his scientific findings to a broader audience, he designed this artwork that made it on the cover of the journal. Open source science and art FTW…

Check it out!
http://www.blendernation.com/2012/01/27/blender-used-to-make-cover-art-for-nature-chemistry/

And here’s the Nature Chemistry paper.

Cover art Summary:
Randall Snurr and co-workers describe a computational approach for simulating every possible metal-organic framework (MOF) that can be built from a given set of building blocks (metal clusters and organic ligands) — represented conceptually on the cover using Tinkertoys. Some of the properties of MOFs can also be simulated to uncover structure–property relationships or materials suitable for specific applications. The MOF shown on the cover was identified for its methane storage capacity — a property that was subsequently confirmed experimentally.

Paper Abstract:
Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are porous materials constructed from modular molecular building blocks, typically metal clusters and organic linkers. These can, in principle, be assembled to form an almost unlimited number of MOFs, yet materials reported to date represent only a tiny fraction of the possible combinations. Here, we demonstrate a computational approach to generate all conceivable MOFs from a given chemical library of building blocks (based on the structures of known MOFs) and rapidly screen them to find the best candidates for a specific application. From a library of 102 building blocks we generated 137,953 hypothetical MOFs and for each one calculated the pore-size distribution, surface area and methane-storage capacity. We identified over 300 MOFs with a predicted methane-storage capacity better than that of any known material, and this approach also revealed structure–property relationships. Methyl-functionalized MOFs were frequently top performers, so we selected one such promising MOF and experimentally confirmed its predicted capacity.

c-base Partner-Event der transmediale 12
Fr, Sa + So Live performance & audiovisual installation by Stickman feat. Fauxtone Collective
Vernissage: Fr 20:00, Sa + So ab 17:00
Berlin-based multi-instrumentalist and producer Stickman teams up with the Fauxtone Collective to bring an immersive audiovisual experience to the stage, exploring synergies and interactions of tones and photons.
Ab 22:00 gibt es an allen 3 Tagen ein Live-Concert by Stickman feat. Entlet

Stickman
Fauxtone Collective
Entlet

So sah es auf der Vernissage aus:

Das vollständige c-base transmediale Programm findet ihr unter http://c-base.org/transmediale/12/

c-base Partner-Event der transmediale 12
Fr, Sa + So 21:00 Improvisationstheater Live Perfomance der Improbanden
“Im/probabilities”
Improtheater ist spontanes Schauspiel, das heißt nichts ist vorher abgesprochen, die Szene entsteht im Moment auf der Bühne. Dazu lassen sich die Improbanden Themen oder Vorgaben vom Publikum geben, die dann als Startpunkt oder Leitfaden für die Szene verarbeitet werden. Dabei erforschen wir Möglichkeiten Medien und Webseiten in die Szenen einzubeziehen und die Interaktionsmöglichkeiten für das Publikum zu erhöhen.
www.improbanden.de

Das vollständige c-base transmediale Programm findet ihr unter http://c-base.org/transmediale/12/

This month we’ve got some notable new books for members to read in Nottingham Hackspace.  The classic ‘Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: A Course in Enhancing Creativity and Artistic Confidence’ by Betty Edwards claims to be the world’s most widely used drawing instruction book and has cracking reviews. We also have a brand new book, ‘How Round Is Your Circle?: Where Engineering and Mathematics Meet’ by John Bryant, which describes some beautiful physical models you can build to explore mathematical problems from an engineering perspective.

These donations were made by David Hayward (and by me). If you have any interesting books gathering dust on your home bookshelf, please consider lending or donating them to the hackspace. I will leave you with these descriptions of our new books, from their publishers:

“Whether you feel you have little talent and you doubt you could ever learn, or you enjoy drawing but have not been able to get much beyond a childlike level, this book will give you the skill you have always wanted. If you are already drawing as a professional artist or artist-in-training, it will give you greater confidence in your ability and deepen your artistic perception. This 20th-anniversary edition of ‘Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain’ has been dramatically revised, with more than fifty per cent new material, including: Recent developments in brain research that relate to drawing. New insights on the use of drawing techniques in the corporate world and education. Instruction on self-expression through drawing. Ways to step beyond black-and-white drawing into colour. Detailed advice on applying the five basic skills of drawing to solve problems.”

---

How do you draw a straight line? How do you determine if a circle is really round? These may sound like simple or even trivial mathematical problems, but to an engineer the answers can mean the difference between success and failure. How Round Is Your Circle? invites readers to explore many of the same fundamental questions that working engineers deal with every day–it’s challenging, hands-on, and fun.

John Bryant and Chris Sangwin illustrate how physical models are created from abstract mathematical ones. Using elementary geometry and trigonometry, they guide readers through paper-and-pencil reconstructions of mathematical problems and show them how to construct actual physical models themselves–directions included. It’s an effective and entertaining way to explain how applied mathematics and engineering work together to solve problems, everything from keeping a piston aligned in its cylinder to ensuring that automotive driveshafts rotate smoothly. Intriguingly, checking the roundness of a manufactured object is trickier than one might think. When does the width of a saw blade affect an engineer’s calculations–or, for that matter, the width of a physical line? When does a measurement need to be exact and when will an approximation suffice? Bryant and Sangwin tackle questions like these and enliven their discussions with many fascinating highlights from engineering history. Generously illustrated, How Round Is Your Circle? reveals some of the hidden complexities in everyday things.

The MAKE blog recently posted a notice of an event being held this weekend–Art Hack Day–that I find very intriguing. I’ve been bandying about an similar idea, in part inspired by the Bravo Channel’s reality TV series Work of Art. The show has the typical “Top XYZ” format of elimination challenges. What strikes me about the show is that their work space looks very much like a hackerspace, and once the artists settle in to the work format, they start producing some extremely intriguing pieces.

In a lot of ways, the artist’s studio and hackerspaces are very similar; indeed, we here at Hive76 have made a former artist’s studio as our fire-retardant-home-away-from-home here at 915 Studios. So with that in mind, we are putting together a similar event to the Art Hack Day. We would like to make it an open build session with recycled materials. Stay tuned for the full details in an upcoming blog post (honestly, I will write it, really, I will).

Last Call for tickets to this class this weekend.

January 28th, 1-6 pm @ Hive76

If you’ve been waiting to get your ticket, now’s the time to do it!

Download or create a 3D model of your choice and the free and open source Blender (v2.61 or later, http://www.blender.org/) and I’ll take you through the process of texturing, lighting, rendering, compositing, and post-processing to make a photo-realistic 3D render.

You’ll learn the ins and outs of the interface in Blender, a professional strength, free and open source program for 3D rendering, animation, modeling, texturing, compositing, and post processing.

For all the details, click here to see the previous post…

Diesen Mittwoch ab 19 Uhr findet wieder der Android Stammtisch in der Mainhall statt.

Entwickler, Nutzer und Interessierte sind gleichermaßen eingeladen.

Weitere Informationen gibt’s auf dem Blog android-in-berlin.de