We’re excited to be taking our Repair Café on the road again, this time to Laois for a weekend filled with fixing, learning, and community spirit!
Join us at The CUBE – Low Carbon Centre of Excellence in Portlaoise on Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th June 2025, from 11 am to 3 pm each day. We’re teaming up with a fantastic new partner to help give your broken items a second chance.
What can you bring?
We’ll be ready to tackle repairs on a wide range of household items, including:
Clothes and accessories
Toys
Small electrical appliances and electronics
Small furniture
…and more!
We’ll even have PAT (Portable Appliance Testing) available to ensure repaired electrical devices are safe to use.
Whether it’s a wonky toaster, glitchy switch, or a teddy missing a limb—don’t throw it away! Our volunteers will work with you to diagnose and repair your items, all while sharing tips and advice to help you learn new skills.
While you’re waiting, enjoy a cup of tea or coffee and take a tour of The CUBE, a national centre of excellence focused on innovation and sustainability in the low-carbon and renewables sector.
Event Details 🛠️ When: Saturday 28th & Sunday 29th June 2025 ⏰ Time: 11:00 am – 3:00 pm each day 📍 Where: The CUBE, 18 Church Street, Portlaoise, Co. Laois, R32 TP89 🎟️ Admission: Free, but booking in advance via Eventbrite is essential.
This special Repair Café event is only possible thanks to the support of Laois County Council, in collaboration with the Eastern-Midlands Waste Region, and with the generous backing of the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment.
Read about this repair by our own Jeffrey, fixing an old-school CB radio setup.
A member arrived at the space one evening with a pair of CB radios: a Philips 369 (22AP369) and a MARC/CB base station (AP569). It’s hard to pin down the exact year of manufacture, but they likely date back to the 1980s. The two radios and the base station were mostly working, but with a few issues. One radio had no sound from its speaker, and the base station wasn’t outputting any power. Time to open them up.
Power Problems
Four screws and we’re inside. The base station revealed a transformer, an audio amplifier, and a nice fuse holder — with a clearly blown fuse, I could see without even taking out the meter. It was a 220V / 100 mA fuse, which I didn’t have on hand, so the repair was put on hold for a while.
Once I sourced a new fuse and installed it, it blew straight away. So did the next three.
In the end, I increased the rating on the fuse from 100 mA to 200 mA, and it held up. I adjusted the output to 13.8 volts, and it seemed to settle down. Maybe it’s just the age of the components that’s causing it to draw more current than expected?
Radio Repairs
Next up: the speaker issue. The sound worked perfectly on an external speaker, but nothing from the internal one. I noticed two mystery wires someone had added to the radio at some point. Curious, I opened it up.
I found a spare speaker in my stash with the same resistance (8 Ω) and rated for 0.5 W. It looked similar in size — the wattage might not be an exact match, but it was worth a test. A few crocodile clips later, and I had sound. Turns out the original speaker was just blown.
A little soldering and the new speaker was in. As for those mystery wires? I chose to embrace a little bit of mystery and just taped them up safely. Sometimes it’s okay not to know everything.
Antenna Adventure
Maybe I look like a radio person now. At the last Repair Café in Blanchardstown Library, someone randomly offered me a CB radio antenna — without me even mentioning radio! It was missing a few parts, but it worked well enough for testing.
With that, both radios were working again. I might be a few decades late to catch any actual CB chatter, but this was a fun little repair project. To actually transmit between the two radios, I’d need another antenna — but that’s a task for another day.
Check out our gallery for even more photos of the repair. Photos here.
Got something old and broken? Join us at a future Repair Café or electronics night at Tog Hackerspace and bring it back to life, or at least enjoy taking it apart!
USB-C conversions are becoming a bit of a thing around here. We repaired a faulty work light earlier this year, and we took the opportunity to upgrade the charging socket to USB-C. A few other items have had the same treatment over the last few months. This latest one is an old-school light box for viewing film negatives and slides. We’re still keen on our film photography at TOG, and we still have all of our dark room equipment.
As-built, this particular light box came with with a foot-long fluorescent tube. Inside, there is a driver PCB for the tube, and a 6x D-cell battery compartment. It also has a 3.5mm power input socket if you want to run it from some kind of adapter.
The small driver PCB inside takes the ~9V battery voltage and bumps it up to the high voltage required to to run the fluorescent tube. The switching transistor on the driver has already failed once in the past, and its heat sink gets very hot during operation. Probably not a very optimal design or power efficient.
A bit of work with a Dremel and we have a nice oval hole for the new USB-C socket. A few touches with a soldering iron to melt the plastic, and the socket is now joined firmly to the case. The intention was to feed in 5v, and then bump it up to something closer to 12v to charge the batteries via a current limiting resistor. A cheap voltage converter sourced from the usual websites would look after that.
That was the intended upgrade, but a bit of feature creep came along last night. We thought that it would be nice to replace the fluorescent lamp with a more power efficient LED one. This would also allow us to eliminate that iffy driver PCB. Rummaging around the space, an old emergency light fitting had a nice LED strip ripe for harvesting. Check back in with us over the next while to see the finished article. If you have anything that you think might benefit from a USB-C upgrade, drop in to our regular Monday and Tuesday open nights.
We’re packing up projects, charging the batteries, and heading south—Tog Hackerspace is back at the Cork Carnival of Science this weekend, Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th of June, in the beautiful Fitzgerald Park.
As veterans of this fantastic festival, we’re excited to return and share our love of making with the people of Cork once again. It’s one of our favourite science outreach events of the year!
This year, we’re making the journey by car and train, carrying our interactive projects across the country to take part in the science-fuelled fun. Whether by road or rail, no distance is too far when it comes to spreading maker magic and hands-on learning.
The Cork Carnival of Science is packed with family-friendly experiments, live shows, garden games, food stalls, and all kinds of interactive activities. It’s an amazing celebration of curiosity and creativity—and a perfect match for what we love to do.
📍 You’ll find us on Discover Drive, where we’ll be showing off an assortment of interactive games and projects built in our hackerspace. Expect blinking LEDs, DIY gadgets, mechanical puzzles, and more. Come explore what’s possible when creativity meets technology!
We believe strongly in science outreach—in sparking curiosity, encouraging learning, and making tech more approachable for everyone. Events like this are how we connect with communities, share our knowledge, and hopefully inspire the next generation of makers.
🕚 We’ll be there both days from 11 am to 6 pm, ready to welcome visitors of all ages.
So if you’re in the Cork area, come join us for some hands-on fun! Bring your curiosity—we’ll bring the projects.
A blog post by our member, Jeffrey Roe, on his trip to Edinburgh.
At the end of May, I headed off to Edinburgh for a long weekend full of hardware hacking, radio waves, refurbished tech, and just a little too much cake. The trip centred around the Open Hardware Summit 2025, which took place on the 30th and 31st of May in The Nucleus Building at The University of Edinburgh.
The last time I attended an Open Hardware Summit was way back in Maker Faire New York 2012, so it was a real treat to be back at such a key event in the open hardware calendar. The talks this year were fantastic, touching on everything from accessible design to space exploration.
One of the nice surprises of the summit was getting to meet up with others from Dublin who were also attending. I had a great chat with the team behind EIRSAT-1, Ireland’s first satellite, who were showcasing their testing equipment. It’s always refreshing to run into familiar faces and see Irish projects represented at international events, and we even had dinner together.
Saturday: Workshop Day
Saturday was all about rolling up my sleeves and getting stuck into workshops. I signed up for three sessions and left each one with a new creation in hand.
Opencyclone – A Vacuum You Can Build Yourself This workshop involved assembling a fully working vacuum cleaner using open source plans and a bit of elbow grease. Loud? Yes. Satisfying? Absolutely. More details on the project here: Opencyclone Project
Shortwave Collective – Open Wave Receiver A beautiful, social workshop where we built a basic but effective radio receiver that can tune into the shortwave bands. There’s something magical about hearing signals bounce around the world using only passive components and a wire for an antenna.
Ribbit Network – CO₂ Sensor Workshop Frogs and sensors—what’s not to love? This community science project helps build a distributed network of open hardware CO₂ sensors. I now have my own Ribbit sensor ready to go!
The evening ended with the Open Source Open Mic, where makers shared stories, sang songs, and showcased their creative projects in a welcoming atmosphere. It was a lovely way to wind down after a busy day of building.
Sunday: Art, Nature & Hacking Spaces
On Sunday, I took some time to explore more of what Edinburgh had to offer beyond the summit. I started the morning with a peaceful stroll through the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, soaking up some greenery and grabbing a moment to reflect after two busy days of hardware excitement.
I made a return visit to Summerhall (Last visited in 2017 for Maker Faire), this time exploring more of its galleries and installations. It’s an inspiring venue for both art and tech events, with a real sense of creative energy running through its halls.
Later, I visited Edinburgh Hackspace, a highlight of the day. Tucked away but buzzing with activity, the space was full of tools, interesting projects, and most importantly, very welcoming people. We chatted about how their space operates, community challenges, and shared experiences around running public workshops and events. It reminded me a lot of Tog, and I left with a few ideas we might borrow!
Monday: From Cake to Circular Tech
After all the indulgences of the weekend (I’ll link to my full vegan cake round-up below!), I kicked off Monday with a workout at a local health club before taking a short walk to the Scottish Parliament and Palace of Holyroodhouse for a tour.
That afternoon, I headed out to Leith to visit the Edinburgh Remakery. The team there were incredibly generous with their time. We talked about their work in tech refurbishment, sustainability education, and their Repair Café events. There are a lot of parallels between their mission and the work we do at Tog, especially around community-led repair and reuse. It’s always great to meet people tackling e-waste in practical, inclusive ways.
Wrapping Up
All in all, it was a brilliant weekend packed with tech, community, creativity, and inspiration. Edinburgh has a lot to offer, both for hackers and visitors alike. If you’re curious about the non-maker side of the trip, including my deep dive into Edinburgh’s vegan cafés and cake scene, check out my Mastodon account.
We’re excited to announce a special event at TOG Hackerspace: a full day dedicated to radio, electronics, and signal experimentation, celebrating our recent membership with the Irish Radio Transmitters Society (IRTS).
Whether you’re a maker curious about what amateur radio is, a licensed operator interested in digital modes and SDR, or just love to learn how signals fly through the air, Radio Day at TOG has something for you.
This is a unique day to connect the local radio and tech communities, explore the fascinating world of wireless communication, and get hands-on with tools and concepts that are often invisible, yet all around us.
🗓 Date: Saturday, 14th June 2025 📍 Location: TOG Hackerspace, Unit 1B Motor City, Kylemore Road, Dublin 12, D12 CF6V 🎟️ Tickets: Free, but registration required – Reserve your free ticket here 🍕 Bonus: From 7 pm, join us for TOG’s famous monthly open social night — meet the community over chats, demos, and pizza!
📅 Event Schedule
🔧 11:00–12:30 — Multimeter Masterclass
Instructor: Jeffrey Roe EI7IRB Want to confidently measure voltage, resistance, and current? This class will give you hands-on training in using a multimeter properly. You’ll leave knowing how to troubleshoot circuits and understand key electronic measurements.
💶 Fee: €25 🎟️ Booking required – Book here Note: This is the only paid session of the day. All talks and demos afterward are free with a general ticket.
📡 13:00 — What Is Amateur Radio? A Beginner-Friendly Introduction to the Radio Hobby
Speaker: Adrian Connor EI9HAB
Ever wondered what amateur radio is all about? Adrian will walk us through this rich and varied hobby, from chatting across the globe with handheld radios to decoding digital signals and building antennas in your garden.
This talk highlights:
Voice, Morse code, and digital modes
Fun, license-free projects (like listening to satellites or airband)
How to get started in Ireland, including the path to licensing
The creativity, experimentation, and global community that makes amateur radio unique
To wrap up, Adrian will demonstrate a portable station setup, and if conditions allow, attempt a live radio contact!
🛠️ 14:00 — Packet Radio for a New Generation: Reimagined
Speaker: Ben Field EI9IUB
Once the backbone of digital amateur communication, packet radio is getting a fresh look. This talk explores the current state of packet radio, its potential in a modern context, and the ambitious goals for building a new Irish packet radio network.
We’ll look at:
What packet radio is and why it still matters
Emerging uses with low-power devices, mesh networking, and APRS
Ideas and inspiration from international efforts
How you can get involved in shaping a next-gen Irish system
Whether you’re into digital comms, infrastructure, or retro-tech with a modern twist—this one’s for you.
📊 15:00 — Hands-On With Filters
Speaker: Gary Cooke
This live, practical session dives into one of radio’s core building blocks—filters. Using function generators and oscilloscopes, Gary will demonstrate:
Band-pass, low-pass, and high-pass filters in action
How frequency and signal type affect filter behaviour
Applications in real radio systems—reducing interference, improving clarity, and isolating desired signals
This is ideal for anyone into RF design, SDR, or improving their shack’s performance. Come see waveforms in motion and leave with real-world insights.
This will be a drop-in in hands-on session and a chance to also get a cup of tea and have a chat.
🛰️ 16:00 — Talking to Space: Connecting Students with the International Space Station
Speaker: Daniel Cussen EI9FHB
How do students get to ask astronauts questions live from Earth? Through ARISS (Amateur Radio on the International Space Station)—a program that brings space communication to schools around the globe.
Dan shares the behind-the-scenes experience of helping set up an ARISS contact event:
Tracking the ISS as it races overhead at 28,000 km/h
The antennas, radios, and audio/video gear involved
Challenges in receiving video and audio from space
The human impact of seeing kids speak live to astronauts
An inspiring talk for fans of space, education, and the power of amateur radio to bridge worlds—literally.
🏠 17:00 — A Homebrew Amateur Radio Setup
Speaker: Tony Breathnach EI5EM
Tony takes us on a tour of his personal amateur radio station, built with DIY and budget-friendly gear. He’ll explain how he put together antennas, tuned radios, and tackled interference challenges—all from a home setting.
This talk is perfect for those looking to start their own station, especially with limited space or funds. Come see how creativity and perseverance can bring the airwaves to life.
📶 18:00 — Drones For Sensing and Communications in Emergency Applications
Speaker: Dr. Boris Galkin EI6HDB
Tyndall National Institute and the CONNECT Centre are involved in a number of projects with the Department of Defence and Civil Defence to explore ways to support emergency personnel using emerging technologies. Drones have shown themselves to be a powerful tool in a variety of applications in this talk, I will describe how radio communication equipment mounted on drones can be a gamechanger in the field.
🌐 Bonus Demos (during the day)
We’ll also have demos, tours and plenty of tea and coffee throughout the day.
🍕 From 19:00 — TOG’s Open Social Night
Once the talks end, the fun continues with our legendary Open Social Night. Meet the TOG community, hang out with radio operators and makers, and enjoy an evening of conversation, demos, and pizza. Everyone welcome!
🎟️ Tickets
This event is free, but registration is required so we can plan seating and space.
(Separate booking is required for the multimeter class – link above.)
👋 Get Involved
Want to demo something, share your gear, or help out on the day? We’d love to hear from you. Email info@tog.ie or come along to one of our open nights before the event.
We’re looking forward to seeing you on June 14th for a day of radio waves, learning, community, and fun.
