2016 End of Year Review

calendar-icon-mdWell the world has turned and another year has almost passed. What a year it has been for TOG. We started 2016 with our doors closed to the public. We had just made our big move from Chancery Lane. Blackpitts was a blank canvas for us. It was a completely open-plan space and we had to decide what to do with it. It wasn’t long before we had a proposed layout and we started building rooms. We built ourselves a fantastic common room, a classroom, a make-room to house our laser cutter and electronic stuff, and a general workshop. We decided that our traditional January birthday party and Open Social would be our grand re-opening to the public . We billed it as a monster bash, and it didn’t disappoint. It was our biggest social event ever. We invited just about everyone that we could think of, and most of them came.

It wasn’t long before we started all of our regular evenings again….. CAD and Electronics, Coding, Lockpicking, Crafting as well as some Movie and Games nights. What else have we been up to in 2016? Well let’s see…..there was making Christmas baubles, projection mapping workshop, DIY vacuum former, DIY CNC router, Science Hackday Dublin, tinkering with batteries and bikes, undersea and space talks, CoderGirl Hackday, Science Week 2016, supercollider workshop, metalwork and machining antics, games nights, building works in the space, Electric Picnic, mega fly traps, build-it workshops, Arduino fun, EMF camp, bridge building competitions, skull radios, Dublin Maker, Inspirefest, Duck shoot’em up, Coolest Projects, OSM jams, variac fun, green video screens, boat building, coder forge, Makerfaire UK, brewdays (woooo beer!), motorbike madness, Big Day Out, hacking IKEA furniture, VR motorbikes, 100-year old mangles. Did we miss anything there? Probably!

Everything at TOG happens because our members and visitors are so generous with their time and effort. Everyone volunteers for free. If you’re looking for a 2017 New Years resolution, why not drop in and see us. If you’ve never been in before, we’ll give you the grand tour of the space. Talk to members and visitors about projects or things you’d like to do. Ask about our plans for 2017. If you like what you see, ask about joining as a full member. What a great New Years resolution that would be!

December Open Social

christmas-treeOur regular Open Social evening for December, will take place on Saturday 17th December at 7PM.

If you’ve never been to our Social, you’ll find it a great alternative Saturday evening in town. Think of the break from the Christmas shopping! Come in and look around. If you’ve never been in before, we’ll give you the grand tour of the space. Talk to members and visitors about projects or things you’d like to do. Ask about our plans for 2017. If you like what you see, ask about joining as a full member. What a great New Years resolution that would be!

Hopefully there’ll be, caint, ceol agus craic as usual. The space stays open until the last member is left……usually the small hours of Sunday morning. The evening is free to attend for members and visitors alike. No need to book…. just turn up. You can drop in for 10 minutes, or stay the whole night. We have parking available. Bring beer, food, gadgets! Our doors are open from 7PM. Hope to see you there.

https://www.tog.ie/
https://lists.tog.ie/mailman/listinfo/tog
https://twitter.com/TOG_Dublin
https://www.facebook.com/togdublin

 

November Open Social….with a twist!

mind-webBy now, you’ll probably know that we hold a regular Open Social evening on a Saturday in the middle of each month. November will be no different. We’ll be doing it on Saturday 19th November. This month however, there’ll be a bit of a twist!

We’ll also be hosting Science Hackday Dublin that weekend, so the space will be very busy. You’ll get to see up to 100 makers, up to all sorts of making antics, just for the pure hell of it!

If you’ve never been to our Social, you’ll find it a great alternative Saturday evening in town. Come in and look around. If you’ve never been in before, we’ll give you the grand tour of the space. Talk to members and visitors about projects or things you’d like to do. Ask about our regular craft evening, which has just restarted. See what the Science Hackday participants are up to. If you like what you see, ask about joining as a full member. Either way, we’re always interested to know what has drawn you to our door.

Hopefully there’ll be, caint, ceol agus craic as usual. The space stays open until the last member is left……usually the small hours of Sunday morning. The evening is free to attend for members and visitors alike. No need to book…. just turn up. You can drop in for 10 minutes, or stay the whole night. We have parking available. Bring beer, food, gadgets! Our doors are open from 7PM. Hope to see you there.
https://lists.tog.ie/mailman/listinfo/tog
https://twitter.com/TOG_Dublin
https://www.facebook.com/togdublin

Visit the Science Hack Day website too, for more information about the event.
http://sciencehackdaydublin.com/

Rebuilding an Ebike Battery

ebike-batteryA few of our members and visitors use Ebikes. We were presented with an Ebike battery which had a dead cell. The plan was to replace the cell with a new one. This is not ideal, since you end up with a mix of old and new cells, but the balance circuit should make it usable. On further investigation we found that there were a number of dead cells. So we set about rebuilding the whole battery with new 10Ah cells.

The cells are 10Ah LiFePO4 type…. 12 of them in all. The new ones are a little bigger than the old ones, so we will have to modify the case a bit, but that won’t be a show stopper. Drop in during our fortnightly electronics night to see the build in action.

One Year in Blackpitts

tog-locationThis October bank holiday weekend brings an important milestone for us.  It will be one year since we did the big move from Chancery Lane to Blackpitts. Over the bank holiday of 2015, we cleared out our old space and moved the lot to 22 Blackpitts, just a short distance away.

In the year since then, we’ve done incredible work.  TOG continues to grow. All of our old favourite theme evenings are up and running. We’ve built a fine common room, set up our kitchen, built classroom, electronics/laser cutter room and a general workshop. We’ve welcomed new members, each of whom bring their own unique skills and interests.

November will also be an important month for us as it will mark one year since we set up of our new organisation Tog Hackerspace Designated Activity Company.

 

 

 

Coder Girl Hack Day

shadow-boxesWe had a great time at Coder Girl Hack Day on Saturday. The girls assembled shadow boxes from laser cut plywood. They got to decorate them and install some LED lights that they soldered together with 9v battery and resistor. The boxes worked great and the girls got to take them home too.