Author: gary

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Electronics Bootcamp

640px-Kondansator_(3)Its time for our electronics bootcamp again. This is a quick, practical / hands-on introduction to electronics. Its suitable for complete beginners, as no previous knowledge is required. If you’re curious about electronics and don’t know where to start, then this is for you. No soldering required, as we build everything on plug-in breadboards. We’ll be building and testing circuits covering DC, AC, analog and digital electronics.

You’ll have a chance to play with components, multimeters, oscilloscopes, signal generators and other electronic test equipment.

This event will be run over 2 half-Saturdays, the first half on Sat 13th July and the second half on Sat 20th July, from 12:00 to 17:30 each day. Cost for the bootcamp is €50. To sign up, open this article and fill in the form. There are 8 places available.

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4 Month Pinhole Photo

In Nov 2011 we left a pinhole camera taped to the drain pipe in TOG’s yard looking south. So its been up for 4 months. It’s just a beer can with a 1mm hole and a piece of b+w photo paper inside. We took it down today and scanned it in. The raw image is upside down and back to front. The “colours” are also inverted. You can see the track of the sun and how it gets higher in the sky, as the days get longer.  The gaps are days where there was no sun. After a bit of trickery in GIMP, its right way around and inverted. We have lots of photo paper in TOG if you want to come in and make one. You can leave it in place from days to months and still get a good image. Click on the images for a closer view.

 

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Electronic “Build-It” Workshop

*** just 2 places left ***

Join us at TOG for an afternoon electronic “build-it” workshop. This is a quick introduction to electronics. Participants get to build and take home a small electronic kit, which we’ve chosen as a good basic introductory kit. The workshop is suitable for beginners to electronics. If you’ve never built an electronics kit or soldered before, then this workshop is ideal for you. We’ll show you everything that you need to know.

We like this particular kit very much, and we think that it will provide you with great fun and mischief. To make it a bit more interesting, we’d prefer not to tell you what the kit is, but if you really want to know, contact us or sign up and we’ll tell you…. only if you promise to keep it to yourself!

In addition to building the kit, we’ll explain how the circuit works and you can test it with various electronic test equipment that we have at TOG. We’ll show you how to do that too.

The cost of this workshop is 30 euro and you can pay on the day. The workshop takes place at TOG on the afternoon of Saturday 5th November at 3PM. We should be finished by 5:30PM. You can sign up using the form below. That same evening we hold our regular open social event. You’re welcome to stick around for that, meet the other TOG’gers and visitors. As usual with our open socials, hang out, bring beer, food, gadgets etc!

Continue reading “Electronic “Build-It” Workshop”

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Pinhole Photo Workshop

We had some fun yesterday with pinhole cameras made from soft drinks cans. A bit of trial and error was order of the day. Exposures ranged from 5 seconds to 10 minutes.

We also recovered a long-term pinhole camera which has been mounted high-up in TOG’s yard, and exposing for several months. Unfortunately it got a bit wet inside at some point which damaged the paper slightly, but you can still clearly see the tracks of the sun and the outline of the roof. Check out the gallery soon for more pictures.

TOG Yard long-term pinhole
TOG yard long-term pinhole camera
TOG common room
TOG common room