The Dublin Hackerspace
We want to welcome a new makerspace to Dublin. Fingal Makerspace will be in Blanchardstown Library. A kick off meeting is happening on Wednesday 20th of October from 6 pm. They are looking for input from the community how this new resource can be best used for all. Event poster below.
Maker Faire Rome takes place from Friday 8 – Saturday 9 – Sunday 10 October. A mix of 250 exhibitors in person in Rome and over 300 makers via the online platform. The free to sign up digital platform will allow everyone to explore the projects present directly from your home and meet and interact with makers and innovators from all sectors. Sign up with the following link https://digital.makerfairerome.eu/
Our own member Jeffrey Roe will be online to showcase his project. “Kill The Dots – Remote LED Game“.
The project mixes Raspberry pi, Arduino, LED display and IoT all in one. It uses remote.tv to allow the player to remotely control all the buttons of this fun arcade-style LED game. The user tries to kills all the red dots in order to stay alive to see hot pink. The game is a total mash-up, using a robotics platform built for using the pi camera mixed together with an Arduino drawing cool animations on a 32 by 32 LED display.
To find out more visit https://makerfairerome.eu/en/exhibitors/?edition=2021&exhibit=200260#
Octocon is the national Irish science fiction convention running from the 1st till the 3rd October 2021. A weekend celebration of our favourite stories from books, comics, TV, films and games; from science fiction, fantasy, horror and beyond; attracting artists, writers, film-makers and fans from across the human sphere of influence.
Going virtual again this year, the programme is split across Twitch, Zoom and Discord. It is packed with panels, interviews, talks, workshops, fan chats, readings, games and guest chats (aka kaffeeklatsches). See the full programme here.
The event is free you can sign up following this link. https://registration.octocon.com/
Tog will have a fan table at the event. We share a lot in common with the Octocon community, the love of bringing iteas to life in various forms. Jump on the Octocon Discord where you can chat to Tog members, ask advice about making things and just hang out.
A story of repair by our member Jeffrey.
I do like the chance to repair things every now and again. It allows me to get away from coding and try something.
This Sunday I had a look at this broken Casio SK-1. A classic small sampling keyboard made by Casio from 1985.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_SK-1
From the owner, they didn’t have a plug for it and it was no longer working with batteries and the last time they played it the sound was a bit off.
I got the unit to power up with an adjustable voltage supply but taking care of the odd centre pin negative configuration. It can certainly make noise.
Finding the service manual online, made opening it up fairly straightforward. I can see some type of liquid had stained the area around the battery compartment.
A good while cleaning contact points and spraying it with a load of compressed air it looked a lot better. Now testing with five AA batteries the unit came to life.
Now for the odd sound. It seems when the volume is about 40% and a few of the bass notes are played distortion comes to visit. Thinking it might be just the inbound speaker, a line out was plugged in and it had followed us there.
The demo mode and other instruments at higher volume seem to be free of this distortion. A visual inspection of the caps and parts on the board, I saw no immediate signs of damage.
I called it a day before reaching for the oscilloscope and began probing singles and that’s all the time on I had on a Sunday morning. For more photos check out our gallery.
The space has been a hive of activity as we get it ready for our members. We will be hopefully soon being opening to the wider community. Check out the videos below and our gallery.
We missed you all in July but we had the big job of moving space. If you missed the news check out Tog 4.0. We are back now and have a project showcase live stream for you. We have just scheduled a night of great talks to let you all see what these makers have been up to over the last few months. We hope to welcome you on Tuesday the 31st of August from 7 pm streaming on our Youtube channel. We will have talks about making a pizza oven, a remote LED game and a large 3d printer. The talks will be followed by a live Q&A. Check out the talks below.
Talk Title: Outdoor Pizza Oven & BBQ
Project Description: Design, construction and learnings from an outdoor pizza oven and BBQ build.
Speaker: Shane Phelan
Bio: Electronic engineer currently building agricultural robots for the poultry industry. Likes making, brewing, leather craft, renewable energy, sensors & wireless tech.
Links: Twitter
Talk Title: Kill The Dots – Remote LED Game
Project Description: This talk will outline how this project came together. An Arduino/Raspberry Pi powered game that allows people to have fun remotely. Using the remo.tv platform, it allows people to take over and play the kill the dots games that is in Jeffrey’s living room. The game was build and showcased at Dublin Maker earlier in the summer.
Speaker: Jeffrey Roe
Bio: Jeffrey is a software/hardware engineer. For the last number of years, he has been building hardware and coding for public transport systems from bike-share schemes, parking and port traffic access management systems. In his spare time, he likes to make crazy projects like bubble machines, bone conduction, IoT projects and anything with LEDs in it. A big fan of getting people making, he co-runs ‘Dublin Maker’ an annual maker showcase festival and is a director of our space. He is a member of Engineers Ireland and servers on their council and executive boards.
Links: Twitter
Talk Title: Building a large CoreXY 3D Printer
Talk Description: A talk about designing and building a custom CoreXY
style 3D printer. The project aimed to be simpler to assemble and
cheaper than other current CoreXY designs such as the printers from
VORON.
Speaker Name: Maja Stanislawska
Short Bio: Software Engineer and Consultant in Ennis. Runs the popular MakerShop.ie and former member of Tog. An avid model maker and creator of jewellery projects.
Link Website: https://makershop.ie
Link Twitter: https://twitter.com/MakerShop_ie
Link Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/people/majastanislawska/
Link Project Design:
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/cf780ce0c57173e212cdb46b/w/c0bd5f693971229a05745108/e/7f6d83902d7f9e224dd765f8
Be sure to put any questions you have for our speakers in the Youtube chat.