Author: tdr

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Chaos Communication Camp – Irish Embassy

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The Chaos Communication Camp is an international, five-day open-air event for hackers and associated life-forms. It provides a relaxed atmosphere for free exchange of technical, social, and political ideas. The Camp has everything you need: power, internet, food and fun. Bring your tent and participate!

13. – 17. August 2015, Ziegeleipark Mildenberg, Zehdenick, Germany, Earth, Milky Way

The Irish hacker & maker communities that are travelling to CCC Camp invites you all to join us in forming an “Irish Embassy” This will be our village presence at the camp. We’ll be show casing any participant projects and coming up with new collaborative initiatives as the camp progresses. Become one of the Irish inhabitants or at least drop by and say Conas ata tú? We look forward to seeing all our friends and making new ones.

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Dublin Maker 25th July

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Dublin Maker is a one-day, hands-on, family-friendly, free, outdoor celebration of making on the Physics Lawn at Trinity College Dublin from 10am to 6pm on 25th of July. We are very proud to be a supporting group again this year . Dublin Maker takes the form of a ‘show and tell’ experience where makers demonstrate what they are making, and share what they are learning.

Makers range from tech enthusiasts to crafters, educators, tinkerers, hobbyists, engineers, artists, science clubs, students, authors, and commercial exhibitors. They are of all ages and backgrounds, coming from all over Ireland and beyond. Dublin Maker will feature over forty groups of makers from across the country. Check out the full list of makers.

Our Members will be showcasing some old and new projects;

  • Skull Radio – A bone conduction project that allows the user to listen to sounds without using their ears.
  • Duck shooting gallery – lasertag for ducks.
  • Ring The Bell – aka High Striker carnival  style game were people can hit a pad with a big hammer and see their strength.
  • Tachyonic Antitelephone – receive mysterious printed messages from your future self  Spectral forms: Watch and listen to your brain waves in real time, using an eeg device and some custom software.
  • TOG Lockpickers – Come and give lockpicking a try. Demonstrations of different locks throughout the day as well as hands on lockpicking tutorials from TOG’s very own lockpickers. Have your own lockpicks? Come and test your skills against TOG’s ever growing collection of Love Locks from Dublin’s own Ha’penny Bridge

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Coolest Projects

YoungCoolestProjectAwardsworkshop1Coolest Projects is showcase of all the creative and wonderful things the Coder Dojo community makes. It takes place on the 13th of June in the RDS from 10:30 to 17:30. This year the event have ballooned in size to a massive 500 projects on display. It really goes to show much Coder Dojo movement is still growing. Tickets are free and available to anyone via their website here.

 

 

TOG will be at Coolest Projects running our famous ‘Learn to Solder’ workshop. We will be teaching kids of all ages some basics electronics and soldering skills. As always we will be using partfusion‘s ( Irish Maker) fabulous I can solder badge.

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Inspirefest 2015 – Family Fringe

Inspirefest is a two day technology conference taking place on 18th-19th of June in the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre. The conference has a strong focus on STEM and diversity. To go along with the conference, there is a host of fringe events taking place in Merrion Square. We are proud to be taking part in the Family Fringe event on 20th of June.

We have joined forces with Intel and Girls Hack Ireland to create Stop the Lights workshop. The workshop will give insights into the basics of using the Intel Galileo, an Arduino-compatible designed right here in Ireland. Participant’s will get their hands on LED’s, buttons and buzzers, to create a traffic light animation.

The workshop is open to all aged between 15 and 17 and is most suitable for participants who have some prior coding experience. Participants are not required to bring their own laptop or materials

  • Date: Saturday June 20th
  • Time: 10am
  • Location: Merrion Square, Dublin 2
  • Duration: 3 hours
  • Places available: 20.
  • Tickets: Free, but prebook.

Apart from our workshop we are also teaming up with Dublin Maker to give people a little taster session ahead of their July event. Dublin Maker is a family friendly showcase of invention, creativity and resourcefulness, and a celebration of the maker movement. The taster session will also feature the Year of Light makers. 

We will be showing off projects created by our members. They will include the Egg Bot – draw your own images onto eggs, Skull Radio – listen to music without using your ears, Buzzer Game – classic game of keeping a steady hand and Constellation Quilt – stars, electronics both met on a quilt. 

The UN has declared 2015 the International Year of Light to highlight the central role of light has in the modern world from science and technology to nature and culture. The Year of Light makers will demonstrate how light is used in our everyday lives though lots of hands on experiments from making UV bracelets, lenses out of Jelly and LED badges. There will also be some optical illusions to show the different ways in which light works.

 

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Project: Skull Radio Box

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This blog post is written by our member Jeffrey Roe about his Skull Radio Box Project.

The Skull Radio Box came out of the frustration demonstrating the bone conduction kits at the Big Day Out. The kits are great for workshops but in a show and tell type of stand they just are not user friendly. They need an audio source hooked into them and just not appealing to members of the public to bite on a metal rod with lots of wires hanging out of it.

 

 

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I first found out about bone conduction from David McKeown at Artek Circle (Photographed right) and tried it out with a spoon in my mouth.  Months later, I then worked with Sinead Mc Donald to create the Guzman Box. Internally, it used a Kitronik amplifier kit to create the bone conduction effect. During its stay in the Lexicon Library for Soundings, the TBA820M IC burned out twice. The main cause was due to heat. The IC had no heatsync and would burn if left on for too long.  Jump forward a few months, I used bone conduction again during Spectral Forms a week long residence in the Science Gallery. We looked for a fun way to play back the audio of people’s brain waves, that we were capturing with an EEG unit. We again faced problems with the kits being too quiet for the loud gallery setting. Finally, we used them as a demo at the Big Day Out, people loved the demo but not the look of the device. All these led to creating a stand alone, demo dubbed the Skull Radio Box.

 

The Build

IMG_20150404_191128.jpgIMG-20150405-WA0008.jpegThe case was the first part of the project.  I started out with Maker case website to create the general box. I then moved into Inkscape to do all the other parts of the design. After a few prototypes in cardboard, I was ready to cut out the final box in  5mm plywood. As the project came out of the laser cutter it looked perfect but when putting together the box with the finger joints, it was clear it did not fit together. Two hours later, using a file,  sand paper and just a little hot glue, the box was all together.

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