Category: News

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Help TOG find a new home!

We have been given notice on our current home, TOG 3.0 at 22 Blackpitts, with 31 July 2021 as our last day. Right now we have no new premises to move to, and with the current rental situation in Dublin, we need all the help we can get to find our new home!

How you can help TOG:

  • Do you know of an available building that could be TOG 4.0?
  • Do you have contacts who could help us find that new home?
  • Do you know of an organization that we could partner with on a space?
  • Share this post/Forward this email to get the word out!

What does TOG 4.0 need?

  • Ideally light industrial/workshop space with facilities with potential for common room, kitchen, classroom etc
  • At least 150sqm (?)
  • Easy access via public transport or walking distance from the city centre
  • Safe and accessible for our members and the wider community

Please get in touch with us via email info@tog.ie

What is TOG?

We are a community hackerspace/makerspace located in Dublin City Centre founded in 2009. We are a place where people can go to make things in a supportive and creative atmosphere. Where people can go along and pick up a new skill or have access to equipment to make their project a reality. Most importantly it’s a community space.

We are a non-profit, non-commercial group funded by our members. We are a very diverse group of makers with strong software, hardware and engineering skills as well as arts and design skills. In our Blackpitts space, we have the room, tools and equipment to work in all

of these areas. We range in age from students to retired. We have members with decades of experience in work and industry. We also host and attend external events such as Hackathons, Dublin Maker events for Science Week, Engineers Week and a range of other STEM outreach

events. A strong social, networking and ideas exchange scene is also part of our membership and the wider public. We are open to new members joining and we run regular weekly events for the public.

What does this mean for you?

Right now we are reducing the amount of material in TOG 3.0 as much as possible.

If you are a member, please remove all your items from TOG ASAP! All members’ personal materials must be removed from TOG by 30 June 2021.

If you are a former member and still have material in TOG get in touch with us ASAP and we can facilitate collection or disposal.

Full Press Release -> https://www.tog.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/TOG-Press-Release-Irelands-oldest-hackerspace-needs-a-new-home.pdf

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April Live Stream

April is almost at a close but we have just scheduled this month’s live stream. We have lined up a night of talks for you on Wednesday the 28th of April from 7 pm streaming on our Youtube channel. We will have talks about electro-mechanical Uilleann Pipes, the Sharepair project and the electronics that go into an escape room. The talks will be followed by a live Q&A. Check out the talks below.

Link To Live Stream

Talks

Talk Title: Musical NAND gate oscillators and electro-mechanical Uilleann Pipes
Project Description: A demonstration of analogue synthesisers that I’ve made, a look at their schematics, and how this might lead to a new electro-mechanical musical instrument.
Speaker: Brian Leach
Bio: Brian is a Maker, Sound Artist, and Musician inspired by the cross-over of ancient tradition and contemporary technology. Brian currently works as a musician with traditional Irish band ‘Torcán’, as a Luthier at his own business Cork Guitars, and also as a Woodworker. A fascination with new notes and sounds leads him to design and build one-of-a-kind musical instruments with unique character. He completed his studies in Musical Instrument Building at St. John’s Central College Cork in 2017. Drawing on a degree in Astrophysics, and a Masters in Music Technology, he designs his instruments with a solid scientific understanding, technical intuition, and an artist’s eye. Brian is a maker from Benchspace.
Links: www.corkguitars.ie

Talk Title: Sharepair: Digital Support Infrastructure for Citizens in the Repair Economy
Project Description: The project addresses the increasing amount of waste from electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). WEEE is one of the fastest-growing waste streams in the EU, growing at 3-5% a year. Consumption of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE), and therefore production of WEEE, is very high throughout the NWE region (Eurostat 2016, EEE products put on the market). At the same time, NWE is home to a growing citizen repair movement (10,000+ volunteers), attempting to fight back against this upsurge in waste. However, their impact remains small, even though consumers indicate a high willingness to repair. Hence, there is a large gap between intent and actual behaviour, due to a lack of convenient and accessible repair solutions.
Speaker: Bobby Comerford
Bio: Bobby Comerford is a multimedia designer currently working on digital tools to aid repair and data collection in the citizen-led repair initiatives across Europe. He has a background in design research, education, and industrial design
Links: Website, Sharepair

Talk Title:  Bringing an Escape Room To Life
Project Description: The talk will outline the design and craft process in creating an escape room experience. Louise will cover the theme to puzzle design and concerts. Jeffrey will give an example of the electronics that go into a puzzle.
Speaker: Louise Nolan, Jeffrey Roe
Bio: Louise is a multidisciplinary designer, artist and educator. Links: Twitter. Instagram, LinkedIn

Our event will be hosted by our own CEO Jeffrey. On the team of festival makers for Dublin Maker, Council & Executive board member of Engineers Ireland.

Be sure to put any questions you have for our speakers in the Youtube chat.

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Engineers Week – March Live Stream

We are delighted to be taking part in Engineers Week. We always like to take part in these national weeks to promote science and education. We have lined up a night of talks for you on Thursday the 4th of March from 7 pm streaming on our Youtube channel. This year we are teaming up with the Young Engineers Society to bring you a night of interesting lightning talks. The talks will be followed by a live Q&A. Check out the talks below.

Link To Live Stream

Talks

Talk Title: Faking it in AI
Project Description: AI and machine learning in particular is a great technology for engineers to play with, adopt and apply in unexpected ways to see old problems in a new light. Even better, you can fake it until you make it and there is a long on-ramp of automated services, packages and tools available to the hacker willing to try out new things. With some experience and a bit of derring-do you can even get up to the front line of research in a field that is changing and developing incredibly fast if you carefully pick your battles. I will give a quick tour of my lab’s engineering journey in machine learning where we learned to fake it, then make it before finally faking again but this time for real. On that journey we will talk about fitness trackers, brain computer interfaces, self driving cars (sort of) and why in our latest work we just made up loads of fake data and yet no one got angry about it. 
Speaker: Professor Tomás Ward
Bio: Tomas Ward is AIB Chair of Data Analytics at the School of Computing, Dublin City University. As a member of the Science Foundation Ireland-funded research centre Insight – Ireland’s Data Analytics research centre, Prof Ward studies how human health, performance and decision-making can be better understood through new ways of sensing and interpreting our physiology and behaviour. Tomas is a keen advocate of hacker spaces and is a co-founder of Dublin Maker – the showcase of the maker movement in Ireland.
Links: Website, Twitter

Talks Title: VCON – an Arduino with built-in remote firmware update and remote management
Project Description: Ever wanted to remotely OTA your Arduino without changing a single line of firmware code? VCON makes it possible.
Speaker: Sergey Lyubka
Bio: CTO at Netfort (now part of Rapid7), Engineering manager at Google, CTO at Cesanta
Links: vcon.io

There are lots of Engineers Week events happening all over the country you can find more of them listed here -> https://www.engineersireland.ie/schools/Engineers-Week

Our event will be hosted by our own CEO Jeffrey. On the team of festival makers for Dublin Maker, Council & Executive board member of Engineers Ireland.

Be sure to put any questions you have for our speakers in the Youtube chat.

This event is in collaboration with the Young Engineers Society

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International Unconference Building Communities

Photo: Christopher Burns (cc), Design: Q.ck (cc)

International Unconference Building Communities is set to take place on Thursday, 28th of January 2021 from 10:00 to 12:45 CET( 09:00 to 11:45 GMT) via Zoom platform gathering leaders and members of diverse international organisations and institutions, as well as experts in the areas of hybrid arts, museum practices, visual arts, intermedia and new media art, hacker and maker culture, performance art, environmental disciplines, street art and socially engaged practices with inclusive approaches to vulnerable groups and minorities in the context of community practices.

Our own CEO Jeffrey Roe will be telling our story of how TOG got started, the links we have built and our community.

To find more about unconference visit https://radiona.org/international-unconference-building-communities/

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12 years of Tog

This time of year we normally gather our members and the wider community to celebrate our birthday. Our community is now 12 years old.

Unfortunately our normal festivities are not possible with the current restrictions. We thank you all the for continued support over the years.We have moved a lot of events online. You can find them all on our Meetup page.

https://www.meetup.com/Tog-Dublin-Hackerspace/

Coding nights, Crafting, book clubs, security research, Wikipedia contributions and nights of talks.But we have always been about sharing connections and experiences in person.

Here is a throwback to our first interview by the The Irish Times with members Jeffrey Roe & Robert Fitzsimons. We still believe about the importance of meeting in the physical world.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/hackers-seek-physical-space-outside-the-virtual-world-1.741931?mode=amp

We hope to welcome you all back to our space and community when restrictions are lifted. Stay safe.

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Athlone Community College Calling ISS, Over

Athlone Community College has a once in a lifetime opportunity to make contact through amateur radio with the International Space Station (ISS) on 7th December 2020 at 2:50 pm.
Students from ACC will have about 11 minutes to put Athlone on the astronomical map as they make contact direct with the ISS while it orbits our planet at a speed of 27,600km/hr. This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity is part of the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station programme (ARISS), which will see students from Athlone Community College speaking with U.S. Astronaut Shannon Walker onboard the ISS.

The event will be live-streamed on YouTube starting around 1:30 pm on Monday, December 7th. Watch for the live stream at: https://youtu.be/viVQBI4WzKs Contact with space station is about 2:50pm-3:00pm

Working with the students and staff of Athlone Community College will be Daniel Cussen our member the ARISS Radio Technical Co-ordinator. He will build, test and oversee the operation of the temporary “mission control” radio station EI1ISS. Daniel commented “I am thrilled that ACC has been chosen for this event. I am extremely passionate about amateur radio and technology and I am so excited to share my passion with these students and to inspire them to follow in my footsteps”

Find our more at https://www.ariss.org/upcoming-contacts.html