News – Page 33 – Tog Hackerspace

07/05/201511/05/2015

Important Safety Update: Tog is now ducksaster-ready

While politicians and the media remain silent about the impending duck-driven disasters coming our way, Tog has taken the proactive step of installing a Mutually Quacksured Duckstruction doomsday device for when the flocks finally rise up against us.

This is the most advanced system yet to come from Tog’s secretive Defence Using Counterfowl Knowledge Streams [D.U.C.K.S] Lab.

Several Tog members quit their jobs to develop this vital defence against The Flappy Menace, many going bankrupt in the process.

When terrifying scenes like the one below come visiting your town, who you gonna call?!

21/04/201525/04/2015

TOG Moving…….A Stay of Execution

TOG’s lease on Chancery lane expires in the next few days, but since they’re not ready to tear the place down just yet, we’ve been given a minor reprieve. We can stay on month-to-month for a little while. It’s a very busy time for us at the moment, so it kinda suits us to hold on for a little bit, until we get some events out of the way. We’re still preparing for the move, so watch this space or join our mailing list / twitter feed for updates.

28/03/201525/04/2015

Beefhack Success

Last weekend saw Ireland’s first food focused hackathon, Beefhack. The event sponsored by ABP Food Group, was about coming up will solutions for the Irish beef industry. The a prize fund was over €22,500, it drew people from all over the county to participate. Over 100 people on Friday evening came together to form 13 diverse teams to build all sorts of different projects. At the end of the weekend, 11 projects were completed and demoed to the public.

Our own Jeffrey Roe was on a team called “Track n Trace”. Their project was developing a smart tracker that monitors and collects data of beef produce while in transit. The tracker provides real time data and shipment info ensuring that there is full traceability of the product from field to fork. For more information about the project you can view this slides or photos.

We are delighted to see team “Track n Trace” came second in the competition winning €5,000. This TOG’s second success in a hackathon this month after the Smart City’s event. For more coverage of the event and to find out about the other winners you can read the Intel round up or Silicon Republic.

24/03/201524/03/2015

Spectral Forms

tumblr_inline_nleqv0IQzN1r1ofie tumblr_inline_nleshmU6T21r1ofie Over the past few months, we have been working with brain waves. What started at Artek Circle hackathon last year has grown to be Spectral Forms. We have taken consumer-grade EEG wearables, and tried to see what is the potential and limits of these devices are. Available online and for only $50, it has opened up a whole new area to play with. These small devices claim to accurately detect and interpret the tiny electrical impulses our brains output. These impulses can be broadly categorised into four bands, representing four different ‘levels’ of thought.

We have created software programmes that takes in the brain data, then displays it in a number of different patterns. We also play back an audio representation back to the wearer via a bone conduction unit. You can hear a sample below.

Lab in the Gallery

We are now taking the project to the public to try out. From the 24th till the 29 March we will be in the Science Gallery as the Lab in the Gallery . We are hopping that people will drop into us and listen to their own thoughts for a while. During our time there, we hope to work more on the 3D printing of brain wave data and testing the accuracy of the sensors.

Skull Radio Workshop

We are running our Skull Radio Workshop during our time in the Science Gallery where you get to make your very own bone conduction kit. For more information on the workshop and tickets visit here.

Spectral Forms forms was created by Sinead McDonald, Jeffrey Roe and Krzysztof Foltman with lots of help from TOG members.

Over the 7-8th March 2015, several members of Tog participated in and mentored at the Global Urban Datafest.

This was a globally synchronised hackathon with dozens of cities around the world hosting teams to solve urban problems with open-source hardware, software and data solutions.

Dublin saw many great teams participating — you can check out some of the projects here:

http://global.datafest.net/projects

The winning team was Bintel – retrofitting Dublin city’s street bins with sensors and wifi to help make our city smarter and safer.

One of the members of the team was from Tog, and the others are now big hackerspace fans – they are using our space to build more prototypes for their products.

See the project page here for more info.

Overall it was a great weekend, and the kind of environment Tog thrives at.

We are looking forward to host and participate at many more events like this in 2015!

Category: News