The Dublin Hackerspace
Tog Hackerspace is teaming up with Trinity College Dublin (TCD) for a special Green Week Repair Café! Bring your broken items—electronics, appliances, furniture, clothing—and our skilled volunteers will help you fix them while sharing valuable repair skills.
📅 Date & Time: 12th of March from 12:00 – 14:00.
📍 Location: Atrium, Trinity College Dublin
🔗 More details: Event website
Let’s reduce waste, learn new skills, and build a culture of repair. See you there!
We are teaming up with Fingal Makerspace and Make Create Innovate to host a Repair Cafe in Blanchardstown. The aim is to bring together skilled volunteers and community members who want to repair their broken household items.
Our passionate team of skilled volunteers will be on hand to help you fix everything from electronics and appliances to furniture and clothing, all while sharing valuable repair skills and promoting a sustainable lifestyle.
At the Repair Café , you can:
So grab your broken treasures and join us for a day of mending, learning, and connection at Fingal Makerspace Repair Café. Together, we can build a more sustainable future and celebrate the power of repair!
Date: Saturday 29th March 2025
Time: 11 am – 3 pm
Location: Fingal Makerspace
More info & Tickets : https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/fingal-makerspace-repair-cafe-all-ages-tickets-1249306582619?aff=ebdsoporgprofile
An ebike battery from 2012 has given great service, but the balancing of some individual cells in this 16S Lithium Iron Phosphate battery started to take much longer than others. Eventually, some cells would not balance at all. Each cell has its own “channel” on the battery management system (BMS). A red LED on the BMS should illuminate when the cell comes up to full charge.
On closer examination, some of the sense wires to individual cells were found to have become disconnected. These were resoldered which brought some improvement, but still balancing was not happening consistently. Some damage and corrosion on the BMS circuit board was then found. In the world of ebikes, things have moved on quite a bit since 2012. So it was decided to replace the stock BMS with an up-to-date Bluetooth enabled one.
A “JK” BMS was chosen, which seems to be a popular brand from various online forums. The one page “manual” that came with the BMS isn’t the best, and would probably get a “could do better” if it was a school or college project. Thankfully, with a bit of help from a number of YouTube channels, the BMS was fitted ok and started up. With the matching smartphone app installed, it’s cool to see all the individual cell voltages in real time and the balancing happening before your eyes.
If you’d like to see these kinds of fixes and mods that we get up to, drop in to our Monday night Electronics or Tuesday Open House.
We’re no stranger to Repair Cafés here at TOG, having just run our biggest one ever in January. Repair Cafés are events where volunteers try to fix stuff to keep it in-service and out of landfill. We had about 90 fixes attempted on the day with much success, thanks to a fantastic pool of fixers. You can read about it in the Irish Times.
This particular fix was a simple one, but we also decided to upgrade the power socket to USB-C. A rechargeable work light from ALDI had become intermittent in charging. The charging socket (micro USB) seemed sensitive to touch. Some of the tiny surface mount pins on the charging socket circuit board had failed. These proved quite difficult to re-solder, even with our best hot air kit.
Checking the usual Chinese websites, there are many kinds of USB-C plugs and sockets available. We bought 3 types…. some chassis mounting ones, some on a small PCB similar to the original one, and some plain vanilla ones with just 2 flying leads. We decided to use the plain one. With a bit of enlarging of the hole to make it fit, and some 2-part epoxy, the new USB-C socket is now in place and connected up. These have just a red and a black wire so it’s just 5V, but that’s fine for this application.
Talking afterwards, most of the gadgets and gizmos that we’ve made at TOG have traditionally used some kind of barrel plug for 5V or 12V. Since USB-C is now the in-thing, it’s easy to use it for new projects. Drop in to our regular Monday night Electronics or Tuesday night Open House to see this and much more.
If you need something repaired come along to our upcoming repair cafes.
Fingal Makerspace, Blanchardstown Library 29th March 2025
Tog Hackerspace, 19th April 2025
Bring your broken gadgets and gizmos to get them fixed by skilled volunteers at TOG Hackerspace!
Save your things from the landfill and your wallet from having to replace them.
Join us in Tog on Sunday 19th of January from 12 pm – 4 pm.
What objects can you bring in?
Safety testing (PAT) for electrical devices will be available.
Whether it’s a wonky toaster or a glitchy switch, our experienced volunteers are here to help. No need to throw things away when they can be fixed! Swing by with your items and let’s get them back in working order together. TOG members will be on hand to show you around the space – come and enjoy a tea or coffee and a tour while you wait!
See you there!
Where? – Unit 1B Motor City, Kylemore Road, Dublin 12, D12 CF6V
When? – Sunday, January 19th, 12 pm – 4 pm
Admission is free – but book a ticket so we can plan numbers – all are welcome!
https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/1122854872149?aff=oddtdtcreator
If you would like to be a fixer, drop us an email.
Continue reading “January 2024 Repair Cafe”
3D printing has become an incredibly useful tool for household repairs. With a little creativity, you can fix broken items instead of throwing them away. In this post, Christian will share how he used a Prusa 3D printer to repair two everyday items: a toilet roll holder and a window blind clip.
Project 1: Toilet Roll Holder Repair
When the mounting bracket of my toilet roll holder broke, I decided to design a custom clip to fix it. Here’s how I did it:
