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Fan Table at Octocon 2021

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.

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Casio SK-1 Repair

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.

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Project Showcase – August Live Stream

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.

Link To Live Stream

Talks

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.

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Goodbye TOG 3.0 – Final Day

We have now said goodbye to 22 Blackpitts, our home since 2015. The space has served us well. We had many great events and projects build while there. At this point, we also say goodbye to Dublin 8. We have been in this area of the city since TOG 2.0 in 2010. This area and the wider community have been great supporters to us. It has allowed our little group to grow up to a large members organization that supports a wide range of activities and people to have a creative outlet.

Check out our photo gallery to see all the effort that went into the clear-out and move.

https://www.tog.ie/gallery/

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TOG 4.0…. New Space

Introducing TOG 4.0, our new home in Bluebell.

We are delighted to announce that we have secured a home for TOG 4.0. We have taken a lease on a 335 square meter industrial unit in Bluebell at Unit 1B Motor City, just off Kylemore Road. We are about an 8-minute walk from Kylemore Luas stop and there is also plenty of car parking available.

Keeping things retro our first photo of the space is taken on a 1970s Polaroid sx-70 instant camera.

The unit is completely empty, so we now have a blank canvas to build a wonderful space for ourselves and our community of hackers and makers. We are always open to new members so if you would like to be a part of building TOG 4.0 please let us know!


We want to thank all our members and the community for their help in finding a new space and a home for the next few years. You can check out our gallery for more photos of TOG 4.0.

https://www.tog.ie/gallery/nggallery/all/tog-4-0

TOG has been in existence for over 12 years now, providing Dublin with a space to craft, hack, make and socialize. Watch out for a mega opening event when COVID permits. We are all really looking forward to running events and working on projects again.