Global Urban Datafest – Smart Bins for Dublin!

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.

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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!

 

 

 

TOG Laser is alive

So finally after 7 months of running the laser, we are getting around to making a blog post.

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Our Lasersaur 13.04 is working well have been able to cut lots and lots of projects. Come and check it out we have some stuff you can take away with you. Also if you have any projects you would like to try out let us know in comments or join our mailing list.

 

Video:

Open Social with Satellite Ground Stations

This Saturday is our monthly Open Social. We are trying something new this month with having a talk on during the night too. We will have all the normal madness with project demo’s, beer tasting , pizza making and general chatting all round but with a short talk by Daniel Cussen.

Our doors will be open from 7pm with the talk starting at 9.30pm . The event is free and all our welcome.

Talk Title : Creating a Satellite Ground Station

Talk Description: This talk will be about the experiences of setting up a  Satellite Station to talk to the International Space Station. From more information you can view an article in Echo Ireland on the project.

DIGITAL CAMERA

Epson Stylus Pro 9500 large form printer

Epson Printer

We, at tog, like to extend the usability of items for as long as possible. (Or at least that is our excuse for all the out-of-date tech laying about.) So back in May of last year when we were offered a very large format printer, it was hard to say no. (Stay with me sewists.)

Some members took it in, gave it some TLC, and we even found a roll of paper at ReCreate! But then we hit a problem. The last available drivers for it are Windows XP 32-bit. Which is not exactly commonplace anymore.

Then, a short while, and some internet searching, ago, we discovered that gutenprint-cups, the default printing facility on many linux distros actually supports this printer! It’s not hard to install; plug in the USB cable, open a browser, go to http://localhost:631/ and press the right buttons. Done.

Long story short; the printer lives again! And for you sewists out there; ever buy a digital pattern and have to spend hours taping together A4 sheets? Well, if you can also get a large form pattern, you won’t have to do that anymore! Just visit tog some Craft Night and we’ll sort you out!

Love Locks on Ha’penny Bridge

IMG_20150220_080018_800x600The TOG Lockpicking Group were in the press a few times over the last few weeks. Mainly over the Love Locks removal from the Ha’penny Bridge. At first we got some mixed responses from family members and colleagues but eventually we got them to see us as helping the bridge and not destroyers of love!

If you missed any of the coverage, a TOG member running the @LoveLockNoMore account documented the adventure.

It all started with a quick visit to the bridge to remove 8.7KG of locks:

Then of course Broadsheet.ie pick up on it:

Then the newspapers picked up on it:

Irish Examiner

The Sunday Times

The Hearld

The Irish Sun

We even managed to squeeze in a bit of run with a quiz :

Even getting into the Social Media Column in the Irish Examiner:

And what is the best result of it all? The Dublin City Council visited the bridge with their cutting tools, and cleared the bridge! I job well done if I do say so myself 🙂

 

Update On 98FM talking to Ray Foley from 1:10:25