Software night will be back as usual this evening – feel free to post any ideas for stuff you might be working on, and come along with laptops, drinks and/or nibbles.
The project list from last time is available here.
There should be some tinkering with the ‘pattern’ NLP library for Python going on as well if anyone’s interested.
I’ll aim to open the lab for 7pm – in practice may be there a little earlier.
Cheers!
Jay
Last night we completed a vital new piece of equipment, the safety socket.
The safety socket is a design by Kevin O’Connor of London Power that has been published in his book “Tonnes Of Tone”. It uses domestic light bulbs as a power soak to protect equipment-under-test in the event of a potentially catastrophic failure. It’s a simple design that can save hundreds of pounds worth of gear from destruction.
Now it’s completed, it becomes part of the growing library of test equipment available to builders and experimenters in the Edinburgh Hacklab.
Here are some images showing the construction process:
Robomotic of Glasgow have had their new hobby logic analyzer put through their paces, with positive results. Great value at £25.
Congrats Paulo
Read the review at Maarten Damen‘s blog.
This project has been a long term project nearly since Edinburgh Hacklab’s formation. The goal was to take the broken RepRap, and use its 3 axis stepper motors and electronic and fit them to a basic milling machine (Clarke CMD10 Micro Milling Machine). So far we have successfully made new motor mounts for the X and Y axis and fitted the NEMA 23 steppers to it. The stepper motors can now move the workpiece from electronic instruction.
We have postponed automating the Z axis. Many useful things can still be machined without an automatic Z, e.g. PCBs, sheet profiling. Also it does not make much sense investing more time into the machine until we know the X and Y axis will work as desired. While we know that the X and Y turn, we do not know whether they occasionally skip steps which would lead to loss of accuracy in the machine.
Our focus currently is building the tool chain which turns graphical representations of objects (CAD) into lists of machine instructions (G-Code). This process of instructing a machine to cut according to a technical drawing is known as computer aided machining (CAM). The installed RepRap Arduino electronic controller is already a G-code interpreter. So we are looking for an affordable CAD and CAM software solution (preferably open source). Gareth has suggested http://www.heeks.net/ which seems to tick the right boxes.
There are still some more minor issues to resolve before we can try out heeks. Martin found a laptop for use to use with the machine, but the wi-fi does not seem to work. Before we can install any software on the machining laptop, we need an Internet connection. The machine, to minimize dust contamination, is located as far away from our computers as possible, thus complicating setting up a network connection.
Tom Larkworthy
Dallas Makerspace have some blog coverage of Gareth’s visit to their space:
Gareth Edwards of Edinburgh Hacklab and Dorkbot Alba in Scotland is our latest international visiting hacker. He dropped by the Dallas Makerspace on Sunday (7 Nov) to check out our newly painted warehouse area and help us pull the plastic tarps off all our gear. Edinburgh Hacklab and Dorkbot have done projects similar to some of our own including a really cool computer controlled pipe organ that puts our puny vacuum reed organ to shame.
Michael McLeod has given us another mention on the Guardian Edinburgh blog:
The StartupCafe blog reports that Friday’s Edinburgh Hacklab opening was packed with people and ideas, including a homemade quadrocopter, an LED top hat and robot cupcakes.
Thanks, Michael!
StartupCafe have reviewed our Grand Opening on Friday:
We checked out the Hacklab opening on Friday. The place was so packed at 19:30 that we could hardly get in the door—quite a feat for a co-working venue that’s only been a month in the making.
The Guardian Edinburgh blog has a short piece on the opening of the Hacklab:
Hackers have been known to be anything from journalists to computer crackers in recent years. But a new bunch of self-proclaimed ‘geeks with a dream’ in Edinburgh are looking to give the term a more positive and creative reputation.
On 8th September 2010, Ollie Saunders gave a presentation on hackerspaces to TechMeetup.
TM Talks-Ollie Saunders talks about Hackerspaces from TechMeetup on Vimeo.