Thanks everyone who participated in the event.  Our booth was a huge success.  If you didn’t make it, here’s a pic flood of what you missed.   To name a few thing’s you missed: Mark’s robot HEX, Eric’s telepresence robot, Jeff’s LaserShark/Laser Pong,  The robot head game, the cornstarch monster,  Paul’s chiptunes streamer/midi interface, Miles and his cardboard robots, an awesome vacuum tube amplifier and the larger part of our redbull creation project!  See you next year!

You must register for this class on Meetup; Limited seating available.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

You will learn:

How to use a breadboard
What capacitors are
How to use capacitors for filtering power
How to use capacitors for basic debounce/timing circuits
Connect a 555 timer circuit for blinking an LED

This will require the purchase of a breadboard and some more expensive parts that last time (I’m thinking it will be about $15 — I may need to adjust this after I buy the parts). I will bulk-order and get everyone more parts that you need.

700pt breadboard (Like this: )
A few voltage regulators (LM317, 7805) in TO-220 packages
A few 555 timers (DIP-8)
A couple potentiometers (5k, 10k, linear taper)
More resistors (assortment)
Some capacitors (.1uF, 1uF, 10uF)
etc.

I’ll update this as I develop the slides.

You will need to bring:

1 power supply – can be a wall transformer that is between 9 and 15 VDC and greater than 200mA output. You should be able to salvage on of these from any number of places.

22ga Solid Core wire (for connecting to you breadboard)
Some kind of wire cutters. I got some of these the other day:
(Small version – will handle anything that can fit on a breadboard)

Some kind of wire strippers. I like these but any kind that can strip 22ga solid wire is fine.

The parts kit from the last class (need the resistors, LEDs, and multimeter from it) or you can buy a kit for $5 (we may not have more multimeters available if you wait too long)

Either $15 or all of the parts that I listed in the parts section above.

Chris Cockrum will be hosting another class.  This time is for beginning electronics.

There is limited seating available so Please register if you wish to attend.  Wed, March 20th.

Part 1.  Ohm’s law and Watt’s law

This class will teach the basics of voltage, current, and power.  A lab will be included that will demonstrate how to calculate the proper value of resistor to connect LEDs to power.

Parts and equipment may be borrowed from the hackerspace or you can purchase a multimeter (http://www.harborfreight.com/7-function-digital-multimeter-92020.html), a few LEDs, a few resistors, clip leads, and a 9V battery for $5.    Alternatively, you can bring your own.

Chris Cockrum of the Baltimore Hackerspace will be giving a course on Cryptography this Wednesday, February 20th at the Baltimore Hackerspace. He will be teaching the fundamentals of public and secret key cryptography including exercises on RSA, elliptic curve, and cryptanalysis using Sagemath (Python Based).

According to Meetup, the class is full but if you are interested in having another class, please let us know by leaving us a message on the meetup entry.

Here’s what’s going on this week at openHack:

• More Raspberry Pi tutorials
• Working on the Telepresence Robot.
• Continuing work on the Battlebot
• Heater building (hey, it’s cold man!)
• Hex (the Robot) demo’s
• Hopefully there will be some quadcopters roaming around tonight too.
• Fun with barely legal electronic cigarettes!

Look for our sign out front and see you tonight!

Baltimore Hackerspace hosted the first meetup of the new Baltimore Drones Meetup group. The event was a huge success. There were about 10 drones on display and everyone had stories to tell and knowledge to share. One of the hot topics discussed was the perception of  the word Drones. Baltimore Hackerspace can relate to this problem. The word “Hacker” has been tainted for decades and our decision to call ourselves a Hackerspace vs a Makerspace was a big one. What is the definition of a Hacker anyways? Everyone has their own opinions of the word.

Baltimore Drones is in the same boat. What is a Drone? Should we call our toys Drones,  UAVs,  or Multirotors? This was a hot topic and we all seemed to agree on most things. There are so many positive things Drones can be used for. Most of which can create new jobs which are disparately needed these days.

Thank you to all who participated. We look forward to hosting future meetups for Baltimore Drones.

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Here’s what’s going on Wed. Feb 6th Baltimore Hackerspace:

1. Telepresence Robot – The basic design is down, wireless ipCam – check, steering mechanism – check, motors to power the wheels – check.
2. Installing ‘Occidentalis’ on Rasberry Pi’s and connecting them wirelessly to a network. Continuing through adafruit tutorials. – Didn’t get too far with that last week.
3. Jeff will be coding in python and C.
4. Continue building the Prusa 3d Printer.
5. Robot Building / Heater building – Miles is building a kick-but battle bot!
6. Much fun usually surfaces real time so we’ll see what else is happening.

6410 Landay Ave.
Baltimore MD. 21237

Look for our sign out front and see you there!

Here’s what’s going on tonight at Baltimore Hackerspace:

1. Guest Speaker Jim Jackson, HTML5 for .NET Developers
2. Continure building the Prusa 3d Printer.
3. Installing ‘Occidentalis’ on Rasberry Pi’s and connecting them wirelessly to a network. Continuing through adafruit tutorials.
4. A rebuild of a classic video gaming console.
5. Continue the design of our autonomous telepresence robot.

6410 Landay Ave.
Baltimore MD. 21237

Look for our sign out front and see you there!

Last week, Terry Kilby from Baltimore Drones stopped by Baltimore Hackerspace and he brought a couple of his Drones with him. I think it was the first time allot of us have seen Drones of this quality up close and they were just as exciting as I thought they would be. Both Drones were made to port a camera on the bottom of them and Terry said that he frequently contracts out the Drones for special camera work. Very cool!

To find out more about drones and how to get off the ground with them, The Baltimore Drones Meetup will be held at Baltimore Hackerspace, Saturday, February 9th at 1pm.

Here are some pics:

Here’s what’s going on tonight:

1. Raspberry Pi tutorials.
2. An electric cigarette project that you have to see for yourself.
3. Fun with Arduino’s and relays.
4. Assembling a Makerbot Prusa.
5. Wheel hubs and a vacuum table.
6. Hex will be getting some upgrades
7. Kicad layout/schematic entry.