We recently moved into a 1250 square foot facility and are in the process of renovating it to suit our needs. The space is located at:

6410 Landay Ave
Baltimore, MD 21237

The floors were looking pretty bad when we moved in, so we gave them a vigorous cleansing using a floor buffer and a power washer. The floors still were not up to par, so we painted the floors using acrylic floor paint and then added paint flakes to really kick it up a notch.

We need a place to work, so we built a few work benches. 40 2×4′s, 2 sheets of plywood and 2 sheets of laminate was just the right amount of wood to build 6 benches which are 32″ high x 30″ deep x 48″ long.

As you can see in the background, we have also moved much of our stuff into the space.  That’s not all…We have really been hard at work in making this space feel like a warm and welcoming place to hang out and learn new skills.  Paul King gave the place a slightly more social feel by adding a little graffiti to the newly renovated office wall.

Maybe that should be E=I*R but does it really matter? Google ‘Ohms Law Chart’ and you mostly find V=I*R as examples. Besides, it’s only paint so we can fix that! We plan to add a lot more electronics-related graffiti to the wall. I bet that Ohms law triangle will get used more often that people think…

Harford Hackerspace is pleased to announce that we have received our official letter of approval from the Internal Revenue Service giving us 501(c)(3) non-profit, charitable status.

We started our adventure of becoming a charitable organization in July 2009 with the help of Nick Farr from HacDC. Nick took time out of his busy schedule to visit our Hackerspace and go through the rough draft of our IRS Form 1023. Without him we would have made a few mistakes on our form. A very special thanks goes out to you Nick.

In October 2009 we put the stamp on our envelope and sent our application to the IRS hoping for the best. A lot of hard work went into preparing the application. It’s a 26 page application and several of the questions require written responses. To keep the application reviewer from guessing at what we do we included several project examples and  took photos of us working as a group.

On January 11th 2010 we got a request for more information. Apparently this is standard procedure for all applicants. The questions were fairly straight forward and we were able to call the IRS agent directly and ask her questions. After faxing her our answers the lady quickly reviewed them and told us over the phone that she was recommending us for our 501(c)(3) status.

Today, we finally received our approval letter complete with our 501(c)(3) exemption number. It has been a long time coming but I am sure all the hard work will pay off in the near future.

Our first birthday!  Seems just like yesterday, HaHa was just a twinkle in Dave’s eye.  Check out this video of us enjoying some inkjet-printed confection.

I know we have been pretty bad with updating our blog. However, I can assure you we are a very active hackerspace and have been building like of fun things in our Baltimore space. Over the last few weeks we received a Schlage Link Z-Wave keyless entry kit and installed it with no problems. Miles has been leading the construction of a hovercraft made from laser cut wood parts, some bolts, and a motorcycle inner tube. It works very well! Jason has brought in several little gadgets for show and tell and the CNC Machine is just about complete. It just needs a few finishing touches.

Check out the photos for a little motivation. You could be here having fun with us.  info@harfordhackerspace.org

Before we get to this topic I want to remind our guest that we meet every Wednesday at 7pm. Contact us if you are interested in coming.

We were never using our forum yet we were getting lots of spammers signing up for it. So I have disabled the forum and removed the link to it. We do have a mailing list but it’s kept private and is only for people who want to participate. E-mail and tell us all about you then you can get on the list.

Our Wiki and this blog will remain the two main methods of communication. The blog is more for a snap shot at what we have done and what we will be doing. The wiki is more for the business side of things such as how we raise funds and event planing.

Nick Farr stoped by Harford Hackerspace and shed some light on the 501(c)(3) process. He also shared some “good practice” points with us and The Node. Prior to Nicks arrival Harford Hackerspace and The Node had a long conversation about how the two organizations could collaborate or possibly merge. There was a lot of repetative questions asked but very little answers came of the discusssion.

Several members from both organizations put on the table the possible merge so long as the two organizations could agree on a suitable location. As of the end of the meeting on July 11th an agreement was not reached on the merge but both organizations agreed that our goals were similar and we would help each other in our efforts. A merge is not out of the question but it’s also not likely to happen in the immediate future. However the offer is still on the table from Harford Hackerspaces perspective.

Now that that intense meeting is over Harford Hackerspace will resume its normal activities on July 16  @ 7:30 pm in the Temporary Hackerspace Garage. E-mail info@harfordhackerspace.org if you ever want to attend any meetings. We may even be able to schedule a meeting around your calendar.

It has been a while since we posted an update but that’s because we have been busy. Here is the latest on the organization.

1. We found a temporary place to start meeting weekly. It’s a large garage owned by one of our members. This will allow us to start working on projects and hopefully attract a few new members. We plan to start holding weekly meetings to work on our projects starting next week. Get in touch with us via IRC or the Forums if you would like to hang out with us.
2. We have decided that our first project is going to be to build a CNC Machine capable of creating circuit boards. We are currently in the design phase and the design discussion can be tracked on our forums project board.
3. [***FINALLY***] This is the most exciting news. We are now officially incorporated with the State of Maryland Department of Taxation as a non-stock corporation. You can look for your self at http://www.dat.state.md.us/ and searching for Harford Hackerspace. This means that we can setup a bank account and start collecting membership dues. Not being incorporated has been a big setback for us but we pushed through it and are ready to move full speed ahead.

We now have a forum and it looks great thanks to member bsom. Sign-up and start posting. Remeber to introduce yourself and please start brainstorming project and educational class ideas. Keep in mind that the purpose of a Hackerspace is to get out from behind your computer and interact with real people in real places. It’s often easy to forget this and get trapped in the internet virtual world. Please come to our meetings and hopefully soon our hackerspace.

A link to the forum can be found at the top of the home page for easy access. However you will need a separate account for the forum. Your wordpress account for the home page will NOT work. Sorry!

http://harfordhackerspace.org/forum

The opensource http://www.dimdim.com software is Free for up to 20 people and only $99/yr for 100 people.  User Brimstone from hackerspaces was nice enough to join a conference with me where we tested the software by sharing a PowerPoint presentation and a Whiteboard. I was able to call into the Free conference phone number as well as communicate via voice using a microphone.

Unfortunately, people on the microphone can not be heard on the phone. Also one other limitation pointed out was that there is no time stamp in the chat room. Other than that the software is super cool. It’s fast and full of features.

I would like to use this software to hold Free webinars and possibly even webinars where we would accept donations to help raise funds for Harford Hackerspace. This software will allow us to reach beyond our own hackerspace to teach and learn from hackerspaces all over the world.

I was day dreaming about this logo at work and I even used Paint to sketch the concept. As you can see the original idea included a capacitor and a resistor. I would still like to work some type of electronics or code into the image but my artistic abilities pretty much stop at what you see.

I am certainly open to new ideas. If you are an artist or simply good with computer graphics and would like to make us a nice vector graphic then by all means please do so. Feel free to simply improve this logo. About .001% of my computer skills are related to graphics. Some of the obvious issues with this are are its scale, the font, and the bluriness of the bmp export. It was create in about 10 minutes using InkScape.