We are so proud of his accomplishment. If you haven’t read the article, click here.  Way to go Mark!

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.

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

1. Face scanning  (Jeff)
2. Assembling a MakerGear Prusa (Jessica)
3. Printing motor mounts and playing with kinect (Miles).
4. Rummaging through some Rasberry Pi tutorials from adafruit.com (Eric).
5. Working on design for tank robot (Mark, Eric)
6. I’m sure someone will be printing something out on the CNC machine as well.
7. Optimize my Arduino Fireplace Fan. Thanks for the tips Jason!

Hope to see you!

*** UPDATE ** added some pics from open hack night

Attention All Hobbyists

• Is your shop so cluttered you can barely work on your projects?
• Did you buy something online that didn’t fit into your plans?
• Are you still looking for that perfect gadget, part or tool?

If you answered YES or NO to any of these questions, you need to attend the 4^th Annual Techno-Swap-Fest to buy, sell and gawk at all the precious junk that other hobbyists crave.

More info here

We’re really excited to announce that Baltimore Hackerspace has moved to a new location and we would like you to come help us celebrate.  Come socialize, learn and check out the facility. We will have our projects on display and will be doing a couple workshops. There is also a rumor that there may be food!

If you are attending I invite you to RSVP so we can get an idea of how many people are coming.

http://www.meetup.com/Baltimore-Hackerspace/events/89508782/

When: November 17th, 2012
Time: Noon – whenever
Where: 6410 Landay Ave. Baltimore MD 21237 MAP

*** UPDATE **  This event has been canceled.  Sorry everyone.  We’ll be having Open Hack night instead.

Interested in getting started with Git? Curious about what’s so great about this DVCS stuff? Have no idea was DVCS is? Join us for an awesome night of Git and GitHub and get bootstrapped. Jared from GitHub (@ShepBook) will be presenting and will be hanging around to answer your questions!

Wed, November 7th, 2012.  7:00 pm.

Limited space available, so please register at http://www.meetup.com/Baltimore-Hackerspace/events/88080042/

We’ve been having some fun decorating, painting and building new workbenches for the hackerspace.  We also realized we have a lot of junk to sort through! Whew!

Anyway, if you haven’t stopped by yet, we wanted to show the progress of how things are coming a long.  Here are some updated pictures:

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…